You wake up at Seatac. LAX. LaGuardia.

You wake up and check your mouth, check your carry-on. Make sure your fly is still done up.

You wake up in a sea of strangers all waking up like you, or still asleep with their eyes wide open and staring blankly at nothing in particular, their arms folded in their lap and earphones jacked in. You wake up surrounded by sheep in business suits.

Kurt Hummel didn’t hate his job. He didn’t hate the long flights or the business meetings or the fact that his sock drawer was filled with rows of matching black cotton poly blend. He didn’t hate his perfect apartment, with its glossy fittings and overpriced organic furniture hand-crafted by the honest hardworking people of wherever.

He didn’t hate it. Because he didn’t care.

Another evening flight out of Los Angeles and back to New York, back to his empty apartment lined with too much of nothing important. He got used to the little plane videos, the safety demonstrations he could recite from memory, it all became like a comic after a while. He kept thinking about his repeating fantasy, the one where the back of the plane snapped off and whipped away, sucking suit-clad sheep out in to the atmosphere like twirling acrobats. Probably bleating all the way.

At some point after high school he’d forgotten who to be, and became whatever was left. Sometimes he remembered himself, the Kurt he was, but it all seemed like some brightly coloured mockery of real life now, some kind of musical that lasted year after year and then suddenly vanished over the event horizon. Like someone switched off his life.

It was easy enough to forget, most of the time. That was the blessing his particular brand of numbness afforded. There was something about today, though, something about today and he couldn’t remember what. If he thought about it, he might have said he was uneasy.

The monotone voice in his head wondered if he was really uneasy or just hungry.

“I promise you, he’ll come back at the end,” a voice said out of nowhere.

Kurt blinked, and turned to the man beside him in the window seat. He was strange-looking, in a pleasant way. His shirt was deep maroon, glaring underneath a grey suit blazer, and his dark jeans had turn-ups over bright red shoes. His hair was a mess of curls that somehow managed to look like he’d both just stepped out of a salon and woken up from a rough night at the same time. His eyes were smiling.

“Excuse me?”

The man gave a quick nod, and indicated across the aisle. Kurt glanced over to see a middle-aged woman staring down at the lavatory intently, her face pulled tight with nervous lines, eyes flicking intermittently down to her watch.

“Her teenage son has been in there fifteen minutes. He’s not coming out till we’re landing.”

Kurt was confused, and it began to show in his features. “W- why? How do you know?”

The man shrugged, and Kurt watched his entire body ripple with the motion. Like he couldn’t just shrug with his shoulders. “He’s jacking off, you ever try to jack off in a space that small? You’ve got to find the right angle.”

An awkward, bewildered smile curled at the side of Kurt’s mouth. “Um. What makes you think he’s-"

“He’s a teenage boy, it’s practically his occupation,” the man said casually, shifting in his seat and reaching for his bag.

Kurt blinked at the brown leather satchel in his hands. “We have the same bag.”

The man glanced at him. “What?”

Kurt smiled and felt his shoulders lift up to his ears, embarrassed he’d said anything. “Nothing. We - we have the same bag.”

“Uhuh,” an odd smile washed over the man’s face. Something strange twisted in Kurt’s gut, something warm and nameless.

“You’re not in paper distribution too, are you?” he asked, attempting casual.

The man watched him for a second, amusement shining in his eyes. It was a long moment before he punctuated the silence with one word. “Soap.”

Kurt jolted, and realised he’d been staring so intently he’d forgotten they were having a conversation. “What?”

“I make and sell,” he passed him a tiny paper card. “Soap. Blaine Anderson.”

Kurt took the business card and looked at it. “Blaine,” he repeated so softly it was barely a sound.

“You have something against soap?” Blaine asked innocently, almost sweetly.

Kurt felt his face flush. “No, I just. I don’t use it, that’s all. I prefer - I have sensitive skin. Soap’s pretty harsh.”

There was a flicker of fire, a tiny spark in Blaine’s eyes as they traveled down Kurt’s body and lingered over his thighs. “You’d use mine.”

Kurt felt the temperature in the cabin go up, and swallowed hard.

The ‘occupied’ lavatory light on the bulkhead flashed and went out, and a red-faced gangly teenage boy emerged from the dividing curtains.

“Well, well,” Blaine grinned, shifting up in his chair. “Looks like I was wrong this time.”

Kurt watched him shimmy to a half-standing, half-crouching position and gather his bag. “You’re going?”

“Not anytime soon, but I do need to pee,” Blaine informed him. “Now we dance the awkward social ass-passing ritual.”

Kurt barely had time to ask what he meant before Blaine shifted past his knees in a shuffle-step, and the curve of his ass was right in front of Kurt’s face, perfectly framed by his too-tight jeans clinging to all the right lines of his body. Kurt gripped the armrest as Blaine’s hand brushed over his thighs and he slipped into the aisle, heading for the bathroom.

Kurt’s eyes fluttered closed, skin prickling with a heat he’d long forgotten.

You wake up in New York.

* * *


It wasn’t the first time his luggage had been lost or withheld, but it was the first time he’d been accused of terrorism that he could remember. The security guard kept him under a close watch while he waited for news on exactly what had happened to his suitcase this time.

“What do you mean my bag was ticking?”

The attendant looked even more bored than Kurt. “It was ticking, grinding, vibrating. In these situations it’s standard procedure to investigate and contact the bomb squad where necessary.”

Kurt’s brow furrowed. “Wait - bomb squad? You think there’s a bomb in my bag?”

“It happens all the time, and it’s never a bomb, but we can’t be too careful. Usually it’s a,” the man glanced at Kurt’s expensive fitted suit, his eyes flicking over Kurt’s soft hands and flawless skin, “personal device.”

“Personal device?”

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to wait patiently for a little longer,” the attendant gestured to one of the hard plastic seats lined along the wall like gallery ducks. “We’re just investigating, it’s procedure.”

Anybody but Kurt would probably have been offended at the notion that he’d smuggled a ticking, grinding, vibrating dildo onto the plane in his work suitcase. Kurt wasn’t really surprised by any of the things that happened to him anymore. It didn’t really make a difference if he went home alone now or in another three hours. It was all the same.

His suitcase was released before midnight. He gathered it without a word, signed the last of the paperwork they’d thrust at him, and wandered out into the rainy night in search of a taxi.

The trip home was the same old blur of packed city streets bleeding out into quieter, empty ones where the rain finally stopped. When a whirr of red and blue siren lights flickered past once, and then again, and then a third time, he sat up straight in his seat and peered out the window. As they rounded onto his block the road became a sea of parked cars and people, and beyond them the smoking rubble of what was once his apartment building.

“Stop. Stop here!” he yelled at the taxi driver, punching a fistful of bills into the man’s outstretched hand and grappling for his bag while he was already halfway out the door. The suitcase was harder to retrieve, but he managed to drag it from the trunk of the taxi before it sped off, screeching, into the night.

Dragging himself over to the crowd, he glanced around in confusion. “What happened?”

A young woman wrapped in an oversized jacket looked up at him, her eyes huge and blank. “Bomb. They said – bomb.”

Kurt’s eyes flashed back and forth over the mess that was once his building, and he absently wondered what was with him and bombs tonight. “Was anybody hurt?”

“Oh, no, no,” the woman waved a shaky hand. “No, they pulled the fire alarm first. And it was a controlled explosion, they knew what they were doing, the police said.”

Kurt’s narrowed his eyes. “Who would want to blow up an apartment building?”

“Everything’s gone,” the woman whimpered softly, “all of it.”

He quirked an eyebrow and backed away as the woman lost herself in grief again, stumbling between other bodies in the pressing crowd.

He wondered exactly when his own crippling sense of loss was supposed to kick in. After a moment of waiting for it, he shoved his hand into his suit pocket, finding his cell phone and thumbing over it to dial. The tiny device stayed mockingly dark, and he remembered he’d forgotten to charge it at the hotel. With a sigh he gathered his things, striding quietly over to the corner payphone and setting his bags down against the scratched clear plastic walls. After digging around in his pockets again, this time for change, he snatched up the receiver.

His mind went blank.

More than anything he knew he didn’t want to call his father. He couldn’t remember Finn’s number, even though he’d dialed it hundreds of times before. He couldn’t think of the name of a single hotel for the life of him.

Trapped in stillness, he tried to remember anybody he knew – but no numbers came. Like a phantom pain, a sting in his skin, he felt the outline of a business card poke through the fabric of his pants into his leg. Fishing it out, he glanced down at the name and found his fingers punching at the payphone’s buttons before he could stop to wonder if it was a bad idea.

The phone rang on and on in a seemingly endless trill-thump, trill-thump, trill-thump. He felt something in him sink, and just as he moved to hang up, a voice came down the line.

“I can’t answer right now, I’m eating corn chips and masturbating. Leave a message if it makes you feel better.”

Kurt froze, stammering over “I- hi - I,” before he slammed down the phone. What was he thinking?

The voice was right. The words were familiar, too, like something from an old b-grade movie one of his friends made him watch a long time ago. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but it wouldn’t go away.

Shaking his head, he bent to gather his bag when the phone sprang to life in a jarring, tinny trill. With a jolt he straightened and eyed it carefully, reaching out a tentative hand to take the receiver. “H-hello?”

He could hear the sound of someone eating. “Hello.”

Kurt blinked. “Is this… Blaine?”

