"I have to go."

Kurt ignored him, pulling back only to drop light, feathery kisses against Blaine's chin, down his jaw and back up to his lips.

"Ku…Kurt!"

"Hmm?"

The vibrations of his throat rustled up Blaine's spine, somewhere between the hands clasped at his hips and the firm press of Kurt's chest against his.

Blaine turned his head slightly, letting the scrape of his stubble rub Kurt's chin until he trembled, buckling into Blaine's body and crushing him harder against the side of the car. A cool wind whipped at their sides and Kurt's fingers pressed insistently under Blaine's shirt, icy against his waist and he hummed contentedly at the warmth of his skin.

"You were saying?"

Kurt's voice was cracked and teasing, too hoarse and dry and Blaine's jaw ached but he swung them around with a grin, pressing Kurt back against the car and crowding in close to him, nipping at his lips and letting them drag and hold between his teeth.

"That I needed to go."

"And yet," Kurt said, somewhere between soft breathy moans, light gasps of breath as their lips met over and over, "You don't seem to be going anywhere."

Blaine smiled against his mouth, slipping his hands beneath Kurt's uniform shirt to lie flat against the warm, damp skin of his lower back and tug him closer until their hips were slotted hard together, one thigh pushing firmly between Kurt's own.

"Who knew I would ever be this desperate to spend time with you, of all people."

His hand was on Kurt's cheek, tilting and tipping his face to catch his sound of indignant protest with a laugh and fuck, with Kurt's lips against his own it didn't matter anymore. The world, the sound, the vertigo of it all had faded and left them spinning in a silent orbit of their own. Sebastian and the bet, Quinn and Santana and every tiny inconsequential thing on Blaine's mind, it was all gone.

It was just Kurt.

Kurt and his warmth and the curve and bend of his lips and body against Blaine's own, and the pliable twist of skin as they met over and over and Blaine had never believed in God or any other sort of unnameable higher power but fuck, if there was ever a moment he was going to pray would never end it was this one right here.

"Oh please stop talking," Kurt was muttering, snatching kisses between words and they were ill-timed and messy and Blaine caught his teeth against Kurt's tongue and knocked their noses together but he didn't care, "It turns out I like you a whole lot more when your lips are otherwise occupied."

"Mmm. For once, Hummel, I have to say I agree with you."

Kurt was laughing, breathless and utterly unabashedly happy. Insatiably responsive to every lick of Blaine's tongue across his own and every brush of his fingertips up Kurt's spine, shuddering and making tiny agreeable noises that shot straight to Blaine's core until he was grasping his skin harder and tighter and raking his fingers through Kurt's hair, tipping him further backwards. One hand slid down his back and pressed below the waistband of his pants, dipping against the hot swell of skin at the base of his spine and Kurt jerked slightly with a gasp.

He twisted his head to the side, Blaine's lips catching on his cheek and ear and he let them drift below the angle of Kurt's jaw for a moment.

"Blaine, Blaine….we're in the parking lot."

Blaine groaned against his neck and Kurt trembled at the wet vibrations against him, closing his hand around Blaine's wrist and pushing his fingers away.

"Well you weren't complaining a minute ago, Hummel."

Kurt forced Blaine's hands away from him with a sharp hiss, his eyes flashing with sudden anger.

"A minute ago you weren't trying to shove your hands down my pants against your filthy car in a dirty parking lot outside my school."

"And why am I not at all surprised that you're the kind of guy who changes his mind and says no halfway through. You've probably gotten through half the fucking football team that way."

Blaine never pretended that he thought things through before he said them and sometimes with Kurt, especially with Kurt, his mouth would shout and cut vicious and hard before he could hold it back.

Kurt was drawing away from him, as much as he could, curling his arms around his stomach and his eyes were defensive. Blaine sighed, clenching his jaw and stepping back, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets.

He wondered if they were ever going to get this right.

"I…fine."

They were silent for a moment and Kurt dropped his head, scuffing his white shoes along the muddy ground for a moment.

"Didn't you need to go somewhere?"

Kurt's voice was small and stifled, and when he looked up it was with a blank face and red, kiss-swollen lips.

Something inside Blaine surged, some kind of furious anger. At himself.

He'd seen Kurt angry and humiliated and furious, red with rage and screaming at him but he'd never seen him hurt and something ached inside Blaine's chest as a vivid realisation broke across his mind.

