At dusk, the smog of the town somehow glimmered in the mist, beautiful in its own right. Kurt coughed, eyes darting about the vacant parts of town. A strange man had approached him earlier, but Kurt was always quick on his feet and had quickly told him that his owner had run into a shop and would come back out shortly. The man had simply nodded and Kurt had sighed in relief as the man walked away. But now it was growing dark and cold, and he didn’t know where the shelter was or where he was supposed to spend the night. At least in the shelter, he had somewhere to sleep, even though it was loud and he slept on the floor and the other animal hybrids taunted him. At least then, dusk promised an escape to his dreams. But now, dusk only led to uncertainty and despair. And here he was, he thought. This was his life.

Kurt whimpered and curled up on the cold brick of a porch. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t supposed to be what his life was like. When he was little, dusk had promised comfort and love and happiness.

Flashback: Kurt lies curled on his stomach in a grassy field. His head is level with the jagged grassblades, their tips turning blue in the dimming light of the sun. He loves the contrast as a white moth delicately perches on the tip of a grass blade, crawling down and landing gently on the tip of his nose. He meows in greeting and giggles to himself before scrunching up his nose.

“You’ve got something on your nose, sweetheart,” Mom laughs. She reaches a steady hand down to Kurt’s nose, pressing gently against the moth until it crawls into the tip of her finger. Kurt sighs in relief and turns onto his back, resting his head in Mom’s lap and gazing up at her. She runs a soothing hand over his stomach and lifts her finger up until the moth is close to her face.

“He’s beautiful,” Kurt breathes.

“He is, Kurt,” she smiles, and Kurt just gazes up at his mother. Her auburn hair cascades down her shoulders and floats gently atop the evening breeze, scarcely visible in the now waning rays of the sun. She is so gorgeous. He is so lucky.

“Does he have a name?”

“That’s a good question, Kurt. I don’t think so. Would you like to give him one?”

“Oh, yes!” Kurt furrows his brow, his ears moving back and forth in the way they do when he’s concentrating. “What about Rainbow?”

“That’s a lovely name. He’s white, though, beautiful. Is there a reason you want to call him Rainbow?”

“Because he makes me smile,” Kurt says simply, and his mother bends to kiss him on the forehead.

“Me, too,” she murmurs. “Me, too.”

The moth’s wings spread, causing Kurt to jump slightly, and it comes back to rest on his mother’s wrist.

The moth reminds Kurt of something.

“I was playing with Colin yesterday, Mommy. We saw a spider on the playground, and I really wanted to take him home, but I told Colin, and he just laughed and stepped on the spider. I don’t understand why, because Colin is so nice to me and everyone we meet, but he just killed the spider. He’s so little. I could never imagine doing anything like that to him…. he’s alive, isn’t he? He’s just like you and me.”

“You’re so smart to realize that, Kurt. He is just like you and me. But kitten, there’s something you do need to realize about our world, though… some people don’t think about that the same way you and I do. Some people think that certain living things are better than others.”

“But… why?”

“I don’t know why, sweetheart. I wish I did.”

“But people don’t think that about me, though, do they? You always tell me I’m special. I always win the spelling games in school, and I have the best grade in my math class.”

“Of course you’re special, Kurt. You’re the most special person I know, you know that. I’m so proud of you.”

Kurt is glad for the reassurance and just nods.

“Some people, though… they aren’t happy unless they make other people feel bad, so there’s some human beings who think that humans are better than animal-hybrids.”

“They do?”

“Yes, Kurt.” She lifts her hand to allow the moth to fly away, then brings her hand to caress Kurt’s cheek while the other still pets his stomach lovingly. “Because animal-hybrids are naturally submissive and always have to live with a human, humans think that they are better than hybrids, but… that’s the farthest thing from the truth.”

“But… I like it when you take care of me, Mommy. I want to grow up to find someone who takes care of me just like you do. I couldn’t imagine it any other way.”

“I know, beautiful. And that’s what’s supposed to happen, that’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to find someone who thinks you’re just as special as I do and loves you just as much as I do, and you’ll never let anyone tell you otherwise, okay, honey?”

“Of course, Mommy.” Kurt looks thoughtful for a moment then dismisses his worries as the sky fades to black.

“Let’s get you back inside so you can take your bath, kitten.”

Kurt takes her hand and follows her inside.

End flashback.

“Hey! Cat!”

Kurt jumped. A grey cat stood beside him, long and lanky and smooth, leaning with his elbow resting on a low brick wall.

“Sorry, sir,” Kurt whimpered. “I’ll… I’ll just go now.”

“Aww, there’s no need to be leaving so fast! Besides, this here ain’t my property anyways. Do I look like one of them rich hybrids with a nice owner?”

Kurt squinted in the dark, inching closer. The cat hybrid’s fur was scruffy and matted, and his teeth were yellowed and chipped.

“No, I.. I guess not”

“You don’t got a collar either, do ya?’

