Chapter 11:

A loud ticking seemed to penetrate Kurt's consciousness and the first thing he noted was the cupid clock swimming before him. He managed to register that they were dancing around three o'clock before he noted the dark shadows sweeping across the carpet. He shifted his body again, feeling relieved when his head didn't explode with pain like before. His bruised limbs seemed to move more easily this time too and he was able to twist himself onto his side slightly more successfully and with noticeably less discomfort than before. Resting his head against the soft pillow, Kurt drew in a quiet, unsteady breath at the sight of Blaine beside him. The Lord was sleeping, uncomfortably curled into the hard-backed chair that had been pulled up to the bedside; his body was quirked at an odd angle, his head resting awkwardly slumped against his unnaturally bent left arm. For the first time, Kurt was able to fully study the young Lord without consequence and he felt a faint flush creep over his skin as he unashamedly raked his eyes over the unconscious form.

The dark curls were ungelled and lay in unruly spirals around his scratched and scared cheeks. The muscles in his jaw were exposed by the angle of his bent head and Kurt stared, mesmerised by the contrasting beauty and frightening power in the sinewy lines of his neck. His tongue darted out to lick his dry lips and he registered with a twinge of fear the compulsion to repeat the action across Blaine's own body.

Swallowing thickly, Kurt tried to decipher the jumbled code of feelings he had towards the man in front of him. He'd not allowed himself to surrender to the chaos in his mind, preferring simply to label it as hatred and disgust and blocking out the other, more complex and significantly less comfortable feelings that stirred in his brain when he looked at the young Lord.

When he'd run the previous night his mind had been clear. Lord Anderson was a monster; cruel, immoral and inhuman. No thought had been given to the snow, the danger; Kurt had thought only of escaping the clutches of the Lord and his soulless house. He'd thought he would be saving a tiny part of himself that he'd believed still existed; a tiny shred of goodness still hiding somewhere. He'd not cared in what form the escape would come as long as he was rid of Lord Anderson. 

But it was Blaine who had come for him.

His eyes fell to the soft rise and fall of Blaine's chest, taking in the tiny stuttered breaths of slumber and was startled once again by how desperately young the boy looked to him. As Lord he had always seemed so ageless, his authority irradiating any similarities between the two men but now, as Kurt tentatively reached out and stroked a soft curl around his finger, he felt something tug in his chest. Strange images of dream-like scenes floated in the space between them and Kurt couldn't tell if they were real or imagined. A vision of thick dark fur mingled with glossy curls in the moonlight flashed and then blinked out again as Kurt shook his head, trying to clear the fog of thoughts. He thought he remembered desperate pleas and words screamed into his chest by a figure above him; pressing down and around him. He heard fragments of his own voice as distorted sounds as if he were underwater and being pulled further down into icy depths. He thought he remembered a voice breaking and distant tears but couldn't determine who's they were.....and then he'd remembered feeling weightless and dark and a strange sense of being engulfed.

Thinking back on it all now and wading through the thick plasma of his brain, it all seemed like a dream; unreal and illusory. His eyes darted once again to the figure beside him. He tried to stir up the feelings of hatred and revulsion from the night before but all he felt was a hallow ache where anger should have been.

It was Blaine who had come for him.

Light played across the scratched cheeks as the soft beginnings of another frozen morning filtered through the gap in the curtains and Kurt watched, transfixed as the tanned skin seemed to radiate and transform before him. The boy existed as two people inside Kurt. His brain knew the Lord, the man devoid of feeling and emotion who bought slaves and took what he wanted without remorse.....but, somewhere, in another part of him, there was...just Blaine. The boy brought up in a place without sentiment, without love, who had been trained and conditioned to a point of utter emptiness. The boy who despite all of that was still able to instinctively whisper words of affection into another man's skin when he thought he'd caused him pain. The boy who Kurt knew had cried against his chest and risked his own life for someone supposedly meaningless. The boy who had whispered in a tiny voice for Kurt to stay with him on the very first night. A boy who seemed able to feel without ever having been taught.

It was Blaine who had come after him and it was Blaine who was with him now, stripped bare. Kurt felt fractured and splintered, allowing his eyes to fill with unexplained tears as he reached out once again. Silence seemed to wrap a comforting arm around him, drawing the two boys into a frozen point in time while the cupids watched on. The light extended a little further into the room and slid down Blaine's exposed arm, dancing across entwined pale and tanned hands. The sleeping man's eyes remained firmly closed, but the tiny muscles flexed as he unconsciously held on to the warmth of the other body. Kurt looked slowly down at their interlaced fingers and allowed himself the tiniest of smiles. Through his blurred vision it almost looked like their two hands were glowing.     

*****

When Blaine finally stirred awake, it was Kurt's probing, ice-blue eyes that greeted him first. As he blinked the other boy into focus, he was momentarily startled by the open and searching look in the pale features of Kurt's face, so used to the guarded hostility normally radiating from him. It took him several more seconds to clear the muzzy shadows in his brain and register where he was as he blinked rapidly a few times and looked dazedly around him. Kurt watched quietly as the confusion of sleep and a restless night dissipated gradually from the hazel eyes and then unconsciously held his breath as his Lord's head suddenly looked down at their interlocked fingers. He wasn't sure what he was expecting in reaction to the voluntary contact, didn't know which man he had woken up with but whatever it was, it didn't prepare him for the wide honeyed eyes that met his questioningly.

