Chapter Summary: Kurt finds out what he is.

A/N: We're almost done! Only two more chapters until the end, and then a tiny break so that I can post the sequel in closer intervals than this first story was posted. I'm sorry for the delay, but I hope this chapter is somehow worth the wait! It's pretty intense, just as a warning. Once again, thank you all for sticking with me. Also: I promise I will lead you to a happy ending. It will just be a very complicated road getting there. I hope you enjoy!

His body hurt.

That was the first thing he noticed. There was an aching throb attending his veins, an itching crawling up the insides of his elbows; the backs of his knees; the pulse of his wrists; the webbing between his fingers and behind his ears. The discomfort quietly hummed in his chest, just loud enough for him to be aware of it but not enough to interrupt the silence of the space.

Something shifted. It sounded like cloth moving. Someone was sitting nearby. Maybe they had changed positions, crossed their legs. The room was cool flutterings against his skin.

Slowly, Kurt opened his eyes.

He was on his bed, lying above the covers and staring up at the ceiling. He blinked rapidly to clear the blur from his vision.

"How do you feel?"

Blaine's voice was soft brushes against his skin, and a small noise slipped out of his mouth in answer before he could properly form words.

"Strange," Kurt responded. "How long…?"

"You slept through the night. You're dad decided to let you sleep in for the day. It's eight in the morning," Blaine added when Kurt tried to look for the clock. Oh. He was missing school. "Does it still hurt?"

Kurt thought of the answer, taking stock of all the stretched-out aching pervading his bones. He nodded.

Fingertips lightly ghosted up his wrist and he sighed as it felt like his entire arm was dunked in a cool, soothing layer of… of something.

He turned his head to find Blaine, eyes amber, lying quietly curled up next to him.

"What is that?" Kurt breathed as the feeling traveled up over his shoulders and to his neck, following Blaine's fingers.

"Magic," Blaine said. Then he leaned forward to capture his lips in a kiss, and Kurt shivered as the aches trickled down his neck and his arms, flushed out by Blaine's presence—Blaine's magic, he corrected in his head. Blaine pulled away and Kurt frowned. Concentrating, he tried to pull all the strings of his focus back into himself. He felt like he had been stretched over a surface too wide to properly hold him.

"What's wrong with me?" he struggled to ask. "You're not freaking out any more."

"No," Blaine said. Some kind of knowledge glinted in his eyes, worrying a little at the edges of Kurt's stomach. "I know what's happening now." Blaine smiled and leaned in to kiss him again. A tickle of thirst sparked at the back of Kurt's throat, and he deepened the kiss before Blaine pulled away again. Kurt moved to follow before stopping himself. Kurt, come on, you have more control over yourself than that.

He blinked hard, but the dry need at the back of his throat didn't go away. Blaine's fingers kept up their tickling patterns on his skin. Kurt realized suddenly that his cardigan had been taken off, and the sleeves of his shirt had been unbuttoned and rolled up, almost to the point of being shortsleeves.

It was starting to feel like he had woken up in the middle of a movie and had missed too much of the beginning to make sense of the conclusion. Blaine cupped his neck, right underneath his ear, his thumb stroking Kurt's cheek. There was nothing accompanying the gesture, not like before, when some kind of calm or happy floated into his system. Blaine wasn't trying to change his mood, he was just—soaking him in magic. The longer they lay there, the sharper Kurt's senses became—the healthier he started to feel—but still at the back of his mind a voice insisted something was wrong. That glint in Blaine's eye. Something.

What was going on?

"Back when Magic was a common folk… before magicians really began to learn how to command us… there were these people." Blaine gently brushed a stray hair out of Kurt's eyes and Kurt's lips parted at the sudden swell of feeling that accompanied the gesture. "They were called Fascinators," Blaine continued, speaking in that soft voice of his; a voice that suddenly sounded so much more private and intimate to Kurt's ears than it had ever sounded before. "A Magic person would be drawn to them, inexorably. He wouldn't know why, but whenever a Fascinator was nearby… he wouldn't be able to look away." Blaine's eyes, amber and glinting, stayed steadfastly locked on his own. "And when he found that one that affected him like no other… It's where the folk tale of a soul mate comes from." The pads of warm fingers trailed oh-so-gently down his neck. Kurt gasped as yearning stretched inside of him.

