Warnings: Smut in this chapter.

***Please read end note***

The Proper Way to Change

In one of her poems, Elizabeth wrote about writing and how it can help you feel free when you're feeling trapped. I can't tell you exactly what she said word for word—I don't have the book anymore and I never took the time to memorize anything—but I'm starting to think that maybe this is helping. Writing this all down, I mean. I feel different now than I felt when I first started. I feel less angry—less like I'm going to snap at any moment and destroy everything and everyone around me until I finally stop screaming. I still feel empty, though. I don't know how to make that go away. Every time I write about being close to Kurt my chest aches and I feel like maybe I should cry. I don't, though. I can't.

I don't want to talk about the present anymore. The past hurts a little bit less.

I'll get back to that…

As the hours passed, it got colder. Eventually we got down from the top of the Navigator and moved to the back seat. Kurt laid himself on his back while I cranked up the heat so we could get warm. When the temperature was comfortable, I sat down in the space between the front seats and the back, but Kurt reached over to grab a fistful of my sweatshirt and tugged until I was practically on top of him.

"I'm crushing you," I pointed out, feeling stupidly embarrassed.

"Hurts," he mumbled. Feels good.

I pressed my cheek against his chest and said nothing. There really wasn't anything to say until a few minutes later, when a question formed in my mind that wouldn't let go. "Does it hurt when you take an ability away?"

Kurt stared up at the roof of the car and ran his fingers slowly down my back. When he got to the bottom of my sweatshirt, he pushed his hand underneath the material and I felt his warm skin against mine. He dragged his hand up and then down, making my eyes feel heavy. "I don't know." It doesn't hurt physically. It just feels wrong and uncomfortable—like I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing.

"How many times have you done it?"

His hand stilled on my back. "Only a few times." A lot.

I hesitated to ask my next question, but asked anyway in the end. "Because they made you?"

His whole body sagged underneath me. "No." Yeah. "Carole told you everything, huh?"

I leaned up to look at him. He refused to look back. "Well, I—yeah. I thought you knew. I figured when I mentioned my father before that you knew she told me. You know, about your past."

"I didn't." I did.

I frowned. "So then why do you look so…" I tried to think of the right word. Defeated fit, but I didn't want to say it. I didn't need to, though. He seemed to already know it.

"I don't know." I knew she was going to tell you, but I didn't really think about how I would feel about it until now. I guess I was hoping that maybe she would tell you and we would just never talk about it or something.

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, but I won't lie and tell you that I'm not curious," I admitted. Then I panicked. "I mean—shit. I don't want you to feel obligated to tell me. I just—I would like to know, if you would like me to know. I guess. I don't know." I groaned. "I don't know what I'm saying. I don't know what to say."

He finally looked at me with sad searching eyes. "Why do you have to say anything at all?"

I sighed. "I don't know. I just do. I mean, none of that matters to me. Whatever fucked up shit they did to you or made you do, I don't care about any of that. You're still you. To me, anyway. That will never change no matter what."

I pushed myself closer to him, needing him to understand. "You've done everything for me. I've never felt anything like this before and everything sucked before I met you. I told you before, you're like the other part of me. Why else do you think we have to be so close to each other all the time? Why else do you think it didn't hurt me at all when I took your omission? Why else do you think I met you? You're the only one who could have fixed Cooper. You're the reason why he's safe from my father right now. All of that has to mean more then whatever fucked up shit went on in our lives before we met."

He kissed me when I was finished. It was nothing too heated or anything like that; it was sweet, I guess is the word. It was his hand on my cheek and my bottom lip slotted between both of his for a quick second of soft connection before the sensual retreat and a quiet smacking sound.

He dropped his head back down on the seat and looked straight up. "I have to tell you something." I want to tell you something.

My eyebrows rose at the sudden turn in the conversation. I got the feeling that whatever he wanted to say had nothing to do with his time as one of my father's prisoners. "O…kay."

He made that face that he would make when he couldn't get his words out. "Help me out a little."

"What do you want to tell me?"

"Nothing." I used my ability on you.

My mouth fell open and one word tumbled out of it breathlessly: "What?" I hadn't been expecting that at all. "When?"

"I don't remember." It was the night when you were drunk. The night you kissed me for the first time.

I stared at him blankly.

"I did it on purpose," he went on. His eyes begged me to just listen long enough for him to explain. I didn't mean to do it.

It took me a second to really comprehend what he was saying. Everything about that night seemed hazy and so far back in the past that it was unimportant. Then again, everything that had happened before Cooper and Brittany escaped seemed hazy and unimportant.

