Kurt froze in shock, all fight draining from his body as he nearly went cross-eyed staring at Blaine. Kurt’s mind was blank. He just stood there as Blaine gripped his wrist tightly and pressed Kurt’s lips to his as the rain poured out all around them.

Kurt took a deep breath through his nose, head immediately shooting back as an acrid stench filled his nostrils. 

Kurt’s eyes flew open in surprise, Blaine’s hands still tightly gripping the back of Kurt’s neck and his wrist. Blaine’s lips were red and he was breathing heavily as the rain steadily began drenching the two. “I…” Blaine murmured, his voice rough. He sniffed the rain, glancing away before his eyes widened in horror. “Come on!” he yelled, dragging Kurt through the forest by his wrist.

Kurt’s brow furrowed in confusion as he stumbled after Blaine, nearly tripping on branches and roots as they tore through the forest. “Blaine, what—” He dodged a tree branch.

“Just hurry up!” Blaine snapped, panicked. He yanked Kurt’s arm harder.

Kurt hissed in pain, as the wound from Andrea’s arrow bled out through his jacket. “But I don’t understand—”

“It’s alcohol rain, Kurt! Now come on!”

Kurt’s blood ran cold as he sped up, fear making him keep pace with Blaine.

Alcohol rain. Everybody knew about alcohol rain. It had happened the year Blaine’s brother Cooper had won the games. There had been a lull in the killings and the Capitol had apparently gotten bored, so in lieu of rain they had poured alcohol over the entire arena. All it had taken was one foolish tribute from District 5 to light a match and the whole arena had been ablaze. and the whole arena had been ablaze. Only three had survived — Cooper by hiding underground. 

Kurt had no idea how Blaine knew which way they were going — Kurt had no idea how Blaine knew which way they were going — or whether he even knew which way they were going at all — but the rain was coming down harder so he just pushed on.

Blaine suddenly took a very sharp left and Kurt almost hit a tree. As they came to a field of ferns that lead up to the edge of the mountain they wove their way through the foliage to get to the mouth of a cave. 

Blaine ushered Kurt in, out of the rain, before picking him up and tossing him ten feet in.

Kurt cried out as he landed on his injured arm — thankfully not breaking it — and curled in on himself as waves of pain shook his body.

Blaine backed up a couple of feet so he could run and leap a whole seven feet. He landed gracefully and precisely close to Kurt but with enough space between them so as not to crowd him. Blaine sighed, running his fingers through his curly hair and grimacing at the mixture of residual gel and alcohol.

“What…” Kurt winced, gritting his teeth as he sat up. “What… the hell… was that for?”

“We’re drenched all the way through,” Blaine said, taking off his shirt and wringing it out over a large crack near the wall of the cave. “If we’d just run in, we would have left a trail leading right to us for when the arena’s ignited and we’d burn. And I’m pretty sure that you can’t jump far enough, so I threw you.”

Kurt fixed a glare at Blaine’s face, and deliberately schooled himself to glance from Blaine’s cheeks to the bridge of his nose and eyebrows then back again to make sure he kept his eyes above Blaine’s neck. “You could have warned me.”

“You would have said no,” Blaine shrugged and unbuckled his pants with a wet scrape of metal on leather. 

“Woah! What are you doing?” Kurt scooted further back into the cave in alarm.

Blaine rolled his eyes and shucked off his pants, wringing them out like his shirt. “Do you really want to sit in a puddle of alcohol all night?”

Kurt locked his arms tightly around his knees, feeling oddly sluggish as he turned to face the wall and yelled, “Of course I don’t!” 

There was a loud ripping noise and Kurt had the vague and odd feeling of his back being tugged. He looked around and realized that Blaine had torn his jacket straight the middle. “What the hell?” he shrieked and jerked away from the tugging, which since he was as close to that far end of the cave as he could get meant he pulled himself into a standing position that made his jacket slide off him and onto to ground with a wet smack.

Kurt looked up from the jacked around his ankles in shock. Blaine’s brow furrowed and he was frowning at Kurt petulantly. “You need to get naked.”

“No, I don’t!” Kurt whined with his teeth clenched to keep the hiss of pain to a minimum, but as much as he tried to stand upright, the pain in his arm and back from the fall made him curve and bump into the wall.

“Yes, you do!” Blaine insisted, tugging at Kurt’s shirt, ignoring Kurt’s batting hands. “Because Coop said… Coop said…”

“I don’t care what stupid Cooper said!” Kurt yelled. The shout unbalanced him so he was stumbling against Blaine, whose fingers continued tugging and fumbling at Kurt’s clothes despite the fact that his hands were pressed into confinement between their bodies.

Blaine’s expression brightened. “Stupid Cooper…” he muttered as he shook his head and grabbed Kurt by his shoulders to straighten him up, slightly swaying and eliciting a wince of pain from Kurt that Blaine didn’t register. “Hey Kurt, that’s funny! Stupid Cooper! Stupid Cooper!” 

He giggled, then clapped his hand over his mouth, his eyes widening. “We get drunk. Kurt, alcohol can travel through the skin, we’re drunk.”