“I don’t… I mean…” He couldn’t let him know that he didn’t have an owner, not unless he wanted to go back to the shelter to the other animals’ abuse.

“Shh, darlin’, it’s alright if you don’t got an owner. I’m not gonna tell anyone.”

“Okay.” Kurt’s big eyes grew with the reminder that he, too, didn’t have an owner. It had been so long…

“Shhh, why you crying? It’s okay. I have an owner, ya know. He’s actually a pretty nice guy. He keep about ten of us cat hybrids in his house. He might even letcha stay wit’ us. Com’on, he’s not home yet, you can meet the others!”

Kurt eyed the older cat’s outstretched paw with distrust, but… it was someone who understood him, knew what he had been through, and it looked like his owner had taken good care of him. He didn’t want to be left alone outside by himself all night.

“Okay,” he murmured shyly.

“Great! Oh. The name’s Tom.”

“I’m Kurt,” he said in a small voice, his hand small and warm in Tom’s large, calloused one.

.oO0Oo.

“Awww, who’s the little guy?” a lilting voice from the corner with a southern accent called out.

“Oh, he’s Kurt. Picked ‘em up on the street, he looked so sad ‘n’ lonely, I couldn’t resist. This is Lydia, by the way,” Tom directed at Kurt.

“Awww, do you not have an owner, honey?” Lydia purred, sauntering towards him from across the room.

Honey. It had been such a long time since he had been called that.

“Um… no.” Kurt looked ashamed. He had heard of animals without owners, but… this was him, who had had the perfect family and a perfect life. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“That’s okay, we love havin’ new animals! And Ben, our owner, he’s a sweet guy, you’ll get used to him.”

“In more ways than one,” Tom laughed, and another cat gave him a high-five.

“Okay...” Kurt felt nervous, looking around the room at the scratched up walls and mildewed carpet. “How come none of you have collars?” he wondered.

“Ben’s not like that,” Tom chuckled. “He’s our owner, sure, but he shows us that in different ways.”

Kurt opened his mouth up in question, but Lydia interrupted.

“Don’t scare the little guy already,” she chirped. “Come on, we’re just about to have some fun. You like to dance, right?”

Kurt did like to dance.

“Yes.”

“Well, come on with me.”

She turned on a CD with a flip of her paw, and Kurt felt uneasy at first, but the way Lydia lifted him and danced with him was soothing, and he lost himself in the music as they danced with the other hybrids.

“Hey, guys, I’m home!”

Kurt looked over to the doorway and saw Ben standing there with groceries on his arm. Green and blue tattoos ran up his arm and disappeared underneath the sleeve of his tight black shirt, but… he looked nice, at least by Kurt’s rapidly declining standards. He ran his tongue over his salt-and-pepper mustache before pointing at Kurt with a muscled arm.

“Who’s the new guy?”

“Oh, he’s Kurt! Tom picked him up on the street. He’s a sweet kid.”

“Mmmm,” Ben eyed Kurt up and down, smiling. “Need a place to stay, I assume?”

“I… well, yes.”

“Perfect! We’ve always got room for one more, especially one as cute as you.”

The other animals smiled at Kurt and engaged him in friendly conversation as they ate dinner. Kurt left out the part about his parents, now knowing how they would react if they knew how comfortable his former life had been.

As they finished eating dinner late that night, Kurt began to follow the others to sleep on mats on the floor.

“Hey, Kurt?”

Kurt felt a strong hand on his small shoulder and turned to see Ben standing behind him. In front of him, Lydia cast Kurt a sympathetic look over her shoulder before curling up by the fire.

“Hi, um…”

“It’s okay, kitty, you can call me Ben.”

“Okay… Ben.”

Ben grinned. “I just wanted to tell you how glad we are to have you here. And as a special treat, I usually let the new animals here sleep in bed with me for the night, okay?”

Kurt froze, looking at the man’s toothy smile and smelling the alcohol and garlic on his breath.

“Uhm…. That’s okay, I’ll be fine down here.”

The man’s jaw tensed and he took a deep breath to force himself to remain calm. “It’s tradition, kitty. It’s how I initiate all the new animals here. You don’t want to break tradition, do you? Go back outside, all by yourself?”

“I… I… no, I guess not.”

“Perfect.”

Later that night, Kurt lay huddled as close to the other side of Ben’s bed as he could. He smelled garlic and old fish on the covers, so he leaned over so that his nose was almost entirely off the bed. Even the air in the room was stale.

He heard the mattress creak and felt Ben wiggle across the bed until he lay beside Kurt. His hot breath blew into Kurt’s ear, and Kurt shuddered violently as a large, hairy arm wrapped around him, kneading small circles on his hip.

“It’s time for your initiation, kitty….”

Kurt couldn’t respond, frozen with fear as Kevin’s rough, chapped lips moved against his neck and his hand crept down between his legs.

“Please,” Kurt choked.

“You want this, sweetie?”

“No, I… I can’t… stop.”