“Hey,” the voice said around a mouthful of something. “Kurt?”

“Yeah,” Kurt felt a rush of relief. “Yes. I mean. Wait - how did you-?”

“I sixtynined you,” Blaine said simply.

Kurt almost choked on his own tongue. “What?”

“I star-six-nined you,” he repeated. “I never answer my phone.”

“Oh,” Kurt felt his heart racing in his ears. “I - was wondering if maybe…”

“Hey, you wanna get a drink?”

Relief rushed over him again. “Yes,” Kurt said quickly. “God, yes.”

* * *

“So it’s all gone,” Kurt finished explaining with a final wave of his hands, scooping up his bottle and taking another long drink.

Blaine ran his tongue across his teeth, nodding quietly.

“I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now, I’ll probably check into a hotel,” Kurt shrugged.

“Probably,” Blaine said, practically oozing disinterest.

Kurt bobbed his head awkwardly in the silence, finishing his bottle off. “Well, thank you, anyway. For the drink.”

Blaine smirked. “You’re not thanking me for the drink.”

Kurt paused. “What are you talking about?”

Something about the way Blaine was tracing his fingers lightly up the side of the bottle in front of him made Kurt squirm in his seat.

“You’re thanking me for what comes after the drink,” he clarified.

Trying to keep his breathing even, Kurt leaned back and watched Blaine carefully. “And what, exactly, is that?”

“You didn’t ask me here because you needed a buddy to drink with and grieve over your smoking pile of useless shit,” Blaine tipped forward just slightly, enough for Kurt to feel him pressing in despite the gap between them. “You’re not even a little bit bothered that place is rubble.”

Kurt felt suddenly naked, and that unnamed heat twisted up in his stomach again.

“No,” Blaine stroked a thumb firmly down the side of his bottle. “No, you called me because you need somewhere to stay.” He took a long drink, but his eyes never left Kurt’s.

Unable to look away, Kurt fought the urge to cross his legs. “Okay. Yes. I do.” he admitted at last.

Blaine downed the remnants of his bottle and lifted himself out of the booth. “Come on.”

* * *


Blaine’s house was a two-storey shit heap that looked like something out of a horror movie. Kurt had never seen a house like it anywhere but behind the warped glass of a TV screen, and he wondered how it was his apartment that was rubble right now and not the dilapidated wreck of cracked timber and peeling paint he was staring at.

After he changed into jeans and a shirt, he left his luggage in the bedroom Blaine had shown him - a spare with a double bed that smelled faintly of wet grass and old shoes. It was a bed, at the end of the day, and despite how disgusted his younger self would have been with his new living arrangements, a part of him thrilled at the alien surroundings he was walking into.

Along the way Blaine explained that the house technically wasn’t his, it technically wasn’t anyone’s, but the word ‘squatting’ never actually came up in conversation. After the single most straightforward tour he’d ever experienced (your room, my room, bathroom, kitchen, don’t go downstairs unless you want to electrocute yourself, welcome home) Kurt was handed a cold bottle of something possibly foreign but definitely alcoholic that appeared to be all Blaine really kept in the fridge.

They sat on the front step for hours, watching the night bleed into morning, waiting for the light to start creeping over the horizon. Kurt had no idea why, but he wasn’t even remotely tired. He had work the next day, but he didn’t much care about that either. His skin was singing in the cool pre-dawn air, and the alcohol coursed through his veins, just enough to make him sway with a sense of peace he hadn’t known for a long time.

Blaine was a different story. He’d been on his feet for hours, tossing bottles up the street just to watch them explode across the asphalt, dancing around on the trashcans by the road. He was always moving.

Kurt watched his body glide under lamplights, smooth and alive with an effortless energy Kurt remembered having, once upon a time.

He was lost in a reverie, teetering on the stoop when he realised Blaine was staring at him, mouth hanging open and eyes dark. “Come here,” he said.

Kurt obliged, hauling himself up and wandering over to the middle of the lawn. He listened to the chorus of dead grass and leaves crunching under his feet as he moved.

Blaine laughed, and began to sway his shoulders back and forth to a rhythm only he could hear. His fists came up as he danced. “I want you to hit me.”

Kurt didn’t know what to say.

Blaine grinned at him wolfishly.

“What?”

“I want you,” Blaine slid forward just a little. “To hit me. As hard as you can.”

“What?” Kurt repeated, bewildered. “Why?”

“I’ve never been punched,” Blaine shrugged, another whole body movement that sent a spark down Kurt’s spine.

He swallowed nervously. “I have.”

“Ever been in a fight? A real fight,” Blaine asked, eyebrows lifting.

Kurt thought for a moment and answered quietly, “No.”

“How much can you possibly know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? Come on, hit me.” Blaine shifted closer, still bouncing, and Kurt laughed.

“You’re drunk.”

“Nope,” Blaine argued. “Just alive. Now will you fucking hit me?”

A strange surge of anger rose up in him at the tone in Blaine’s voice, and before he knew what he was doing he swung. His fist collided with Blaine’s jaw, sending him staggering sideways.

“Oh god, oh my god, I’m sorry,” Kurt recoiled in shock. “Are you okay? Fuck.”

“No, no,” Blaine called back, bent in half and laughing wildly. “That was perfect. Fuck. God that felt good.”

Kurt shook his head, trying to wrestle his own laughter back down. “You’re insane.”

Without warning, Blaine stepped up to him in a flash of movement and buried a fist in his gut. Kurt flew backwards, hunched and gasping as the pain shot through his system, swirling out in waves from his stomach. “Fuck!”

“How do you feel?” Blaine asked, his eyes still wide and voice trembling with a giddy kind of excitement.

Kurt thought about it, really thought for a moment before he felt a smile pull at his mouth. “Good... actually.”

Blaine grinned from ear to ear, stalking forward again and striking. Kurt managed to lift a hand in time to block him, swinging their bodies around to try and drag Blaine over his shoulder. They grappled in the grey light, pushing and throwing each other around the lawn, knocking each other down and climbing back up again. Kurt could taste blood on his lip, but it was a ghost of sensation compared to the burning fire in his veins, the adrenaline coursing through his entire body. Blaine charged at him and knocked them both back through the front door, collapsing onto the shaky floorboards with a resounding crack!

They wrestled and rolled over each other, fighting for control, crawling across the floor and landing punches wherever they could manage. Yelping and grunting noises punctuated the silence along with the flat smack of fists meeting flesh and the scrape of shoes across wood. Just as Kurt gained the upper hand, Blaine caught his shoulder and flipped them both over.

Kurt twisted on the ground, trying to get out from underneath, but Blaine had straddled his hips and pinned him completely, both hands holding Kurt’s wrists to the floor. Breathing hard, Kurt glanced up, laughing and shaking as his body surged with the rush.

Blaine didn’t move, just stared him down, eyes trailing over Kurt’s throat slowly and back up to his mouth.

“As fights go,” Kurt said breathily, trying to break the silence. “I think you won.”

Without a word, Blaine rolled his hips and pressed down hard. His knees slid along the wood, spreading his legs wider and pushing his body down into Kurt.

Kurt’s hips bucked at the sudden friction, and he felt that familiar wave of heat and pounding blood shoot straight to his cock. “Fuck. Blaine.”

Blaine rolled his hips again, smirking at the sharp intake of breath from Kurt and the way he squirmed under his grip.

“Blaine - wh - fuck, what are you doing?”

There was no reply, and Kurt forgot how to form words past the shocks of violent pleasure shooting up his body as Blaine rode him, bruising his wrists into the floor and watching Kurt fall apart. Kurt moaned as Blaine’s hips jolted harder and harder, and hissed at the ache of his cock pushing painfully into his jeans. “Blaine,” Kurt begged brokenly. “Ungh. I need to- I need you to-”

Before Kurt could finish Blaine had let go of his wrists, fisting handfuls of Kurt’s shirt to drag it up over his head in one long movement. With a sharp shove to his chest, he forced Kurt’s arching body back down to the floor.

Kurt whimpered softly as Blaine dropped a hand to where their hips met, shifting back to undo Kurt’s pants. Kurt hadn’t moved, had left his arms where Blaine had let them go, tangled up in his shirt. His entire body jerked, eyes slamming shut as Blaine pushed down the front of his pants, thumb grazing over the head of Kurt’s cock and sweeping the slick, silky moisture down the length of him.

When his eyes fluttered open again, Kurt watched as Blaine lifted his hand to his mouth and licked a long, wet stripe across his palm. He made an embarrassingly loud noise, hips twitching feverishly at the image of Blaine licking pre-come off his own hand.

Blaine dropped his body low and curled his arm under, sliding his palm in a hard line up the length of Kurt’s cock at a painfully slow pace. He didn’t break eye contact as he coiled his fist around him, finger by finger, and held him there, squeezing and loosening his grip a few times. Kurt tried to breathe, tried to close his mouth but he couldn’t tear his eyes away or stop the sounds he made as Blaine began to pump him slowly and roughly, swirling his thumb over the head on every upstroke. Kurt’s breath came to him in tiny, staccato intakes of air, his body shaking under the intensity of Blaine’s gaze and the electric heat shooting into his every nerve.

