“No,” Kurt said, and then repeated it again, “no.”

The man had followed them down and a couple of other boys had been attracted towards them too. Wes, who Kurt had met earlier stood between a boy with black hair and a black boy who he slowly inched closer to.

“Dad, you…why?” He carefully stepped back into the house, “why is this happening? Let him go, damn you!”

He stood on the first steps of the stairs and he shook his head, “it’s not under my control. He must stay – the magic demands it.”

Kurt couldn’t figure out what he was expected to do. He couldn’t leave his dad there, that wasn’t a possibility, but if he couldn’t even step out of the house…wait, had he said magic?

“Magic? Magic doesn’t exist. I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here but we’re leaving and…”

“He can’t,” one of the other boys said, “if the magic of the house won’t let him then, he can’t go.”

Kurt let his eyes close. This was a nightmare. He couldn’t believe that this was happening. Magic. It was laughable. He pushed his father towards the door again and this time he went right through the door.

“Yes, he can,” he said to the boys behind him but when he approached the door this time it was he that couldn’t go through and magic had to be only reason because nothing else could explain the force field that had appeared there, hard as a wall.

Kurt threw all of his weight on it, pushing to leave but nothing came of it.

“Come on, one of you try. Please,” he said turning to the other boys.

Wes stepped forward and he went right through and stood next to his father, but Kurt couldn’t.

“You’re blood related,” the boy from before spoke, “the magic will let you take his place, but it won’t let you both leave.”

The whole magic aspect of the entire affair was still freaking Kurt out, but not being able to cross the door while everyone else could made it clear that it had be real and that there was no way around it.

“Dad, you can go,” he said after a long moment leaning against the barrier that kept him in, “I’ll stay – you can go. Carole’s probably waiting at home. Just take my car. We can – I’ll figure something out.”

“No, Kurt, I’ll stay,” his dad said and came right into the house again, “I’ll be alright here and nothing will happen to me and…”

Kurt cut him off, pulling him into a tight hug. “You’re still sick, dad, you need your medication and rest and you can’t be under stress. Please go. I’ll – I’ll call Carole and you can just bring some of my stuff and we’ll figure something out okay?”

His dad rushed back into the house and pulled Kurt into his arms. They hugged for a while and then Burt tried to maneuver Kurt towards the door, but he turned and stopped him go.

“Go,” he told him and looked at the other boys around him, “I’ll be okay.”

“No, Kurt, I…”

Kurt threw his keys at him.

“Go.”

Kurt closed the door and he leaned against it. He heard his father knock a few times with the knocker and with his fists and then finally a few minutes later heard him shout, “I’ll be back, Kurt!” before he walked away from the house.

He lifted his head to look at the other boys, then, “now what?” he asked.

The boy that hid his face muttered something to Wes and then walked towards another room and out of sight without another word and Kurt stared after him curiously.

“Who is he?” he asked Wes.

“He is the master of the house,” Wes said, “but never mind that now. Come, we’ll get you settled in.”

Kurt looked back in the direction he’d gone.

“I’m David,” the black boy said and extended his hand, “and this is Thad.” He motioned towards the other boy, “you’d do best to listen to us and not go off on your own – that was your father’s mistake.”

Kurt frowned at that. He was lead back up the stairs and he couldn’t help but wonder if they were going to just throw him into that attic room his father had been in. He hoped not. He said nothing and followed David. Wes and Thad trailed after him.

“You’ll stay in one of the guest rooms,” David said, “and I guess I’ll warn you now, the master is very private and there are rooms in this house that you should not go near.”

“Is that what my dad did?” Kurt asked.

His mind was going in circles. He didn’t know what to think or how to respond to everything that was happening and so he was doing the one thing that he could do, not respond and take everything calmly and keep pushing everything he learned into his head for later revision.

“Yes,” Thad said, “it was probably an accident and these two didn’t explain – but he went into one of his personal rooms and he touched something.”

“Something whose magic is now keeping me here as punishment?” Kurt asked, eyes narrowed.

“Yes.”

He had to be dreaming. He must still be sitting in the kitchen by the phone waiting up for his dad. This was just some insane dream brought on by all the coffee he’d drunk or something. His dad would shake his shoulder any time now as he got home with an excuse for why he was late. This wasn’t happening.

Except it was.

