July 30, 2013, 1:37 p.m.
About Rights and Wrongs
Twisted Rights, Earnest Wrongs: Part 5
E - Words: 5,510 - Last Updated: Jul 30, 2013 Story: Complete - Chapters: 10/10 - Created: Jul 16, 2013 - Updated: Jul 30, 2013 176 0 0 0 0
A huge, booming sound echoed all around the bar, and the amount of screams that went up and people that hit the floor after the bit of roof and ceiling that was hit crumbled inward and slid off the sleek black handgun held by a man standing tall with a mask over his face made them jump.
"EVERYBODY PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!" he bellowed. "HANDS UP!"
When hands obediently shot into the air, Rachel's back turned to Santana so she couldn't see her friend's face, the man turned to Santana and her position by the cash register. The gun lowered and pointed directly at her face.
Run away run away run away run away get Rachel out of here run away run away...
"Gimme all the money in there," he demanded, his voice still loud, but no longer shouting. The air was full of surprised whispers and murmurs, the people in the bar that hadn't gotten down quickly enough the only ones fully silent. Santana was aware of how stoic she was appearing. If Rachel hadn't been directly in the path of the bullet if he were to shoot at herself, she might have been able to move without her hands shaking, too.
She moved obediently. Her fingers tapped into the keypad nimbly, if waveringly, and the register sprung itself open to reveal the several green bills shoved roughly inside.
"Gather it up," he snarled.
She could actually hear the radio playing. That was unusual. The Taylor Swift song it was currently beating out was rather unfit for the situation, but she hardly took it in. She could hear the clock behind her ticking. Usually the place was so noisy she couldn't even hear herself think, let alone hear how the back of Rachel's chair rattled as she shook.
A sudden beeping noise that was familiar went off.
"NOBODY USE THEIR PHONES!" he ordered, and there was a muffled sobbing sound from under a table.
His finger tensed on the trigger.
Tick.
His arm jerked upward.
Tock.
"IF I HEAR ONE WORD I SHOOT WHERE I HEAR IT COME FROM!" he threatened. Nobody dared doubt his words; the hole in the roof that showed the darkening sky was proof enough of his capability.
Tick.
Santana had heard Blaine's recounting of the shooting scare at McKinley. The metronome had sounded horrible enough, with its insistent ticking causing an elevated, terribly suspended pulse - but the clock felt ten times worse than the metronome has sounded, because it was normal, and yet not. Clocks were always there, but she never heard it. Now she couldn't risk turning her back to look, but she could hear it - maybe it wasn't even there. Maybe the seconds being counted was her pulse light and thin pounding against every cell in her body.
Tock.
"You heard me, get the cash!" The man snapped at her, and for the first time, she actually heard the voice, and she was startled to realize she had heard it before. Placing it, though, was something she was lost on. It sounded nothing like Blaine, but for some reason it triggered an image of him to pop into her head.
Tick.
"Get moving!"
She began scooping the money into her palm and onto the counter from the register. The image of Blaine was not one she thought of often. Kind of blurry, not really the most clear memory... maybe she was drunk at the time. But he was close, and his back to her, but she felt how scared he was, and how warm, and flushed, and livid, and it rolled off of him and scared her in turn.
Tock.
The coins she scooped out were chilled in her palm, and she shivered, the movement running down her spine, reminding her of the wall. She'd been pressed against the wall... Blaine was protecting her. From someone that he knew from before. That was it. She kept her face cautiously clear of any and all feeling. She'd rather be shot than show she cared about living to whoever the man w-
Tick.
It was him.
Tock.
The realization was so monumental that in the second it took to go from that tick to that tock on the clock she knew was behind her she thought of nothing but that hazy, half-drunken, nauseating memory, and how Blaine had begun his entire period of falling then. Right then.
It was his fault.
Tick.
And then his hand was there. Santana jerked her head up with the intention of looking through the holes cut in the mask into his eyes and instead found herself staring straight at the end of his gun.
Remaining stone-faced was entirely impossible at the shock, and covering the next flick of the second hand on that hideous clock, she gasped and let her face fall.
She knew it was a mistake the moment she did, because everything moved so quickly the adrenaline that suddenly burst all throughout her made it all... slow... down...