Rough fingers traced each vein, pressed into every sensitive curve and dip that Kurt didn’t even know he had. He groaned as Blaine squeezed him again, drawing him up with a tight fist and sliding it back down to the base, learning every inch of him. Kurt’s head hit the floorboards with a thump, and he moaned over and over as Blaine teased him slowly, stroking and pressing into him in ways he’d never imagined. Kurt couldn’t feel his legs, couldn’t feel his arms but for the strange hot sensation in the palm of his right hand.

His head clouded and grew heavy as he struggled for a little bit more, a little bit harder, thrusting desperately into Blaine’s hand as much as he could with his legs pinned. Blaine swiped his tongue over his lower lip and stared, pupils blown wide as he watched the breathless, writhing man under him. He was making it last, he was drawing it out as long as he could in the most painful, blissful, teasing way – Kurt could feel Blaine pulling him back every time he came close. He let out a low, broken sound, desperate and aching as he tried to form the right words to tell Blaine he needed it, he needed to come now.

Blaine smirked, as if reading his mind, and slowed down again. With a long moan Kurt shivered, twitching against the floorboards. He felt Blaine shift again, and opened his eyes to see he’d tipped himself back to watch his hand stroking Kurt, watch the way his cock bobbed in and out his fist. His pace quickened, and Kurt felt his brow draw together in desperation as heat flooded his body from the base of his spine to his fingertips.

“Do you have any idea,” Blaine said, his voice almost a growl. “The things I could do to your body? The things you always wanted me to do to you and you never even knew it.”

Kurt cried out, fingers scraping the floorboards fanatically as his orgasm finally overtook him. With one last rough stroke of Blaine’s hand he came, long and hard across his own chest and Blaine’s fist.

He felt his back strike the floor, shocked to realise how hard he’d arched. A warm, numbing buzz swam around his head, and his chest flashed violently with quick, deep breaths as he tried to focus his vision. In the distance he heard what sounded like a belt buckle, and looked down his own come-stained body to where Blaine had pushed down his jeans, now fisting his own painfully hard cock frantically with a raw look in his eyes that made Kurt shudder even in the aftermath.

Blaine dropped low again, free hand propping himself up as he sunk down to suck Kurt’s split lip into his mouth, tongue swiping over the cut. Kurt gasped at the sting, and made a tiny pained sound that tipped Blaine over the edge. With a shattered groan he came across Kurt’s chest, panting as his entire frame shook with tremors.

Kurt watched breathlessly as Blaine came down from the high of his orgasm, watched the muscles shift under the thin fabric of his shirt as he reigned in control and tried to keep his balance. Still numb through his boneless, aching limbs, Kurt lay motionless but for the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the smell of sweat and semen flooding his senses and making him shiver.

With warm, gentle hands Blaine tucked him back into his pants, drawing them up and climbing slowly to his feet to do the same for himself. He glanced down at Kurt with a smile that was bordering on fond. “You think you remember the way to your room?”

Kurt nodded, head lolling against the floorboards.

Blaine laughed breathily. “See you in the morning.”

Kurt swallowed, tipping his head back to watch Blaine walk away down the sloping hallway. After staying spread out on the floor for a long while, learning how to breathe normally again, Kurt managed to untangle his hands and drag himself upright.

He swiped his fingers absently through the lines of come on his chest, feeling his knees tremble beneath him. After a moment lost in the heady swim of standing up too quickly, he squinted down the hallway to the three unmarked doors and tried to remember exactly which one was the bathroom.

* * *


Kurt woke up sore long after his workday was over, groaning and fishing lazily around in his suit pants for his cell. The dark, blank screen glared back at him, a reminder he still hadn’t charged it. Rolling his eyes, he dropped it over the side of his bed carelessly and flopped onto his back, inspecting the bruises on his ribs from their fight the night before – if he could call it that.

His eyes wandered across the peeling paint of the ceiling and the broken antique pendant, mouth curving into a lazy smile despite the twinge in his spine and the aching bones in his wrists. He pulled himself out of bed gingerly, dragging on whatever clean clothes he could find from his suitcase and padding out into the hallway. The faint smell of coffee and perfume reached his nose, and he wandered across creaking floorboards to the open archway of the kitchen.

Blaine was wearing another pair of absurdly tight jeans and a long-sleeve shirt that hugged every line of muscle in his back, singing to himself and stirring a giant pot on the stove.

“Morning.” Kurt smiled, sliding onto one of the wooden chairs of what was maybe once a beautiful kitchen table. He had no idea how long he'd slept, but he was still completely exhausted.

“Evening,” Blaine corrected him, tipping his head back and winking as he drank down the last of his coffee.

Kurt glanced over to the large bay window past the sink, stunned by the complete lack of daylight. “Evening? What time is it?”

“Eight.”

Kurt’s brow lifted. He’d never slept twelve hours in his life.

“Don’t tell me you’re worried you slept too long?” Blaine chided playfully. “Miss work?”

“Yes,” Kurt admitted softly. “Only in the sense that I didn’t go.”

Blaine laughed. “You’re not upset?”

“I am Sue Sylvester’s total inability to care.”

“What’s that?” Blaine asked, brow drawn in curiosity.

“Oh,” Kurt laughed. “Just. Something I used to do. Haven’t done in a long time. People I used to know, their features, their – characteristics. If I feel that way, act like them, it’s just something I used to say.”

“Ah,” Blaine nodded his understanding with a sly smile. "You're one of those."

Kurt blinked. "One of those?"

"Clever people," Blaine said smoothly.

Kurt watched his fingers press along the wood of the table. "I guess."

"And how's that working out for you? Being clever?" Blaine asked, turning his attention away.

Kurt wasn't sure how to answer that. There was a long stillness, and he shifted uncomfortably, curious as to why he remembered the old habit in the first place, and what Blaine had meant.

“So tonight,” Blaine began enthusiastically. “I have a new venue.”

“Venue? For what?”

“The fight,” he said simply.

Kurt couldn’t keep the surprise from his face, and wondered quietly at the thrill he felt shoot up his spine.

After another long press of silence, Blaine flicked off the stove and slid across to the table, eyes locked on Kurt. “You had fun last night?”

Kurt let his eyes drop down Blaine’s body slowly before he glanced up again with a hint of a smile. “I did.”

Blaine gave him a look that Kurt could only interpret as a promise and returned to the stove. “Well, if you’re up for it, there’s a bar down the street. We should check it out.”

Kurt’s eyes lingered on the tight curve of Blaine’s ass and the strip of skin exposed over a hipbone where his shirt lifted up just the right way.

“I’m in.”

* * *


The bar was a dive, greasy and thick with smoke and the lingering smell of men. But the drinks were cheap, and that was all that really mattered.

It was only a handful of bottles down before they found themselves in the empty car park, kicking and swinging at each other, locking their bodies together and crashing carelessly into the brick walls and posts around them. Kurt felt every bruise he knew he’d have the next day, every sharp slam of his body, and all of it just made him feel more alive. He laughed, spitting a mouthful of blood to the asphalt before he charged at Blaine again, locking an arm around his head and grateful for the height advantage that meant Blaine couldn’t just stand up and knock him down on his ass.

He didn’t notice the group of men gathering at the edge of the car park, watching quietly and whispering to each other. It wasn’t until one of them (a tall, thick looking boy) wandered tentatively over that Kurt even realised they weren’t alone.

The boy looked as concerned as he did curious. “What – what are you doing?”

Kurt stopped still, breathless and giddy, swiping a tongue over the blood that was now dribbling down his chin.

Blaine grinned up at the boy. “Welcome,” he threw his arms wide. “To fight club!”

* * *


Kurt had no idea how he’d done it, but Blaine had started something bigger than both of them with those four words. By the next night the number of spectators had doubled in size, and soon they were asking to go next. Rules were established, all Blaine’s rules of course, but they were necessary. Cut your nails. No shirts, no shoes. After the first tap-out, the fight is over. Tell no-one.

If it’s your first time at Fight Club, Blaine announced with a feverish glee, you have to fight.

Kurt watched him stalk through the crowd, eyes burning with a strange kind of fire as he lined up each match. There was something inside of Blaine, something raw and wild that did things to Kurt’s body he couldn’t control. He tried not to stare, but most of the time he couldn’t stop himself. When Blaine peeled his sweat-damp shirt off and flung it to the ground, gearing up for his next fight, Kurt visibly shuddered against the wall.

I am Puck’s raging hard on.

Blaine moved with the kind of grace you had to be born with to carry. The swoop and slide of his body, the way his feet shifted and gave him perfect leverage to launch at any moment during a fight - Kurt wondered if he was made for this. Built for it. The hard lines of his chest were shadowed and deep, nothing but muscle and bone. There was no bulk, no catalogue model spray tan, just flushed olive skin and definition.

The voice in Kurt’s head asked him quietly what he thought that skin might taste like.

* * *


At Blaine’s command the crowd had dissipated by 3am, and the two of them staggered home still high from the adrenaline and the intoxicating smell of blood and sweat on the air. They pushed through the broken door and stumbled inside laughing, shoving each other playfully and picking their clothing away from skin where it clung uncomfortably. Blaine wandered to the kitchen, inspecting his pot on the stove again before he caught sight of Kurt in the archway.

“What’s that?” he asked, nodding to the strange pinkish contents that had all but solidified.

Blaine quirked an eyebrow. “That,” he tapped the pot with a finger. “Would be soap.”

“Soap?”

“I told you when we met, I make and sell soap,” Blaine reminded him, wandering to one of the cabinets over the bench. He pulled out a small rectangular bar, and gave it to Kurt. “Try it.”