“I’m not!” Kurt yelled before promptly falling over. He glared at the rocks under his hands. “Okay, fine. Maybe I am.”

“That’s why we need to take our clothes off,” Blaine groaned. “Because the more prolonged the contact of your skin with the alcohol, the more inebriated you become.”

Kurt pouted sulkily. “But I like my layers…”

“Come on, Kurt,” Blaine propped him against the cave wall and tugged off the extra three layers that Kurt had on. Blaine tried to reach for his tank top, but Kurt grabbed his hand. 

“No. This stays on. As well as my pants,” he said firmly. “Try anything and I’ll stab you.” He reached for one of his sai swords in the loops of his pants.

His hand closed over only fabric.

Panicking, he looked down. Nothing. No weapons. 

“My sais…” He looked around frantically, but there was only Blaine. “You idiot! You dragged us off and we left our weapons!”

Blaine froze, wheeling around, eyes falling on his empty scabbard. 

“What happens if someone finds us!” Kurt yelled and in his panic he started punching Blaine’s chest, but he was in so much pain he could barely put strength into his fists. “We’re completely defenseless because someone couldn’t stop to grab our weapons!”

Blaine restrained Kurt’s thumping by encircling his wrist carefully so as not to hurt him. “There wasn’t time! I smelled the alcohol and we had to run. Sorry I was too busy trying to save our lives to worry about anything else!”

Kurt glared at him, squirming in Blaine’s grasp so he could push himself away from Blaine’s chest, doing his best not to stumble. “Whatever. I’m going back out there and getting my weapons.”

Blaine held onto his wrist with a tighter grip. “No! Kurt you can’t. If you go back out they’re, you’ll probably die.”

“Everyone already knows that it’s alcohol rain by now,” Kurt snapped, pushing off Blaine’s hand. “No one will be stupid enough to light a match.” 

“Like that’ll stop the Capitol from igniting the arena!”

Kurt knew that Blaine was probably right, but he didn’t care. “I’m getting my sais,” he said firmly as he walked towards the entrance.

Blaine grabbed him around his waist, hauling him backwards as Kurt flailed and kicked, trying to get loose. But Blaine’s arms were like two iron bars locking Kurt to his chest. Kurt leaned forward then snapped his head back, hitting Blaine square on the jaw. Blaine swore and dropped him. Kurt immediately turned around and punched him as hard as he could, wincing in pain as his fist came into contact with Blaine’s cheekbone. 

Blaine’s head swung to one side from the impact. He lost his balance crashed to the ground. Kurt started to run towards the entrance but Blaine’s leg quickly swept out from underneath his sprawled body, knocking Kurt’s feet from under him, resulting in Kurt falling on his hurt arm once again. He tried to push himself back up but Blaine tackled him and pinned him to the ground. Kurt wriggled underneath him, managing to get onto his back. He tried using his weight to throw them over but it was no use. He was just a skinny District 8 kid. Blaine might be slightly shorter than him but he had muscle and weight to his advantage. He pushed Kurt’s wrists into the ground, both of them breathing heavily into the air full of sweat and alcohol.

Then Blaine leaned forward and kissed Kurt again.

Kurt rolled his eyes but sighed, because everything felt nice and warm and fuzzy…He closed his eyes and wiggled comfortably. This was actually quite pleasant. Blaine was licking into his mouth and it was kind of ticklish and funny but he liked it… no.

“Stahp!” Kurt mumbled over a mouthful of tongue. He shook his head vigorously back and forth until his mouth detached from Blaine’s with a wet suction noise. 

“What?” Blaine groaned, forehead falling down on Kurt’s collarbone.

“Aren’t we ever going to talk about this?” Kurt frowned.

“About what?” Blaine murmured into Kurt’s skin, his head not moving from its spot.

“About why you keep kissing me.” 

Blaine groaned and buried his face into Kurt’s neck so he couldn’t see him. “Because I want to?”

“Because you want to?” Kurt asked skeptically.

“Yeah,” Blaine snapped. “Is that really so hard to comprehend?”

“Uh, yeah!” Kurt retorted, his tone equally as sharp. “Because a couple of days ago you were willing to throw me to the dogs just for saying I wanted to kiss someone —”

“Because it wasn’t me!”

Kurt blinked at him in surprise. Then fury washed over him. “Wait, let me get this straight. You broke our alliance — which was your idea in the first place — and joined the Careers… because you were jealous? He was just the first random name that popped into my head!”

Blaine glared at the cave wall to their side.

Kurt bit his tongue to keep the bile from rising in his throat. “Get off of me.”

“Kurt —”

“Get the fuck off of me Blaine!”

Blaine stared down at him with a plethora of emotions, his eyes twitching from one side of Kurt’s eyes to the other in a last attempt to hope for something. He didn’t find it in the squirming beneath him and smoothly stepped away from Kurt but never taking his sad eyes off him.

Kurt stood up, brushing himself off and blinking back his angry tears. “I’m leaving,” he said clearly. He turned on his heel and started walking towards the cave entrance. “I’m going back to the clearing and getting my weapons—”

“Kurt.”

