telefilm: blaine anderson

Le nuove storie sono in alto.

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All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
Blaine covers up Leo’s plate with another plate, to make sure the food doesn’t get cold, and as soon as he does that the truth of his situation – the fact that he just spent almost two hours of his life to roast chicken breast and get some French fries ready for a kid that’s not going to come home in time for dinner, if he comes home at all tonight – hits him right in the face, and he falls back into his chair, and he has to bite his inner cheek until it bleeds to give himself the chance to focus on a more superficial, less overwhelming pain than the deeper one he’s feeling, to stop himself from crying.

He has no idea when he started trying to manage pain like that. He’s not sure that’s completely healthy, but then again he’s not even sure what he’s doing with Leo right now is completely healthy at all, and besides he already knows quite clearly that nothing he’s ever done with Leo since he was fifteen years old has ever been healthy, in any way, so what’s some twisted pain-management system going to add to all that now? Is there even a point in worrying about the unhealthiness of the self-preserving processes his mind has decided to use right now, when there’s unhealthiness everywhere he looks at when he turns around? In the path that led him – them, actually, both Leo and him – here, and possibly in every chance at a future together they have, if they have any at all?

He sighs deeply, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. He presses his forehead against his palms, hard. His hands are cold and he’s not even sure why, at this point. He feels sick, but he doesn’t know if it’s physical or mental. Besides, it’s probably a mix of the two. And at this point he doesn’t even care much for the source of his sickness – he’s been living side by side with sickness itself for four months, now. It’s a part of his being, no more, no less than his son is, or his job, or his house.

Perhaps a little more than his job and his house, at this point. Since he’s had to basically put the first on hold, and sell the other to buy the new one in Lima.

Doctor Williams’ voice comes to his mind, and he closes his eyes, listening to her. “Leo needs you. You’ve been running from your responsibilities towards him long enough, mister Anderson. It’s time to stop.”

He doesn’t like doctor Williams, in the same way people don’t like books or movies that are too intense and speak in much too details of a deep part of themselves, something they thought they were professionals at hiding, something they find out was no secret at all, because there it was, written with black ink on white paper or turned into moving pictures on film by some inspired hand living thousands of miles from them. A person they never knew, someone they’ll never know, knows something about them. Something so intimate they never spoke about it, not even with their closest friends.

He feels the same about doctor Williams. He’s fascinated with her, because she’s absolutely remarkable, a strong, competent, extremely smart woman, but at the same time he finds her unbearable, and he tries not to ever be alone with her for more than half an hour every time. She makes him feel naked in the most obvious, most frustrating way. She sees right through him, past his attitude, his formality, past his coldness, when he tries to use it against her. She has arrows that hit right where he’s the softest, in the hidden core of his own self. The guilty one.

Strange thing, guilt. He always thought it had to work not much differently than pain. You pile it up, and at some point it’s too much, and you get desensitized, you don’t even feel it anymore. But guilt’s different. You pile it up, and you just keep doing it. You keep thinking at some point you’re going to cross some invisible line, that some ideal level will be passed, and in that moment, finally, you’ll be free. But it never comes, and you never are. There are oceans of guilt inside him, when it comes to Leo. And there’s a crack at the bottom of those oceans, a wound open on the deepest part of his soul, that keeps pouring water out. But that’s never going to be enough to drown.

Somehow, he connects the thought of guilt to Timmy, and his heart shrinks to the size of a marble when that happens. Timmy doesn’t really understand what’s going on – of course he doesn’t, he’s too young for that – but he’s old enough to know when something important changes, and he’s sensed the difference when they moved here. He was torn away from Westerville, from his grandparents – the last, thin thread connecting him to the memory of his mother –, from school and the few friends he had already made. What will he remember of this, once he grows up? Will he remember his father like a sorry, sad thing, unable to keep an unstable kid under control? Will he remember Leo as he knew him before, a strong, happy young man, ready to conquer the world, or as the messed up, crazy boy he’s become thanks to him? That is, if he ends up remembering anything at all. Blaine’s not sure he will. He’s not even sure if he’d rather him to forget or not, honestly. What he’s doing with his life – and with Leo’s life, more importantly – seems somehow crucial enough for him to want his son to remember it. But it’s a painful thing, at the same time. He’s not sure he could ever be able to wish something painful to happen to Timmy. Even if it’s only a memory.

He stands up, annoyed at himself for his own thoughts. He’s found out more times than he cares to admit that every time he’s waiting for Leo to come back home his mind tends to start running around in circles over the same trail of thoughts, over and over again. It’s an endless road to run, and he’s already bored of it. He prefers doing something practical. Using his hands helps him not to notice how slow the passing of time is.