Kurt inspected the pink block in his hand, silky smooth under his fingers. “It’s nice,” he said honestly. He’d used the last of his travel shower-gel cleaning up after last night, and realised all at once he didn’t have anything left to wash with that wasn’t smoldering halfway across town.

“Try it,” Blaine repeated. “Trust me.”

Kurt bobbed his head stiffly, the ache building up in his joints now the adrenaline receded. “I will, I should clean up,” he looked down at his bloodstained shirt and pants. “And find a laundromat, soon.”

“Up the street.” Blaine tilted his head to the west and turned to wander back over to the stove.

Kurt played with the bar of soap, slipping it back and forth just to feel the smooth, unblemished surface under his fingertips. “And you make this from scratch?” he asked, curious.

Blaine grinned. “You know the properties of soap are basically found in nature. Different recipes for it stem from every culture. The funny thing,” he poked at the pot again. “Is you mix the right ingredients for soap, maybe a few more, you have nitroglycerine. You can make napalm.”

Kurt watched him carefully, eyes flicking from the pot back to Blaine, and back to the stove again.

“Something so common, but with enough soap, you can pretty much blow up anything.”

He stopped at that, feeling something tug at the back of his mind. A sharp pain in his side reminded him he was still bruised and bloody, and he closed his fingers around the bar in his hand. “I’m going to - I’ll go wash up.” He said absently, and wandered out into the hall, past his bedroom to the bathroom.

The tiles were faded cream, most of them fractured or chipped at the sides, but it was certainly beautiful once, perhaps even palatial. The bathtub was deep, and bordered a separate long shower framed in patterned glass.

The shower-head was old and broad, and water pounded out of it at an alarming velocity – something Kurt was overwhelmingly grateful for in the wake of his beating that night.

He’d won against Blaine more than once, but the tall young boy that had approached them that first night had wound up being his second fight – and he’d managed to get the better of him. It was a matter of dimensions, really, the boy was twice his size, but Kurt had held his own till the end.

He stripped quickly and stepped into the burning torrent of water, letting it roll over his muscles in searing waves and sinking his head down under the bombardment. The soap foamed in his fingers, and he dragged it carefully over the few cuts he’d managed to pick up that night from a ring or a sharp knuckle. The water tinged pink at his feet then faded clear again by the time he was finished, and he felt almost dizzy at the strong smell of the soap riding up on the steam.

He drew a sharp breath at the feel of fingers curling at his sides, and glanced back to where Blaine had pressed an open mouth to a blossoming bruise on his shoulder. He hadn't heard him come in.

Kurt hummed low, and let his eyes drift closed as Blaine’s hands worked their way around him, stroking the muscles of his stomach down to the jutting bones of his hips. Blaine took the soap from his fingers carefully, and Kurt let his head tip back onto Blaine’s shoulder as firm hands worked a lather across his skin, tracing his veins and the lines of chest.

The aches and twinges of the night slipped away under the hot spray of water and Blaine’s exploring hands, cleaning him carefully, cupping the angles of his body in rough, pressing, possessive ways that made Kurt’s hips stutter. The way Blaine touched him was firm, and teasing, and designed to drive him insane with need. Kurt wasn’t proud of the noises he made under Blaine’s fingers, but he couldn’t help as each of them slipped from him, drowned under the hiss of the water.

He didn’t realise how hard he’d been pushing his hips back into the body behind him, how needy and desperate he must have looked by the time Blaine’s fingers found his hardening cock and started stroking him in slow, languid motions. The rise and fall of their bodies together, the feel of Blaine pressing against his ass only made it that much worse, and Kurt lifted a hand to cup Blaine’s neck, trying to find any kind of leverage.

“Shh,” Blaine gripped his wrist, guiding it away and pressing it to the wall of the shower, ignoring Kurt’s whimper of protest.

Kurt felt every muscle in his hips tense when Blaine stopped stroking him and pressed a hand on his hip, guiding him sharply towards the wall. With a wet slap Kurt’s chest hit the tile, and his knees landed on the outcrop by the front lip of the shower, lowering him just enough. Blaine pressed in around him, sliding his chest against Kurt’s back and pushing Kurt’s knees apart with his leg.

There was a hum in Kurt’s veins, in every fiber of him, screaming out the desire for Blaine to spread him wider, to press inside him. Kurt tried to think of way to tell him that without actually begging, but Blaine was stroking firm circles into the muscles of his ass, gliding his fingers down the center of him, and it was quickly removing all coherent thought from his mind.

Without warning, Blaine bit down hard on his shoulder. Kurt shouted, listening to his own broken sound echo off the tiled walls and forgetting most of the English language the moment Blaine pushed two long, slippery fingers inside him at once. Kurt bore down instinctively, barely able to push back while Blaine had him pinned bodily to the wall and was slipping his fingers in and out of him over and over. Blaine smirked at the keening sound Kurt let out, pressing his mouth to the top of Kurt’s spine and grazing his teeth over skin as he kept pumping inside. Kurt felt every inch of him stretching, warm from the heat of Blaine’s fingers and aching with the need for more of them.

Blaine pushed a third inside at last, stroking the tight ring of muscle with practiced hands. Kurt had been fucked before, been touched and stretched, but never this way – at the kind of pace that was somewhere balanced perfectly between pleasure and pain.

With a jerk of his wrist, Blaine crooked his fingers and pushed them deeper, buried to the knuckle inside Kurt. He watched through heavy-lidded eyes as Kurt gasped and shook, and spread his legs further apart.

It was all just Kurt begging without using words. He just wanted to feel more of everything, more of Blaine inside him. Blaine leaned back, sliding his free hand up to keep Kurt pinned to the wall and trailing his eyes down to watch his fingers fucking Kurt’s ass.

Kurt moaned helplessly against the tile again, and Blaine pulled back his hand, lathering himself up quickly. There was a sound, a constant gravelling rasp, and Kurt realised it was his breathing as he tried to suck in the air around the steam. He was trembling from the absence of anything inside him, and aching where his painfully hard cock was trapped by his body against the wall. His legs shook violently as Blaine pressed against him again, and Kurt felt the thick, warm surge of him pushing inside.

Blaine moved slowly, rubbing at Kurt’s back and relishing every tiny noise as he pulled out and pushed in again, a little longer this time, closer and deeper and everything Kurt wanted. Kurt tried to push his body back, impatient and needy, and he caught the utterly breathtaking look on Blaine’s face as he glanced back. Locking their eyes, Blaine flattened both hands against Kurt’s shoulder blades and snapped his hips forward to bury himself completely.

“FUCK. GOD. BLAINE,” Kurt screamed, hands scraping at wet tile as the feeling of being perfectly, exquisitely full rushed through every nerve in his body. Blaine stayed inside him without moving, letting Kurt feel it, stroking down his hips and the curve of his ass with both hands and staring at where their skin met, where he disappeared inside Kurt’s body.

Finally, Blaine pulled back again, thrusting his hips forward harder this time and groaning at the noises Kurt made every time he buried himself to the base. The wet, loud slaps of their bodies colliding punctuated the constant hiss of the shower and the deep, shattered noises pouring from Kurt’s mouth as Blaine pounded into him mercilessly. Kurt couldn’t move, pressed so tightly up to the tile he could only grind out desperate sound as Blaine fucked him harder and harder, biting down on his shoulders and sucking bruised skin into his mouth.

The pain barely registered, washed out in the heady rush of blood pounding in his ears as Blaine changed his angle. In an instant, any pain he’d felt turned to searing hot pleasure as his body jerked violently out of his control. He could feel Blaine’s grin against his skin as he picked up his pace again, catching that perfect, bone-shaking place inside of Kurt on every deep stroke.

With a rough shove, Blaine pinned their bodies together, driving himself as deep as he could inside and lifting Kurt up off his knees. Kurt screamed out his name and felt his muscles lock down, sending searing electricity up his spine as his orgasm hit him with violent force. His body stuttered loudly against the tile as he came, and Blaine pulled back a little while Kurt rode it out in a shuddering wave.

All of his strength slipped away from him in an instant, dropping him down harder onto Blaine’s cock. Kurt whined and twitched at the overwhelming sensation, sensitive and throbbing in places he didn’t know he could. Blaine moaned into his ear, and the sound cracked in two, sending prickles of goosebumps down Kurt’s skin as the water turned lukewarm.

Numb and still trembling, Kurt lifted himself to the wall with what strength he could muster and felt Blaine close in behind him, slipping deeper inside again and making Kurt draw fast little breaths. Blaine watched him, eyes low and exquisitely dark with lust as he pulled out and pressed inside, taking his time. Kurt twisted to look back over his shoulder, sliding a hand down and spreading his own ass. “Ungh. God, you’re still fucking me.”

Blaine pushed back in slowly and watched Kurt’s eyes flutter closed. “I can stop.”

“No,” Kurt said softly, barely above a whisper. “Please.”

Blaine flexed his body carefully, watching himself slide in an out of Kurt with a messy rhythm as he came closer and closer to the edge.

Kurt stared at him while he slowly unraveled. He felt his cock twitch even in the wake of his own orgasm, there was just something so unbearably dirty and hot about the way Blaine was watching himself fuck Kurt. A sharp thrill sparked somewhere in his hips when he realised how badly he needed to feel Blaine come inside him.