He didn't want to hurt Kurt. Not really and not ever.

And suddenly it was inevitable that he would.

"Yeah," he mumbled, checking his phone in an attempt to drag his eyes away from Kurt's face, "Yeah…um…Sebastian's."

"Oh."

"Hey," He caught Kurt's cheek where he made to turn away, forcing his head back and up as softly as he could until their eyes met and Kurt's were hard and pale, unreadable, "I haven't spoken to him since Scandals, you know. And he's not going to be happy with what I have to say to him."

His fingers brushed against the softness of Kurt's hair, palm cupping his cheek and as he spoke Kurt relaxed minutely into the touch, his eyes drifting closed and gracing his face with an unavoidable fragility.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"You should…you should probably go then."

His voice was dropping to a whisper, and Blaine would have barely caught the words if he hadn't been as close as he was, breath tickling against Kurt's lips.

"Yeah. I should."

One kiss turned into two, turning into a countless lazy stream of Kurt's hot mouth against his, pressing soft and sensual and relentless and Blaine's hands were cupping Kurt's cheeks, holding his face as near as he could until the bleep of his phone forced him to pull back, resting their foreheads together with a sigh. Kurt leaned into his face, like a moth to an open flame.

"Okay."

"Okay."

"…"

"You know you actually have to let go of me if you want to leave, Anderson. I sure as hell am not going with you."

Blaine laughed and kissed him once more, firm and open on the mouth before he pulled away and swung into his car, not daring to look back until he was pulling out of the lot and caught a glimpse of Kurt in the mirror.

He'd taken the sunflower from his bag, holding it lightly and carefully in the filtering, fading rays on sunshine and spinning it between his fingers until it was nothing more than a hazy yellow blur.

Blaine knew the drive to Sebastian's house like the palm of his own hand, which gave him time to think as he purposefully dawdled below the speed limit wand watched the glowing numbers of time on his dashboard tick by resolutely.

It was new, it was strange.

It was backwards, unfamiliar like a new song with words you didn't quite know yet stuck in your head all day.

It was wonderful.

And it hurt.

It hurt too much; too much white noise like the space between radio stations filling his mind and heart and Blaine wanted to ram his car into the brick walls of every building he passed just to get a little silence in his brain.

He needed to talk to Sebastian, to shout and scream and demand answers to every single question that was suddenly on the tip of his tongue and Blaine had never hated his best friend more than now. Not really.

Because he didn't know Sebastian as well as he hoped, and definitely not as well as Sebastian knew him. But that had never bothered Blaine before now, and it hadn't mattered that Sebastian was enigmatic and didn't make sense, that he did things for himself before he did them for other people and Blaine had known every second of the way that Sebastian cared about no one more than he cared about himself.

But this was different to their usual ways of passing time.

This wasn't petty thieving or mindless vandalism. These weren't fires behind the bleachers and cigarettes and vodka bottles in the library, these were hearts and people.

This was real, and it suddenly occurred to Blaine that Sebastian was going well out of his way to orchestrate a flimsy and seemingly pointless bet for almost no reason at all.

Blaine had been parked in front of Sebastian's house for almost ten minutes, so caught up in his own web of thoughts that he hadn't even realised until his phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out.

From: Sebastian

Are you going to sit there all day or are you going to come in and smoke with me?

Blaine rolled his eyes and stuffed the phone in the bottom of his jacket pocket, slamming the car door and marching towards the house as though the ground burned his feet and let himself in the open front door.

Sebastian grinned at him from behind it, holding a lit joint between two fingers and beckoning Blaine in with the other hand.

"How did I know that you were going to turn up eventually, B?"

His hand grasped Blaine's shoulder but he shrugged it off, elbowing past him.

"You fucking drugged him, Seb."

There was a pause, then Sebastian's hand was brushing over Blaine's lower waist as he moved past him and up the stairs.

"I see we're not bothering with preamble. Are you coming?"

Blaine rolled his eyes and followed, sitting when Sebastian pointed towards his bed before laying across the covers beside him and Blaine tried not to think about something Quinn had said when she'd been in his room the day before.

"It's like some twisted form of hero worship, B. It's like he's a fucking puppet master and you're his favourite marionette."

