Chazzam
Dec. 17, 2012, 1:22 p.m.
Midnight Confessions: Chapter 5
E - Words: 2,050 - Last Updated: Dec 17, 2012 Story: Complete - Chapters: 21/21 - Created: Dec 06, 2012 - Updated: Apr 13, 2022 883 0 0 0 0
Sunday, 12:39 a.m. - 9:56a.m.
Maryland, West Virginia
Kurt stared at the body on the hood of the car. The body that, just seconds earlier, had been a man.
He slowly approached Sebastian's body. His arms were splayed and his eyes were wide and unseeing.
Because Kurt had taken a human life.
God, if Sebastian had just walked away–
If Kurt had just walked away.
Kurt leaned in close, remembering what Sebastian had been doing to Blaine. Remembering how hard Blaine had been crying. Remembering his beautiful face, bruised and bloody and contorted in suffering.
I should have gone ahead and fucked him.
Kurt stared down at the body on the car. “You watch your mouth, buddy,” he whispered.
A moment later, Kurt's car came swinging wildly around the corner, tires screeching. Blaine leaned out the driver's-side window.
“Kurt! Come on!”
Kurt blinked down at Sebastian one last time, before turning and walking toward the Camaro, leaving the body that had so recently been a man lying splayed across the hood of a stranger's car.
Kurt hardly even registered how recklessly Blaine was driving or the fact that neither one of them had bothered to turn off the radio as he sat, staring down at the warm gun in his lap. He heard the blare of horns as Blaine tore out of the parking lot, choosing a random direction which somehow lead them back to the highway, swerving in and out of the traffic around them that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
Kurt just stared down at the gun in his lap.
Once they seemed to have settled into traffic, Blaine broke through his sobs in an attempt to speak. “Kurt.....” he tried weakly.
Kurt barely heard him. He couldn't stop staring at the gun.
“Kurt!” Blaine repeated, his voiced edged with hysteria. “Wh-where are we going?”
Kurt closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He needed to pull it together. He needed to be strong for Blaine, because after what happened, he couldn't expect Blaine to-
He bit his lip. He knew what he wanted to do. His first and only instinct was to pick up the phone and immediately call his father. Burt would know what to do, Burt had always known what do do.
But Kurt wasn't his father. And all he knew was that he was in way over his head.
“Kurt?” Blaine asked again, panic rising in his voice. “What are we going to do? Where should I-”
“I don't know,” Kurt interrupted softly, eyes still closed. “Just...Just be quiet so I can think.”
Blaine was silent, save for his gasping, sob-laced breaths, and Kurt found that it didn't help him think at all.
“Don't you think we should...I mean, I really think we should tell the police,” Blaine finally ventured after several moments.
“Tell them what, Blaine?” Kurt asked tightly, his chest clenching at the prospect.
“Just...I don't know, the truth.”
Kurt swallowed, opening his eyes and looking over at Blaine. He flinched at the state of Blaine's bruised and blood-crusted face. “Which part do you think we should tell them?” Kurt asked, trying to tamp down his growing frustration, trying not to snap. Blaine looked like he was about to completely fall apart.
“Just...just all of it. That...that...he was raping me, and...and...” Blaine trailed off, biting his lip against a fresh round of tears.
“And what, Blaine?” Kurt asked, trying very hard to keep his voice steady. “You left the city with a gay man who wasn't your husband, and probably a hundred people saw you grinding on the dance floor all night with yet another man. You know what people think of men like us, Blaine, Who's going to believe us? Who's going to believe that in Western Pennsylvania? God, even in New York no one would believe that. We just don't live in that kind of a world, Blaine!”
Despite Kurt's best efforts, his voice had steadily risen until he was almost yelling, Blaine's face falling more and more with every word. Blaine bursts into fresh tears at the end of it, and Kurt couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand any of it, and now he had made Blaine cry like that, and he had to be the strong one again, he always had to be the fucking strong one, and just once – just once – he wanted to fall apart like that too.
But he couldn't. Because the last time he had let himself fall apart...
Unbidden, the very memory Kurt had been trying so hard not to summon burst to the forefront of his mind, and he felt entirely sick.
“Oh, god, pull over,” he managed, making it out just in time as Blaine pulled the car to a halt on the side of the road. Kurt flung the door open and stumbled onto the asphalt, cool, steady rain slowly soaking him through as he vomited over the guardrail.
Once he had nothing more to expel, Kurt remained hunched, hands on his knees, breathing deeply.
He couldn't fall apart. He didn't have that luxury.
Standing up, Kurt took a deep breath and summoned every bit of strength he had.
He could do this. He had to do this. If not for himself, then for Blaine.
When Kurt returned to the car, Blaine had climbed into the passenger seat. The visor was down and Blaine was looking into the mirror, attempting to straighten his gelled hair back into submission with shaking hands. He was clearly fighting not to cry anymore, but had instead fallen into steady, quiet whimpering, which managed to be even more heartbreaking than the gut-wrenching sobs he had emitted in the parking lot.
Kurt swallowed. He could do this.
“Blaine?” he asked as quietly and gently as he possibly could.
Blaine continued to try and fix his hair, tears sliding down his face. After a moment, he turned to look at Kurt nervously, as if almost afraid of him. Kurt felt a sharp jolt of pain go through him at the sight.