Blaine crowded in again, sliding in deep with a fast jerk of his hips as he came moaning Kurt’s name. The rush of wet heat that struck Kurt made him gasp and he let out a tiny, broken sound as he felt Blaine slip out of him all too quickly.

“Mmmh,” Blaine murmured against his shoulder, pressing his hips and softening cock up against Kurt’s ass. “God, I could fuck you for hours.”

Kurt tipped his head back onto Blaine’s shoulder, sucking kisses across the stubble of his jaw as he snaked both hands behind him and slid his body down Blaine’s thighs. “Then why don’t you?”

* * *


Kurt had no idea how his life had descended into an endless circle of fighting and sleeping and fucking. Somehow some random luggage mishap may have saved his life and thrown him into this circle of delicious chaos where he lived on a constant high from adrenaline and hours upon hours of the hardest, dirtiest sex he’d ever known. He was tired – always tired – and sore from the inside of his body to the tips of his toes, but he thrilled at every twinge. Just another reminder of what he had in store after Fight Club.

Fight Club itself had changed, too, now growing broader across the city with other clubs starting in bigger bars across Manhattan. All of them bowed to Blaine’s rules, all of them had to - if you disobeyed the rules of Fight Club, there would be consequences.

The evening a wild-eyed redneck brought a gun to Fight Club was the last straw, for Blaine. He’d beat the man bloody and taken the gun, and seen to it the rules were known, that the penalties were known.

Do not fuck with us, he warned. We are the men who make your food, who run your transportation system. Do not. Fuck. With us.

Kurt burned with a new kind of rage that night, fueled by the feeling that something they’d built, something they’d created could so easily be threatened.

Blaine had fucked him raw when they got home, fucked him on the floor so hard Kurt could hear the plaster cracking and crumbling into powder from the ceiling downstairs – but he wanted nothing more than that. He wanted nothing more than Blaine inside him whenever he could get it, as hard as he could get it. The way they had sex was nothing short of perfectly violent, and Kurt fell asleep stroking himself more than once just thinking about it.

No, the sex he loved. It was the gun that bothered him.

Kurt hated the gun. He hated the way Blaine played with it that night, so carefree, like he was twirling a children’s toy. Like he thought he knew what he was doing. When Blaine fell asleep, Kurt hid it in the old dresser by the back door, seething at everything it represented.

I am Finn's chair-kicking rage.

Blaine had forgotten about it by the next night, and Kurt breathed a sigh of relief.

* * *


It was weeks before Kurt found out where the house phone was. He’d never needed to make a call, never wanted to get one, so he had no reason to track it down until the afternoon it woke him from a deep, dreamless sleep. He pulled on his sweatpants and staggered out into the hall, trying to track down the noise and absently scratching at the pattern of bite marks Blaine had left in his side the night before.

He found the receiver at last, lifting it to his ear and catching the flash of a half-naked Blaine swooping by the door at the end of the hall, twirling something long and metal. Probably a fire poker, which he’d noticed Blaine had an odd supply of even though he didn’t have a fireplace.

“Hello?”

“Kurt?”

He froze at the sound of his stepbrother’s voice.

“Kurt, where have you been, man? You haven’t been answering your cell.”

He sighed. “Finn. Hi. I’m busy, right now – how did you get this number?”

“One of the guys from the gym said he saw you on his block, it wasn’t hard to find the number,” Finn said.

“By which you mean Rachel found the number through her vast network of bat-shit crazy friends?”

“Pretty much.”

I am Tina’s complete lack of surprise.

“Are you okay dude? I haven’t heard from you – your boss called Dad, you have him listed as your emergency contact. He said they hadn’t heard from you, wanted to make sure you’re, you know. Alive.”

“I’m fine,” Kurt assured him distractedly, watching as Blaine stopped in the doorframe and flexed his body back, tensing every last muscle in his chest and twirling the long iron rod like some kind of warrior.

“You don’t sound fine, man. And you haven’t been going to work?”

“I’m fine,” Kurt repeated forcefully. “I just – I’ve moved in with someone, I’m reorganizing some things. My building did blow up, after all.”

“What?! What? When?” Finn asked frantically.

Kurt rolled his eyes. He didn’t figure his brother for an avid news reader. “It’s fine, I’m alright, and nobody got hurt. I just need to take care of some things.”

Finn let out a breath he seemed to be holding. “Oh, okay, just – do you need a place to stay? You can come stay with me, or you can stay with Mom and Dad.”

“Trust me, I’m fine. I’m living with a friend. Blaine’s been good to me.”

“Blaine?”

“That’s his name,” Kurt said absently, tilting his head for a better view of Blaine’s sweat-damp body as he spun and shifted at the end of the corridor.

“But – wait, you mean… Blaine?”

“Finn, I gotta go, I’ll talk to you later, okay?” Kurt said softly, barely registering that the words were coming out of his mouth before he hung up the phone with a clunk! and strode down the hall with his own plans in mind.

* * *


Someone had given Kurt’s boss the phone number.

After the third call from work, Kurt punched a hole in the wall by the phone and tore the cable out. He knew Blaine wouldn’t care, and it made him feel better to know nobody from the paper company could ever reach him again.

That night after Fight Club he cleaned himself up, and filled the bath to soak his aching bones. He’d grown accustomed to not owning clothing without bloodstains. Staring didn’t bother him anymore, either, or the way people looked at his bruises and marks like they were quietly judging him. None of it mattered. He had Blaine, and Fight Club. Nothing bothered him anymore.

Well, almost nothing.

He couldn’t put his finger on why his job, his boss and something about his old company still pissed him off. He couldn’t quell the rage or the lump in his throat at the thought of them.

Blaine had wandered into the bathroom and cleaned himself up over the basin, wiping dried blood and sweat off his skin with a wet hand towel.

“If you could fight anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?” Kurt asked out of nowhere.

Blaine blinked, and thought for a moment. “Good question. Damn.”

Kurt watched him, waiting for an answer.

“My dad,” Blaine answered with a nod. “Definitely.”

For some reason, Kurt was expecting him to say exactly that.

“You?” Blaine asked, trimming his fingernails.

Kurt sighed, flicking at the bathwater. “I’d fight my boss. Or my whole office.”

Blaine glanced at him, suddenly very curious. “Why?”

“I have no idea, it just,” Kurt folded his arms across his chest uncomfortably. “It pisses me off.”

“Assholes,” Blaine agreed, finishing up.

Kurt had fallen into a quiet trance, his face drawn into a frown as his mind ticked over the memory of his workplace. The way every desk looked the same, every person like cardboard cutouts playing at being people, each one indistinguishable from the next. Business suit sheep.

He shook from his reverie when he caught a flash of movement as Blaine peeled his pants off and kicked them away, closing the gap between him and the bath with two steps. Kurt watched appreciatively as Blaine stepped into the water, stretching out over him like a cat and lowering himself down.

Kurt wet his lips, eyes following the dip of Blaine’s head as he pressed his mouth to a nipple and sucked gently, dragging teeth down skin. He let his eyes drift closed and tipped his head back, humming contentedly as Blaine played with his body.

He never grew tired of the things Blaine could do with his hands, the parts of him that Blaine found to stroke or caress and make him tingle all over. Just watching Blaine work was hot enough, but the way he clung to Kurt, the grip on his hips or the way he pinned him made everything inside Kurt coil up in ecstasy. Blaine owned his body, passionately and completely, and whenever he wanted to.

The water level had dropped, Kurt realised as he felt the strange sinking sensation that went with the lowering tide of the bath. He opened his eyes and saw Blaine replace the plug just as the water had moved past Kurt’s sides.

Then Blaine’s mouth and hands were on him again, moving over his belly and the bones of his hips, leaving patterns in beads of water as they collected under his fingertips. Kurt hummed softly, hands gripping the sides of the tub as Blaine’s mouth trailed over the soft skin of his thighs, biting gently, then harder, as he went.

Kurt jerked, squirming under the attention but helpless as always to move out from under Blaine’s broad, pinning hands. He felt the hot, wet stripe that Blaine had left up his thigh chill under the passing cool air and shivered. Like it was an invitation, Blaine slipped his hands up Kurt’s sides and sunk his mouth down over his cock hungrily, sucking back with a growl.

Gasping, Kurt tried to keep himself from slipping along the porcelain of the bath. He gripped at the sides harder and whimpered as Blaine’s tongue swirled over him again and again, hand fisting the base of his cock and stroking in time with his bobbing mouth.

Kurt found his balance and finally let go of the tub, sliding fingers into Blaine’s hair and twisting curls between them. Blaine’s mouth was incredible, and the press of his tongue under the head of Kurt’s cock left him choking for air.

Blaine seemed to take his time whenever he had Kurt in his mouth. He always went slowly, always lingered at every sensitive point for a long time before he moved on. Somehow each time he managed to draw it out for as long as possible, like the taste of him was all he ever wanted on his tongue.

Watching Blaine’s enthusiastic attention made the experience even more incredible for Kurt, and when Blaine locked eyes with him and slipped back to suck fiercely on the head of his cock, Kurt shook and let out a broken, pitiful sound. Blaine’s lips were red now, swollen and glistening as he slid down again and again, paying attention to every part of Kurt he could press his tongue into. Kurt writhed and whined, knowing full well his noises just made Blaine all the more eager.

But this time Blaine pulled back and let Kurt’s cock slip from his mouth wetly, drawing himself up into a better position and guiding his hands around Kurt’s hips.