"How so?"

"Oh come on. This guy is charming and tall with great hair and he swans into your life on your first day of school, the first person who wasn't throwing insults or ice and you and two days with him leaves you walking the halls, awed and untouchable. He let you live with him, he let you become invincible. Of course you were going to hang onto his coattails this long."

"And now?"

"And now…now you're realising how much of a jackass he really is. I mean there's no love lost between him and me, you know this. And I have a sneaking suspicion that there's a lot more to this whole bet than he's actually letting on, but we're never going to know unless he wants us to. But I think you know something now, and you've known for a while."

"What's that, Q?"

"That he's never going to love you more than he loves himself."

"You wanted to talk about Hummel?"

"Yeah, Seb. I wanted to talk about Kurt. You drugged him."

"He's fine."

"But he might not have been, fuck!"

"So what if he wasn't? He's nothing to me."

Blaine spluttered for a moment, fingers fisting into the sheets. This anger had been burning too long, and he couldn't, he just couldn't let it out. It was filling his every inch and every vein until Blaine was speechless and blind.

"He's still a person, fuck he's just a kid like us."

"He's a cheerleader."

"Oh my god, Seb. Cheerleader or not, he's still human."

Sebastian propped himself up on one elbow, face twisted into a smirk as he blew thick grey smoke over the bed.

"Are you sure about that?"

Kurt.

Kurt and the way he laughed and smiled and lived. The way he kissed and fought, both with a mirrored matching ferocity that ran wild in his eyes, and the way he was young and soft and beautiful and fucking ridiculous. The way he was incorrigible and annoying, insufferable and the most flawed kind of perfect, god he was the most human out of anyone Blaine had ever known before.

More human than Sebastian ever would be.

Blaine was by the window, one hand against the wall and he heard the bed creak behind him as Sebastian laid back down.

"Just…just tell me why you did it. I don't understand."

"Because I could."

He answered too fast, too practiced, too default.

"No. Tell me really."

Sebastian was silent and Blaine turned back, crawling across the bed beside him and staring at his impassive face.

"I just don't understand your angle here. If you were trying to get him so placid that I could fuck him and he'd barely notice then you'd lose. But if not then you were just doing it to get him angry enough to not talk to me again."

"Which I heard he isn't."

Blaine's mind flicked back to desperate kisses on the gymnasium floor, dragging Kurt out of school by his hand and shoving their bodies hard against the frame of his car for minutes that felt like hours and his lips tingled.

"He's not. Don't change the subject."

Sebastian gave a lazy smile, a gleam of triumph visible in his eyes as he dropped his head back.

"Which answer would you like to hear?"

Blaine gave a frustrated groan, falling back onto the bed beside him and rubbing a hand over his face.

"I fucking hate you sometimes. I'm not going to get an answer, am I?"

He felt his body dip the bed, and then Sebastian was leaning over him, a thin trickle of smoke from his parted lips drifting over Blaine's face.

"You can have whatever answer you'd like, B. I just can't promise it's an honest one."

And then his lips were on Blaine's, hard and parting to breath smoke into Blaine's mouth and one hand on his shoulder pressing him into the bed.

He could feel Sebastian on his skin, like oil that slid and crawled and wouldn't wash off no matter how much water he used and he was skimming through his veins like smoke, like the heat of the sun burning through the clouds. In his mouth and down his throat until the taste was burned there like acid.

Kurt tasted like mint and coffee when Blaine caught his wrist and dragged him into an empty classroom in the space of time before the morning bell that he could call theirs.

"Fuck, Anderson. Warn a guy before you–"

But Blaine cut him off and stole the taste of toothpaste right out of his mouth until Kurt pulled away breathless, and Blaine was left nuzzling at the soft crook of his neck and that patch under his ear that made him tremble.

"God, you're needy in the mornings."

"It's a mysterious unnameable phenomenon," Blaine said, licking around the shell of Kurt's ear, "When a juvenile delinquent such as myself," he paused to press a wet kiss to Kurt's temple before dragging his nose down the curve of his cheek, "discovers that the bitchy cheerleader he's been relentlessly pursuing is actually a fan-fucking-tastic kisser," he kissed the smile of Kurt's lips, nudging his head back to hold him deeper before he broke off, "he suddenly wants to do it all the fucking time."