Her eyes flicked to the mask and the eyes under the holes. At her voice, they'd averted to her, and not the money he was shoveling in a bag. They were the same eyes. Her vision was swimming and in her memory she'd been drunk, and she couldn't even tell what color they were - but they were the same eyes, and they had the same old self-pity in them, but these eyes had been hardened by weeks of that self-pity spreading to his limbs until it overtook them completely. His finger loosened on the tightly-held trigger and the gun sagged a bit so it pointed at her nose, not her eyes.
But Rachel had heard her gasp, and Rachel knew something had happened that had unsettled her enough to gasp, and Rachel was terrified. And she was turning around. Santana couldn't even make herself look straight at her; he hadn't dropped eye contact, and if Santana looked away, she risked loosing the small bit of ground she had on him. But Rachel was turning, was drawing his attention, and if he looked at her, if he pointed that gun at her -
So Santana spoke. "He's not okay."
The moment the first word passed her lip the gun was held back up and she could see that his eyes were brown because they emptied themselves - and that was when she knew she'd had difficulty seeing them clearly not through any fault in her own eyes, but because he'd been near tears, and her words had made them fall.
Rachel's face was thankfully obscured by a bit of Santana's hair that slipped over her ear where it was tucked. Though she felt her breath hitch because she couldn't know if Rachel was alright, if she'd have been able to see Rachel's expression, she wouldn't have been able to throw up the sad and understanding face she made herself wear.
The gun sagged further. Pointing to her mouth.
Tick.
All of that had happened in but a second. It felt like it had been years.
Santana could hear people getting restless under the tables, she could hear people who were still standing trying to slide down unnoticed, she could hear how Rachel's bottom lip was trembling, but she refused to pay attention to any of it. The only thing she bothered to pay attention to were his eyes. And he paid attention to hers.
And then Rachel whimpered, "Santana..."
The gun clicked back into place, and Santana just barely had time to see his eyes empty themselves in a way entirely different from how they had before before the gun was away from her face and pointed at Rachel's, and there was no way he could stress that trigger without planning to -
Santana's arm shot out just in time to push Rachel aside so the bullet hit somewhere around her elbow as she was falling and not her head.
Her scream made all the restless people under the tables become veritable statues, and nobody heard the clock say its next
Tock.
Santana's hand, still outstretched, found itself curled tightly around the barrel of the gun, and she jerked it so it pointed upward. His wrist went back with it, and when she flung it further that direction, she heard the snap before she heard him yell. She didn't feel the cool, curved surface of the gun until she was using the butt of it to come down on his head, which he lowered when he cried out from his wrist.
He shouted once more, but Rachel wasn't done with her original scream, and when she was, the clock loudly announced its following
Tick.
Santana whirled around and threw the gun at the spot by the menu where she knew the clock hung, if for no other reason than to get it to stop -.
It clattered against the bare wall and fell. There was no clock.
It was then that she remembered the band around her wrist wasn't a bracelet, but a watch - and then she didn't care, because she was hoisting herself over the counter, spilling money on the ground on both sides and not giving a damn, and kicking his legs out from under him and then squatting down and picking up Rachel with one flourished movement. She huffed at the sudden weight; she almost gagged when she felt the hot, warm, sticky, wet side of Rachel's arm press against her torso, and Rachel felt it, too, because she screamed again, and for the first time, Santana saw her face.
The light hit the tear stains on Rachel's cheeks the same time Santana heard the faint, welcome, purely symphonic melody of the sirens of a police car waft through the hole in the roof.
Tock.
"Blaine? What's this?"
Kurt walked in the door of their apartment to find that Rachel still wasn't home and still wasn't home; but he also stood, aghast but pleasantly so, at the sight he'd walked into. The apartment wasn't only pristine in its cleanliness, something that hadn't happened since before he and Rachel had moved in, but it was decked out in curtains and carpets and flowers and ribbons. On the table there was a table cloth with an embroidered border of gold thread around it, and sitting atop it were two places set with a plate, fork, knife, and a tall wineglass - in between those two places was a cheesecake on a platter and white wine, sitting on either side of a large centerpiece of white calla lilies. And that was just the table. The rest of the apartment looked equally fancy and beautified - but he didn't see Blaine anywhere.
"Ah!" Blaine's voice came from the right, in their bedroom, and Kurt raised his eyebrows - no matter how much is plucked his heartstrings to hear how thick his voice was despite his chipper tone. "You're home early! Okay, hold on, just a second, please, I'll be ready really quickly."