Kurt watched, hard and aching but fascinated as Blaine curled his body down and seized Kurt’s frame completely, both arms wrapped around him and holding him almost unbearably tight.

He almost came just from the look in Blaine’s eyes before he lowered his mouth down and took him completely, sucking hard and wet and letting the tip of Kurt’s cock press into the back of his throat. Kurt's hips were trembling, trying to jerk, but he barely moved. Blaine had him locked in an impossible grip, mouth hot and tight, perfect in every way as he lifted Kurt’s body and fucked his mouth over and over.

Kurt realised he wasn’t going to last as he fisted handfuls of hair and Blaine took him again, as deep as he could. Just as Kurt pressed to the back of his throat, Blaine swallowed.

Like a shot Kurt jerked up violently, thrashing and screaming as he came down Blaine’s throat. Blaine swallowed again, and again, and felt Kurt go slack in his grip.

When Kurt woke up Blaine was licking his lips, stroking a hand down his belly. Kurt peered through the haze of consciousness and let his eyes wander along the muscle and veins of Blaine’s arm till he noticed Blaine was still hard and straining.

Blaine squeezed his thigh. “Bedroom, ten minutes.”

* * *


Nobody at Fight Club ever asked if they were fucking, if they were together. Every fight Kurt was sure someone noticed the hand-shaped bruises or the bite marks Blaine had left all over him, and maybe put two and two together – but nobody ever did.

Kurt was fine with that, and Blaine had never mentioned it, but when Fight Club became less and less a passion and more a precursor to sex, Kurt wondered if he really needed it anymore. Blaine was still as wildly enthusiastic as ever, relishing each and every fight like it was his last day on earth.

The men watched Blaine with a feverish kind of worship in their eyes, as if this sweat-and-blood-soaked man was their god. It didn’t change how Blaine fought, though. It didn’t stop him from beating them blind whenever he stepped in the ring.

Kurt envied him the spirit, but that didn’t stop him from worrying that someday the fighting would be all that Blaine needed.

He didn’t know why, but Kurt needed Blaine to want him. To want him more than anything else, and the notion that he might not one day made him tremble down to his bones.

I am Rachel’s giant ego.

Blaine loved Fight Club, and Kurt knew deep inside he was terrified that it was what Blaine wanted most. That it would be enough.

Blaine seemed content to prove him wrong every night.

* * *


After another night spent building bruises, Kurt had staggered home with Blaine in tow, cleaning himself up before finding a drink in the kitchen and resting against the bench. As he came down from the high of his last fight, it took him a moment to realise that something was different. Something was missing.

He worked on his drink as he wandered in circles around the room, staring at the empty surfaces, unable to put his finger on what it was.

Finishing his bottle off, he pushed it across the bench and looked up to catch Blaine standing in the doorway, watching him, eyes swooping over his legs and his thighs and lingering there.

Fueled by the buzz of the alcohol and the lingering swaps of adrenaline in his veins, Kurt stretched, peeling his shirt from his body and throwing it away. Blaine watched him appreciatively as he undressed, their gazes locked until Kurt finally closed the gap between them and slipped his fingers into the rim of Blaine’s jeans. “And what would you like to do to me tonight?”

Blaine’s eyes flashed in the dim kitchen light, and he trailed light fingers up Kurt’s side. “Bedroom,” he said lowly. “Tonight, in the bedroom.”

Kurt’s brow lifted. They hadn’t used the bed before. He wasn’t sure why, but they usually resorted to fucking on the floor or bent over table – too eager and messy to make it that far.

When Blaine’s fingers brushed over him, Kurt twitched with a nervous spark, feeling himself getting harder already. He moved slowly, gliding down the hall with Blaine in his wake and pushing open the door to Blaine’s room.

The bed was bigger than his, with wooden ribs at the headboard and a decent mattress framed by two lopsided tables that housed empty corn chip packets and bottles of lube. Kurt couldn’t help but wonder if Blaine was as rough with himself as he was with Kurt, and the image of that was enough to make him shiver.

Blaine had taken his shirt off and was sliding out of his pants, and Kurt moved quietly to the side of the bed, waiting for those hands on him, making him do whatever Blaine wanted. Which was always just exactly what Kurt wanted.

The touch didn’t come, instead just Blaine’s mouth pressing a kiss to his bruised shoulder blade. “On the bed,” he instructed. “Hands and knees.”

Kurt trembled at the rough tone to his voice, but obeyed, swaying as he sank down onto the coverlet and gathered a pillow to grip in his hands.

Blaine hadn’t joined him, was just watching, standing at the foot of the bed and stroking himself slowly as Kurt looked over his shoulder. He fought a groan at the image, the dark look in Blaine’s eyes as they lingered on Kurt’s body. He needed Blaine to start touching him.

The mattress sloped when Blaine climbed on the bed, and Kurt tried to steady himself, tried to lock his arms so he wouldn’t shake too hard with anticipation. His cock was pink, flushed and straining underneath him, desperate to be touched. Blaine’s fingers found his thighs first, moving confidently, squeezing and tracing lines of muscle down the back of Kurt and up again, making sure he took his time.

Kurt couldn’t help the tremor that bent his spine or the shake of his body, and Blaine steadied him with a firm grip on his hip, bruising callused fingers into skin.

He was waiting for anything, any part of Blaine, careful not to push back too hard but longing for a finger or the press of something inside. Kurt felt a nervous thrill at the feel of Blaine’s mouth against the base of his spine, moving down slowly, mapping patterns with his tongue.

With a smirk Blaine rubbed gently at the inside of Kurt’s thigh, grazing softer skin above and watching Kurt twitch violently. Satisfied, he leaned in, using both hands to press into the muscle of Kurt’s ass. “Spread your legs.”

Kurt obeyed, inching his knees out as best he could and trying to keep his breathing steady.

“Wider,” Blaine growled, and Kurt shuddered at the sound, shifting his balance to slide his knees further apart.

Blaine traced down the center of him with his tongue, listening to the broken breaths falling away from Kurt and finally swirling gently around the tight rim of him.

Kurt whined, the sound breaking at the end into a throaty gravelling noise as Blaine pushed his tongue in, tracing the muscle there and pressing against the soft skin. Burying his face in the pillow, Kurt tried to keep still, struggling to find air as Blaine dipped his wet, pink tongue inside again and again, and Kurt’s brain began to melt from the exquisite sensation rocketing through his veins. Blaine’s fingers spread him wide, mouth buried against him, stroking the ring of muscle open with his mouth.

There was no sound left, no noise. Kurt knew he was moaning, knew he was making the most pitiful, helpless string of music with his voice but he couldn’t hear any of it, he could only feel. Blaine was pushing deeper, his tongue wet and hot inside him alongside a finger, and then two fingers, and Kurt’s entire body squeezed tight against the threat of coming far too early.

When Blaine pulled away, Kurt stilled, finding his breathing again and feeling the muscles in his thighs and hips burn with a stringy, rubbery sensation. He wanted more.

Glancing up over his shoulder, Kurt locked eyes with Blaine, whose mouth was wet and open, hands bracing himself against the covers. Without a word he rolled over, climbing up the bed and settling onto his back.

Kurt pushed the pillow away and managed to glide smoothly over Blaine’s hips, straddling him and pressing his hands down into the hard, sweat-slick muscles of his stomach. “I want to hear it,” Kurt said, his voice harsh and deeper than he’d ever heard it before. “Hold on to the bed.”

A flicker of recognition lit Blaine’s eyes for a moment, and he obeyed, wrapping his fists around the ribs of the headboard as Kurt leaned back, and lined himself up, sinking down on to Blaine’s cock far too quickly.

He let his eyes snap shut. The burn didn’t matter – the push and the rush of too fast, too soon. Kurt wanted to own him, wanted to break down the walls, and hear it. He groaned when he met with Blaine’s skin, when they fell flush together and Blaine was buried completely inside him. His eyes opened again, locking on Blaine as he began to roll his hips, faster and faster, and the bed frame knocked a rhythm against the wall.

Blaine’s grip tightened on the bars as the bed shook harder with each jerk of Kurt’s body, the soft tapping turning into a cacophony of crashing as the wood hit the broken plaster of the wall again and again. Kurt threw his head back, rippling his body with every drop, ignoring the pain in his thighs from the strain of just how hard he was fucking himself on Blaine.

Kurt cried out, sliding fingers down his stomach and stroking himself roughly as he rocked even harder, and the room almost shook with the force of the banging, crashing bed frame. Blaine was gasping for air, the wood under his fists creaking from the force as he lay there and watched Kurt ride him. Kurt's entire expression was so open, so beautifully open and aching with the force of what was happening to his body. Every spark of pleasure flickered in his eyes as he kept moving, his body glinting with streaks of sweat under the dim light.

He squeezed tight when the rush hit him, the sticky heat of Blaine coming deep inside, grappling frantically at Kurt’s hips as his breath punched out of him in a string of cusses, book-ended with Kurt’s name over and over.

Kurt watched Blaine come undone, privately amused and stroking at Blaine’s thigh behind him as he slowed down his pace and sat still, unwilling to let Blaine’s softening cock slip out of him just yet. There was something sweet about the way Blaine pawed at his body, like worship. Blaine’s expressions hid nothing – his face showed every flinch, every whimpering, pleading look as Kurt squeezed down around his oversensitive cock. Kurt loved that look, that begging, frantic look on Blaine's face, knowing how much pleasure he was feeling and how close it was to pain.

