Every two weeks, Kurt insisted on being allowed to shop for groceries. It was his ‘outside time’ as he called it. He would go at seven on a Sunday morning, when it was certain there would be very few people in the store for him to brush up against. So it was that a Sunday morning in September, Kurt was found in the fruit aisle, trying to decide which green apples would be healthiest for his father. Another boy wandered into the aisle, about Kurt’s age, and Kurt was intrigued. He had never seen a person under forty shopping at this time unless they had a child or two in tow. When the boy seemed like he was about to glance his way, however, Kurt quickly looked back to the apples. He tried not to make eye contact with strangers as a rule: there was no telling how perceptive they would be.

He almost jumped when he felt the boy pause next to him, seeming to browse the fruit. Kurt looked at him out of the corner of his eye, wondering what he was doing here. He reached out for an apple, but another arm stretched out at the same time as his. Kurt pulled his hand back instinctively, but he hadn’t been quick enough. The zip on the cuff of the boy’s jacket scratched against the back of Kurt’s hand and because of the fast movement of his arm, it dug in a little, just enough to break the skin and make it bleed in a long, shallow scratch.

The boy reached forward instinctively to wrap his hand around Kurt’s wrist as a sign of apology, the word ‘sorry’ already on his lips, but Kurt whipped his arm back, cradling it to his chest before it could be touched. The boy’s attention was drawn towards it and he had gasped before Kurt could realise what he must be seeing.

“Oh my god,” the boy whispered, staring shell-shocked at the tiny scratch of blue blood traced down the back of Kurt’s hand. “You… you’re a…”

“Please don’t…” Kurt wasn’t sure what he was going to ask the boy not to do. Tell anyone? Touch him? Rape him?

“I’m so sorry I cut you. I won’t touch you, I promise. I’m not… I wouldn’t do that,” the boy said, wrenching his eyes away from the blood to catch Kurt’s own. There was something so kind in the boy’s gaze that Kurt couldn’t help but believe him.

“Thank you. And it was an accident, so don’t worry about it. I just… I should probably leave before someone else sees it.” He looked down at the shopping basket in his hand, chewing on his lip briefly as he thought about the questions his father would ask when he came home without groceries.

“Here,” the boy said, reaching into his pocket. “Take these.” He held out a pair of fingerless gloves to Kurt with a smile on his face. “It seems a shame to abandon all that hard shopping.” He nodded towards the over-brimming basket Kurt was holding.

“I…” Kurt reached up and took the proffered gloves, while carefully avoiding touching any of the boy’s skin. “Thank you…”

“Blaine,” the boy finished for him.

“Kurt.” There was an awkward almost-shuffle between them in that space where a handshake should have been. Kurt pulled the gloves on, hissing a little when the fabric pulled across the cut on his hand, but knowing this small amount of pain was better than the alternative. “How will I give them back to you?”

Blaine seemed to be evaluating Kurt for a second, before he cocked his head to the side and grinned. “I could shop with you, if you don’t mind.”

Kurt was usually very careful with people he didn’t know, but there was something so open about Blaine that set him apart from the rest of the avoided world. Perhaps it was the gesture of the gloves, or the fact that Blaine hadn’t dragged him off to an alley, or maybe it was just the way he had tilted his head before he spoke, but Kurt found himself agreeing. Blaine quickly fell into step beside him as they walked down the toiletries aisle.

“Do you need any shampoo?” Blaine asked, his eyes twinkling as he gestured towards the vast wall of bottles.

“If you’re going to ask me whether I need every single thing we walk past then I will have to seriously reconsider letting you shop with me.”

Blaine laughed and looked like he was about to bump shoulders with Kurt, but seemed to think better of it when he saw how close their hands would get. “Okay, I’ll be good. But, seriously, do you need shower gel?”

Kurt rolled his eyes and shifted his basket to the hand between them, using it as a physical barrier. Just in case. “You’re not as funny as you think, Mr I-shop-freakishly-early-on-Sundays.”

“I don’t.”

“What?”

“I don’t normally shop at this time. I just… I needed to do something.”

