Chapter 6

Rachel and Finn started the pestering first on the Thursday in Glee club, the beginning of a long line of Blaine's harassment. When Mr. Schue had entered, she asked him permission to announce something to the club. She stood in front of them and stared directly at Blaine.

"Blaine," she started, "the Glee club is a bit concerned about your behavior yesterday morning in the hallways." She cleared her throat. "Sam said that he saw you and Kurt Hummel holding hands and smiling and talking with each other-"

"Why can't I do that?" Blaine instantly went on the defense. The way Rachel spoke of it in utter disgust angered him. "Kurt's a really nice guy, if you talk to him."

She grimaced. "But he's a part of the Skanks Blaine! Do you even know who they are?"

"Punk-rock crazy ass emos, is what," Puck finished. "Unfortunately we lost two of us to them and don't get me wrong, Anderson - they're definitely not a study group."

Blaine sighed. "You guys wouldn’t-"

"It's a trick, Blaine," Finn said. "They do these kind of recruiting things where they prey on people and try to get them to join them. I know this because Ronnie, one of their members, tried to recruit me once." Blaine remained silent to let him continue. "I was failing in everything and I didn't really know what else to do. Ronnie took the opportunity and offered me some weed, saying that it'll help me in my studies. But she didn't call it weed - she called it Cannabis and said something about it opening my mind to revise..."

Rachel was looking around uncomfortably.

"I took it, of course," Finn continued. "I aced the Math test I had that morning, plus the Spanish I had in the afternoon." Then he added as a side note. "Sorry Mr. Schue. I lied about studying." Mr. Schue shrugged like if he was expecting it. "Anyways, I had a whole lotta exams coming up in two weeks so I went to Ronnie to ask her to get me some more. She told me that I couldn't get any unless I proved myself worthy enough."

It was hard to believe a story when told from the point of view of Finn, but Blaine was polite and didn’t interrupt. "I asked her what I had to do. She said just to get some piercings; some tats and dress in all black. I'm not really a fan of piercings or wearing black or...tattoos. So I asked her if there was anything else. Then she told me if I slept with her-"

"Okay I don't think Blaine needs to know about all that!" Rachel said in a shaky voice. "The moral of the story is: Kurt's on a mission to recruit you in his awful group and if you keep going out with him you're just making things easier."

But Blaine had already made his mind. They had proof about Ronnie but not about Kurt. He was about to say that when Rachel stopped him with a finger to his lips.

"Before you say anything, Finn and I have a song for you that would hopefully change your mind." Finn got up from his seat to join her as Rachel took center stage. "It's called-"

"Listen guys," Blaine interjected. "Thanks a lot for the advice but I don't want to judge Kurt because of what you guys say. It’s only been about three weeks since we started talking.” He didn’t dare say “dating” for them to throw a fit. “Call it naïve but I think I like him." He smiled at the thought. "If he tries to get me into his group, I'll tell you guys and you can say 'I told you so' how much ever times you want. Okay?" The Glee members all looked downcast. "I have to go home now and complete a...Chemistry project."

He picked up his bag and went to find Kurt instead.

As usual they were behind the bleachers but Quinn was the only one smoking. Dressed in a fitted, plaid Polo shirt and a bow-tie with brown slacks, he looked completely out of place among them - like a rainbow in a dark, cloudy sky. They barely gave him a second glance but Blaine could have sworn he saw them smile a little.

He found Kurt sprawled out on the couch with a hat over his face. He appeared to be sleeping but one of the girls nudged him and he sat up. When he saw Blaine he was slightly confused but smirked all the same.

"Didn't expect to see you here," Kurt said, his voice groggy as though he had been napping there for hours. He got up and dug in his pocket then took out a cigarette. "Do you mind?" Blaine told him it was alright and Kurt lit up. "What brings you?"

Blaine furrowed his brows. "Glee members kept harassing me about hanging out with you just now. I left them before they could annoy me with songs."

Kurt huffed. "What did they say?"