Still, I struggled to concentrate, to think back and remember that first kiss and then the next day when I had opened up to Kurt for the first time—vulnerable and scared by the window sill—terrified that he would hate me for invading his private mind without his permission.

"What do you mean you didn't mean to do it?" I found myself asking him in a rush, as if getting the words out as fast as I could somehow mattered in the grand scheme of things. "How did you not mean to do it?"

"I don't know." I didn't even know you had that ability. I only sense one ability from you, and that's your lie detection—being able to take an omission is just a minor facet of that, I think.

I shook my head, trying to understand. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Nothing." I was feeling really vulnerable that night. It was the first time we had separated since we met and I felt lost and alone and I just wanted to be near you again. I was scared of the fact that I couldn't handle being away from you. And then when I finally gave in and I left my house to go back to Dalton, I had to face a two hour drive with nothing for me to do but think about how I felt about you… and then when I finally got there you were drunk and you were asking a lot of questions that I didn't want to answer, and I sort of panicked I guess. So I tried to tone down your ability a little—just enough to protect myself. I didn't even really mean to do it. I sort of did it before I realized what I was doing. Not that that's an excuse… but what I'm getting at is, when I tried to tone down your lie detection, I'm pretty sure that I somehow altered your ability to hear omitted lies, which is why it didn't hurt when you took mine.

He trailed off after that, his thoughts getting confused and flustered to the point where they were mostly just noise in my head. I needed some space, though. I pushed myself off of him.

I was trying not to get pissed, but all I could think of was how much shit he gave me for that whole incident. He had looked so betrayed when I told him that I had willingly poked around in his brain for a truth he had no intention of giving me. At the time, I understood why he got so angry with me, and I hated myself for ruining his trust.

But all of that was bullshit, wasn't it? I asked myself. He had ruined my trust first.

I stared at him in disbelief. "You stopped speaking to me for weeks because of that and now you're telling me that you did the same thing?"

He didn't look proud of it. "No." Yes.

I felt blindsided. "Two fucking weeks, Kurt. Do you know how fucked up I was over that? And what you did to me was worse! I came clean! I apologized over and over and you still acted like I was the only one who did something wrong!" I bit out a harsh laugh. "And that's without bringing up the fact that you actually changed something about me. All I did was listen in on what you were thinking, but you actually messed around with my brain. That's about as personal as it fucking gets." The hypocrisy of it made me want to punch something. "Do you know how fucked up that is?"

"I don't." I do. I'm sorry.

"Yeah. Now you are." I scoffed. "Just—why are you even telling me this now? Why not then? Why did you let me think that everything that I was the only one who did something wrong that night?"

He gave me his typical response and the truth followed: It's really hard to explain, even to myself. I guess I was angry at you for different reasons. Once you told me that you could hear omitted lies I went into a panic. All of a sudden you were able to know things about me that I wasn't willing to share with you and that scared me. There were things about myself that I couldn't tell you—not just about my feelings but about my past. I felt like if I told you one thing that I would have to tell you everything and I just wasn't ready. I was angry that you ruined things.

Until that point I had been lying to myself about you. I kept telling myself that the name Anderson was a common name. It didn't mean that you were related to him. It didn't mean anything. But I always knew that wasn't true. Deep down, I knew that I was lying to myself, but the lie worked. And then you told me about your ability and for some reason, I knew I couldn't lie to myself anymore. It felt like you had given me an ultimatum—either stay with you despite the danger, or cut you out of my life—and I hated you for doing that.

"And you chose cutting me out was your best option?" I snapped.

"Yes." No. At first I was going to try to make it work. "I don't know why it didn't." But then in the hallway after that whole mess with Sebastian…

I rolled my eyes. All I could think was: Seriously? He was going to bring that up again?

His truth continued: You got this look in your eye. It reminded me of the way your father would look at me when he was getting desperate for answers, and I just knew that you were going to try to take my omission again. That was when I decided to cut you out. That look used to terrify me and seeing it on your face was just…

I shut my eyes. My stomach felt like it was filled with glue and sawdust. "Stop. Please stop. Please, Kurt."

But of course, he couldn't just turn his brain off. It didn't work that way—the truth was harsh and unforgiving. It didn't pause to consider feelings and it didn't hold back. His mind kept tangling and twisting inside mine until I understood just how terrified he had felt that day—terrified because of me. Terrified because I reminded him of his worst nightmare, which only meant that my own worst nightmares had been confirmed.