"Nuh uh, there's definitely a name for that," Kurt murmured, running his nails up under Blaine's jacket to skim his ribs through his thin shirt.

"Oh yeah?"

"Mmm. That's the Kurt Hummel Effect."

"Fuck me, you're cheesy."

Kurt wrinkled his nose, "I can go back to insulting you if you'd prefer."

"Oh," Blaine scoffed, kissing under his jaw and down the smooth expanse of Kurt's throat, "I don't think you could if you tried."

"You…you dress like a homeless person gave you the clothes he didn't…didn't want…oh."

"Ohh, burn," Blaine smirked into his neck, tongue lapping over the tender, bitten red of his skin as one hand grazed through Kurt's hair and pulled his head back further, "Keep going."

"You drive…a piece of shit motorcycle that…that…tha–aah…"

Kurt was boneless and shuddering in his arms, fingers clutching into Blaine's shirt and eyes screwed shut, hips rocking feebly forwards as he thrust against Blaine with tiny movements and tugged him closer. Blaine could feel the hard swell of Kurt's cock against his thigh, turning his head to the side and gasping hot breath against Blaine's ear.

"That?" Blaine prompted, letting his tongue chase the stream of goosebumps up Kurt's neck, one arm looping around his waist.

"Fuck."

Kurt's thigh slipped between his own and pressed hard against Blaine's own cock, where he was aching and straining and he couldn't hold back the groan that ripped from his mouth, his teeth sinking a little too deep into Kurt's throat but all he did was buck up against him with a whine.

And then Kurt's hands were pushing at his chest and shoving him away, until there was too much space between them and he was wiping his mouth and smoothing his shirt.

"And you smoke so much I sometimes can't tell if you're a person or a nuclear power station."

His voice was raised, higher than it needed to be and bordering on shrill, but Kurt's eyes weren't angry they were…frantic.

"And that fucking hair, it's like someone shaved a –"

He was spewing out meaningless insults so fast they blurred together, each one progressing further into ridiculousness and sounding more and more like something that –

"Porcelain!"

Sue Sylvester was standing by the suddenly open door, one hand on her hip and her eyes narrowed.

Blaine jumped, straightening his shoulders and tightening his jaw as Sue's eyes flicked over him and back to her precious cheerleader.

Kurt was suddenly poised, chin raised and one hand on his jutted hip as he fixed Blaine with his steely glare.

"Yes, coach?"

"You need to come with me."

Kurt frowned slightly, not meeting Blaine's eyes as he scooped to pick up his bag and followed her from the room without a backwards glance leaving Blaine hard and dismally frustrated, palming roughly through his jeans at his straining erection.

His phone beeped a moment later.

From: Hummel

Nearly two years on her squad and you think I can't recognise her footsteps down the corridor? I'm glad one of us has quick reflexes.

To: Hummel

I have it on good authority that this classroom is going to be empty all day, you know.

From: Hummel

I'll see if I can fit you into my hectic schedule of slushying nerds and being better than everyone

To: Hummel

How are you for fourth period?

From: Hummel

I think Algebra can do without me.

Blaine grinned and stuffed the phone into his back pocket, pulling it back out a moment later to send one last message.

To: Hummel

Nice hickey.

Oh, Kurt was going to kill him later.

But Kurt didn't turn up.

Blaine passed the first half of fourth period with his feet propped up on a desk at the back, blowing smoke languidly out of the open window and watching it spin in hazy spirals over his head while his phone sat stoic and dark on the surface in front of him.

He carved his initials into the desk with the end of a blunted penknife, scratching deeper and deeper and flicking his lighter towards the pile of waxy wood shavings until they smouldered.

He tilted back on his chair until it wobbled dangerously, swallowed down the last mouthfuls of vodka from the flask that lived at the bottom of his bag, stained the skin of his forearm with the inky smudges of some nameless refrain that drifted through his mind to work out on his guitar later and when the clock on the wall told him there were ten minutes left of the hour, Blaine stood so fast the chair clattered to the floor and he marched from the room without a backwards look. The door slammed on its creaking hinges behind him.

Blaine sat in his car for the last hour of the day, blasting music so heavy he felt the doors shake and stubbornly refusing to even crack the windows open until the smoke was laying thick against the glass and fuck he felt so stupid. Embarrassed and foolish, and he should have pushed whatever Kurt was to the back of his mind before he let the intoxication of his kisses blind his vision.