“So you went grocery shopping. Naturally.”

“You’re very sarcastic, you know that?”

Kurt grinned wickedly and reached across to grab a box of tissues to put in his basket. “I do. It’s one of my best qualities.”

Kurt wasn’t sure how it happened, but he found himself placing a cup of coffee in front of Blaine where he sat at the kitchen table later that day. He slid into the chair opposite the boy and removed the gloves, wrinkling his nose when he saw some of the fluff stuck in the congealed blood on his hand. As he picked it out, he said, “Why did you decide to be nice to me? You could have easily dragged me off and had your way with me.”

“I don’t… I don’t agree with the way the world treats people like you. It’s… sickening.” Blaine’s voice was very soft, and Kurt looked up from his hand, surprised by the intensity of it. He hadn’t known that there were people who actually cared outside of faerie families other than Carole and Finn – and he always assumed they were wonderful anomalies – so the deep frown on Blaine’s face was shocking to him.

“It’s worse if you know what we are really like,” Kurt replied, his voice dropping to the low register that Blaine’s had taken on. He didn’t know why he trusted this boy so much.

Blaine’s frown deepened, but from confusion rather than anger. “What do you mean?”

“Well.” Kurt had removed the last piece of fluff from his skin, so he clasped his hands together on the tabletop. He felt ridiculously nervous: he had never been the one to explain the way of faeries to someone. “You think that when you touch us, it creates… indomitable lust in both parties.”

Blaine nodded.

“That’s not… It’s not strictly true. In fact, the lust part isn’t true at all; that’s just something humans have twisted. When we… when faeries touch people, they fall in love. Not lust, but love. Sometimes its friendship, sometimes its romance, but it’s unavoidable either way. We become involuntarily connected to another human being in the deepest way possible. I don’t know when it started, but one person took that and made into something far less pure. One human changed the story and now most of the world believes we are sex-crazed, libidinous animals. That is sickening.”

Kurt couldn’t look at Blaine, but he had a feeling the boy’s mouth was open in shock. He could hear Blaine’s slightly uneven breathing from across the table, giving away his emotions without Kurt having to see him.

“That is… I can’t think of a word for how horrible that is. I am so sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry on behalf of my whole race for what we’ve done to you.”

Kurt let out a strangled laugh at Blaine’s words. “There’s that, too. We’re the same race, Blaine. It’s proven, but people ignore the evidence because they feel too guilty about doing what they do to their own race. We’re a slight mutation of the human form, but we’re not a different race altogether, no matter what you name us.” He lifted his head, and immediately felt guilty when he saw the tears pooling Blaine’s eyes. He didn’t know whether they were of shame or of remorse, but he felt that he had caused them. He moved one of his hands across the table a little as a sign that he would hold Blaine’s hand if he only could. “Hey, don’t be upset. You didn’t know. It’s not your fault, Blaine. You were just raised in the society that we’re part of, with the beliefs that it holds, no matter how disgusting they are. You can’t help how you’re brought up.”

Blaine wiped furiously at the tears which were spilling onto his cheeks and let out a harsh breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be the one crying. I’m not the one who…” His breath hitched and he looked away from Kurt.

“Don’t apologise. If anything, it’s comforting to see that you’re affected by this, as cruel as that may sound. I’m not used to people caring, Blaine, so this is… well, it’s interesting.”

Blaine was silent for a minute, before asking, “When we touch you, is that a lie as well? Do we not feel lust towards you?”

“Not any more than you do when touching anyone else in the world.” Kurt brought his hand back from where it lay on the table, clutching it to his chest. He had felt oddly naked with it being there, unable to be held.

“But I don’t understand how people can still believe it. Surely they must notice if it doesn’t actually happen?”

“They say ‘be careful what you wish for’. The more you believe something, the more it starts to become a reality. People feel lust when they touch us because that is what they are expecting to feel. And we… faeries fall in love, so they let them rape them. That’s why there are so many faeries in seemingly willing captivity.”

