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.

AN: Wow, last chapter got a hell of a response! So many angry Blaine comments, which I about expected. It was kind of a dick move, even if he had his own logic for it. Thank you all for your reviews, as always! I read every single one of them, and often reply to them if I can (i.e. logged in with reply feature enabled).

I hope everyone enjoys this chapter, and my apologies for the slight delay and that it's a little short.

Chapter Eight: Deep Waters

Blaine didn't know how long he ran.

He ran until the buildings blurred in front of him and he couldn't draw air into his lungs, until his feet began to ache in shoes that weren't designed for this. He wanted to run and never stop until things were normal again.

He wanted to run until Kurt was normal again, and Blaine could do what he'd been seriously considering and man up to ask him out. He remembered the very moment that his world had broken and everything went cold, and he remembered the way Kurt's eyes had widened, huge and bright but glittering with tears that wouldn't fall in front of him. He remembered the hurt, angry, terrified screams echoing from the balcony, and he remembered forcing himself to keep going and not look back at him.

Blaine choked and kept running.

The only sounds he heard were the pounding footsteps of his own feet, and as Blaine finally collapsed onto a swing in the middle of the local park, he knew that he was alone.

The world was silent and dark and shadows seemed bigger and darker than they normally were, and Blaine stayed where he was.

He was definitely alone, and this time he'd brought it on himself.

Kurt felt like the world was clearer than it ought to be, panic and fear and a fair amount of residual fury making him feel as if somewhere inside him a faucet had been opened.

He didn't stop to catch his breath or think about where the other boy could have gone or consider the fact that this might be the most inefficient way to go about finding someone. But it had to be done this way. Blaine had run and Kurt had to go after him.

If only to make sure that he knew the truth, not the warped image that he seemed to hold.

Kurt didn't want to lose Blaine, but if he was, it was going to lose him to the truth, not some image that his brain or society or the media held. He knew that he'd go home eventually and probably cry a lot more and call up his girlfriends. He knew that regardless of everything, he'd definitely be going down to the lab to get his update and get his shoulder looked at, and he'd probably scream at Finn even though it was kind of like yelling at a particularly dim puppy.

He would go back to his apartment, and if Blaine didn't move out, he'd continue to look him in the eyes without fear even if he'd lost.

If being shoved and degraded and misunderstood had done anything beneficial for Kurt, it had made him nothing if not determined.

Kurt Hummel did not and would not back down.

The boy gritted his teeth and kept going even though his breathing was going ragged and he was having a hard time drawing in the air he needed and he was sure that he might have pulled something in his calf because it hurt to put weight down on it. Everything was tight, but as long as Blaine had kept running from him, he'd have to keep following.

Kurt Hummel only ran after things that mattered, and Blaine mattered.

And then, as if something that Kurt had never believed in had answered his prayers he hadn't prayed, there he was.

Suddenly, there was the sound of someone's breathing that wasn't his.

Blaine silently lifted his head and shifted tensely, recognizing Kurt's silhouette against the street lamps, cast against the inky sky and the lights of the stars. He shifted to move, stilling abruptly when Kurt spoke.

"Don't move. I know you; you wouldn't stop unless you had nothing left. I really don't want to run again quite so soon, anyway."

Kurt's voice was hoarse and Blaine wondered if it was from screaming in rage or from sobbing, before forcing himself to stop thinking about it. He didn't want to be concerned. He didn't want to care. He didn't want to hurt and he didn't want the pain on Kurt's face, plain as the darkness around him, to hurt so much. Blaine wished he was empty because then, this wouldn't matter.

Kurt walked over and sat down on the swing next to Blaine. He was limping slightly.

"You're hurt?" Blaine asked lowly, gesturing to the younger boy's leg and absently, Kurt ran his fingers over his calf, face unreadable.

"Guess I pulled something. It doesn't matter, muscles heal."

For a good while, silence reigned. An awkward, oppressive silence that neither of them found comfortable, so unlike their usual silences. Those times, Kurt would just be watching as Blaine worked with Fortissimo, not hovering, just observing. Or Blaine would be parked in his usual spot in Kurt's kitchen, watching the other boy cook, comfortable in himself and what they had.

This was misery stuffed into nothingness, and neither of them could take it.

"What do you think of me?" Kurt finally asked, lacing his hands in the chains of the swing set. "I don't want your censoring or sugarcoating. I want the truth."

The truth, because that was all that he was willing to give.

"…I'm scared." The words came through, tiny and ashamed and low, "I'm terrified right now. I'm scared of you. I thought that you were someone, and now it turns out that you're— I don't know anymore."

"Blaine… you always knew. What am I and who I am are different things."

"Of course they're not!" Blaine burst out, just the slightest shaking to his voice, "You've got—you've programs in your brain. Was everything just…binary to you? How do I know that it's real? How do I know that you won't just like…break one day? Or that something won't go wrong and you'll be someone different and won't care about you or about me?"