Blaine had been so busy trying to listen to his mind that he hadn't noticed the way Kurt was ruling his heart.

His knuckles slammed against the glass window, cracking the half-healed skin until it was raw and sticky and the jolting twinge of badly mended bones tingled up his arms. New wounds settling over old ones.

The parking lot was littered with students, filtering from the school in small groups and there was a tiny figure in a garish sweater walking fast in Blaine's direction, headed right past his car and he shoved the door open with a crash.

Rachel Berry flinched as he approached her from the smoky car, eyes wide and glistening like the devil was bearing down upon her.

He seized her arm, pulling her to a sharp stop and Rachel cowered under his glare, hunching her shoulders until the barely-there height difference between them was suddenly magnified and she was tiny beside him, her head ducked and cheeks shining.

"Berry, where the fuck is Hummel?"

Rachel let out a shuddering breath, just one.

And then her shoulders shook like a breaking dam and her entire frame trembled with sobs.

Blaine froze, his fingers locking around her arm until he forced them apart and rubbed a hand through his hair, and he knew he was a jerk but he'd never made a girl cry before.

"Be–" he broke off with a sigh, dropping his voice, "Rachel?"

She looked up, eyes wet with tears and sniffed hard.

"He's…he's at the hospital."

Blaine was suddenly ice cold, the ground swaying under his feet and his hand was on Rachel's arm again but this time she was holding him back. Steadying him, her mouth forming his name over and over under the pound of his heart in his ears.

"…Blaine?"

"He's at the hospital?"

Rachel pressed her lips together tightly, a strange expression in her eyes as she looked at him.

"It's not…he's fine, it's not him. Blaine, it's not him."

But the tightness in his chest didn't fade, nor did the paralysing fear because –

"It's his dad."

Blaine didn't know much about Kurt's family or home life and he was suddenly realising how little he knew about Kurt's life at all.

But he knew that before Finn joined their family it had just been Kurt and his dad. And he knew enough to know that Kurt's dad was the most important person in his life.

It didn't occur to him that Kurt might not want to see him, that he might want to be left alone or with his family. That he might not even be home.

Blaine just needed to see him, even for a second.

Just to make sure.

Kurt didn't arrive home until hours later.

Hours of Blaine sitting in his car, parked down the street from the Hummel household at the address Rachel grudgingly gave him, watching the sky dim and the lights of the houses flicker into life.

All except Kurt's, which stayed empty and dark.

Skeletal.

Blaine didn't move when a car finally pulled down the street and stopped in front of the house. Not even when a tiny figure, framed by an unfamiliar slump of shoulders appeared from the driver's seat and made his way into the house.

Blaine gave him a moment, hand frozen on the handle of the car door, breathing hard.

When Kurt opened the front door he'd rung it four times with increasing urgency, finger still poised over the tiny white button even as the door swung to reveal a dimly lit hall.

Kurt looked at him, and Blaine felt his heart splinter into razor-sharp shards.

Because this wasn't the boy who'd laughed and kissed him only a few hours ago, a face full of teasing happiness. He wasn't the one who'd gasped and moaned, writhing against the wall until he was flushed and straining.

He couldn't be.

There was a sunken hollowness to Kurt's face, as though he'd aged a million years in a million seconds, but somehow he looked younger. Childish, almost.

Kurt was huddled inside an oversized sweater, loose links of heavy wool that chained over his skin and gaped, misshapen at the neck and cuffs. He was paler than the white knit, sallow and ghostly with shadowed eyes and bitten red lips and the purple stain of Blaine's mouth high and proud on his bare throat.

He looked like a debauched angel, like a sin.

He looked like heartbreak.

"Oh, Kurt."

Kurt jerked slightly at Blaine's words, his face hardening and he made to slam the door against him, forcing against where Blaine wedged his boot into the gap and shouldered it open.

"Go away, Anderson."

His voice wasn't his voice.

"I'm not going anywhere, Kurt. Fuck, I'm not leaving you alone."

"What makes you think I'd want to see you?"

Blaine growled, jamming half his body through the widening gap until Kurt gave up with a frustrated noise and moved away, letting him stumble through.

