Dinner was achingly formal yet still too personal for Kurt's current tastes. 

He and his grandmother were sat at opposite ends of the dining table that could easily seat sixteen. The meal consisted of a sort of spinach salad with pears and currants and an odd crispy creamy cheese along with a small bowl of cubed grapefruit and a glass of Perrier. For grandmother's health, which was failing due to her old age. 

"This is the proper diet for someone in poor health," she said evenly from her end and Kurt knew the double barb. She'd never approved of his father marrying her daughter and now the only one alive to hear about it was Kurt. Who she could also berate for his own father's bad health, as if she truly cared.

Her voice lilted softly in the background and Kurt drowned it out, methodically eating bite after bite of salad. His stomach gnawed in hunger but he didn't care. He excused himself after he'd finished his meal and went back up to his room.

No pictures adorned his wall. No posters or paraphernalia. No personalizations of any kind. The only addition he'd made was a picture of him and his parents at a park when he was four, which resided on his bedside table. He stripped out of his black oxford and slacks and put his pajamas on, turning off the lamp as he climbed into bed at eight pm and watched the snow quietly fall outside. 

Darkness.

***

School kids in Massachusetts weren't terribly different from the ones in Ohio, except with the addition of social classes. He'd thought they were a thing of a bygone era, but apparently they were well and alive in New England, evident by the whispers he received in the halls from the other boys. According to hearsay, his mother had caused quite the stir in Provincetown when she'd run off with a midwestern mechanic. 

The uniform sucked as well, but it was to be expected in an all-boys school.

But...Kurt somehow imagined that the way he was treated would be different from Lima...

"Hummel!"

Kurt groaned against his locker, closing it firmly. He just wanted this first week to end already. He turned, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "Harrington."

Scott Harington was one of the top students at St. Andrews, came from the famed Harrington family that Kurt knew nothing about but apparently everyone else on the east coast did, and was captain of the field hockey team.

(Kurt was still clueless about field hockey but he surmised that it was basically lacrosse on the ground with weird sticks)

Scott leaned against the locker next to Kurt's, fluffing his blonde hair back and fingering his field hockey stick idly. "Where are you scuttling off to so quickly?"

"Home," Kurt said shortly.

Scott gave an exaggerated pout. "You can't linger?"

"I have a sick grandmother."

"Who's probably making her way over to Providence for tomorrow morning's annual Ivy Manor Garden Party that she's managed to attend with all our grandmothers for the past decade despite illness." Scott pushed off the locker to stand in front of Kurt. Kurt disliked the height difference. It had been fine on Finn because he'd just been some big dopey jock that Kurt had found himself crushing on. But with Scott and the other six field hockey players that had just appeared out of nowhere, it was kind of scary.

"You see," Scott continued, not noticing Kurt's unease. "We have practice in half an hour. You should come help us with warm-ups." 

"No thanks," Kurt said firmly, the knuckles gripping his shoulder bag turning white. "That's the opposite direction from where I need to go."

"Oh, we're not going to the field," Scott smiled pleasantly. "No see, we have this tradition with freshman."

"I'm a junior."

"You're new," Scott shrugged. "So..." He stopped twirling his stick and brought it up to his hands more firmly, like a club. "Gonna help us with practice?"

Kurt ran, bolting down the hall and out the door. He skidded on the ice just outside but managed to keep his footing and tore off across campus, panting as his eyes fixed on the bus that was waiting just outside the gates. His breathing grew ragged as he pumped his legs faster, ignoring the sounds of the school doors opening behind him as he shoved the gates apart, slamming them shut just as quickly as he ran onto the bus.

He jammed in two dollars' worth in coins to the slot and the bus thankfully left the stop, just as the field hockey team pushed through the gates.

Kurt sighed a breath of relief and sat down, resting against the icy window and breathing heavily. It wasn't the right bus to take him home, but it would at least get him within a mile of his grandmother's house. 

An hour passed and Kurt's eyelids fluttered open. They were getting near to his stop. He sat all the way up in his seat and cracked his neck, glancing out the window. His blood froze.

