“Uck.  Noah always leaves sweat in the bunk…”  Sam grumbled towards Kurt as he crawled into his bed.

Kurt chuckled and drew the blankets up and over his own body.  Their beds were just across from one another and every mid-afternoon, when their sleep shift began, Sam complained about his one bunk-mate's sleep habits.  

It had taken Kurt awhile to be able to sleep at the Anderson factory.  Every two hours a whistle would blow that alerted groups as to a change in shift.  At first the whistle woke him up and he worried he was missing his own shift, but he quickly learned that he would be getting a warning thirty minutes before his own shift, and, with the help of earmuffs and pulling the covers over his eyes, he was able to block out most of the distractions around him in order to pass into dreamland.

Besides, having a real bed that he only had to share with two other people and not animals was absolute luxury.  Sam could complain because he had his own cot back at the junkyard, but Sam didn't know about having to deal with animal feces and urine every night before settling in, or what it was like to not have a blanket.

During their breaks, they would eat and work together on their schoolwork.  Both Sam and Kurt had used the modules before so they had no problem continuing on with the work, though Sam frequently asked Kurt to read things for him because it was clear early on that he wasn't as strong a reader as Kurt was.  Santana on the other hand griped bitterly about the modules.  At the hotel she worked at, the indentured kids had a tutor for their education requirements and she just didn't know how to go about learning with the direction a teacher could provide.

“What's the difference between explain and describe and contrast and all these other stupid words?” She'd grumble as she pointed to each of the different question starters, leading to Kurt and Sam trying to explain what they both thought the differences were.

It was nice to have kids doing the same coursework he was, even if he was the one that seemed to grasp the concepts faster.  At the farm the kids were all of different ages so no one was doing the same work, which meant no one could ask one another about things they didn't understand.  With Sam and Santana doing the same grade he was, he found he was actually getting through the work faster and with more confidence.  

“You think Blaine has to read this much at his school?” Santana grunted, leaning back in a seat at one of the common tables they were sitting around, all reading the same book for a novel study.

“Don't talk bad about the bosses!” Sam whisper-hissed over at her.

“I wasn't talking bad.  I was asking a question.”  Santana snapped back.

“Just don't talk about him.”  Kurt insisted, glaring at her over the top of his book.

“What?  You two going to tattle on me?  You both get it worse than me!”

It was true.  Blaine was on summer vacation from his school and apparently that meant he was dragged along to the factory every day where his dad ignored him and Blaine ran around causing everyone grief.  He'd make messes, ask workers questions they couldn't respond to, call them names, fart near them and then leave them with the smell, and otherwise run around and cause a disruption.  Earlier today he had flicked buttons at Sam who ended up getting in trouble for not being able to keep the pace because of it, and then Blaine had kept yelling in Kurt's ear which had given him a headache that he was still trying to get rid of.

Blaine generally left the girls around, always exclaiming loudly that girls had cooties and that that meant they were all diseased.  He was still a distraction though, regardless of where he was in the room, but everyone knew better than to complain about his antics.

“We're not going to tattle.”  Kurt said steadily, “We just need to get through his summer break and then he'll be gone.  There's no point in getting in trouble because of him.”

“Summer break… stupid kid needs more schooling not less.”  Santana growled, receiving a nudge to the side from Sam as a warning to shut up.

“You guys talking about Blaine?” PN513 asked as he came over and flopped down beside them.

“No Noah, we are not talking about the boss' kid like we want to be demoted.”  Sam insisted, shooting Santana a glare of his own which she shrugged in response to.

“He made a guy cry on my shift man!  They had to take him out!” Noah said, ignoring Sam's obvious indication that they needed to be more discrete.

“Cry?  How?”  Kurt's interest was piqued.

“Told him his parents must not love him if he ended up here.  Called the kid's mom a whore and his dad a dirtbag.  Said they must not want him to do this to him.”

“What's a whore?” Kurt tilted his head to the side.  He certainly got that it wasn't good, but it wasn't a term he'd encountered before.

“Y'know.  Someone who sleeps with someone for money.”

“Why's sleeping with someone bad?”

Kurt watched as the other kids at his table either snickered at him or just shook their heads.  Eventually it was Sam who relieved him of his confusion.

“They have sex.”

“Oh… OH!”  Kurt went bright pink and his eyes went wide.  He knew about sex.  That was why the one demoted Dent at the farm got the boot - having sex with the farmer's daughter.  One of the other guys had said the farmer caught them right when the guy was in the middle of putting his “thingie into her thingie”.

Santana chuckled at his expense, “Honestly Kurt?  You didn't know that?”