Kurt spoke as gently as possible, his voice shaking with the desire to sound like he was in control of the situation. Like he didn't even have to try to be strong in the face of this. “Blaine, I'm going to take us somewhere to get a cup of coffee – just – just for a minute, and then I'm going to get myself together, and then we'll figure out what to do.”
Kurt reached into his messenger bag and pulled out his water bottle, unwinding the silk scarf from around his own neck. He wet the scarf with water from the bottle, and gently held it up to Blaine's face, wiping the dried blood from Blaine's nose with light, gentle strokes.
“And everything's going to be fine, all right?” Kurt continued. Blaine hissed softly at the sensation of the scarf on his broken and bruised skin, but remained as still as possible so that Kurt could continue cleaning him. “It just...do you believe me?”
Blaine stared at Kurt, his eyes enormous and terrified and wounded and full of trust. “Yes,” he whispered.
~000~
They pulled over at the first diner they saw after getting off the highway and crossing into Maryland. The table was greasy and the walls were yellowed and cracked.
Blaine barely noticed.
Kurt was fumbling with a wrinkled map he had pulled out of the trunk of his car, pausing every so often to take a sip of coffee or fiddle with his unlit cigarette and frown at the no-smoking sign over the door. He was speaking rapid-fire, his voice laced with false bravado.
“The important thing now is not to panic. If we panic, we're finished. Nobody saw it...nobody knows it's us. So we're OK. We're fine. We're great. We just need to figure out what we're going to do next. We just need to...to figure out what we're going to do.”
Kurt paused nervously, moving as if to take a drag on his cigarette before putting it down and picking up his coffee instead. Blaine stared at the rain-splattered window, and thought about how the weekend was supposed to go.
“Well, let me just say, this sure is a fabulous vacation,” Blaine said weakly, barely even registering that he was speaking out loud. He began to laugh. Kurt eyed him uneasily from across the booth. “I sure am having a fun t-time...”
Somewhere along the way, Blaine's laughter grew slightly hysterical, fresh tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.
Kurt stared at him. Something dark seemed to flutter across his face.
“Well,” Kurt responded through gritted teeth, “if you weren't so concerned with having fun, I-”
Blaine felt like he had been slapped. Kurt stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes going wide.
“Oh, god, Blaine, no, I didn't mean-”
Blaine suddenly felt he was drowning in an abandoned ocean, like the one shred of safety offered to him in all the world had been ripped away. Barely holding himself together by the thinnest thread, he rose to his feet, pulling his hand back quickly when Kurt reached to take it.
“I...excuse me. I need to use the restroom,” Blaine said, his voice unsteady even to his own ears..
“Blaine...” Kurt pleaded quietly.
Blaine couldn't do more than bite his lip and shake his head, quickly making a bee-line for the one-person restroom at the far end of the diner car. Once inside, he managed to get the door locked behind him on his third attempt.
Blaine took a deep breath, lowering the lid onto the toilet seat without even bothering to buffer the contact with a paper towel. He sat down and pulled his phone out of his pocket.
The wallpaper on his iphone had been a picture of Kurt and himself at Songbirds, but it had caused a horrible fight when Dave caught sight of it. Now the picture was of Dave and Blaine, beaming at each other in their matching tuxedos on their wedding day. Blaine smoothed his thumb over the image, wondering why it didn't give him comfort.
Swallowing heavily, Blaine unlocked his phone and dialed.
It rang. And rang. And rang. When he got Dave's voicemail he called again. And then again. He double-checked the time. It was 2 a.m. Where could Dave possibly be at 2 a.m.?
He called again.
When Dave's voicemail picked up again, Blaine didn't disconnect the call. Instead he opened his mouth to speak, but found he had nothing to say. “Dave,” he finally managed, “I – I'm sorry, I–”
Shaking his head, Blaine ended the call, allowing his phone to drop to the floor with a sharp thud. He had a very good idea where Dave was, no matter how hard he tried to deny it to himself. He knew Dave wasn't faithful, probably hadn't been faithful for a long time. Probably hadn't loved Blaine for a long time either. If he ever had at all.
Dave hated him and Kurt blamed him and it suddenly occurred to Blaine that he didn't have anything. That he wasn't even worth anything.
He sank to the floor and curled into a ball and wept.
Blaine allowed himself to let go completely, his entire body shaking with deep, wracking sobs. He could still feel the echo of Sebastian's hands all over his body, could still recall, with startling clarity, how it felt to be utterly trapped and helpless and under someone else's control. Like he wasn't even a person anymore. Like he didn't matter at all.
It wasn't more than a few moments before he heard the soft knock at the door, followed by Kurt's voice.
“Blaine?” The voice was cautious, almost nervous. “Blaine, I'm sorry, can you just – can you open the door, please, Blaine?”
Blaine rose to his feet slowly. So slowly, that by the time he was upright, Kurt was already calling his name again. Blaine walked the few steps to the bathroom door and opened it, his eyes meeting Kurt's almost instantly.
Kurt's face crumpled into an expression of pure devastation when he looked at Blaine.
“Oh, Blaine,” he choked, and the look on his face was unmistakable. It was a look of compassion and tenderness and love. It was a look that said Blaine wasn't alone. It was a look that said Blaine mattered.
Kurt slipped into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He immediately took Blaine into his arms, holding him tight and allowing Blaine to sob into the fabric of Kurt's shirt.
“It's going to be okay,” Kurt promised as he rocked Blaine gently. “No matter what happens, I'm going to make sure you're okay.”