Blaine glanced at the listening members and changed his mind about telling the truth. "Nothing important. Just that you guys were bad news."

"Can't lie about that," another girl said and they all laughed. Blaine didn’t know if to smile or not.

"So are you gonna stop talking to me?" Kurt asked. He inhaled deeply, his eyes trained on Blaine. When he smoked, Blaine had to admit that Kurt looked a bit sexy.

"No! Of course not. I told them I'd like to judge you myself."

Kurt's smile was mischievous. "Well since you're here already, common courtesy says I have to introduce you to my friends." He pointed to the black girl who had the ends of her hair dyed red and wore a light brown fur jacket over a black tee and a pair of embroidered leggings. "That's Sheila. The mouth of the group. Don't even think about getting in a standoff with her. She'd curse you from now till next year and never run out of words."

"Got that right."

"That's The Mack. The badass of the group." The girl looked slightly Hispanic and had long, curly, dark hair with blue streaks. She had on a black cardigan over a white tank top and dark blue skinny jeans.

"Why do they call you that?" Blaine asked but regretted it because it felt rude.

The Mack answered anyways. "I like to make out with truckers at rest stops." Blaine opened his mouth, tried to find a logical reason behind this, but failed. He was close to asking "Aren't you afraid to contract an STD?" but the logic in his brain moved faster than his mouth, a very rare occasion, and he decided against it.

"She's Ronnie, the brawn of the group." Ronnie was fat and intimidating with a thin leather collar around her neck and a leather jacket. Blaine could definitely see why she was the brawn, though if she had more fat than muscle, he couldn't tell.

"And by now Glee must have told you about Quinn," Kurt concluded. She wore a long, flowing skirt of a sheer fabric and a jacket over a Tee decorated with skulls. In fact, Glee hadn't told him anything about Quinn. He had only known her name because Finn mentioned her once and when Blaine asked him who she was, he gave him a description.

"She's tall, blonde, all legs and a killer body," he said haughtily. Bad mistake when Rachel was sitting right next to him. Rachel had stormed out, dragging Finn by the ear. For a girl half his size, she sure seemed to control him more than was healthy.

"Nice to meet you guys," Blaine said with a cheery smile. All of them grunted a response then fell into silence. He fidgeted with his fingers.

"We'll leave you two lovers alone," Quinn thankfully announced. "Come on, girls. I think that club three blocks down is having free drinks tonight." The Skanks all hooted and followed Quinn. Now there was only Kurt and Blaine and secretly, that was how he wanted it.

"You want a smoke?" Kurt asked him, holding out his cigarette.

Blaine felt a bit adventurous so he nodded. What could one cigarette do? And he didn’t want to look like a wimp in front of Kurt. So he took the cigarette, placed it between his lips and breathed in the heat and smoke. But even though he tried to inhale just a little, his lungs were too inexperienced so he ended up coughing and choking, gasping for breath. He handed Kurt back the cigarette and fanned the smoke away. The other boy was grinning impishly.

"You never tried it?" He placed it back by his lips and breathed expertly. Blaine shook his head. He was probably red-eyed and red-faced from all that coughing. "I'll teach you."

Kurt took a lungful of air, removed the cigarette from his lips without letting much smoke escape and then leaned towards Blaine. He didn't know what to expect but he allowed Kurt's lips to rest on his. His heartbeat sped up at the contact. Kurt's cold fingers pressed on his jaw to part his lips…and weirdly enough he tasted the smoke as Kurt breathed out into his mouth. He inhaled and even more surprising, the smoke didn't inflame his lungs as it had done the first time.

Kurt pulled back with a slight nip and tug on Blaine's lips. He was smiling and Blaine's mouth was still open. "Good?"

"Yeah,” Blaine said, but he really meant he liked Kurt doing it to him.