"Frankly Hummel, I don't give a fuck what you want right now. It's what you need that matters."

Kurt scoffed and turned away, up the stairs with Blaine tailing right behind him.

"And of course, you immediately assume that you're what I need."

He stopped, arms looped around his own waist and shoulders slumped and trembling and it hurt.

This wasn't Kurt, the icy head cheerleader with the fierce uniform and best friend.

This was just Kurt. Just Kurt who was scared and alone, and suddenly a fragile shell of the boy he'd been this morning curling in on himself because his father was lying in hospital across town struggling for life and his sob shattered the silence of the room, Blaine's fingers stilling where they reached out to touch his shoulder.

"Tell me what you need Kurt."

Kurt sobbed again, louder and choking.

"God, Kurt. I don't know what to do."

"I just want my dad back."

Blaine couldn't stop himself leaning the last few inches, touching Kurt's shoulder with the gentlest brush of fingertips he could muster but Kurt jerked away from him with a hiss.

"Don't touch me, Anderson," he snapped, spinning to face him with a twisted snarl of anger and slamming backwards into the wall and away from Blaine's hand.

Blaine saw the flash of shock on Kurt's face as he hit the surface harder than he meant to, some kind of bright clarity dawning in his eyes before he threw himself at Blaine, crashing their bodies together with a frantic noise.

Blaine's arms caught him, automatically, instinctually. Like they were made to do it, coming up to hold his waist as Kurt pressed his lips over and over to Blaine's shocked own.

There were tears that didn't belong to him, wet across Blaine's cheeks and he pushed against Kurt's hips, trying to pull away from the grappling fingers against his cheek and neck.

"Kurt…Kurt what are you…Kurt stop."

Kurt's fingers wound their way into his hair, scraping across Blaine's scalp enough to make him arch their bodies together.

"You asked me what I needed Blaine."

"I don't –"

"I need…fuck I need you. Please just kiss me."

He was desperate, begging and pleading with a raw and broken voice that cut straight to Blaine's heart and god he was wrong, so so wrong as he kissed back, tentative and gentle against Kurt's relentless lips.

Blaine gave as little as he could, hands unmoving at Kurt's sides and he didn't want this, he didn't.

He didn't want Kurt crying against his skin, raking through him with some sort of reckless abandon, bleeding Blaine dry just enough to soothe his own scars.

"You don't, Kurt. You…you don't want…me."

"I do, god I do."

"No, you –"

Kurt had him by the shirt, walking Blaine backwards until his knees hit the edge of the bed and he tumbled onto his back and the air left his lungs. But then Kurt was over him, pinning and holding him and planting messy kisses up his throat and whispering his name over and over.

Blaine please come on Blaine I need this I need you god touch me I want you fuck I want you so bad I need you right now I need you to do this for me I need you help me god Blaine help me

He was hot and heavy, teeth and tears against Blaine's neck and licking over every patch of skin, pushing Blaine's hands under the heavy sweater against his stomach and clamping his thighs around Blaine's waist.

And then he whispered and everything froze.

"I want you to fuck me."

Blaine heard himself make a faint choking noise, fingers gripping the skin of Kurt's back and he arched into it, rocking against his lap and fuck Blaine was hard, he'd been hard all day but this was wrong and this would be so easy to finish right now and he could walk out of Kurt's house and phone Sebastian and tell him it was all over.

That he'd won.

That he'd had Kurt Hummel begging and squirming in his lap, kissing the stretch of Blaine's throat until he buckled and broken, relented and given in. Tell him that he'd laid Kurt back across the bed, kissed away his tears and given him something to take his mind off his father just for one night.

Kurt sat back, hauling Blaine up with him with a fistful of shirt until they were chest to chest and dragged the sweater up over his head, ruffling his hair in every direction and letting it drop to the floor. His nails dug across Blaine's shoulders, pushing his leather jacket the same way and he could feel the pounding heat of Kurt's chest through his thin shirt, his ribs and the flexing twist of skin and god Kurt's skin was soft beneath his fingers.

It was one chance, one last dive to finish this before it plunged further out of hand and Blaine was rushing headlong towards a diminishing gleam of light. A fast closing way out.

"Come on, Blaine."

Come on, Blaine.

Come on.

One step, one drop and precipice and one last gasp for air.