“Your father stayed here last night,” Wes said showing him the room, “you’re allowed around the house, just stick to the common areas. Anything downstairs except the room whose door is always closed.”

Kurt nodded. The room was simple, and it wasn’t at all to Kurt’s liking.

“How long do I stay here?” he asked.

The boys all stared at him, faces blank as if they didn’t know just how to answer.

“How long? A month? A year?”

David shook his head.

“Two?”

They didn’t answer and that was enough for Kurt. It was indefinite. They didn’t know. As long as that magic – whatever it was – held him there, he wouldn’t be going anywhere and of course they didn’t know how long that’d be.

- - -

Meditation was supposed to help. He sat in the middle of his mediation room, legs folded and hands on his knees but no matter how hard he tried to clear his mind, his thoughts would always stray to those eyes. Blue. Green. Swirls of grey and amber. He couldn’t close his eyes without them coming to mind, showing up and staring at him accusingly and with so much stubbornness and dislike.

Kurt Hummel was like no one Blaine had ever met and a part of him was very glad that it was he and not his father that had stayed behind. For once the magic that surrounded the house had done well, but Blaine still despised every ounce of it.

The door to the room was pushed open and had Blaine not gotten a whiff of Thad’s familiar scent he would have done more than just looked up.

“He’s the one, Blaine,” Thad said. He walked to stand in front of Blaine and Blaine slowly got to his feet.

The room was dimly lit and from the floor, Blaine had still been hidden in shadow, but once he was standing that was no longer the case. Instead, his face was visible now. Scarred with cuts deep and shallow all looking quite fresh his face was a sight to behold, but Thad didn’t even flinch when he looked at him. Any inch of skin was scarred and his hair, an afro of curls falling onto his forehead, did not make him look any better.

“Kurt Hummel could be the one to break the curse,” Thad said.

Blaine snorted. “I don’t think so. Did you see him? He’s…” But he couldn’t continue. He couldn’t admit it. Saying that Kurt had taken his breath away, that he was the most beautiful person he’d ever met would make all of this all the much harder.

“Gay,” Thad said, “Kurt is gay and he’s not afraid of showing it and I think if you tried he could surprise you.”

Blaine shook his head. There was no point in hoping, in letting himself believe that maybe this time it’d be different and that everything could change again to how it had been.

“He was upset about his father and yet his clothes – he was well dressed and his hair was done, and he’s just…”

Thad reached towards him and grabbed his shoulders, “you of all people should know not to judge someone by those things.”

Blaine stared at Thad before he closed his eyes, “I don’t know.”

Thad nodded. “That’s alright. For now. He’s settling in, Wes and David like him.”

“Of course they do.”

Thad didn’t say anything else before he left the room.

Blaine paced around the room for a while, resembling quite closely a caged animal. He paused in front of one of the windows that looked out at the backyard and he pressed his forehead against the glass. He’d become so used to his cuts that he didn’t even make a noise at the pain that filled him when the skin pressed against the glass or stretched.

It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.

He was this monster, cursed to live for eternity seeking the one person that could break the spell and give him back his life. But what life would he have? All he had left was this house and his three friends. Now, Kurt. But he wasn’t even sure if the spell had already extended to Kurt too. He definitely wasn’t the curse breaker. He couldn’t be.

It was still light out and Blaine almost longed for night to fall. Then, maybe the thoughts of those eyes could go away.

In another life he might have been able to think of Kurt that way – he might have been able to admire him and want him, and even hope that Kurt might feel the same way. But he was a monster and Kurt deserved so much more than that.

Blaine sat down again, right in the middle of the room, and he slowly calmed his breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Stop thinking. Inhale. Exhale.

It took only five more minutes of trying before he gave up. He stood up and grabbed his sweatshirt, slipping it on and covering his face with the hood just in case. He would hide this from Kurt for as long as possible.

- - -

For the first hour, Kurt lay in the bed curled up and wondering just what would happen to him. His phone had buzzed a few times but he hadn’t gotten the energy to fish it out of his pocket and see who it was.

The next hour he spent it by the window, staring out past the heavy curtains at the empty street.

During the third hour, Kurt finally realized where he was. It had been the shock, he knew that had kept him from actually realizing that he’d gone to the Dalton house. Suddenly, he didn’t know what to think, because everything he knew about the house was legend or as he’d once told his father, a fictional account to scare kids.