Kurt felt the sensation building in his hips, that low pooling heat that came right before his orgasm. He squeezed down again and Blaine cried out, fingers digging harshly into the muscles of Kurt’s ass.

“Not yet,” Kurt warned, fisting himself again and tipping his head back at the sharp lick of electricity that rode up his spine.

Blaine’s eyes fell to Kurt’s hand, and he watched under half-lidded eyes as the red, slick head of Kurt’s cock bobbed in and out of his fist and finally spilled across Blaine’s chest. Kurt’s feverish cries were met with Blaine’s own hissing groan as Kurt came, and his entire body constricted. “FUCK. Kurt, I’m still inside you.”

“Mmm,” Kurt barely made the noise, eyes still closed, hand rubbing an absently over the curve of his ass. “I know.”

Blaine’s eyes sank down to the wet line and Kurt’s cock on his stomach. With a fierce rush of movement he gripped Kurt’s knees and jerked him forward roughly, sliding him up the bed.

Kurt nearly overbalanced, taken by surprise as Blaine slipped out of him and he nearly toppled over, knees now under Blaine’s armpits and hands smacking into the wall to keep him from falling. Blaine gripped Kurt’s ass with both hands, keeping him still, and sank his mouth over the hot, abused head of Kurt’s cock. When Blaine sucked around him, Kurt screamed, swearing and scraping his fingers down the cracked wall. “BLAINE! FUCK.”

Blaine sucked for another long moment before he slipped his mouth back, licking his lips. “Too much?”

Kurt’s lungs were burning as he tried to find air and his body stuttered violently. “It’s too soon, it’s too much.”

With a smirk, Blaine pressed two fingers against the rim of Kurt again, pushing inside and listening to Kurt’s endless string of moaning sounds. Blaine buried his fingers to the knuckle, slipping them in and out faster and sliding his mouth over Kurt’s cock again. He stroked his other hand up Kurt’s thigh, and listened as he fell apart above him.

“Blaine, oh god, Blaine,” Kurt babbled and scratched at the walls, hips jerking violently at the bombardment of screaming, painful, exquisite sensation sinking into every oversensitive inch of him. “Fuck, Blaine, oh my god, don’t stop.”

Blaine kept going, licking and teasing him slowly, loving every spasm and twitch of Kurt’s body under his fingers and mouth. Kurt was getting hard again, shaking and sweat-damp and screaming for more.

Blaine fucked him for hours, again and again, pushing and tasting and feeling every inch of him. He had no idea when it happened, but somewhere between his third orgasm and Blaine’s cock and fingers buried deep inside him all at once, Kurt forgot his own name.

* * *


Kurt was used to waking up in darkness, sore and exhausted from the fights and whatever Blaine had done to his body the morning before. He was used to drinking bad coffee, and brushing his teeth at nine in the evening, and finding whatever clothes he could that were the least stained.

He was halfway through his usual evening ritual when a familiar tune prickled on the air, an old song he hadn’t heard in a long time. It took him a moment to recognize his cell phone ringtone, and he squinted down the corridor at his room. The song had stopped by the time he reached the doorway, and he stepped inside, toothbrush still hanging from his mouth. Why was his cell phone ringing? He hadn’t charged it in - how long had it been?

He glanced over to the sloping power point and noticed his charger had been pushed awkwardly into the wall.

I am Brittany’s perpetual confusion.

The phone began to trill again, and he caught sight of it rattling across a floorboard. Leaning over the bed, he picked it up and stared for a moment at the flashing name.

With a sigh, he answered. “What is it, Finn?”

“Dude, you’ve been ignoring my calls for weeks, what the hell is wrong with you?”

Kurt sat down, waving his toothbrush at nothing in particular. “I’ve been busy, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, you’re insane. I went by your place, and everything’s switched off.”

“We’re asleep during the day,” Kurt told him flatly.

“Not the haunted fucking mansion you're squatting in, your actual home,” Finn said angrily. “Oh, and I talked to Blaine.”

Kurt stilled, eyes shooting wide. “What?”

“I talked to Blaine, man,” Finn insisted. “I know.”

“You know what?” Kurt demanded. “And what the fuck kind of business do you have talking to Blaine? You don’t even know him.”

“What – Kurt, what is wrong with you? It’s Blaine,” Finn argued, and Kurt felt his brow knit in confusion. “He said he saw you in LA a month ago, said you saw him but you didn’t say anything. I asked him if you’re living with him, he said no.”

Kurt recoiled. “What the fuck? Finn, this isn’t funny. Just. Stay out of my life, will you?”

“Kurt, wait, he wants to help-”

Kurt launched the phone across the room violently, watching it shatter into several pieces on the far wall.

Glaring at the broken shards, he tried to calm his breathing. What the fuck was Finn talking about?

Something sharp shot through his chest like a warning, like a memory right on the tip of his mind. He felt panic seize him, and dropped his toothbrush in a rush to the door. “Blaine? Blaine?”

Kurt tore through every room of the house, calling out, trying to find him. The house was silent.

He staggered back into the kitchen and sighed at the empty benches all around him.

Lightning fired in his veins. The benches were empty…

Where was all the soap?

In a split second he felt his heart stop.

We have lost cabin pressure.

The world flooded back to him, the last four weeks in words that bled together. He knew exactly where Blaine was.

It was a controlled explosion, they knew what they were doing.

Who would want to blow up an apartment building?

I’d fight my boss. Or my whole office.

Something so common, but with enough soap, you can pretty much blow up anything.

His feet moved faster than his mind as he bolted around the corner, crashing frantically into the dresser by the back door and scrambling around in the drawers for what he needed. He pushed out the flimsy screen door and let it flap shut in his wake, pounding down the asphalt barefoot and barely feeling the cut and tear of the rough pavement and shards of broken glass along the way.

It took him nearly thirty minutes to run to his office building, body in full flight, legs pumping battery acid and burning. By the time he pressed the button for the elevator to the basement he was keeping himself upright by pure force of will.

He re-gathered himself as the elevator descended and chimed like a funeral bell, doors sliding sluggishly open.

Blaine smiled at him from the other side.

“I was wondering when you’d get here.”

* * *


Blaine was wearing those same jeans he always wore and that same old long sleeve shirt, but his face was different. The look in his eyes was wrong, the way he was standing. Kurt flinched at the sound of his voice, staggering out of the lift sideways to pin himself against the wall and keep himself steady.

“Who are you?”

Blaine shrugged. “Who are any of us, really?”

Kurt shook his head in frustration, eyes falling shut for a moment as he kept trying to even out his breath. “You’re not really Blaine,” he managed to say slowly through gritted teeth.

Blaine smiled at him. “No, I’m not.”

“Who are you, what - what are you?”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Blaine asked, amused.

Kurt lifted the hand holding the gun. “I’m asking the questions, who the fuck are you?”

Blaine didn’t even glance at the weapon, his eyes stayed on Kurt.

“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?” Kurt shouted, rage burning under his skin.

“All those things,” Blaine said brightly, almost cheerfully, “that we did. You don’t think there’s anything off about that, anything that didn’t quite fit?”

Kurt’s eyes flashed back and forth as he tried to understand.

“Why did you come here?” Blaine asked, lifting his arms and looking around the basement.

“Because you’re going to blow this up,” Kurt waved the gun at the structure overhead. “This office, I hate it. You know I do. You’re going to blow it up, like you blew up my apartment.”

“Did I?” Blaine asked, his brow lifting.

Kurt cried out in frustration and screamed, “WHO ARE YOU?”

Blaine fixed him with a dark, knowing smile. “What’s the recipe for soap?”

Kurt knew it. He knew, and as it rushed into his mind as clear as a photograph, he suddenly knew everything.

“Oh god,” he felt himself sinking down the wall.

“Welcome to ground zero,” Blaine said, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“No,” Kurt felt the air punch out of his lungs, eyes wide with shock. “Oh god.”

“You can say it,” Blaine teased, “it’s not like there’s anybody here to hear you.”

Kurt’s mouth trembled around the words. “You’re me.”

“And we have a winner,” Blaine announced giddily, throwing his arms in the air.

Kurt felt everything compress and fall away, like water and glass kicking out from a point of impact. There was nothing now. Nothing was real.

Mind spinning and slack with shock, he swayed out of his control and tried to piece together the last four weeks. Blaine was humming, singing a soft song he knew, and it pulled him sharply from his spiraling state. He glanced over, rage firing in his veins, and cocked the gun.

Blaine looked at it, this time. “You do realise you’re pointing your gun at your imaginary friend?”

“No,” Kurt growled. “It can’t be, because – all the things we did,” Kurt felt his hand shaking violently. “We spoke to people, both of us.”

“Nope,” Blaine shrugged. “Sometimes, it was you. Sometimes, you were me. At Fight Club, you were me.”

“At home?” Kurt almost whispered.

Blaine’s mouth curved into a wicked smile. “You.”

Kurt closed his eyes, flooded all at once with frantic flashing memories. Lying on the floor of the broken house, pants pushed down, pumping himself hard and rough. Pressing himself into the wall of the shower, his own fingers pushing inside, his own broken sounds echoing off the walls. In the bathtub, on the floor, in bed. His fingers, his palms, sometimes the help of something bigger.