“Well… well…”  Kurt stammered, his forehead suddenly getting damp with nervous sweat.  He hadn't been raised to talk about this kind of thing and they were mostly isolated at the farm, so all he knew was the basics.  He certainly didn't know there would people who would pay to have sex.

“Don't you remember in your orientation center?  When they talked about fast-tracking?” Noah asked of him, a smirk over his face.

Kurt nodded slowly, “Yeah… if you wanted to get out before you were eighteen and your debt was big enough there were things you could do to earn more money faster….”

“Like scientific testing….”  Sam added on and then nibbled on his lower lip waiting for Kurt to come up with the conclusion they were driving him towards.

“And sex…?” Kurt uttered, nearly pushed out of his throat as his face felt like it was on fire with the blush he was making.

The other kids around the table nodded.  “Yeah.  Whoring.  Being a whore.  Having sex for money.”

He balked, “Why would anyone want to do that?”

“Uh… duh… to get out faster.” Santana said with a flip of her wrist towards him as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“I'm not going to do that…”  Kurt whispered quietly, feeling quite sick at the thought.

“No one ever wants to do it Kurt… but they make people deals… why do you think there aren't many kids past the fast-track age around here?” Sam explained.

Kurt blinked and looked around.  You could opt into fast-tracking at fourteen, and sure enough, most of the kids around here were between their own age and fourteen, with the odd exception.  “Promotions?”

The snickered at that, at him, once again.  He couldn't believe how naive he was.  How did he not know this when they all did?

“I'm going to fast track when I can… scientific study route though.”  Sam noted, and all eyes turned from Kurt to Sam then.

“But what if you end up being a write off?”  Noah stammered, shaking his head, “I've heard like half the kids that do that end up being written off…”

Written off was the term used when someone died in service.  Kurt had yet to see anyone being written off, and this was the first he had heard about any statistics around it.

“I get written off and my family's debt is considered paid.  My little brother and sister hopefully won't have to work long or at all depending on how old I am then.”  Sam shrugged, like his life wasn't a big deal.

“That's crazy…”  Kurt shook his head as he looked at the blonde boy, wondering how he could make that sacrifice.

Sam shrugged, “That's life.”

The whistle blew and Sam, Santana, and Kurt left Noah behind as they returned to the main floor for their next four hour shift.  Thankfully they were allowed to sit wherever was free, so they could sit together, even though they couldn't talk to one another.

Kurt had taken to the sewing machines quickly, enjoying the way he made something from scraps and loving the way the machine hummed under his touch.  In his own mind, and as a way to pass the time, he would pretend he was using the machine to make music, sometimes finding himself nudged by one of his new friends for humming under his breath.

Sam on the other hand had a harder time, often fumbling and having a hard time with the threading and keeping the fabric straight in the machine.  Santana and Kurt kept him between them both so when that happened they could quickly help him out and keep him on task.  The small friendships formed in service would never be forever, but they helped sustain Kurt's need for family in the short-term.

An hour into their shift, Sam and Kurt were wedged apart by Blaine, who plopped himself down in between them and started rambling on about how unfortunate it was that they were there, that their parents weren't around to care for them, and how much his own parents clearly valued him since he wasn't in service and they were.  Kurt was able to tune him out, deftly ignoring him as he had become used to since starting at this job and continuing his work.  To his other side, Sam was doing the same, and because of that, Blaine seemed to get irritated.

“What?  Don't you care that you're the lowest of the low?  You know in school we learned that Dents like you usually end up back in service when they're adults because they're stupid and don't learn anything… plus you guys like it don't you?  You were all made to be controlled.”

Breathe in, breathe out, Kurt reminded himself, trying to ignore the arrogant ass of a boy beside him.

“Blaine!  What did I tell you! Get away from them!”

Thank god, saved by Blaine's dad, Kurt said to himself inwardly, never so happy as when he felt Blaine stand up and leave them alone to go whine to his dad once again about how there was nothing to do at the factory and how he wanted to play.

“God I miss playing…”  Sam mumbled under his breath so quietly only Santana and Kurt would be able to hear him.

“Me too..” Kurt admitted, thinking about the fields and barnhouse he had been able to romp in and play pretend.

“You guys got to play before this?” Santana asked.

“Yeah… at the junkyard we could play so long as the stuff was sorted when it came in.” Sam admitted.

“Same at the farm… some seasons were busier than others but we still got play time everyday if we worked hard.” Kurt noted.

“No one for me to play with at the hotel…” Santana admitted sadly.  “... the other Dents were kept in different areas.  Boss didn't like us being together except for when the tutor was there.”

It was one thing this place was definitely missing - the freedom to be a kid and play.  Kurt just wanted to go and run, play tag, throw snowballs - whatever.  He wanted that little bit of time to release his energy and remember that even though he was working, he was still a kid at heart.