When Kurt was thirteen and he’d slowly begun realizing that he didn’t like girls like all the other boys in his classes did he’d pushed the thought away and scared of what that meant had buried himself in other things. First and foremost had come his love of clothes and although he’d always been a fashionable child – a trait carried on from his mother who started his love of scarves – at thirteen it had become suddenly more important. Another thing he’d pursued was knowledge and one of the things that Kurt had wound up reading about at one point had been about this very house he was sitting in.

The Dalton house belonged to the Andersons. They had actually built the house themselves when they first moved to the area back in the 1900s. The story went that one night the elder Mr. Anderson and his son had a fight when a stranger arrived in town and asked for lodgings. Mr. Anderson enraged at his son did not welcome the stranger warmly.

There the story split into many directions. Some claimed that it was the younger Mr. Anderson that acted rudely, and that the stranger was no stranger at all and had been invited by the elder Anderson. Others said that the stranger was welcomed warmly into the home and was present during the fight itself.

In the end, everyone agreed that something happened that night, because in the morning Mr. and Mrs. Anderson packed up and left and the younger Anderson did not leave with them. He was also only sighted once or twice after they left and eventually most people assumed to too had left.

The stranger was never seen again. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson never came back. The house was never put up for sale. Someone always kept the yard immaculate. Sometimes the people in town heard screams and howling.

And as the world progressed around the house more legends build and no one knew what happened to the elder Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. Or their son, Blaine.

When Kurt read about it when he was thirteen, he’d scoffed and rolled his eyes at the crazy theories that surrounded the house and even his dad’s tales of when he was a kid. To him it had been silly legend that he didn’t believe. Now, being in the house and being kept there against his will by magic he began to wonder who could be right about the house and if he would ever get an answer from the occupants.

The fourth hour of his being there was spent pacing the room. Exhausted from thinking about everything, Kurt was restless and he wanted to go out and do something anything.

By the fifth hour he’d had enough and he opened the door and went out to the hall. True to his word, he kept away from the other rooms on that floor and instead he headed towards the stairs and walked down slowly.

There was no one to be seen or heard around and for a moment Kurt considered trying the door again, but he was already resigned to his fate, so instead he began to walk around the first floor.

The house was somewhat modern for all that it was so old – like someone had renovated it recently and made sure it kept up with the times. The living room was beautiful with matching white sofas and an armchair. There was a fireplace and right above it was a picture that was very familiar to Kurt. He gasped.

It was the Andersons. Mother, father, and the son. Mr. Anderson was tall and broad shouldered. His hair had the slightest bit of a wave and was kept short and out of his face. Blue eyes peered out, gentle and glinting, and his broad smile gave away that he was truly happy. His wife was short, coming just up to his shoulder and she was foreign. Her skin was a shade darker and her dark hair was pinned up – beautifully full and curly. Her eyes were hazel – a mixture of amber and green. Mrs. Anderson didn’t gaze out like her husband did, but instead looked in the direction of her son.

Blaine Anderson was exactly the kind of boy that Kurt could have fallen for. He was just a few inches taller than his mother and seemed to have inherited her curly dark hair and eyes though on him they were more amber than green. He didn’t look unhappy in the picture, but neither did he look pleased to be there. The smile on his lips – just a gentle crook of the lips – did not reach his eyes. But what he was, was handsome. He looked just what a young gentleman should look.

Kurt had seen a picture of this painting once in one of the books he’d read but it had not made justice to what the painting did.

“I see you’ve left your room.”

Kurt jumped and his gaze dropped from the painting. “I’m sorry,” he said, “Wes and David said it was alright. I won’t go where I’m not wanted.”

The master of the house still covered his face, but the sleeves of his shirt had been pulled back and when Kurt looked at his arms he couldn’t help his reaction. He immediately grabbed hold of one arm and he went closer to look.

It was covered it cuts – some fresh and others older.

“What happened to you? Are you alright? You should get those looked at, you know, it can’t be good to have…”

He took back his arm and it was only then that Kurt realized who he had been talking to. But the other boy hadn’t reacted quickly either.

“I’m fine,” he said, his tone was harsh and biting. And then he walked away.