He starts by washing the dishes. He could simply put them in the dishwasher, but that would defeat the purpose: it’d only take him a couple of minutes, and that’s not what he wants. He wants to lose himself into irrelevant chores, he wants to drown his sadness in the idea of still being able to do something, and it doesn’t matter if it’s something inconsequential, stupid, even, what matters is that he gets it done. That way, he can delude himself into thinking there’s no task he can’t complete, even if he hasn’t completed it yet. Some would say being able to complete the task of washing the dishes shouldn’t be taken as an assurance in the sense of being able to complete any other task at all, but Blaine will take it. He’d take pretty much anything, right now, if he has to be honest about it.

At some point between the pan and the grill, he blacks out. He wouldn’t be able to describe it any better. He’s still with his hands under the water, soapy and red with how hot the water is, when he hears the lock turn, and the door in the hall open up.

Leo’s back.

The door is being slammed open so hard it hits the wall and bounces back. “Fuck you, stupid thing,” Leo hisses, hitting it open again. He’s drunk, Blaine can hear it in his voice. He’s also angry, but that’s got nothing to do with the drunkenness. That’s just what Leo is. Angry, before anything else.

He turns off the water and puts the grill down at the bottom of the sink. He watches the bubbly water run down the drain until it’s all gone, trying to give himself and Leo time. He can still hear him – he kicks the door closed, throws his keys on the console taking particular care into making as much noise as humanly possible and then starts wandering in the hall and sitting room hitting every single wall and piece of furniture, threatening to topple something over with each and every movement.

Blaine sighs, closing his eyes for a moment. Then he dries his hands and joins him in the other room.

He doesn’t think he will ever be able to adjust to Leo’s conditions when he finally comes back home every night. He’s not just high, or drunk, he’s miserable. He doesn’t even look like a human being anymore, more like a wreck of one. He’s thinner than he’s ever been – and he used to be such a healthy young man, with broad shoulders, slender but strong arms, full facial features which had just then, and he was twenty-two, started to sharpen out in very masculine corners. And he’s dirty, of course. Every night he’s dirty. He puts clean clothes on when he goes out in the early evening – of course he does, dirty clothes would be a problem cruising, wouldn’t they? – but there’s no tell about the conditions those clean clothes will be once he steps back home later. Usually, it’s just spilled drinks. Sometimes it’s come. When it’s been a bad night and he got into a fight with someone, there’s blood.

There’s no blood on him tonight, but something’s there. Whether it’s come or alcohol, in the darkness Blaine can’t see. He’s pretty sure once he gets closer to him he’ll know, and so he fights against the need to run away that Leo’s conditions always push out of the back of his mind every time he sees him like that, and he moves towards him. Slowly, like he’d do with a feral beast. Trying not to make things worse.

Leo sees him before he can attempt to say something.

“Ah, look who’s there,” his voice is mean, a sharp object, a weapon to cut him, “Hi, daddy. I see you waited up for me again,” he says, and he finishes the sentence with a cruel, harsh laughter, underlining how ridiculous it was of him to do so. Blaine thinks about Timmy, asleep in his bedroom upstairs. He hopes his son doesn’t wake up. He’s not ready to explain something like this to him.

“Leo,” he says, trying to sound calm, controlled, reasonable, “Lower your voice, please.”

“Why you hiding in the darkness, huh?” Leo pretends not to have heard him, and keeps talking louder than he knows he should. Blaine tried to set down rules, when Leo first moved in, but he’s not even sure Leo ever listened to them, let alone memorizing them. “You ashamed of something? You brought someone home while I wasn’t here, right? Come on, confess. You’ll feel better, afterwards.”

“You know very well I don’t take people home when Timmy’s here, Leo,” he answers, “Or when you are, for that matter.”

The wicked smile Leo was sporting up to a second before fades away in a moment upon hearing those words. He frowns, clutching his fists down his sides. “So what? You want a fucking award for that? Father of the year! You happy now?”

Blaine inhales and exhales slowly, trying to keep himself calm, keep himself focused. He knows there’s no talking with Leo, when he’s like that. Or better yet, there’s no reasoning with him. The only thing he can achieve by talking, right now, is convince him to go to bed, perhaps after having washed himself a little.

“You know very well I’m not, Leo,” he says.

“You keep saying that,” Leo shrugs, taking off his jacket and letting it fall carelessly to the ground, “You know very well, Leo. I don’t know shit, old man. But,” the smile comes back, suddenly as it had disappeared. It’s like a separate entity, something with a life of its own. It takes possession of Leo’s body and turns him into a whole different person, somebody Blaine doesn’t know, somebody he fears, even. “I found out something interesting, tonight. You wanna know what?”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t,” he answers, looking away from him, “And I think you know that very well too.”