There was Scott Harrington, looking up at him from the backseat window of an expensive black car, two other teammates next to him.

Kurt stood up sharply, moving to the left side of the bus and sitting down. But out the window on that side was another black car ferrying field hockey players.

They weren't going to let him get away.

Kurt gripped his hands tightly, looking around wildly for something, anything that could help him. They could follow him anywhere if they had cars unless...unless...

He looked out the window at the coast which was fast approaching. There was the sound of a small bell behind him. Someone requesting a stop.

Sitting very still, Kurt waited for the bus to slow to a halt. Three people got off. Kurt glanced behind him. Scott's car had stopped and the three hockey players were walking towards the bus, intentions of boarding.

Kurt bolted, running off the bus and through the brush just off the sidewalk that led straight to the sandy beach. He heard shouts behind him and another car screeching to a stop, but he kept running until he was sprinting along the sand, the sea to his left.

"Hummel!"

Kurt just kept running, breathing heavily as his legs pumped, avoiding the sharp rocks that had begun to stick up by the surf. The rocks increased and he was forced further up the beach, towards the woods. Soon the entire beach broke off into treacherous rocks and the beginnings of a small cliff so he headed into the woods, aware of the heavy footsteps behind him that wouldn't relent.

After passing a large twisted oak tree, he realized that he was close to his grandmother's house and he knew the path from this point. But...they'd said that his grandmother was out of town and she probably took Edmund with her...which means that the hockey team would have the weekend to try to break into his grandmother's house to get him and even he didn't know where all the doors were so he couldn't guarantee his safety...

He took a left instead of a straightish-right, hoping to lose them all in the underbrush instead so he could double back and go home. 

"You can't run forever, Hummel!"

Kurt ignored the voice and kept trudging through the trees, shoving moss out of his way.

"When you get tired, we'll find you! We'll just follow your footprints!"

Kurt looked down at the snow and cursed. So he couldn't hope to hide behind a large tree or anything. He needed shelter--

Almost immediately, he stumbled into a clearing. He was back on the beach again.

An old lighthouse loomed over him.

Deja vous hit him hard and he breathed out sharply, taking a step back. 

"Hummel!"

Kurt looked behind him, back into the woods where there was clear movement. Gritting his teeth, he ran towards the lighthouse, fingers pulling on the rusty lock and wrenching the door open, slamming it firmly shut behind him. It was completely dark.

Breathing heavily, he ran his fingers all over the cold door, surprised to find that it was wooden from this side instead of metal. He searched and searched, but dread slowly started to fill him. 

There was no lock. He had no way of keeping them out.

Stumbling blindly through the dark, he reached out with his hands until he hit cold metal railing. Finding his footing, he raced up the spiral staircase, up and up and up and up, until the top. The light stood large and unmoving, the structure probably hadn't been operational for years. There was a roomy area around it, covered in dust, then an small door set into the large panoramic glass window that led to a small metal balcony that wrapped all the way around the structure. 

Kurt sat down heavily on the dusty floor, gripping his bag tightly. If they were going to come up, he'd knock each one of them back down the stairs one at a time.

But an hour passed.

And then another.

No one came.

The light slowly leeched from the sky and Kurt got quietly to his feet. Perhaps he'd managed to lose them after all. He glanced out the glass window, freezing.

There was a dark figure standing in the snow below, staring up at him.

A chill filled Kurt as he looked down. It was getting dark, but he could tell that it wasn't Scott. Or anyone from the field hockey team or school. They all had to wear burgundy blazers and khaki slacks and white shirts and black ties.

No, this person was in all black and staring directly at where Kurt was.

Kurt sat down quickly, ducking his head below the glass. So the field hockey team had gotten someone else to keep watch over him while they presumedly went home and slept in their own beds. 

His cheeks felt hot and he realized that he was crying.

Brushing aside some of the dust, he curled into a ball on the ground and let sleep take him, not noticing the deep scratch marks in the wood that he'd just uncovered because it was too dark.