He breathed, he closed his eyes and let Kurt kiss his cheeks and then Blaine fell.

"No."

Kurt didn't hear him, not for a long moment until Blaine managed to force his fingers into cooperation and there was space between them.

"No."

He didn't break their gaze and the word was stronger this time. Resolute.

"What?"

His eyes were darkening, flashing and stabbing like poisoned thorns into Blaine's heart, his entire body stiffening and rigid in his arms.

"I'm not going to fuck you Kurt. I'm…I'm just not. Not now, not…like this."

"Why not?"

Kurt's hands were balled into fists, forcing against Blaine's chest and he couldn't move, trapped between Kurt's thighs and the bed and he let Kurt pound them hard against him and each hit was wilder and harder; an animal struggling for feeble survival until he was sobbing with each gasp of the word, hands connecting with Blaine's heart and skin with weakening ferocity.

"Why"

"Please"

"God why not"

"Please Blaine, please"

"Fuck, why can't you just"

"Why…can't...why does this"

"Why not, god why why why"

He struggled in Blaine's arms when they locked around him, sending them both falling back onto the covers and he was thrashing and sobbing, clawing against Blaine's skin.

Blaine just held him tighter.

The night passed around them, unnoticed.

Somewhere near dawn Kurt fell asleep, cries fading into wet muffled noises, staining Blaine's shirt as his breathing jerked and evened out and Blaine was smoothing his hands down Kurt's back, feeling the steady beat of his heart through his spine.

Kurt looked almost happy when he slept.

Through the splashed red of his pale cheeks, the tearstained skin and bruised lips there was a vague lucidity. A kind of peace that the world seemed to steal from him with every waking hour and Blaine spent the minutes of sunrise watching them dapple across Kurt's face, the fanning shadows of his eyelashes and the rising breath of his chest with the light.

He left when the sun crawled down Kurt's torso, filling the dent in the pillow with the sunflower from Kurt's dresser and kissing his forehead once.

Blaine drove home, for once, in silence.

"So I saw Hummel was sporting a rather magnificent work of art on his neck yesterday."

Blaine was too tired to even turn towards Sebastian's voice, grunting instead as he shoved books into his locker and taking a long drink from the flask Quinn pushed into his hand, throwing her a grateful glance.

"Really?"

"Which means, B, you've been holding out on me."

Blaine said nothing, turning to walk down the hall beside Quinn with Sebastian at his shoulder and the crowds parting habitually, as though nothing had changed.

He wanted to laugh.

Because it had.

"Oh come on," Sebastian had to raise his voice to be heard over the crack of thunder as they passed an open window. Because first period meant smoking in his car and listening to the rain fall towards the end of October, "I can't believe you thought you could hide that from me."

"You're sounding far too happy about the prospect of me actually making some progress with Hummel, Seb."

Sebastian's smile was the painted masquerade it always was. Practiced.

"Just keeping score, B. So what is it?"

Another crack of thunder and the school doors were bursting open in a whirl of stray wind, hustling a thin figure in from the unexpected cold.

Kurt looked drawn and tired.

He looked shy.

And he looked positively and suddenly, unexpectedly gorgeous with Blaine's leather jacket wrapped over his Cheerio's uniform, sleeves pulled down to cover his fingers and collar turned up against the wind.

It was a little too wide in the shoulders, but Kurt wore it with an expert grace. Even the old slushie stains, the cigarette burns and the rips at the seams and it was like he was wearing Blaine's life. Blaine's trademark.

It was like he was wearing Blaine, and the high jut of his chin baring the column of his throat only highlighted the purple bruise across his neck.

There was a hush among the crowds.

Tight stares and flitting glances shared, confusion. Whispers.

Kurt paused in front of him, voice high and light enough to carry through the silence.

"You left this on my bedroom floor last night."

Blaine smirked, letting his thumb run slowly up the collar to brush against the mark on his neck until Kurt shivered and met his eyes.

Shameless trust. Bold and unforgiving and Kurt was laying himself open and naked in front of the entire student body,

And he looked as fearless as Blaine felt.

"Keep it," he said, matching Kurt's tone, "It looks better on you."

And then Kurt was kissing him, arms looped around his neck in a movement as easy as breathing, as casual. Letting their lips brush softly, once then twice and his tongue was darting out to press against Blaine's, breathing deep and together.