"My grandmother was a Fascinator. Her husband was Magic." Blaine's hands explored his body with focused precision, still flooding magic into his skin with every caress, and god, god, god… "My parents tell me they were soul mates." Kurt's figure was a continual shudder as a hunger swelled inside of him, a need so familiar and right and yet wrong…

A whimper escaped him as Blaine continued to break him down with his fingers. He realized Blaine hadn't stopped quietly smiling since he'd woken up.

Blaine moved close, his lips brushing against Kurt's with every word he spoke: "It's okay. You can let go."

Kurt shook his head, face crumpling against the tidal wave of aching inside. Blaine's eyes stayed locked on his.

"Let go."

Arms wrapped around his waist, his back. Pulling him close—and all Kurt wanted to do was give in to that need clinging like vines inside of him, but he couldn't. He couldn't. Because something was wrong, something was wrong and Blaine wasn't telling him what it was.

Blaine brushed his lips against Kurt's in an almost-kiss. "This is who you are," his whispers slipped inside of Kurt's mouth. "There's nothing wrong with you."

Kurt closed his eyes against a sudden shock of tears. A weight lifted itself from his chest and Kurt breathed out in surprise at his reaction. He hadn't known how badly he needed to hear those words. He had thought he was past all that.

"Stop fighting yourself and just let yourself be, Kurt."

His muscles tensed.

"Please."

Blaine was quietly beseeching.

"You're beautiful."

Blaine kissed him.

It might have been the 'please'. The word 'beautiful'. The fact that a boy he cared for so much was telling him not to be scared of himself. (the word 'soul mate' floating tantalizingly in his mind's eye, with trailing strings of love and trust and forever following its afterimage like ghostly petals) He sighed out harshly into the kiss.

And let go.

The thirst at the back of his throat pressed his tongue into Blaine's mouth as he took control of their interlocked mouths, the hunger in his bones took hold of Blaine's arms and pressed him onto his back, pushing him hard into the bed as something wild took him over. One of them made a noise at the back of his throat, maybe of triumph, and Blaine's hand came up to claw into his hair as they moved in tandem, Blaine anticipating every feeling Kurt felt, listening as—

"You took down your walls," Kurt realized, gasping into Blaine's mouth. Blaine nodded, moving to capture Kurt's lips again. Kurt hummed into the kiss in appreciation before pulling away once more, trying to think through the cloud of need in his brain. "Why?"

"Because I can't keep fighting what you mean to me," Blaine said fiercely, his smile gone from his face. Kurt felt his body sparking with electricity, golden thread of magic, and he ran his hands down Blaine's back, captured by that fiery, amber gaze.

"Oh," he panted. His fingers slipped underneath Blaine's shirt, touching warmed, tanned skin. "Why can't I hear you?"

"You don't need to anymore." Blaine groaned as Kurt's hands moved around his waist, his hips bucking as they dipped down into the waistband of his pants before changing direction and feeling their way up his stomach. "You already have me." That didn't make sense to Kurt, but he didn't have time to think about it as he pushed up the shirt beneath him and sucked at the vein pumping at Blaine's collarbone.

It was hot—the room was a desert and he was thirsty, so thirsty, but every time he brought his mouth to Blaine's it was like he was swallowing cool water in an oasis, and the more skin he touched the more contact he craved and oh he was so thirsty—

Blaine keened and dug his fingers painfully into Kurt's side and Kurt's hand swept up his chest and over his shoulders, the skin beneath his palms starting to sweat as he slid them down Blaine's arms and pressed the muscles down into the bed. Blaine let go of him and their fingers tangled together as Kurt pressed their interlocked hands into the mattress but he had to untangle them and run his palms back down those arms, that chest, that stomach and Blaine was so hot underneath him, his skin glowing and almost scalding to touch but Kurt needed he was so thirsty he needed, touch, taste, take, feel, up the stomach and past the ribs and over the shoulders and down the arms and up the stomach, past the ribs, over the shoulders, down the—NO!

Kurt gasped as he tore away, staring down at Blaine as horror burned an acid hole into his stomach, chilling the arid desert of the room into a polar icecap. Someone's scream ripped out of his throat as the boy beneath him broke and the fire flooded into him—

—up the stomach, past the ribs, over the shoulders, down the arms—

—hands clasped tightly in grips of marble—

—Blaine beneath him, Blaine dead, on the ground, unmoving—

"No. No. No," Kurt shook his head, backing away off of the bed and across the room, unable to take his eyes away from Blaine on the bed (Blaine dead on the ground). "No, it was just a dream, it was—"

Blaine watched him carefully, slowly propping himself up on his elbows.