"Kurt....?"

"Don't...." Kurt interrupted him quickly, holding up his other hand to stop whatever Blaine had been about to say. "Please let me speak first." His voice was quiet but forceful and he knew that he was breaking all the rules of his position but he also needed to believe he'd woken up with a different version of his Lord that morning.  Blaine's gentle compliance gave him strength to continue, holding the other man's gaze as he spoke. He had only one question really.

"Why did you come after me?"

He watched the light start to slide away from the Lord's face; watched with sinking horror the recoil so practised and perfected as Blaine moved to turn away. Instinctively Kurt squeezed sharply the fingers he still held. "No. Don't. Please don't turn away from this...please. Don't go back to him. It's one question. Just one question....I... it's all I'm asking Blaine." The whispered name was his last resort but he felt the air expel out of his chest as the other boy turned sharply back to look at him, his eyes flashing with emotion.

"It's the only question." The Lord whispered brokenly into the air between them.

"Blaine...?"

"What did you mean when you said don't go back to ‘him'? Who? What were you talking about?" Blaine continued quietly, still staring at their entwined hands. Kurt studied his Lord silently, watched the way his hand shook slightly and the utter vulnerability that was finally evident in his face. He felt something shift further inside of him and released the last of his fear.

"You're two different people to me." He said simply. "I don't know what to feel...how to be around you...who you are? When you're Lord Anderson.." he felt his voice harden as he said the name and Blaine looked back up at him searchingly. "When you're him....and around the other lords, you're...it's like you're dead. There's no light inside you. You shut off, or down, or whatever it is and you're locked away. Its...it's like you feel nothing." Kurt felt the words tumble out of him, as if he'd finally been given free range to speak and the action had sent everything spilling out of his mouth at once.

He paused and looked up, a little frightened to see the other man's reaction to what he was saying but not quite ready to stop completely. Blaine was staring mutely at him, a little stunned and Kurt realised this was probably the first time anyone had ever spoken to him like this his whole life. The thought both terrified him and gave him the strength to carry on.

"But then sometimes you're so different. Sometimes I think you seem alive behind your eyes...like you feel things even though you don't know what they are and sometimes they just get too much and you can't control them like you do everything else in your life. Like sometimes they just spill to the surface without you having any power over them." He squeezed the fingers again, ensuring Blaine was entirely focussed on him. Entirely there. "And you hate them. These feelings. I can see you....you struggle with them constantly and it's like you're battling with yourself and everything you've ever known to be true and real and it's so hard to watch because you disappear again." Kurt hadn't realised how close his voice had been to breaking until the last line fell out of his lips as a sharp sob and tears had welled in his eyes before he could stop them.

The sight of the tears pooling in Kurt's eyes and spilling down his porcelain cheeks had Blaine transfixed. He couldn't work out why his chest was clenching tightly and why he was finding it hard to breathe again at the sight. Lord Anderson had watched people cry innumerable times in his life and remained entirely unmoved by the emotions of others. People cried for their own pain; they cried in desperation and frustration and always for themselves and Blaine deplored it, but Kurt's broken face made it hard for him to swallow and the realisation as to why hit him full in his heart without warning.

Kurt was crying for him. In empathy or pity or whatever goodness was inside of him, Kurt was crying for Blaine.

He couldn't look at him anymore. It hurt and he wrenched his eyes away from the sight, pulling himself back and untangling his hand from the other man's body, distancing himself to ease the ache. Kurt whimpered at the loss but fought on anyway, needing to get everything out before it all changed back as it inevitably would.  

"You're battling now. It's like you're at war with your own heart but you don't realise Blaine. You don't get that every time you squash it....every time you silence the pain or the voices you're killing the best part of yourself." His voice became quieter again as he let the tears flow more freely. Blaine was now standing rigidly against the backdrop of the white landscape outside and his dark silhouette served only to remind Kurt of the hollow little boy of Blaine's childhood.

"I'm not sure I know you Blaine." He continued "I thought I'd seen glimpses of you in the shadows of the forest and the darkness of your bed, thought I'd seen signs of the man you could be...or the man you maybe are underneath all of the guarded control but..." Unsteadily Kurt swung his legs out of the bed and shakily pulled himself to his feet, moving painfully behind the other man but not quiet able to cover the final gap and reach out. Blaine felt the movement behind him but seemed frozen, unable to turn to the comfort that was being offered.

"You've never been shown affection. You've never felt gentle touch or softly murmured words. You've never had a comforting embrace or known the security of unconditional love." Kurt's own heart crumbled a little more at the reality of the words he was saying and he watched the Lord's shoulders hunch over and sink slightly. "...and yet you know how Blaine. Somehow, inside of you, there's something intrinsic, something instinctual. How does a boy who has never experienced love, grow in to a man who can feel it?"

The question hung in the air as Kurt covered the last patch of carpet separating them and breathed in unsteadily. The white light had finally pushed fully through the night and Blaine's outline was bathed in an ethereal silver glow as he stood before the window. Taking the final step, knowing that these words would be forever tattooed on their skin and unable to be removed, Kurt took the last breath of courage he needed.  

"When you're Blaine..." he whispered, closing the tiny gap and pressing his body against the solid form of the Lord's back. "When you're Blaine, I think you are the hope that's left in this world."