"What is all this?" Kurt asked him, a smile breaking out across his face, and he placed the bag he'd been carrying by his feet. He felt oddly out of place in the setting, dressed casually for the day - but then again, Kurt's "casual" was most people's "semi-formal". Blaine surprising him wasn't all that surprising in and of itself, but lately he'd been off. Better, but still off. This was the kind of thing he'd have tried before. The thought that maybe he was healing somehow made Kurt's smile all the more genuine.
"Don't laugh, alright?" No matter the teasing tone he used, Kurt could hear his all-too-real trepidation, and how much it hurt him to even ask for something so small as not laughing. Kurt's smile slipped a bit, but he brought it back up at Blaine's explanation. "This took hours to plan and I only had a couple of those hours before you got home to put it into action," Blaine called.
"I'm not laughing," Kurt said, and he didn't feel like laughing so much as hugging his boyfriend. "So is this a surprise or something? Did somebody get engaged? Or did Coach Sylvester die? What's the occasion?"
And Blaine appeared, looking more than extremely nervous and fiddling with the buttons on his shirt, his eyes wide and golden and glinting at Kurt in the low light. He wore dark dress pants and a button-up, white, collared, long-sleeved shirt, though his normal shoes were still on his feet. He had a bowtie on, and Kurt smirked to see it - but his eyes were drawn to the mass of curls on Blaine's head, ungelled and thin and drooping all over the place.
"No hair gel?" Kurt cocked his head to the side and stared at the hair, which Blaine instinctively ran his hands through.
Blaine laughed, his voice shaking just the tiniest bit, something Kurt had noticed when he'd been in the other room. "I remember that you said you liked seeing the 'real me' with no product, so... yeah, no hair gel."
"Blaine," Kurt grinned, covering his mouth by habit, no matter how sad it was that the look of terror in Blaine's eyes was at the possibility of not getting Kurt's approval - so Kurt giggled, trying to show him he had it. "What is this? What is it for?"
Blaine spread his arms wide. "For you!" he announced He played his part well, but Kurt could read him even better - it was so fake it was almost plastic, but his concern and reasoning was real, Kurt was sure of it. "For existing as well as you have."
Kurt's giggles grew into snickers. "So... so you're doing this... because I exist?"
"Yep!" Blaine grinned, looking pleased with himself, and it was such a contrast from his usual semi-emotional state of self-hatred that Kurt actually froze in awe before he saw through the exterior and into the boy acting his heart out to seem assured. "Because you exist, and your existence is the most important one in the universe. If you didn't exist, neither would my happiness, so the more I tell you that, the happier we both are." He was trying so hard not to let his voice break...
"Blaine," Kurt said again, not sure where he was going beyond that word.
"Care to join me?" Blaine asked, gesturing to the table.
Kurt had to really fight to keep his smile up when he realized Blaine wasn't actually sure of the answer.
"Why are you doing this?" Kurt pressed, dropping his hand and becoming serious. "Really."
Blaine's face changed so quickly and so drastically Kurt's stomach swooped to his feet. "Is it too much?"
"No, it's wonderful!" Kurt rushed to assure him, walking over quickly, almost jogging, taking long strides until he met his hands and took them in his own. "It's wonderful. But did somebody say something to you, or do something, that prompted this?" If it had...
"Why do you ask?" Blaine digressed, looking at him gently, his face not yet as confident as it had been, and Kurt felt like slapping himself for putting the expression there.
"Because I know you," Kurt said. "Blaine, please tell me." He'd needed to say that for weeks - no, he'd needed an answer. He'd been saying it from the beginning. He'd not yet gotten an answer.
"It's no big deal," Blaine waved it off with a roll of his eyes. "It's noth-"
Kurt's phone rang in his pocket and the sudden sound made them both jump. If Blaine hadn't seem so unsure in the embrace Kurt held him in, he'd have kept holding him. "Ignore it," Kurt told him firmly, but just as he finished, Blaine's phone started ringing in the other room.
It took a split second for both of their faces to drop entirely and they both whispered, "Something happened," and dove for their phones.
It took exactly thirteen minutes and forty-six seconds between Blaine hanging up the phone and Blaine being in Santana's arms. He counted. He couldn't help it.