Kurt didn't think that his heart could break anymore than it already had, but at these words, it did. Not just for him –it hurt and everything inside him screamed in agony- but for Blaine too. His words weren't angry though they likely would be at some point. The first feeling he'd stated had been fear. Not anger, but fear. Not just fear of him, but fear for him.

Kurt would have rather had the anger.

"Blaine, do you know what a cyborg is?"

"It's a robot," he answered immediately, refusing to look Kurt in the eyes. "Made of metal and technology and—"

"No," Kurt insisted, voice tight and adamant, "You're wrong. A robot is just a robot. Essentially a-an advanced computer. A cyborg is someone who has both biological and artificial parts. Yeah, I've got some mechanical parts, but I was born human. I'm still human."

"How? And for god's sake, why?"

"Blaine, do you think I'm like this because I want to be? That I just got up one day and said, 'hey I wonder if I could survive putting tech in me!'? No!" There was a flash of anger, and Kurt struggled to get himself under control again, "I was basically born broken. Long story made very short, I would never have been able to move my body otherwise. Never would have been able to walk, to sing, to dance. Never move my arms to give anyone a hug, never turn my head to see who'd walked into the room. Even then, I would have been dead by five. My father…. And my mother, they couldn't handle that. Dad was already the head of the bioengineering department by then, and he got his best team together, and over the span of months they were able to create a skeletal structure for me that would function as a normal human's would, that with semi-regular injections would grow in the way that a normal human's would."

Blaine had raised his head only to drop his jaw in shock. Kurt ignored it and kept talking.

"They had to implant a chip into my head so that my human parts and my mechanical parts could work together. That's why I can pull up programs, and that's why I have to have an antivirus. I get sick, just like you. I'm physically stronger than a normal person and I have to eat more than a normal person, but my skin gets scraped up and bruised and I bleed red just like you. I can't—I could look up something on the internet in my head, but that wouldn't make me able to do it. I could learn the lyrics to a song, but that doesn't mean I could hit the notes. Blaine, I could show you how to put your fingers on the strings to make a certain chord, but that doesn't mean that I'd be able to play."

Kurt gritted his teeth.

"…is that why you're not in school?" Blaine finally asked, and Kurt flinched. The response took a while to come.

"Yes," He answered. "Everyone thought that I'd have too much of an advantage over the other students, and they thought I'd cheat to get the grades. It doesn't matter that the only advantage I have at all comes from being able to look up and store facts and information, and what good do facts do you in life? What good is knowledge if there's nothing you can do with it? Facts wouldn't have helped me sing or get an audition… get on stage and be heard. Who cares if you know how to make a straight surgical cut if your hands aren't steady or confident enough to do it?" There was the anger, the familiar rush of simultaneous fire and ice that never failed to make Kurt's blood boil and freeze, "I have nothing over anyone."

"Who…who else knows?"

"Other than you? My father, obviously. My stepmother and Finn- actually, my entire glee club. Actually, most of my high school and their parents, thanks to that Neanderthal, Karofsky,"

Kurt didn't even wait for the expected question to barrel forward.

"He was already a closeted dickbag, but he found out about me in senior year, kissed me and assaulted me, and basically told me that if I outed him, he'd tell everyone he knew. I said nothing, but he told anyway, telling everyone he could that I'd kissed him, that I was a dangerous bag of bolts whose only purpose was to corrupt and contaminate the normal people," Each word dripped with resentment and bitterness, "The only people who'd so much as look at me were my glee club, my Spanish teacher-slash-glee coach, and the cheerleading coach. Dad kept everything quiet by promising to sue the living daylights out of every single parent involved and the school itself if anyone breathed a word of it, so that's how no one else found out. When being a busybody can bring the full wrath of Carbon Corp. down on your head, people tend to listen."

For an entire minute, neither of them did anything but breathe.

"So here I am."

Silence reigned again, and Kurt began to lightly swing back and forth, just barely brushing the bottoms of his boots along the grass. Blaine wasn't looking at him again and the only sounds were those of the night and the slight creaking of the swing chains.

"Kurt…"

The taller boy stopped, drawing to a halt the moment Blaine moved to stand in front of him. Blue eyes went wide and met conflicted hazel.

"Y-yes?"

A hand reached out, and callused fingertips landed on Kurt's temple, sliding down his cheek and brushing his jaw. They traveled down his throat, over his shoulder and finally came to a rest on his chest.

"I swear to you, Blaine, I am myself. Everything I've done and everything I've said…all of those things are me. The good things, the bad things… I can be self-centered sometimes and a little overdramatic, but all of that, it's all me. There's no RAM, no personality coding, I don't have a USB slot hidden anywhere. You can't plug me in, and I don't have any hidden speakers. I don't think in binary, and I'm no one's computer."