"Wanna do it again?" Blaine agreed enthusiastically to that. Kurt led Blaine to the sofa and they sat with their sides pressed together, not an inch of space between them. He blushed at the warmth of Kurt’s body up against him and the slight tingling in his side. Kurt stared at him for a while and Blaine stared back, wondering what was going on in Kurt’s head. Whatever conclusion he came too was a good one as they kept on with it, Kurt exhaling the smoke and Blaine inhaling it with childish excitement whenever their lips met. They finished one cigarette and Blaine was expecting another. Kurt caught his look and shook his head.

"I don't want to get you hooked on nicotine. It's one of the worst drugs to be addicted too."

Blaine understood but he still wanted more. He liked the feeling whenever Kurt's lips were on his. It felt dangerous and daring and so new to Blaine that he wanted to try it again and again until he got sick of it. He never smoked or drank and knowing that Kurt could introduce him to these things had him liking the idea of a relationship even more. He never knew bad was so tempting.

"I know something else we can try though that's not so bad." Kurt shot him an insidious smile. "Do you know where Lock-Holmes Park is?" Blaine nodded. "Meet me there this evening at nine pm and you'll see." Kurt leaned forward and kissed him slowly and deeply, the kind of kiss that you could keep up for hours upon hours and stirred up a storm in Blaine’s stomach. They finally pulled apart and Kurt left with a peck on the cheek and a wink.

Blaine had gone home smelling like smoke and an hour past his curfew. He was lucky that his parents weren't home or else the devil in his father would have come out that night. It was four pm and his parents might return at four-thirty meaning he would have to sneak out. Exhilaration lit his body and he could only imagine the adrenaline that would race through his veins when he was actually going through with it. He took a shower and lay down on his bed grinning to himself like a fool.

*o*o*o*

Sneaking out was easier than he expected. His father was a commanding man who believed that women belonged in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant so in his delusional head it was completely natural to force his wife to come to bed the same time he did, whether she was tired or not. Blaine’s mother was quiet and agreeable for all those years she had put up with the man. By quarter to nine, both of them were asleep. Blaine had tiptoed down the staircase, grateful it wasn’t squeaky and out through the back door.

The cold spring air sliced clean through his jacket. He pulled it tighter around his body and breathed hot air into his hand. Even through hail Blaine would have been pleased to rendezvous with Kurt, at any given hour. He hopped over the low picket fence that ran all around his house and starting walking west to get to Lock-Holmes Park. It was a ten-minute walk. Cars zoomed past him and occasionally he came upon the custom passerby. He turned down two streets then made a sharp left to appear at a streetlight that illuminated the small children’s park. It was empty but maybe as he got closer, he thought, he might see Kurt.

There were three swing sets, some monkey bars and a slide set connected to a jungle gym. In the dark, however, the structures were looming and menacing monsters with just a speck of light keeping away the shadows. Blaine headed to the jungle gym first and saw that Kurt wasn’t there. The dust and grime, however, had him sneezing. He took a seat on the swing and started to propel himself but the squeaks and groans and wails with every little movement made him have second thoughts. It wouldn’t do him any good if he swung and the entire set broke down on top of him.

Ten minutes passed, fifteen and Blaine was freezing his ass off. He had attempted to create heat by pacing around the small park but by now his fingernails were turning blue and his nose felt like if it was ready to fall off. He checked his phone and wanted to call but decided against it. He knew what Kurt’s personality entailed and it wasn’t his mission to harass him into change. Blaine started treading back to the entrance when a voice cut through the chill air.

“What’s your hurry, hobbit?”

Blaine spun around and out of the shadow of the slide Kurt appeared. He was wrapped in a thick, heavily insulated jacket, a beanie and a scarf around his neck. A cigarette hung between his lips. The sight of Kurt caused things in his stomach to clench and his heart to beat in a wild, erratic pattern.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Blaine said, trying not to show his relief too much. He didn’t want to fall all over Kurt and scare him away.

Kurt sat down on a bar on the jungle gym and beckoned Blaine closer. “Why would I set you up?”