Blaine couldn't even handle the time it took to see Santana. It wasn't as if he completely disregarded Rachel; she was the one who got shot, and he loved her too. In fact, the second question he asked Santana as soon as he could speak again was, "Is Rachel okay?" But the fact of the matter was that Kurt was the one who focused intently on Rachel's behalf with a fair - but not equal - amount of concern set aside for Santana, not Blaine, because Blaine did the opposite.
When he'd gotten the phone call from Santana's phone, she hadn't even been the one who answered when he picked it up and said, "What happened?" Instead, a police officer had explained, and Blaine had bolted out of the room and grabbed a similarly-treated Kurt and made for the street. They wasted a full minute and a half just waiting for a taxi, and the whole time they both grew more and more anxious until eventually when they got into the taxi they all but screamed the directions and paid him during the trip so they wouldn't have to afterward, wasting a good amount of money.
But that hadn't mattered because as soon as he'd seen Santana through the window, with her hair pulled back sloppily and her heels discarded beside her with her head down in the chair with her back to them, he'd been impossible to stop from bursting through the door.
Every single second he couldn't see her, smell her, feel her, every single second since he learned what happened, he'd counted it, because it was another second he hadn't expected. It was a second in which he had been entirely drained of all emotion and feeling during the call but as soon as it ended he was flooded with it. He was feeling and he didn't have to cut for it, and he was terrified as to what that meant.
At first he was pleased. He was pleased that caring for and loving Santana and Rachel to such an extent meant that he didn't have to bleed to feel things; but then he realized that it was only misery and horrible, on-edge tension that he was feeling, and he didn't know if that was a good thing - because it was feeling, no matter what - or a bad thing, because he felt that anyway, just not as strongly. He didn't know if it was a step to "recovering" or if it was a step back.
But when he saw Santana, his emotions were so powerful and so foreign even to him that he had no clue what to do except to run inside and shout her name and hug her when she jumped up at the sound of his voice. He saw her face right before her chin was hooked over his shoulder - he wished he hadn't. If he thought his emotions were overwhelming, he was surprised she hadn't died just from her expression.
But then he was in her arms and she was in his and he squeezed her as tight as he could, and he buried his face in her shoulder, and he clutched onto her as if she were his only rope up from the bottle of a well.
But then, in a shattering moment that nearly killed him, her lips found his ear, and she whispered, "Are you cutting again?"
He jerked back so quickly and so forcefully that he accidentally snapped her head upward and made Kurt jump back in surprise. The first and most prominent thought that plagued him when he met her darker-than-normal eyes was I was careful.
He opened his mouth to deny it, to lie, to say something other than the truth. He opened his mouth to be fake. And he succeeded.
He was glad, for a flash of a moment, that he already looked so horrified, because it must have sold the shaky "No, I'm not," that he breathed. But after that gladness dissipated, in its wake was left a horrible pool of guilt, and a sense of worthlessness, and betrayal, especially when Santana actually smiled and started to cry at the same time when he answered. He understood then just how much of a big deal it was to her, even if he didn't know why.
And he didn't. He had no clue. He couldn't comprehend why someone like her would care so deeply about whether or not he bled, though it was obvious she did. And if, in that moment, he hadn't thought about how little it meant to him to actually bleed and the massive amount it meant to bleed out and bleed in like people breathed, he might have had enough emotion left to feel confused.
But he didn't. He felt quiet, and that was never, never good. But he couldn't make it feel bad. Just quiet.
Kurt was incapable of thinking. His feelings were so absolutely jumbled that his thoughts were lost in them. He'd always associated emotions with colors, and a lot of times people were confused by his ideas for them. There were some that made sense, like red: the color when you kiss someone with tongue, the color of your head when you're making love for the first time, the color when you hear words saying they've done the same with someone else, the color of your hatred for what they've done but your love for them themselves. Red was the main reason why he'd gotten over he and Blaine breaking up.
But there were some nobody had ever understood. How he thought yellow was a sad color, and how he thought of blue as happy. He thought of green as both sickly and healthy all the time, the same way red was hate and love simultaneously, and he found brown warm and cozy. He found gray to be comforting but distancing at the same time, and for moments like the one he was living in, a huddled mass of colors blending and making horrible brown-gray sludge in his head made it impossible to tell what he felt.
"Blaine," he whispered, the hardness of the uncomfortable waiting room chair digging into his back, but his fiance's warm arm easing the slight discomfort into indifference. "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course," Blaine murmured, and Kurt wondered just how broken Blaine felt every time Kurt mindlessly questioned whether or not he could do something to/with him and immediately felt guilty. But Kurt wanted to ask, and a lot of times he held back, simply because it was such an abstract question.