“Your little friends downstairs all went through it, just like you did, you know… Just once a week, maybe twice… and you get to live here. It could be much worse, you know that…”

Kurt felt the man’s arm wrap around him as his other hand tugged at his waistband and then gripped his small, soft penis.

“You’re so small and fresh and innocent,” Ben grinned, nipping at Kurt’s earlobe. “Oh yes, Tom did quite the good job in bringing you here with me. It was his night, you know… I guess he got you here in his place. But no worries. No one can escape this for long.”

His hand trailed around Kurt to his behind and began to push between his cheeks.

Kurt mewled and struggled against Ben, his fingernails turning to claws with adrenaline.

Ben growled in Kurt’s ear and rolled his body atop his, but Kurt flailed his arms until his claws cut deep into Ben’s face.

“FUCK, MY EYE,” Ben roared, leaping out of bed to run after Kurt, but tripping and falling on his face.

Kurt didn’t look behind him, running and pushing past the front door and running more until he was on the street and windows and streetlights were passing by him in a blur.

He came to an abrupt stop as he ran face-first into a tall, uniformed man, who grasped Kurt’s arm and pulled him away. His golden “Police” badge gleamed under the street light.

“Where are you headed off to? You know that animal curfew is at midnight unless you’re with your owner.”

“I, well… I don’t have an owner.”

“You ran away?” The police man’s eyes narrowed.

“No, I… well, my owner left me out here, I guess he doesn’t want me anymore,” Kurt lied.

The man examined Kurt’s face.

“Alright, kid. Come on, we’ll take you to the shelter, okay?”

Kurt closed his eyes to hold back a sob, shuffling his feet as he followed the man.

.oO0Oo.

“So help me, I am your father, and you will not be going to your senior prom with that… that… THING.”

Blaine had already steeled himself for his father’s wrath, having dealt with it for all eighteen years of his life, and just raised defiant eyes to meet his father’s.

“He’s a person, like you and me. And we’re going together.”

“BLAINE! He’s not… he’s not even fucking attractive, he’s all yellow and ratty, why would you pick him, of all the boys in that little fag school you go to?”

“Well, I didn’t ask him, actually, he asked me, and he needs a friend, so…” Blaine trailed off uselessly and helplessly as his father glowered.

“Always trying to please everybody, of course. And you know damned well that he’s not supposed to ask you, he’s an animal! He’s not allowed to ask humans things like that, to make decisions and demands like that.

“Dad, no, he’s… he’s a really sweet guy, and I feel so bad for him – he has no friends – and I… maybe everyone tells me that I’m supposed to be the one who asks hybrids to the prom because they’re submissives or whatever, but I… I don’t care. I don’t mind. And I’m going to prom with him with him.” Blaine stood up from the table, looking strong despite his short stature. He was growing so tired of this arguing.

“Let’s get one things straight - you are NOT going with him. If you want to be a doctor, you had better get your head out of the clouds and think of what’s best for yourself, and that doesn’t involve lollygagging around the town doing Lord-knows-what with those fucking animals.”

“I… I don’t want to be a doctor. I didn’t apply to med school.”

“Blaine,” his father said, growing impatient. “I was right there, I signed your applications as your guardian, and you’re going to med school.”

“You signed my applications, but… they weren’t for med school.

Blaine’s father grabbed him by the collar.

“What do you mean, they weren’t for med school?” he said quietly and threateningly, already knowing and dreading the answer.

“They… they were for vet school.”

“Fuck,” Blaine’s father muttered darkly, letting go of Blaine and sending him stumbling across the room. He walked away, pacing a few seconds before returning to Kurt. “FUCK!”

“Dad…”

“Don’t call me that now, not ever again. Now I’m going to call some of my connections, and they’ll get you into med school, granted, it may not be the best one that you could have gotten into, but it’ll do, and…”

“No.”

“What did you say?” he responded lowly.

“No. I’m not going to med school.”

“Yes you are, because you’re leaving for school soon, and I’m not paying for any other school, and that’s that.”

“You… you don’t need to,” Blaine said, growing stronger. “I got a full scholarship, actually. To Royce Vet School, the best in the country. They’ll even pay me to work in their clinics as a student, and then, well, then I’ll basically be guaranteed whatever job I wanted.” His father was breathing heavily, his face red, and Blaine took the opportunity to continue. “I love animals and hybrids. They – they’re what I’m passionate about, and I want to spend the rest of my life serving them, maybe even fall in love with one someday, treat him like he’s supposed to be treated-“

Blaine was silenced by the sharp crack of his father’s hand against his face.

“Get the hell out of my house.”

“Dad-“ Blaine’s voice filled with tears.

“NOW.”

.oO0Oo.

That night found an older Kurt in the shelter, gazing out into the black of night at the twinkling stars. The sky was so big, so dazzling, so beautiful even in its darkness. The world had to be bigger than himself, than this shelter, than this life he was living. It had to be. And miles away, Blaine sat on the windowsill in his mother’s townhome, tears rolling down his cheeks as he wondered the same.