Kurt wrapped his arms around me through it.

"I don't want to be like him," I whispered brokenly.

"You are," he said, and I knew it was just so that his truth could tell me, You're not, but the lie was overpowering and it came at me with enough force to make me feel absolutely disgusted with myself.

His hands were on my face. "Blaine."

Feeling pathetic, I looked up at him. My heart felt like it was beating fast enough to break. I wanted to believe him, but it was hard even though I knew that he was telling the truth.

"I just don't understand. Are you trying to make me doubt us or something?"

"Yes." No!

"Then what was the point of that? Didn't I just say that I thought being able to hear your omission without feeling any pain was one of the things that made us right for each other?"

"There was no point." I'm trying to tell you that maybe you're relying too much on this preternatural connection we have with each other. You keep going back to that as the reason why we're together, but maybe we're just good together because you and I have a lot in common, and we want to be together, and if we somehow lost our abilities we would still be together. Our abilities are important, Blaine, but they don't define everything that we are.

I didn't know what to say to that. There was a bigger picture in Kurt's speech, one that touched on my warped upbringing and the reason why I suddenly found myself so disconnected from Cooper just because he could no longer hear my every thought, but I was too scared to look for it

My lack of response seemed to make Kurt impatient. "Ask me how I feel about you."

In that moment, I really didn't want to.

"Ask me," he said again, more forcefully.

"How do you feel about me?"

"I don't know." I love you. I love you and I don't think you're anything like your father. You're beautiful and your mine and I love you because you're you.

He kissed me not to long after his unspoken confession of love, and it was desperate and everything our kisses hadn't been in what felt like much too long. It was that opened mouth neediness that was somehow still soft and loving.

He grabbed at my shirt the same way, his hands pushing the material up fast to reveal skin that he would touch slowly with his lips and tongue in a way that no one else had before—in a way that all of the begging sluts I had fucked in the past assumed I would never want to be touched. It was a touch that lingered and somehow made me feel calm, but it was a lot for the emotional state that I found myself in—almost too much.

"What are you—" I started and he stopped me.

"No. Let me do this."

I pressed my lips together, holding my protests and insecurities in. It wasn't long before my reasons for stopping him got hazy and my lips parted so that soft moans could fall out.

His fingers went where his mouth wasn't, seeking out skin that hadn't been given any attention. His hands moved against me in a way that was more than touching—they were soothing and stroking, telling me that everything was okay in that moment that it was just us and nothing else mattered.

"Beautiful," he whispered, breathing the words right into my skin.

His lips closed around my nipple, teeth gently teasing, as his fingers undid the button on my jeans and pulled the zipper down. He pushed my pants down enough to uncover my underwear but didn't seem interested in pushing them down any farther than that. I let my head fall to the side and I closed my eyes, taking my time, letting myself feel.

His hands trailed down my thighs and settled at my pelvis, framing my underwear-covered cock without touching me there—close enough to make me moan and far enough away to make me burn. His mouth made its way down. His tongue was hot and the muscles under my skin jumped up, wanting to be as close as possible to the wet heat. He nipped at me, gentle, but not teasing—exploring.

When his mouth was close enough to my cock to make me twitch, his curled his fingers under the waistband of my briefs and pulled them down. There was no talking, or requests for permission. There was just doing and showing and giving and taking, and his tongue was the first part of him to ever touch me there.

He licked me once, one long stripe along the underside of my cock that made me whine and buck my hips up for more, but he took his mouth away and sat up to pull his shirt off, denying me.

Our eyes locked and I looked at him desperately and in awe. He didn't smile at me. Instead, there was a softness in his eyes as he leaned down to kiss my lips, telling me silently that he loved me. He told me again when he kissed my eyebrow and then my cheek. His soft, silent I love you's made the backs of my eyes ache with pressure and I closed them before my vision could start to swim. He kissed the tip of my stinging nose, and then left another on my jaw before going back down and wrapping his lips around the head of my cock, kissing me there as well.

His mouth was inexperienced, and his teeth clipped me a couple times. He was tentative and didn't take me in as far as someone with experience could have, but none of that mattered, and when his jaw got tired too quickly for me to come it still didn't matter. It wasn't about him giving me the best head I had ever gotten. It was about something more that I was too embarrassed to admit at the time, even within the privacy of my own mind.

"It's okay," I panted to him when the burn he was feeling in his jaw became an obvious struggle. I ran my hands through his hair and swiped my thumb over his cheek. "You can stop, Kurt. It's okay."