Suddenly, Blaine felt extremely embarrassed at his irrational thinking. Of course Kurt wouldn’t set him up unless he did something wrong! He took a seat next to him and watched as he reached into his jacket and pulled out a Ziploc bag. In it were crushed up green leaves, two cigarettes and a lighter.

“I thought about preparing the cigarette before but I figured it would be better to show you how to make one,” Kurt announced. He took out the cigarettes and handed one to Blaine. “Empty the tobacco from the cigarette so you can use it to roll the weed in.” Kurt peeled off the paper and Blaine tried his best to follow, tearing it at some parts and trying to hide it so Kurt wouldn’t make fun of him. His effort was of no use as he heard the boy laughing next to him. The brown substance fell out of the paper and he dusted it off his pants onto the ground.

“Then place the weed in the paper and roll it up,” he continued. He divided the weed in half, handed some to Blaine and demonstrated how he rolled it with practiced ease. Blaine succeeded without spilling much and looked up at Kurt with a bright smile for approval.

Kurt patted him on the head. “Good job, hobbit.” He held the lighter up in his hand and lit his bud then reached for Blaine’s. Blaine watched as the fire ate at the paper and smoke trails followed in its stead. “Now, you smoke it.” Kurt crushed his previous cigarette on the ground and placed the new one between his lips. He took a slow, long drag and breathed the smoke out from the corners of his mouth and his nose. Blaine did the same and managed not to cough and splutter like the last time.

Kurt was smiling at him as he smoked, like he had just won some great achievement. Blaine was only doing this because the idea thrilled him in more ways than one, and doing it with Kurt had further instigated his rash decision. He wanted to try things, to stop being such a prune and waste his young life away without doing something memorable enough to tell his future children. Not that he wanted them to smoke weed, but he figured it would be an awesome tale to tell them when they were old and rational enough.

After a few moments, a blanket seemed to cover his eyes and suddenly everything was in focus and out of focus at the same time. The car parked across the street was suddenly right in front of him and the shoes on his feet seemed a mile away. He looked at his hand but when he raised it, it felt like it wasn’t his hand at all. Then the world became a Ferris wheel that spun and spun so he had to close his eyes to concentrate on not passing out. His mouth suddenly felt extremely dry like he hadn’t drunk anything in ten years and a craving of cinnamon sticks hit him so hard his mouth started watering; he could almost taste the cinnamon goodness.

He allowed the sensation to overtake him. All of this happened in the space of an hour and a half. Kurt was no longer next to him, or maybe he was and Blaine just couldn’t see him. One moment he was as light as a feather and the next, heavy as a rock. Random bouts of laughter met his ears but from where Blaine couldn’t discern.

His sense of hearing went haywire with sound coming and going like the volume on a radio being tampered with. At one point in time he saw the outline of a body next to him, the person’s mouth turned up in a white smile that stretched insanely wide. But the smile disappeared and Blaine found himself in darkness.

Then all of a sudden he was flying, high above the ground and rising steadily higher and higher, his stomach churning with the height and a second later he was plummeting as fast as a rocket to the ground. His body stopped and floated an inch above the gravel. He was on the ground, lying on his face a split moment after.

He stumbled to his knees and tried to stand but wobbled on his feet. The world burst into yellow light that blinded him momentarily. He brought his hand up to shield his eyes, stumbled back and fell on his ass. Suddenly arms were hooked under his and pulling him up with extreme force.

“Come on!” the voice said but it was so soft and warbled he couldn’t understand. All he knew was that someone gripped him by the arm and screaming, they ran across the ground that seemed to stretch on forever. When Blaine looked down he felt like the ground was coming up to hit him smack in the face. Bad idea he thought. They reached a wire fence that rose so high it was just shy of touching the sky. The person next to him kept tugging his hand and Blaine watched in awe as the boy who was nothing but a black blotch to him, climbed the silver structure at one hundred miles a second. He zoomed up the fence and hopped down on the other side so effortlessly it made him think that this stranger was a superhero. Blaine found that ridiculously hilarious and doubled over guffawing at his own joke.