Leo snickers, a childish sound with a tainted quality to it. Absolutely terrifying. “Yeah, I do know that. I’m still gonna tell, if you don’t mind. Actually, I’m gonna tell if you mind too, because honestly, I don’t give a fuck about it,” he shrugs. “So, you ready? Here it comes. There was this man at the bar. Around fifty years old.”

Blaine closes his eyes, holding his breath for a moment. He was hoping he could skip this, at least for tonight. Leo seemed out of his mind enough to forget about it. But no, that would’ve been too good. He has to go through it, now. The account of Leo’s nightly sex adventures.

“He was a real work of art, if you ask me. Yeah, I see you’re not asking, still, I’m gonna tell. So fucking handsome, you know? And so out of place in a place like that. Kids having fun all around him and then him, wearing a fucking gray suit, tailored stuff, I’m telling you, must’ve costed a fortune, the real deal, I’m talking big money, here, even more than you, if I had to guess. And he just sat at the bar, you know, drinking. Looking.” He grins, tilting his head like some sort of evil creature of the night, something out of a nightmare, with that ridiculously full mass of curly black hair as if hanging on a neck seemingly too thin to bear the weight of it. “Looking at the kids, of course. That should’ve given me a hint, right? But I was distracted, you see. I had swallowed something, dunno what, really, and I had been drinking for at least two hours straight by then. Well, he was fucking gorgeous, so I thought, you know what, whatever, let’s hit on the creepy old fucker, let’s see what he’s got for me.”

“Leo, lower your voice,” he tries again. He moves a step closer, and Leo moves a step back, leaving behind a faint scent of vodka and mint – it was a spilled drink, then. Thank God. Blaine thinks he’ll stay back, but Leo rethinks it, and steps forward again, smirking. If this is a war, Blaine is already losing it, because his opponent isn’t scared of him, and in war the ability to strike fear into the heart of your enemy is the only advantage that counts for something.

God, it kills him to think of Leo in these terms.

“What if young Timmy hears everything I have to say, huh?” Leo says, defiantly, “It’s a good cautionary tale. Just listen to it till the end, there’s a good moral to this story, you’ll love it. So, I walk to him and I swear, I’m so fucking high I can’t see his face. If the fucker had raped me and I had to describe him for the police, I’d just go with ‘I guess he had eyes’, nothing more, I swear,” and he laughs about it, as if he had just made the funniest joke ever heard. “But anyway. He looked at me as if he wasn’t even interested in me, but I knew better. Christ, I looked at least three or four years younger than anyone else in the fucking room, he had to be interested in me, am I right? In fact,” he smiles again, “He was.”

“Leo, enough,” Blaine raises his voice, feeling his self-control hopelessly slipping through his fingers. Something that’s never changed about Leo – his upsetting ability to always hit right when it hurts him the most. “I don’t want to listen to that.”

“Too bad you’re going to,” Leo answers right away, “Unless you wanna kick me out the house, of course. That what you’re gonna do? No? Then shut the fuck up and let me finish, this is where it gets interesting. So, here we are, me and Mr. Too Cool For This Shit, and I’m like hey, you wanna hook up?, and he’s like get lost, kid, I just wanna finish my drink, but I knew what to say to change the tide, you know? So I get closer and I tell him hey, hey, dude, wanna know something cool? I’m seventeen.”

Blaine shivers, averting his eyes. His fists are already shaking and he can’t stand the smile on Leo’s face one minute longer.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks, sounding weaker than he should, “Why do you keep telling me these things?”

“Because it pleases me,” Leo answers, “Doctor Williams says the search for pleasure is natural and healthy. You want me to do natural and healthy shit, right? Of course you do. It’s not my fault if what’s natural and healthy for me isn’t what’s natural and healthy for most people. Guess who I have to thank for that?”

“Leo—“

“Back to my man, anyway. I tell him I’m seventeen, his whole face lightens up. I swear, if I had come at him juggling crystal meth he couldn’t have been happier. It was almost cute, in a way. But it was more funny than cute. Like, seriously, he believed me. He was so desperate for underage ass he believed me.” He laughs again, shaking his head. “Amazing. He tells me I shouldn’t be there so late at night, you know, this is not a place for young kids like you, he says, God, he was so convincing I almost fell for it. But then when he told me he had his car outside and he’d be happy to drive me home, then I knew I had chosen him right. So of course I followed him, pretending to believe him. And in the car, I pretended to fall asleep. I didn’t want any conversation with him, you know, I think it would’ve spoiled the magic. I wanted him as raw and close to his true self as possible. I could sense there was something wonderful under that Armani suit. I’m great at sensing wonderful things underneath Armani suits, wouldn’t you say?” he asks with a grin.

