004 - Halo

On his way to the library, Blaine is so deep in thought that he almost doesn’t notice his roommate calling his name repeatedly. Finally, the other boy decides to just hit Blaine in the back of his head. That, at least, makes him raise his head and see who it is.

“Barney! I didn’t notice you!”

The guy called Barney scowls. “How many times have I told you to not call me by my horrible surname?! I’m Zach, Zach, do you hear me?” To be fair, Blaine does call him the purple dinosaur quite often and that is a pretty valid reason to be angry with anyone after a while. Zach hates his surname with a passion seldom seen related to names. He curses the ancestors who decided Barney would be a great name to leave as a legacy for their future generations.

“Okay, okay, chill! I know your first name.” Blaine laughs and smiles in a way that makes you smile too, almost involuntarily, unless you are in a very very bad mood. Zach isn’t, so he smiles back.

“Where are you going with that level of determination and concentration? I called your name like five times but you were so out of this world that you didn’t even twitch.”

“ Ah.. I started a photography project course where I can finally do my own photography pretty freely and I have tons of ideas flying in my head. And I got a great idea about books, but I need to visit the library.” Blaine explains with an excited smile. Zach smiles at his enthusiasm, because even though he is studying journalism and doesn’t know much about doing art, he does know what getting excited about things means. He also knows how Blaine, his best friend on the campus, gets when he is enthusiastic about things.

“Okay, I see. Please go on and don’t mind your poor lonely roommate. Go find your inspiration!” Zach shouts the last part from a little further away as he continues his routine jog around the campus.

“Yeah, thanks! Bye!” Blaine shouts at Zach’s receding back. Then his mind (and feet) are turned back to the library again. He needs to visit the graphic arts section first to see if he can find anything helpful or inspirational from there. When he gets to the library collections, the familiar calm and hushed silence of the library comes over him and he starts paying attention to things around him again. It’s always more easy for him to be lost in thought when there is constant noise around, silence makes him register what is going on.

After he gets to the further end of the second floor, he suddenly stops on his feet as if he hit an invicible wall there. He might as well have, as it definitely feels like he is hit with something, and hard. He sees a boy standing in front of a window facing the library park and watching something happen very attentively. The boy is dressed fashionably but toned down, in tight jeans and a grey cardigan with a white undershirt. His hair is styled carefully, but it’s not something that takes your breath away - just a classically stylish hairdo. His face is absolutely beautiful, at least to Blaine, and Blaine thinks this might actually be the most handsome man he has seen on the campus this far. The thing that stops Blaine, though, is neither his outfit nor his outlook (even though Blaine does blush a little as a fleeting thought of what those pretty lips could do to, say, another man crosses his mind). What is special about him is the expression on his face. It is hard to read, there is a lot of emotion there, but it is nothing you could pinpoint on a continuum of happy and sad. He seems to feel something, deeply, but it’s unclear what exactly the feeling is. There is an aura of utter innocence all around him, aura of detachment, like he is not part of this imperfect world, as if he is just an observer of this life form called humans. He doesn’t feel real in a way most bypassers feel, even if you only see them for a second. Rationally, Blaine knows no one is angelic and faultless, but this boy sure looks so, as he watches people in the park and holds his hand against the window, as if tracing their forms through it. Suddenly the sun comes from behind a small cloud and hits a mirror behind the boy’s back, making a soft glow in his hair, as if a makeshift halo to underline his purity and untouchability.

Blaine’s camera is already in his hands, turned on and the lens cap off, before Blaine even notices he decided to take a picture.

The shutter of the camera is loud in the silent library when it suddenly and completely breaks this silent moment of pure otherworldly magic (which it was at least to Blaine). The boy turns around fast and his eyes (so blue, so so blue) widen when he sees Blaine pointing the camera at him. Blaine sees all this through the lens of his camera, before he puts the camera down and the boy turns slightly smaller in his vision again.

Unlike just a second ago, this expression Blaine has no trouble of reading. It is full of surprise and shock, turning rapidly into wariness and suspicion and even fear. Mostly it is just disbelief, though, as if he can’t understand how anyone even saw him in the first place. And suddenly, the boy is so very very real and solid and here. The innocence is not gone, but there is a new layer of vulnerability and unsureness on him, that wasn’t there before the click. It’s as if he is afraid of being noticed. After he turned around, he hasn’t moved at all, just staring at Blaine and his camera.

Then Blaine realises he just took a picture of someone he doesn’t know in the middle of a library and this could potentially not make him look very good and turn out to be a really awkward situation.