Kurt breathed icicle-air. No.

"What happened to your grandfather?" he rasped over the sheet of silence covering the room. Blaine looked at him, uncomprehending. "Your grandmother's husband," Kurt clarified, feeling his heart sinking into the floor. "He was Magic." Blaine's expression flickered in recognition. "You never met him. Did you? You never knew him. You never called him your grandfather, because he died." Kurt swallowed against the words choking in his throat. "Your grandmother killed him."

Blaine looked at him, his expression unreadable. "Yes," he said softly.

Kurt couldn't breathe.

"There's no such thing as soul mates," he said thickly as a slow river of tears ran down his cheeks. "That's why you called it a folk tale. Because there's no such thing, because the soul mates of the people with Magic killed them. That's what a Fascinator does. He kills them."

Blaine's eyes radiated sympathy, and Kurt realized what that glint in his eyes earlier had been: resolve. He had known it, it had felt so wrong and he had known it.

"How can you be so calm about this?" he whispered. "I was killing you. I was—just now, I was—" The ghost of that skin, growing hotter and more searing at his every touch, shuddered down his body. Blaine was shaking his head ardently, and Kurt finally noticed how pale and sweat-soaked he looked, his eyes glowing unnaturally with fever.

"It's okay," Blaine was saying, "Kurt, please," and he reached for Kurt's arm and Kurt jerked back, eyes wide as betrayal slicked down his throat.

"How can it be okay?" he cried. "I was killing you!You were letting me kill you, Blaine!"

"Please—"

"Were you going to tell me? Or was I just going to kill you and wake up in the morning with a dead body in my bed?"

"Kurt, please, listen—"

"Oh my god," Kurt couldn't listen, not right now, it was too—this was too—he had just oh god oh god oh god no no no—

"Listen to me, this is good, this is okay" Blaine was saying, voice intense and fast and fevered, god, did he even know what he was saying, could he hear himself right now? "I've dreamt of my own death for the past three years, Kurt, it's okay, this is supposed to happen, it's good!"

"How?" Kurt asked weakly, curling in on himself as his body began to ache, his head began to hurt. Blaine's hands stroked his arms—sure, calming, soothing hands, chasing away the pain, pouring magic into him and—no. Kurt tore away and his back slammed against the wall as that thirst, that need for more, filled him.

The magic. It was the magic that was doing this.

"Don't touch me," he warned.

"This is who you are," Blaine said fiercely. "This is what you have to do, Kurt, to survive. It's okay."

"You keep saying that, and I don't understand!" Kurt glared through his tears. "Just explain to me, how is it okay?"

"I'm supposed to die," Blaine held his hands up in an attempt to calm Kurt down (it didn't work). "I've known that ever since I was taken to Dalton. Those dreams kept coming to me, every night, and I knew there was a Fascinator out there for me just like there was for my grandfather. But I thought it was Andrew, Kurt—I thought Andrew was supposed to kill me. But it's not him. It's you!" Blaine smiled so beautifully that Kurt couldn't look. This was making him sick. "If it had to be someone, of all people, it's you. Kurt, please understand, if it was anyone but you I would be fighting so hard. But it's okay, because it's you."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?"

"I've come to terms with it already," Blaine insisted earnestly. "If I had to give my life to someone, it would be you, anyway. It's okay."

"Stop it," Kurt spit out.

"It's okay, Kurt."

"Stop it! Stop saying that!" Kurt pushed himself off of the wall, moving somewhere, anywhere, away from Blaine. "It's not okay, Blaine, I'm not going kill you just because you say it's okay!"

"It's who you are—"

"Stop saying that!" Kurt shouted. "God, can you even hear what's coming out of your mouth? Don't come near me!" he held out an arm in warning as Blaine moved to follow him. "I won't let you use me to commit suicide out of some misplaced feelings of martyrdom!"

"It's not suicide," Blaine insisted. "It's an inevitability. Fate."

Kurt stared at the stranger who used to be his boyfriend, wondering how everything had gotten so twisted.

"Is this what they did to you?" he asked, voice hushed with realization. "They brainwashed you into thinking you're fated to die?"

"This has nothing to do with Dalton," Blaine said lowly.

"I'm not going to kill you!"

"You have to!" Blaine suddenly growled. "My grandmother was a Fascinator, and she killed my grandfather because it was who she was. Because she couldn't not!"