“Stop fucking around and climb the damn fence, Blaine!” the person screamed. Somehow the instruction cut through to him and soon he was ascending the impossibly tall fence throwing his legs over and then dropping to the ground. He didn’t expect to reach the ground so quickly so when he dropped, his ankle bent in an odd direction that caused him to cry out in pain.

“…no time! I’ll carry you!” His arm was lifted and thrown over a small shoulder. He was dragged away from the wire fence and gradually got to the rhythm of hopping. They walked and hopped for what felt like hours and gradually the blanket over his eyes began to peel away, layer by layer. The shirt he wore was drenched in sweat. His brain eventually understood the pavement they were hobbling on wasn’t them floating over a deep abyss, the trees on the next side of the street weren’t ominous creatures and that the streetlights definitely were not sparkling fairies hovering over the ground.

“K-Kurt,” he mumbled. The name came to him like a piece of a dream that he thought he had forgotten.

“We’re almost there,” the person who must have been Kurt said. Sometime later they finally stopped and Blaine was sure his ankle was ready to fall off with how badly it was hurting. Kurt eased them down to the ground and Blaine’s back hit something solid. The ground beneath was prickly and the air was cold but with Kurt resting gently beside him, it wasn’t that bad.

“How much does it hurt?” Kurt asked. Blaine was ready to say “It’s freakin’ excruciating!” but what came out of his mouth was so unintelligible and incomprehensible it sounded like a different language.

“Still high I see. That’s pretty kickass that you’re lasting that long.” Kurt said then laughed. Blaine liked the smell of him as they were that close – through the fog of smoke Blaine scented cinnamon and the bitter tang of coffee. He leaned closer to sniff Kurt’s neck and the boy cringed then giggled.

“That tickles, idiot,” he said playfully then moved away and lower down Blaine’s leg. “Which ankle is it?” Blaine shook the hurt ankle – then cursed himself for his foolishness. That just made things worse.

“Ouch!” Blaine pouted.

“Is the little hobbit injured?” Kurt asked in a baby voice.

“Shut up. I don’t think I’m ever gonna smoke again.” His eyes were beginning to clear and now he could make out Kurt’s face. Unexpectedly, Kurt pulled up Blaine’s trousers to expect the damage. The cold air didn’t help his swollen, red ankle one bit.

“That must hurt like fuck,” Kurt commented. “How are you gonna get back home?” Kurt turned those pretty blue eyes on his, full of concern.

“It’s okay,” Blaine said, smiling through the discomfort. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll find a way.” He planned on calling his parents and braving through the serious trouble he would find himself in. He didn’t know what time it was but his father cherished his sleep as much as he did his job. And it wasn’t as though he could call his mother and ask her to come without waking his father up. She told him everything even when Blaine begged her to keep it a secret.

“Are you sure?” Kurt pressed. “I think I should walk you home and make sure you’re inside and then I’ll leave.”

“No, that’s too much-” he protested.

“I could get Quinn to pick me up. I’ll be fine.” Kurt waved away the argument then busied himself with Blaine’s ankle. His foot twitched when Kurt’s cold fingers touched the swollen area but after a while they turned warm. His eyes studied Kurt’s intense expression as he examined his ankle,  drifted down to his sharp nose and finally to Kurt’s pink lips where all of a sudden he was overtaken with the need to taste those lips, to remind himself how it felt against his. It was far too long since they had that intimacy and Blaine was more than willing to reclaim them.

He grabbed Kurt’s hand that was touching his foot and pulled the other boy towards him. When their faces were inches apart, Kurt understood, smiled sweetly and closed the distance between them. Blaine felt a pressure from his chest lift as their lips met and slid perfectly against each other. Kurt’s lips were slightly chapped and tasted a bit like smoke but it was so Kurt that Blaine didn’t care and wanted to melt right into him. They made out under the tree for a long while, uncaring of the cold or if anyone found them because it was just the two of them, Kurt and Blaine and their fast-paced love was simply perfection.

Blaine had never felt so happy and complete in such a long time.