"If you could... um, assign a color to right now, what do you think it would be?"
Blaine's cheek rested on his shoulder, so he couldn't see his face, but he heard how his voice changed when he said, "I'm probably not the best person to answer..."
"Oh..."
"... but probably gray."
"Gray?" Kurt repeated, a bit taken aback. That hadn't been something he'd been considering. Gray seemed too formal for waiting for Rachel to come out. "Why?"
"Because it's like all my feelings are... um, you know."
Kurt turned his head just a bit and kissed the top of his head. "Blending together?" he murmured. "Hard to separate?"
"Sure."
"Blaine," Kurt pressed gently, "Please."
Blaine squeezed his eyes shut; Kurt could just see him do it, and a rope knotted in his stomach of nerves and pity that he'd never talk about. "I was... I was thinking more like they were gone."
Santana turned her head sharply when she heard Blaine and her face was tied up in a way Kurt had never seen it before. It was so loose, so... hanging. As if everything about her sagged and even her shock made her more tired, and she looked like she knew something she really, really didn't want to.
"I wish I was like that," Kurt told Blaine. He'd have given anything to be able to make all his feelings go away.
"No, please don't," Blaine whispered, and it was evident in his voice, in how he shifted, in how his hand in Kurt's tightened that he was begging.
Kurt spared just a moment before saying, "I can't, so I don't think there's a need for concern." Santana's gaze, which had found him, unnerved him, and he averted his eyes to look at his fingers laced with Blaine's.
"Rachel!" Kurt nearly screamed, as soon as she was visible, and the already-crying brunette with a cast around her arm sobbed into the crook of his neck, because he was up faster than Blaine could see his friend.
It was decided unanimously that they would all stay at Kurt and Rachel's for the night. Their apartment was bigger and they all needed to stay together; after Santana had given her statement to the police and they'd dragged the masked man in handcuffs into the back of a police car again, they'd gone home. They'd had to push through reporters and cameras, and after Rachel had whispered to them all not to be afraid, she'd screamed as loudly as she could.
Everyone had backed off. Several microphones were dropped, and cameras were diverted, and people from inside nearby establishments looked at them and people across the road stopped in their tracks and stared. And then they'd gotten into the cab that had been waiting for them.
Blaine knew that while he was living it he was seeing it, but afterwards he couldn't remember a single damn thing other than how cold he felt when Kurt was holding Rachel and not him, and how horribly selfish it was to feel that way when she'd been shot.
His relief had been enough to cut through the emptiness when she walked out, but it had been quickly diluted to the chill left on him when Kurt's warmth had been taken off of him. And that chill had left goosebumps on his arm that hadn't gone away, even when they got to the apartment.
He opened the door because Rachel couldn't, Kurt wouldn't let go of her, and Santana didn't have her key. Before he let Rachel pass through, however, he hugged as much of her as he could, and he told her softly, "I am so, so sorry that this happened to you, and I wish it was me, not you."
She'd responded with a tearful thank you before she entered with Kurt right behind her and Santana behind him.
The point where Blaine started remembering things was when Santana pulled him aside into the bathroom and pointed at Kurt's razor, lying on the counter. "Tell me," she said, and in her voice was nothing but pure honesty and firmness.
"Tell you?" he asked.
"Please don't lie this time," she said, and he realized she was pleading. "Are you... are you?"
"Am I..." he looked at the silver, thin, sharp lines, and then back at her soft, warm, golden face. "Am I cutting?"
She didn't flinch away from the work of blink too many times or anything after he said it; she showed no difference, though she hadn't been able to get the word out herself. "Yes."
Blaine kept his mouth firmly closed.
Not because he had no intention of answering, but because he wasn't sure how to. Should he lie? Could he? She knew he'd been lying before, but Santana... he'd lied to her once and this was monumental to her. If it was that important, if he was that important...
But he couldn't be. He couldn't. Kurt had proved that. He was... he was hurting them all. Brainwashing them into loving him and lying to him and everyone else simply so they'd please him. It was the darkest, sickest kind of manipulation he was capable and aware of, and he did it anyway, because he was scared of how little it would hurt if he didn't.
"Blaine?"