Kurt stared after him but didn’t call him back and suddenly he really wanted to know just what was under that hood that he had to hide. He also couldn’t help but wonder just what had done that to his arms because if there was one thing that Kurt could be sure about it, it was that those were the wounds brought on by an animal. And if the stories were to be believed then howls and screaming still came from the house.

He wrapped his arms around himself and turned back to stare at the painting. The three figures stood just in front of the house and it looked ever so different from the house now. The hedges and the gate were missing entirely. The house also looked brand new and smaller somehow but just as beautiful.

- - -

Blaine could still feel the gentle, soft hands that had grabbed his arm just a few minutes before and he tried to push the feeling away as well as the expression on Kurt’s face; the worried, concerned look that Blaine would not have expected from someone that was trapped in this house. Kurt really was far more interesting than Blaine would have thought.

Blaine had expected repulsion, shock and curiosity. He hadn’t been expecting for Kurt to grab his arm and try and see just how badly he was hurt. He rubbed at his arm, but that did nothing to extinguish the ghost feeling left behind of Kurt’s gentle thin fingers. God, but he was in trouble.

He hid out in his room and threw off the hat and scarf he’d been using to keep his face and hair hidden and he let himself wonder how Kurt would react to his face. Wes and David had had a hard time getting over it, he remembered; Wes because he was so blunt sometimes, and David because he tried to be sensitive about it. Neither had really looked at him for the first few weeks, not until they realized that they happened almost every night and that for all the healing that he could go through he would always have them. Thad had been better, but he’d gone the way of trying to ignore them all together.

Kurt would see him at some point, he knew, especially if the spell really did keep him there. Blaine couldn’t see how Kurt would let his father stay on his behalf.

Watching Kurt with his father had brought back memories of his own parents and his own relationship with his father. It had never been good.

Of course Blaine loved his parents and he and his mother had gotten along very well. But when it came to his father, Blaine never saw eye to eye with him. His father had always seen life in a certain way and when Blaine began to challenge that his father hadn’t liked it in the least. And then, when he found out what Blaine was and why he challenged his views that had been the end of it. The blowout of that fight would define the rest of his life as he knew it.

Blaine dropped back and stared at the ceiling, head rested on his arms. The pull of his muscles and the skin full of cuts left a small trill of pain, but it was nothing compared to other pain Blaine had experienced.

For a moment he let himself wonder if Thad was right and Kurt was the one. After all, it wasn’t Thad that had made the mistake all that time ago. He was the one at fault for Jeremiah and the spectacle that had been. But maybe Kurt was different. Maybe Kurt was what had made Blaine wait all these years.

But he couldn’t let himself hope like that because if he started to hope again and Kurt wasn’t that person it would destroy him and maybe all these centuries of waiting would be for nothing.

Someone knocked on his door and Blaine grunted. “Enter,” he called.

Wes followed by David entered.

“Kurt’s baking,” Wes said excitedly, “he found flour in the kitchen and I didn’t even know we had some and then he was just pulling stuff out of the cabinets and he’s making something delicious I just know it.”

Blaine sat up and he couldn’t help but grin a little. Wes was out of all of them the most exuberant and the craziest. But David balanced him out.

“Baking, eh?” he asked, “so why are you here?”

“Oh,” Wes said and turned to David.

David rolled his eyes good naturedly. “Well,” he said, “Kurt wanted to know if you liked red velvet cupcakes or if you’d rather chocolate chip cookies. He can’t decide.”

“And you can’t choose?” He asked.

“He wanted your opinion,” David said, “he said something about it being your house and how you should like what he makes.”

Kurt just kept surprising him. Baking had just never seemed like something that could be a past time for him. And Blaine was sure that there were no recipes in the house for him to use unless he’d looked one up somehow so he had to have something memorized.

“I don’t mind,” he said and it was only after Wes and David had gone off, Wes insisting that David skip with him – and Blaine would really never understand him – that Blaine let himself smile.

If nothing else, Kurt was going to change things up. He flopped back down to the floor. For once he wasn’t even thinking about what would come when it was nightfall. Instead he smiled and he listened to the laughter of the boys down in the kitchen as well as the sound of appliances that were never used coming to life. He listened when Wes and David left the kitchen, sent away by Kurt, and then he heard a melodious sound crawl up through the house and Kurt’s voice washed over him leaving him breathless.