Blaine nodded slowly, but didn’t seem to be able to think of a reply. Kurt was slightly relieved because he wasn’t sure he could talk much more on the subject. It was hard enough explaining this to someone he barely knew, so he had no idea how it must have felt for his father to tell this to Carole.

Eventually, Blaine sucked a breath through his teeth and spoke. “When you say ‘fall in love’, what exactly do you mean?”

“Just that. Love. My best friend – well, my only friend – Mercedes accidentally shook hands with me and I instantly connected to her. It was as though we had been friends forever. The emotion can be platonic or romantic depending on who you touch, but it’s real either way. It’s the deepest emotional connection you can have, formed at the tiniest brush of skin. If I were to touch you now, I might think of you as practically my brother, while you are left seeing me as the random faerie you met in the grocery store this morning. It’s…emotionally draining to think about. I’m very lucky in that, outside of my current family, I’ve only ever touched Mercedes, and that she wanted to become my friend after I did.” Kurt knew this was the most complex part of faerie life for humans to understand, despite it being the defining feature. He was, therefore, expecting the emotions that crossed Blaine’s face: confusion, then shock, then horror.

“So,” he replied, voice shaking a little, “whenever humans… whenever they rape a faerie, the faerie’s in love with them?”

“Not necessarily. They may think of them as their best friend, but they are still emotionally joined to them and unlikely to fight back -- at least at first. Whenever I think about how that must feel, I just…” He knew his eyes were filling with tears, but Blaine’s were as well, so he didn’t fight them. He tried to avoid thinking about these things, but he couldn’t always evade the thoughts of what people like him went through. There were times when he would become overwhelmed by the horrendous images flashing through his brain and would have to go into his father’s bedroom, pull open all the drawers of the dresser, and try to breathe normally as he lay on the floor. He would let his mother’s perfume permeate the room and soothe his mind. He would try to think about her rather than the people lying violated and heartbroken in backstreets and the bedrooms of mansions.

“I never thought people could be such monsters.” Blaine brushed at the tears on his cheeks and laughed a little. It was humourless, simply an attempt at alleviating his discomfort. Kurt hated his body in that moment because it would have felt like the most natural thing in the world to reach out and take Blaine’s hand in his own. “God, Kurt,” Blaine said, his voice harsh now. “You’re not an animal.”

It was at that point that Kurt broke. His tears turned to sobs as he watched the boy in front of him; the kind of person Kurt hadn’t even known existed. Blaine truly cared and understood more than Kurt had thought anyone could. He had been in shock since the moment Blaine hadn’t tried to take him in the grocery store and then hadn’t run away from Kurt as quickly as possible. He had thought then that this boy was different and perhaps better than the rest, but he hadn’t been expecting someone so compassionate.

“Kurt.” Blaine leaned forwards, looking alarmed. “Kurt, what’s wrong? I’m so sorry if I said something—”

“No, Blaine, no.” Kurt shook his head frantically, hand over his mouth in an attempt to control his almost hysterical sobs. “I’m just not – I’ve never met anyone like you. You care so deeply and you don’t even know me.”

Blaine looked utterly torn. “I really, really want to hug you. I want to hold you and convince you that life doesn’t have to be this way.”

Kurt cried harder, nodding, though he knew not why. He wanted that so desperately, but Blaine saying it made it at least partially real. He could imagine it. He closed his eyes, feeling the tears on his cheeks and hearing Blaine’s breathing across from him. He could hear the hitches in it that told him Blaine was crying.

Kurt hadn’t kept track of time. He and Blaine had cried until they couldn’t any more, then simply stared at each other. There was nothing else to say at that point: Kurt couldn’t talk any more even if Blaine thought he could bear to hear, and it was not the easiest topic to move on from. Kurt spent the time memorising Blaine’s face and wondering how he had been lucky enough to meet this boy. He eventually heard movement from upstairs and realised that it would probably be better to explain his meeting with Blaine to his father before the two became acquainted. Blaine understood this, immediately standing to leave.

“Thank you for the coffee,” he said, looking Kurt in the eyes with such raw openness that Kurt almost staggered. He knew Blaine was thanking him for more than that.

“Thank you for the gloves.”