“You didn’t really think it was a bomb in your suitcase, did you?” Blaine asked lightly, almost mocking him.

Kurt shook, and viciously waved the gun. “No,” he uttered brokenly, tears streaming down his face.

“Sorry, but,” Blaine winced dramatically. “Yes.”

Kurt couldn’t swallow the lump in his throat, couldn’t feel past the burning streaks of his own tears down his face.

I am Kurt’s shattered heart.

“Oh god,” he gasped around sharp intakes of air as the shock set in again. “I was alone. I’ve always been alone.”

Blaine watched him, expressionless.

Kurt let out a quiet, frustrated scream from the bottom of his lungs. “How could you do this?”

“You’re talking to yourself, you know that?” Blaine asked genuinely.

Kurt searched the empty space in front of him, desperate for it all to have been some kind of dream. “Stop it.” He sobbed quietly, trying to piece together the fractured memories of the last four weeks. “Why?”

Blaine rolled his shoulders in a shrug, the same full-body shrug Kurt knew so well. “You were triggered. And then, you just kind of - stopped.”

“Triggered?” Kurt asked, voice high and lost.

“You don’t remember?” Blaine asked, seemingly annoyed. “Well, no, of course you don’t remember, half your life for the last month has been imaginary.”

Kurt screwed his eyes shut tight, desperately trying to will away the nightmare.

“Ever wonder why you hate your job?” Blaine asked. “Why you’re numb, all the time? It’s been building. It’s been building a long, long time.”

“What has?”

“This,” Blaine pointed between the two of them. “Me.”

“Why you? What – I don’t understand,” Kurt choked out wetly.

Blaine crouched down, closer now, and looked straight into Kurt’s eyes. “You saw him in LA,” he said. “You saw him, and you broke. Because sometimes, everything that’s wrong with your life, everything that’s been gnawing at you, clawing inside you, everything you broke – can come down to one person.”

Kurt was panting, staring into huge green-brown eyes and unable to feel his legs beneath him.

“You remember coming out here. Everything you sacrificed to do it. Everything you lost because you failed. So you gave up. You took a boring as fuck job in a boring as fuck office, and you became fucking mediocre,” Blaine was yelling now, but his voice softened at the end. “You and me? We weren’t made for mediocre.”

“Blaine,” Kurt breathed, heat flooding his chest.

Memories flashed back. A blazer, a hand in his, an old familiar song.

The smell of coffee.

“Oh god. Blaine is real.”

“He was always real,” Blaine chided. “But you can’t have him. Because you can’t face him. So you made me.”

“Why. Why you? When you’re the same?”

“I’m not the same,” Blaine shifted and leaned back against a pillar, entirely too casual for someone with a gun pointed at him. But then, Kurt supposed, he wasn’t real. He wasn’t real.

“You are, you’re – Blaine.”

“I’m the part of you that needs him,” Blaine confessed. “The part of you that wants to belong to him again. All you want is to belong. So I play that part, I’m the bad guy,” he waved his arms exaggeratedly. “Because you need to be the good guy in your own story. And we both know you’re not.”

Kurt felt his frame shake as he slid the rest of the way to the floor, the gun falling away from him and skittering across the concrete.

Blaine fixed him with a sympathetic gaze, and crouched down to the same level again. “You’re better now,” he told him.

“Better than what?” Kurt sobbed.

“Than before,” Blaine said. “You know, now. You’ve opened your eyes. And you know more than you think you do.”

“Stop talking in fucking riddles!” Kurt spat angrily.

Suddenly, his eyes blew wide with realisation. “Oh god, the bomb. I blew up my apartment? This place - where, where is it?”

“We both know you’d never hurt anybody. Not deliberately,” Blaine scolded him.

Kurt swallowed back tears, stunned. No. We wouldn’t. He knew he wouldn’t.

“There was no bomb,” he realised aloud. “Either time.”

Blaine gave him a nod in confirmation.

A swell of relief mixed with the throbbing in his head, blood pounding in his ears as reality kept crashing down around him.

“What am I now?” Kurt looked down at his shaking hands. “What did you – what did we do?”

“I did what you wanted,” Blaine insisted. “You slept, I worked.”

“I was always tired,” Kurt said absently, like he couldn’t keep the words in. “Oh god.”

“It’ll pass,” Blaine said. “You’re stronger than this moment. This is rock-bottom. Ground zero. And now, it’s only up from here.”

Kurt sobbed around a desperate breath, fighting for air.

“You know more than you realise.”

“What the hell does that even mean!?” Kurt cried, exasperated.

Blaine reached over and gathered the gun in his hands. “What was the first thing I ever promised you?”

Kurt blinked. “What?”

“The day we ‘met’,” Blaine continued, hands flicking up into airquotes around the gun. “The first thing I ever promised you, when you were sitting on that plane.”

Kurt tried to remember, sorting through the shattered pieces of reality and fantasy that were jumbled and melting together in his mind.

Blaine smiled. “I promise you he’ll come back, at the end.”

Lost in a blur of realisation, Kurt stared at him. “It was you. You charged my cell. You knew Finn would call him.”

“And I left a note,” Blaine smiled. “So being clever is really working out for you, after all.”

Kurt felt his breathing quicken as Blaine lifted the gun, and pointed it at him.

“You ready?”

Beside him, the elevator sprang to life and whirred as it ascended.

“What are you doing?” he asked, eyeing the gun carefully.

Blaine smiled. “This is how we set each other free.”

And he fired.

* * *


“Kurt? KURT, FUCK, oh my god!”

He felt a weight on his thighs, felt the press of hands on his chest, stirring him from unconsciousness. “What? Where am – what’s – Blaine?”

Blaine hovered over him, hands fiercely pressing into the wound on his shoulder to stop the bleeding. “Kurt you’ve been shot! Oh my god. Fuck. Oh my god, we have to get you to a hospital!”

He could smell him, the strange lingering scent he memorised so long ago, that heady mix of sweat and some kind of cologne. He was older, so much older than Kurt remembered, but he wore it so well – the lines of his face still so beautiful, even under the neon lights of the basement. His hair was loose, barely gelled and his eyes were bright with fear.

Kurt heard Blaine’s voice rattling off details frantically, begging for someone to hurry, but it seemed so far away.

Pocketing his phone from the 911 call, Blaine kicked away the gun where it had fallen from Kurt’s hand. “Why – what did you do? Kurt, stay with me,” Blaine was terrified, and his hands were still all over Kurt, clinging frantically like he might lose him if he let go.

“Blaine, Blaine, I’m alright,” Kurt waved a limp hand. “I’ve been – I’ve been sick, my head, I – I’ve been lost for a while now. I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have to deal with this,” he tried to push himself up the wall, tried to get to his feet, but Blaine pressed him back and held him still. The motion sparked a warm rush of familiarity. Kurt smiled weakly at him. “You’re here.”

“I’m here, I’ve got you,” he said, his voice wavering slightly, and Kurt found himself leaning into the warmth of those hands.

The weight of Blaine on his lap grounded him, and he wondered why he wasn’t in more pain. He just shot himself, he’d actually just shot himself in the shoulder, but nothing hurt. Blaine had him, Blaine was looking at him, and everything would be alright.

Blaine’s mouth curved into a smile that was barely a smile at all, just another worried expression trying to hold back the fear that was etched into his expression.

“Talk to me,” Kurt said softly. “Please just. Talk to me.”

“I thought you were dead,” Blaine admitted in a near-whisper. “When I stepped off that elevator, you were – I thought. I just,” his words were coming out harsh and erratic on fast-paced breaths. He composed himself quickly, and closed his eyes, head shaking slightly. “I missed you. I’m sorry, god, this is my fault. I should have been here sooner.”

“This couldn’t be any further from being your fault,” Kurt assured him, his voice even now, eyes half-lidded and lazy from the bloodloss. “This was all me. I had to fix it, I had to," his head drooped and swung back up. "I had to work through it. But it's over now.”

Blaine’s lip was trembling. “It doesn’t matter,” he said softly. “I should have been here.”

He fixed Blaine with an adoring, disbelieving gaze. How was it after everything, after all the things Kurt broke, he was always there to rescue him. Even from himself.

I am Blaine’s unconditional love.

The siren’s whooping echoed off the walls of the basement carpark, and Blaine looked up eagerly, shifting in Kurt’s lap. “They’re here, just hold on.”

Kurt’s fingers clung weakly to the edges of Blaine’s shirt. “I am.”

Blaine leaned in and kissed him, softly and slowly, pressing their mouths together and tasting salt on Kurt’s lips. He pulled back, and pressed another kiss to Kurt’s forehead, resting his cheek there and waiting.

Kurt closed his eyes, his mind swaying and clouded with what might have been shock, or pain, or maybe happiness. He began to forget the names of things.

“Will you stay?” he mumbled under the clanging noises of a stretched and the footfalls of paramedics.

Blaine pulled back and looked down at him. “I’m not going anywhere, ever. I promise you. Just. Stay with me, please.”

Kurt smiled, but his mouth barely moved. “I love you. I never,” he tried to get the words through the haze in his face and mouth. “I never stopped loving you.”

Blaine kissed him again quickly, and moved back off his lap. “Neither did I.”

He felt a strange wash of cold as Blaine moved away, and the strong hands of the paramedics reached him just as he passed out again.

I am Kurt Hummel’s second chance.

(FIN)