As he spoke, Blaine could hear Kurt's heart thudding under his palm, the beat hard and fast and he realized that through all of this, underneath a guise of calm and resignation, Kurt was scared.

"Are…are you…?"

"I'm petrified, Blaine," he ground out, tense and unhappy. He didn't shove the hand off of him. "I didn't want it to happen this way. I don't know how I wanted it to go, but not like this. Maybe not at all. I don't want to lose you. Not as a friend, not as- as anything. But if it's that or deny what's gotten me this far in life? Deny what keeps me alive, deny the hard work that an amazing team did to keep me together and bring me here? I can't do that. If it comes to that, then…" Kurt broke off, looking Blaine in the eyes. "If you're going to walk away from me, then do it right now and don't look back. Leave now and you don't have to worry, I won't go after you again."

Blaine's heartbeat was loud and heavy in his head.

He took in Kurt's face, the way he was watching him and worrying his lip between his teeth. His hair was windblown and beginning to slip in front of his eyes and he wasn't even bothering to push it away or try and fix it, and somehow that was weirder than anything else because Kurt not caring about his appearance meant that this was serious business.

He felt Kurt's heartbeat.

It sounded just like his.

Blaine shifted his hand back to Kurt's shoulder and reached out with the other to match it.

"My mind is kind of- kind of blown right now. Like, really. I feel like a bread box that was already full, and then someone tried to stuff in a baguette. I think I need to process everything, but I do know that I… I don't want to lose you. I don't want to deny you and I don't want you to deny yourself. The thought of walking down the street, seeing you, and not saying hello, I can't handle it. I want to keep messing up and I want you to keep yanking me out of it. I want to stay with you because the world is better with you, and I'm better with you. I'm still not totally sure what that means, but…"

Blaine's voice shook and Kurt's face was unreadable.

"I'll burn my birthday cake every year if that means that you'll still show up."

He cut off, and Kurt finally reacted. It started as a shudder but morphed into a shocked chuckle that bordered on the edge of hysteria, cut intermittently with the occasional sob. Something twisted painfully in Blaine's stomach and he leaned forward to press himself close, one hand shifting to twine in the hair at Kurt's nape, the other encircling his shoulders. It felt the same as it always had, comfortable and warm and safe.

"Thank you for coming after me," he whispered in the other boy's ear.

That was all it took for Kurt to break entirely. He didn't make a sound but his whole frame shook and Blaine felt a suspicious warmth blossoming somewhere around his shoulder.

"Please don't cry anymore," he pleaded lowly. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not crying, I pulled a muscle. My leg hurts. That's all," Kurt ground out with a hiccup, "I'm not crying. It's j-just my l-leg—"

It was a terrible lie even for Kurt, and they both knew it. Blaine just shook his head and held him tight, not just for Kurt's benefit but his own. This whole thing made him want to cry himself, and he might later when no one else would know about it, but right now it was the last thing he wanted to do, not when he'd failed his first test so spectacularly.

"Yeah, okay," Blaine accepted steadily, and strong arms wound around his waist and squeezed tight.

Neither of them thought about how much the walk back to their apartment building was going to suck from the other side of town at three in the morning. Blaine didn't worry about how he was going to wake up in the morning for his shift and the last thing on Kurt's mind was the fact that he was going to have to have a long talk with Finn and that in retrospect, skinny jeans were a bitch to run in.

They would eventually separate from each other and Kurt would get up, startled briefly by the sharp pain that really did run up his leg and Blaine would offer to piggyback him. The taller boy would roll his eyes and make a retort on how there was not a chance in hell that Blaine could possibly carry him.

Blaine would try anyway, much to Kurt's protest, and be shocked at the fact that no, he couldn't move the other boy an inch.

They would begin the long walk home, the city just barely lit by street lamps and the stars, and Blaine would marvel at how everything and yet nothing had changed. Kurt was still Kurt and he was definitely still Blaine. Kurt would remain in a state of hypersensitive shock and relief, unable to quite believe that he'd won and that he wasn't walking home alone.

Kurt wore his limp like a badge of honor and to try and lighten the mood, Blaine hobbled along too like a pirate with a peg leg. Kurt would smirk, secretly touched by the gesture and call him Blackbeard for the rest of the walk back.

Once in a while, their fingertips would brush together and Blaine wouldn't notice the hesitant little side glances that Kurt would shoot him just before the younger boy would extend his hand further and lace their hands together.

Neither of them would mention it and neither would pull away. Blaine would fight the urge to squirm in pleasure and relief like a puppy in the summer sun and Kurt would be able to smile again.

Maybe it wasn't okay just yet.

But it would be.

AN2: I hope you enjoyed chapter eight! As always, please review if you enjoyed this, or if you hated it. Really though, how'd you get to the eighth chapter is you hated it?