“Oh, god, sorry, I just took a picture of you without asking, and I shoudn't.. I mean, you just looked like an angel there and.. NO! I didn’t mean..I mean yes, you did, kind of, but…” Blaine stammers and he turns a new, deeper shade of red with every word he gets out of his mouth. He is pretty sure anything he just said did not help at all. His normal charmer self had apparently run away somewhere. The boy looks alarmed at this and finally starts to move. He mutters something that Blaine doesn’t quite catch and starts to retreat towards the shelves behind him. After a few careful steps he turns around and almost runs behind the shelves. Blaine moves to go after him, but then he realises that that is not at all a good idea and just stays where he is. Let’s the bird flee.

He presses a button on his camera to see the last photo he took. He got just one, before the boy turned. The picture is probably the best he has ever taken, and it’s everything he wants for his photo project. It’s also something he could never use anywhere without the boy's permission - which it did not seem very likely he would get, at the moment.

005 - A beginning

It has been six days since the curly-haired boy took a picture of him in the library. Immediately after the weird moment Kurt had gone back to his place between the shelves, collected his bag and books, and left the library like there was a bomb hidden in the building. That was Wednesday. Thursday and Friday Kurt had avoided the library as best as he could, never even going near it. On Saturday he had really needed to get a book for a class, so he had gone to borrow it and brought it home.

On Sunday Kurt had started to feel kind of really stupid, avoiding the library like the boy somehow lived in there (and, even if he did, Kurt should just face it, taking a picture of you doesn’t really equal to wanting to, for example,  stab you with a knife or hit you with a law book).  So, he had gone to his normal spot in the corner on the second floor and sat down to read for his European lit class. He had finally finished Anna Karenina the day before, thank God, and was currently reading Kafka’s Trial, which was kind of interesting in a weird way. On Monday Kurt had spent his usual time in the library again, meaning his normal two or three hours between and after classes.

So, now it is Tuesday and Kurt has been sitting in his corner for an hour or so, when he really needs to visit the toilet. He leaves the book he is reading, his copy of Eyes of ice (which he has been carrying around for comfort a lot lately, like a hardcover teddy bear), his notebook and his pencil case, figuring that no one would probably even go to this section let alone be interested enough to steal them during the few minutes he will be gone. At first, when he comes back, he doesn’t notice anything different. Then he sees something sticking from between Eyes of Ice, something thin and faintly glossy, right where his book mark should be.

Kurt opens it and sees a photo of himself. It’s obviously a copy of the photo Curly Hair took last Wednesday, and it is unexpectedly a really beautiful photo of himself. Kurt remembers clearly (which means, the memory is clear, not the words uttered at the time) that the boy called him an angel. With the soft glow on his face and hair, he can sort of see what the boy had possibly meant, even if it seems kind of ridiculous to compare him to any higher form of being. Then he turns the photo around and reads what is written behind.

“Hi!
I’m so sorry for being so rude and taking this without asking. I swear I’m not a weird stalker, I’m just an enthusiastic photography major who forgot himself for a moment. The moment was so beautiful and I wanted you to see, so I wanted to give you this. Again, I’m sorry.
                      Blaine, the awkward camera guy”

Kurt knows he probably should feel even more wary of the guy after this. After all, he had definitely stalked him enough to figure out where he sits in the library and waited for him to go for his toilet break to leave the photo. Whatever he says in the letter, this does seem kind of stalkerish to Kurt. But even as he realises this, Kurt can’t help but to feel happy instead. He has spent a long time avoiding new people, just in case, but here is someone who had noticed him and thought him interesting and important enough to do all this. The message is cute and Kurt has to admit, the boy - Blaine - hadn’t looked very scary. To be really honest, even with the weirdness of the situation Kurt had found him very very gorgeous during the short time they had been looking at each other. The words in this little letter gives Kurt the feeling of someone warm and happy and nice, not someone who he should be scared of.

Also, the whole thing just seems unrealistic, but in a good way, like it is straight from some movie or book. It is definitely something that just doesn’t happen to Kurt Hummel, except that it just happened. He can’t help smiling happily as he reads the note again. Kurt wonders if the boy, Blaine, is watching him right now, so he looks around, but he doesn’t see anyone. He reads the note one more time and looks at the picture and he just has a feeling that this is not a singular event but a beginning of something.  It feels like a beginning for something new and different and good and not so very much unlike a fairy tale.