Could he lie? Could he look at her and say that no, he wasn't cutting, that no, he wasn't spending his nights in the bathroom with his blade, forming a union of intimacy no married couple had dared approach? Could he look at her and tell her he wasn't doing exactly what he was doing? Could he do that? Again?
But could he say that he'd already done that to her face?
"Blaine."
"Yes."
The truth was out before he knew it was truth, even, before his thoughts had caught up to his tongue. And this time, Santana had a reaction. She didn't bound forward and catch him in a bone-crushing hug. She didn't reel backwards. She didn't wear a mask of disgust or of pity. But every cell in her body seemed to shake with uncertainty, and Blaine recognized it. She had no idea how to help, and she needed to. Badly.
"Don't say something like 'If you love me, you'll stop'," Blaine instructed, and she nodded, relief flooding her features. "Don't tell me that it's a horrible thing or that I'm better than it. Don't ask to see it, don't call me names. Just don't acknowledge it."
"But if I don't acknowledge it, it's never going to get better," Santana pressed, and her hand reached out and grabbed his by habit. "I - Blaine, I know it's selfish, but after today, I need things to go well, for me, for you, for Rachel, for Kurt, just... for everyone. And I know that can't always happen, so I just need them to get better. Not good, just... better."
"I am getting better," Blaine insisted.
"Hurting yourself isn't getting better," Santana responded.
"Santana -"
"I don't - I can't even imagine how you - I mean, isn't it worse after you -"
"Santana, please," Blaine hissed, "The desire to find a small blade and watch blood run is not something I take pride in, but it's something I need to feel if I'm going to feel anything else."
"I knew it!" Santana exclaimed, and then clamped her hand over her mouth, before whispering, "I knew it. You say you felt like all your feelings were gone earlier, at the hospital. So that's why you... why you..."
"Cut," Blaine finished, marking that that was not the first time she'd been unable to say it to his face. She nodded before moving forward once more.
"Why do you... what do you feel when you... when you do? Is that right?" she phrased it as carefully as she could, and Blaine noticed how his goosebumps were still there and how the hair on his body had risen and how his palms were sweating, but he felt none of it. His body was responded.
And a blade was right there...
But so was Santana.
"You don't want to know," he told her. And before she could say anything else, he added, "And neither does Kurt. Or Rachel. So don't tell them."
"Don't tell them?!" Santana repeated incredulously. "Blaine, they need to -"
"Nobody needs to know!" he growled, and he didn't mean to put so much menace in his voice, but suddenly Santana, of all people, was cowering, and looking at him with something like fear.
The worst part was that he didn't, for one second, consider that it wasn't normal for her and the others. He assumed with a fair level of certainty that they were always afraid, just brave.
"It's my problem, Santana, and it's helping me right now," he continued, and her grasp slackened on his so he dropped it, not holding her if she didn't want to be held. "Let me deal with it, keep out of it, and drag no one else in. Got it?"
"If you think you're going to tell me not to tell your boyfriend and Rachel -"
"Tell them other things," Blaine demanded against the spark of independent, normal Santana that had shown herself, even in this day of guns and shots and slices. "Tell Rachel how much you love her or how much you hope she gets her next role or how proud you are of her. Tell Kurt how much you'd miss him if he weren't here, or how far you think he's come in the years you've known him, or how long you want to keep knowing him. Tell them things about you that you would have never gotten a chance to say that you would have wished you had if you'd been killed today, and don't act like I'm the most important thing right now."
"You are."
"I'm never."
"This is huge, Blaine."
"This is a coping mechanism, Santana, and you are not helping!"
Suddenly, from behind him came three rapid knocks. "Guys?" Kurt's voice came muffled through the wood. "You guys are shouting at each other in a bathroom, you know. We can't really hear you, but if you get any louder -"
Santana tried to dart around Blaine, but he grabbed her and pushed her back, and she stumbled.
She stumbled.
And she looked at him in total disbelief that he'd ever touch her like that, and he looked at her with the same disbelief, and then he looked at his hands, and then back at her, and then he said, "Please don't tell them." underneath Kurt's continuing voice that covered his.
Santana just stared at him and stared at him until Kurt's voice died down, and it was only when he offered his hesitant, "Guys?" from the other side did she murmur, "I love you, B."
His response was immediate. "I love you too, San."
And neither of them understood anything, but when Blaine turned around and opened the bathroom door to Kurt's frightened eyes, they both did everything they could to reassure him things were fine.