There was a soft crack.

Kurt lowered his head in humiliation, momentarily acutely aware that a lot of people might have just witnessed what had transpired. He still turned his back to Blaine as if he was the only one who could see him and walked towards the entry of the cave. “And I don’t care if you try to stop me —”

“Kurt!”

Then a low hiss.

“Because I’m go—” Kurt had just gotten within a few feet from the cave entrance when Blaine’s arms wrapped around his waist and twisted him sharply around. There was a low dull roar outside, then heat, then Blaine’s scream in his ear as they were blown back twenty feet into the cave. Blaine’s screams continued. He had landed under Kurt, buffering his fall and thereby taking most of the impact of the fall himself.

Kurt scrambled off of him with wide eyes as he stared at the fiery blaze crackling beyond the entrance of the cave, where he had just been.

The arena had been ignited.

The very arena he had almost walked directly into.

But Blaine…

He looked down and Blaine was on his stomach, heaving breaths and sobbing quietly. His entire back was burned raw, as well as the back of his neck, up to his singed hairline. 

He’d taken the fall for Kurt. 

Kurt stared at the red blistering skin in horror for a few moments before snapping himself out of it and into action. Back home most of the accidents in the textile factories were amputations, but there was the occasional burn or two, and he knew how to treat them.

Well, he knew how to treat them when he had the proper medicine at hand.

He rustled through Blaine’s pack — his own had been left when he’d split up with Tina and San — and found a bottle of water, a jacket, some dried fish, celery stalks, a small knife, rope, and some odd pinkish red fruit that he’d never seen before. He took out the jacket and spread it on the ground before gently coaxing Blaine onto it. There was a lot of wincing and whimpering but he managed to get Blaine facedown on the jacket with his arms pillowing his head. He picked up the bottle of water and gently trickled it onto Blaine’s back. Cool water, he reassured himself, that was the first step.

Didn’t make the screams ringing through the cave any easier to swallow.

Kurt bit his lip as he gently dribbled a stream of water all over Blaine’s back, cleansing it of cave rubble. Blaine bit into the material of his jacket, screaming his voice hoarse.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Kurt muttered frantically. He poured the rest of the water onto Blaine’s back, knowing that he’d regret it later when they were thirsty, but shoving that out of his mind to focus on the task at hand. He just wished he could clean the wound somehow, but he couldn’t call either of their sponsors for help because there was no way a parachute would make it through the fire. If only he had some medicine or salve or something… He sighed and set the bottle down, wincing at the cut on his arm pulling with his movement. He glanced at it and prodded the flesh. It was still a deep cut, but it appeared to be healing nicely, and there was no reddening of his skin.

He frowned. The arrows hadn’t been sterilized and he’d been sweating, so why was his cut so clean? The acrid smell filled his nostrils as he leaned closer to it — alcohol rain. He sniffed at the strap of his tank top.

“Disinfectant,” he murmured. Without thinking, he took it off and gently pressed it along Blaine’s back.

Blaine’s scream caused Kurt to jump and cover his ears as it went on for a full minute until Blaine blacked out from the pain. 

Kurt cautiously took his hands off his ringing ears and pressed the fabric firmly against Blaine’s back, causing a bit of liquid to rise on top of the fabric and Blaine’s whole body to twitch. He carefully lifted a corner of the shirt to see yellowy pus oozing from the blisters and cracks. Kurt reeled back at the stench, but carefully peeled the shirt off of Blaine’s back. 

Pus was bubbling up all across the burn, leaking out and dripping down Blaine’s sides. Kurt took a deep breath through his mouth to calm himself. He could do this. He had to do this. If Blaine hadn’t shoved him out of the way he would have walked straight into this and most likely wouldn’t have survived. And Blaine hadn’t even had a shirt on!

Kurt went to grab the two other shirts he’d been wearing before Blaine had taken them off him, still completely soaked with alcohol. Kurt blushed at the memory of Blaine undressing him but quickly pushed it away to focus on Blaine’s back. He took one of the shirts and started to wring it out slowly, placing one leg on the back of Blaine’s thighs and the other across his arm when his body started convulsing. Whole tea spoons of pus started spewing out, but the alcohol was doing a good job of draining it. By the time he was wringing his second shirt out, Blaine’s back was just starting to look raw and irritated. He’d still need medicine, but at least now there’d be no infection.

Kurt carefully removed his legs from Blaine’s body once it began to rise and fall in peaceful sleep. He mopped up the fluids around Blaine with his ruined tank top, then threw it into the blaze, which was finally starting to die down. He set his and Blaine’s clothes a couple of feet closer to the flames so that they’d hopefully dry. Then he settled in next to Blaine, waiting as the fire died down. It didn’t take long. Alcohol couldn’t sustain a blaze for long.

A canon sounded.

Then another. 

Then a third.

Kurt felt an odd sadness wash over him. He supposed it was too much to ask for Jesse, Harmony, and Sebastian to be the reason those canons sounded. 

He sighed before balling up his torn jacket for a pillow and nestling in next to Blaine, the cave still warm from the inferno. With a last glance at the raw skin, he dozed off.