006 - Snow White

On Monday afternoon Blaine is sitting in the university library at the first floor reading area. Unlike many other times during the last week or so, Blaine is in the library to actually study, and therefore he is in the place actually meant for reading, and not hanging around hoping to see Snow White. Snow White is the name he gave to the yet-to-be-named guy he took a photo of. The name is not because he has a pale skin (even though it kind of is) or that his hair is black (which it is not) but because he is the most ethereally beautiful guy, if not in the country, then at least on the campus, so it seemed appropriate. Also, he was always reading a book, so a fairy tale name was called for.

Blaine hasn’t been stalking Snow White, exactly, meaning that he hasn’t been watching him in his secret corner or following him home or anything. He has simply been hanging around the cafeteria next to the main doors or “studying” in the small reading area on the second floor in the hopes of seeing a climpse of him. Blaine refuses to believe this could be counted as stalking. No, he promised in his little letter that he isn’t a stalker, so he isn’t stalking. He isn’t. (Even though that one time he ducked behind his table when Snow White came unexpectedly in the room was a bit of a hard moment for his denial.)

Anyway, this is probably the first time after the photo incident that Blaine has genuinely forgotten to think about Snow White, as he is immersed in a book about a famous British street artist, Banksy. He is currently examining a photo of a truly amazing painting, showing two kids with buckets and plastic spades painted in a concrete wall, and there is a “crack” painted above them looking like it opens straight to a tropical island. Then his view of the painting is covered as a folded piece of paper falls on the book. ‘Blaine’ is written on top of it. He turns around fast and sees Snow White with a shy smile on his lips, retreating slowly towards the exit.

There is a fight going on in Blaine’s brain, debating whether he should read the note or go after him. The former wins and he opens the paper. The note is short.

“Thank you for the photo. You are truly gifted.

                             Kurt”

After reading this, Blaine has two dominating thoughts in his head. One, Snow White’s real name is Kurt. And two, I need to catch him before he leaves the building. So, Blaine rises up from his chair pretty fast - the screech of the chair legs earns him quite a lot of angry stares - and runs after Snow White as fast as he dares while still stared down by a dozen or so narrowed pairs of eyes. He sees the boy near the main doors and catches up with him when his just outside.

“Hey, Kurt, um, wait!” Blaine half shouts when he’s near enough.

“Oh.. Okay..” Kurt says, with a slightly nervous voice. He’s not looking Blaine in the eyes, instead focusing on something slightly behind his head. After a little pause, he takes a deep breath and continues. “What is it?” and then blushes at the rudeness of the question. Blaine thinks his blush is very adorable.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb, I just thought to say face to face that, err, I’m really sorry that I kind of scared you and that I won’t use the photo anywhere, so you don’t need to worry or anything.”

“Oh.” Kurt’s blush fades and he smiles a little. “I didn’t worry, really. After the letter. The photo is really nice, thank you for giving it to me.” Kurt pauses and fidgets  a little as if to leave, which Blaine notices and kind of panics.

“Hey! Um. Are you busy right now?” Blaine asks, kind of awkwardly but still eager.

“No, not really. Why?” Kurt asks and cocks one eyebrow questioningly. Blaine wonders fleetingly if any facial expression of Snow White’s (Kurt’s, it’s Kurt, don’t forget or you’ll call him Snow White in his face and that wouldn’t be creepy at all, Blaine) is capable of being less that elegant.

“I was just thinking, that…” Blaine falters for a moment, before he braces himself and blurts “would you like to maybe go have some coffee with me?” First he feels like he wants to blush, but then his brave and charming personality comes suddenly back, as if it had just been on a toilet break, and he smiles widely instead. Kurt’s eyes glaze over for a little while and another small smile appears.

“I-- okay. Okay.” Kurt says. A small break.“Yeah, I can go with you.” and then he blushes again. (Seriously, Kurt? How can a blush look elegant?) After agreeing to go, it seems like there is some wall becoming thinner between him and Kurt. As if he can see the slightest side of paradise behind the concrete wall. The change is subtle, but it feels like the boy has become just a bit more present in the world and in the moment. Blaine feels like a kid with a spade and bucket, wanting to dig deeper.

Blaine mentions a small coffee shop near the campus, Kurt says he likes the place, and so they start walking towards it and it is surprisingly un-awkward and kind of nice to walk with Kurt, even if the boy doesn’t talk very much and more just listens to Blaine. They speak of normal things and Blaine tells about his photography project class; then Kurt tells about his literature class and they realise they both have a lot to say about the boringness of Anna Karenina, and it all just feels natural.

“What would you like to drink? My treat.” Blaine asks as they enter the shop and face the counter.