He pulled off and licked me one last time before pressing his forehead against my naked thigh. He took a few resting breaths through his mouth, pressed a kiss to where his lips could reach, and then he sat up. He unbuttoned his own pants with shaking hands and pushed them down fast before pulling them off completely. His briefs followed before he finally decided to rid me of my own.

I looked at him.

I wanted to tell him that he was beautiful, and that he deserved something better than fucking around in the backseat of his car, but the words got stuck my throat. His eyes were soft when he looked at me and conveyed another silent message—a promise to take care of me, no matter what.

I wondered when everything had gotten so switched around. I was supposed to be taking care of him. I was the aloof one—the one who didn't give a shitting fuck and didn't need anybody. Or, at least, that was supposed to be who I was. I wondered when that part of me had gone away.

But then, whether Kurt had changed me or not, he was the one who deserved to be taken care of. He was the one who had suffered the most. He was the one who had lost the most, and, I stupidly thought, he was the one who needed the most.

But there he was, despite whatever I thought he needed or deserved, with his beautiful everything eyes, promising me soft touches and loving comforts and whatever else I wanted as long as I agreed to be his to give them to.

I reached for him, wanting him close. He caught my wrist and kissed me there before shifting so he was kneeling between my legs.

He looked down at me before he very deliberately pressed our hips together. Everything blurred at the feel of him. We both moaned when he rolled his cock against mine, and for a second we lost ourselves, wrapped up in how fucking good it felt—I groaned and used my legs to mash him against me, moving my hips in languid circles, shuddering with my eyes closed and my mouth open—and his eyes rolled back into his skull and he threw his head back, grunting as he forcefully pressed against me again and then again, both of us forgetting the other.

"Oh, god," he groaned, guttural. With his eyes squeezed shut, he swallowed thickly before his tongue peaked out to wet his dry, swollen lips. "Shit," he whispered.

"Yeah," I breathed, in my own world where keeping my hands on his hips and getting off was the only thing that mattered. "So fucking good like that."

Then he fell against me and everything changed. He broke through the lustful fog in my mind with the softest whisper of my name and his lips soft and gentle on mine. His hips slowed down and refused to adhere to the fast pace my hands were still trying to make him go. He breathed into my mouth between kisses that trembled and helped me remember that it was about being together.

I relaxed my legs around his waist, going boneless, and allowed myself to feel the way he touched me with his whole body. We breathed hotly together and moved together, holding onto each other as if letting go meant that the other would vanish forever. I circled my arms around his neck, and he pressed his palm against my check and cupped my jaw in the way I had always secretly dreamt of being touched by another person—by someone who loved me—by someone like Kurt—by Kurt.

We taught each other how it felt to be completely wrapped up in someone else—too close and too hot to breathe properly, but too beautiful to ever dream of stopping.

Our movements were lazy, and the buildup was slow. Neither of us was concerned with how much time has passed, or how much time would pass before we finally gave in to the languid licks of pleasure. Everything was delicious and I wanted it to last for a thousand forevers.

I lost track of how many times I told him that I loved him. A number didn't matter, though. However many times as it was, it was the same amount of times that he said it back to me with either his eyes or his lips or his hands.

Eventually, with his hand wrapped around both our cocks, he came, gasping and wet, his lips on my neck, but didn't stop moving until I was able to come too. He rolled against me as I rode it out, trying his best to prolong my pleasure as I shook and clung to him while he licked into my mouth.

He kept kissing me, even when I had recovered enough to break free of the mantra of his name playing on repeat in my head. He didn't let me go and I held him just as tightly.

We kissed and touched until both of us were hard again and I felt strong enough to flip him onto his back and return the favor, neither of us caring about the mess we were making on each other as longs as it was one we made together.

I could have spent forever wrapped in his arms, kissing and coming in that way that meant more than just getting off, and then doing it over again. But the sun had almost set on our somewhere else. The car windows were fogged with our heat, and our bodies were tired. And, yes, our slew of problems was still there—all of them hidden away in whatever grooves they could find, waiting for the worst time possible to come crawling out.

"We have to go back, gorgeous," I whispered.

His arms tightened around me, his body still hot and sweaty. He put his hands in my hair as if it would somehow make it so that we wouldn't have to leave.

"Kurt…"

He buried his nose in my neck, his eyelashes slipping against my skin as he closed his eyes against reality, and I decided another minute or two couldn't hurt.