Kurt's head throbbed and his stomach plunged. He wrapped his arms around his abdomen, gasping as it felt like all his health was draining away from him. "This isn't who I am. This isn't who you are, Blaine, are you listening to yourself? You wouldn't just give in like this! You wouldn't just give up!"

"I'm not giving up. I'm choosing to make it easier for you. Fighting against this will only hurt you!"

Kurt shook his head violently, stumbling toward the door. Blaine followed, and suddenly he right behind him. Kurt spun around, heart leaping in his throat as Blaine grabbed his arms and captured his gaze with burning amber eyes and—

"I'm sorry," he said, "but you need to understand."

And suddenly Kurt was choking on a flood of emotion and he tumbled down into those eyes, falling into eternity and feeling, feeling—

A jumbling rush of terror; worry; alarm. Something ancient, and forever, and wise. Inevitability; care; anticipation, and pain, and concern and determination and certainty, fear, hope relief careloveandlove and love, and love, and love, overwhelming and drowning him and wild and wonderful and so, so painful, and love…

Kurt breathed in and suddenly realized he was in his own body again. And the boy in front of him, watching him with apprehension in his magic-reflected eyes… was in love. With him.

The tears dried on his cheeks as Kurt realized what he had to do.

"Do you understand now?" Blaine whispered. Kurt licked his lips unconsciously, nodding slowly. He reached to cup Blaine's cheek.

"Yes," he breathed. Then, stealing himself, he leaned in.

And kissed him.

Kurt fought against the part of himself tugging for more, trying to ride it out as fire poured down his throat and into his veins.

Magic.

He concentrated.

Suddenly, Blaine arched against him and cried out in pain. Kurt bit down on his own tongue to stop his need from controlling him as his own lips blistered at Blaine's touch. Blaine jerked away, a hand coming up to cover his mouth and his wide eyes screaming betrayal.

(Welcome to the club, Kurt thought bitterly)

"What did you just do?" Blaine gasped. His lips looked raw and burnt, and his eyes for the first time that day were their normal, melted honey.

"I'm not going to kill you," Kurt said evenly. "If that means preventing us from touching, then so be it."

"No," Blaine suddenly snapped. "No, don't do this!" He moved to grab him, but hissed and pulled back as his fingers touched Kurt's skin. Kurt flinched at the spike of pain. "You can't do this!"

"I just did." Kurt moved as Blaine sped towards him too-fast, running and slamming the door shut in between them. Blaine hit it with a thud.

"You can't do this!"

Kurt breathed hard as he locked the door and backed away, trying to remember how to move. His head felt like it was splitting open.

"You've already been exposed to too much magic. If you don't let this happen, your body could shut down!" Blaine pounded on the door. "Kurt, please!"

"I'll take my chances!" he called savagely. His back hit the wall of the hallway and he slid across it, leaning heavily as he tried to make his way to the stairs.

"I can feel you! You're already starting to go into withdrawal—the headache, the aching in your limbs? It's only going to get worse! Don't do this to yourself!"

He climbed down the stairs, clinging to the railing as his knees shot dull knives up his legs.

"Kurt, please!" Blaine's voice cracked. "It could kill you!"

"I don't care!" Kurt shouted, even as the words sliced into his chest. He didn't want to die.

But he didn't want to kill anyone, either. He couldn't kill anyone. Not Blaine.

"I can't let you do this!"

"Deal with it!" he growled as he reached the end of the stairs. He breathed in against the pain as he checked the time: 9:14. He could spend the day in school, away from Blaine, from temptation. (Oh god, the fact that it was a temptation—he couldn't, not with Blaine. Not with anybody, but never with Blaine.)

Kurt stumbled as desperation flooded into his head, catching himself on the countertop. Blaine's desperation. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision and his mind. That bastard.

Grabbing the keys, he pushed himself toward the door, storming outside and slamming it shut with as much force as he could muster so Blaine would feel it shake the house. It wasn't happening. If he had to lock himself away at public school all day every day, he would not. Let it. Happen. Blaine was not going to die. Kurt was not going to be the one to kill him. And a day apart would convince Blaine of that—would take the edge off of the hunger gnawing at Kurt's insides, remind Blaine that whatever Dalton had taught him was screwed up, wrong, insane. This was not going to happen. No one was going to die.

He parked in the lot at school and turned off the car, leaned his head against the steering wheel and shivering in the cold as the heating cut off. He had forgotten to take a coat.

Kurt ground his teeth against the pain behind his eyes. Just a migraine.

He wasn't going to die from a migraine.

No one was going to die. Kurt wouldn't let them.