“No, I wouldn’t,” his voice is tense and he already can’t take it anymore. He wishes there was a way to stop Leo, something different than walking away. He knows that wouldn’t work. Leo would follow. In one way or another, as himself or taking the form of his sense of guilt towards him, he’d follow him everywhere in the world. Blaine knows that for sure. He already tried it.

“That’s disappointing,” Leo puts his hands on his hips and tilts his head the other way, pouting, “You’re the worst at flattery, anybody ever told you that? My Armani suit, instead, God, he was the best at it. You should’ve heard the things he whispered to me while he thought me asleep. You’re such a pretty boy, aren’t you? You’re so small and fragile. Oh, but daddy’s gonna take care of you, won’t he? Yes he will.” Leo laughs again at the memory. “Just awesome. I wish I recorded him, that way I could show you. I was too taken with playing my part, you see, I didn’t want him to smell something wrong. I was amazing, best actor ever, you would’ve been proud of me.”

“I doubt it,” he says, and he uses all the harshness he’s capable of, on purpose. He wishes he could crush him, sometimes, reduce him to a perpetually non-belligerent state. Maybe that would make things easier.

“Christ, Anderson, if I gave a fuck, that would’ve killed me,” Leo brings both hands over his own heart. He’s pretending to be hurt, and underneath Blaine can see he actually is really hurt. He doesn’t even know what’s the saddest part of all this. Maybe they’re all the saddest part, every single part of it. “So, the car finally stops and I take that as a hint. I pretend to wake up that very moment, and he believes it. So I play confused, you know, where are we?, this isn’t my house, and I’m all whiny and whimpering like a five years old child, and I swear, that fucking makes him hard, right there, right then. I can see his fucking dick swell in his pants, it’s amazing. God, I think, this is gonna be good. He picks me up and tells me not to worry, that I must’ve taken some bad pills from someone at the club, I shit you not, he really said bad pills, can you even listen to this shit?, and he says he’s gonna take care of me, do I want him to take care of me?, and that’s— that’s when I really do my best, you know, ‘cause I’m pretending I really am so stoned I can’t get a fuck straight, and he believes that, and he’s fucking into that, and that’s what comes out of my mouth when he asks if I want him to take care of me: yes, daddy, I said. And he just went nuts.”

Blaine swallows, covering his face with his hand. He tries to turn around. He knows he can’t run, but he wants anyway.

Leo stops him, though. “Don’t fucking move,” he says. Blaine can’t see him anymore, and his voice is cruel, cold. There’s nothing of the lighter tone of before. He’s moved past from the sad comedy he was playing for himself. Now it’s the real deal. Now come the hard blows. “He carried me upstairs. He had a nice house. You could tell he didn’t know what to do with all the fucking money he makes. I’m guessing lawyer, but I really don’t know, and I really don’t care. He drags me to the bed. I say I’m tired, I wanna sleep, just to test him. He fails. Sleep, he says, don’t worry, I’m not gonna do anything. Then he strips me naked, parts my legs and starts fucking me. No condom, no lube, nothing. He didn’t even spit on that sorry excuse for a cock he had between his legs. He just put it in. I kept my eyes closed and he really believed I was asleep. Baby, you feel so good, he told me, so tight. Of course he wasn’t talking about my ass, given I’m loose as shit. And he keeps going, you know, there’s no stopping him, I mean, not that I tried, but the words, man,” he chuckles, and there’s such a desperate undertone to that chuckle Blaine wants to die on the spot, “The words. Shit. Daddy loves you. Daddy loves you so much. Daddy loves that tight little asshole, yeah, daddy loves it around his cock. It simply didn’t end.” He takes a break, breathing in and out. “He got asleep, at some point,” he adds then, “I looked into his pocket. He had a picture of a woman and a young boy in his wallet. Guess the kid’s lucky daddy doesn’t take this shit out on him, huh?”

Blaine knows exactly what happened there. It’s what’s been happening since he came back and took him home. Leo did something he thought he could handle, and that something hit him right back in the face. Not just fucking the guy, but telling him about him too. Something he thought would be fun. And ended up not being fun at all.

“You said there was a moral to this story,” he says when Leo finally falls silent, “But I see none.”

“You’re wrong,” Leo says. His voice is as dark and distant as if it came from a cave at the bottom of the ocean. “Here’s your fucking moral, Anderson: grown up men who don’t stop when they know they’re about to fuck a kid are assholes.” He stops for a moment. Then he turns around, headed towards the stairs. “Something I should’ve learned long ago.”

Blaine doesn’t answer him. He’s got nothing to say to that. Perhaps he could tell him he’s right. That he should’ve steered clear from him right from the start. But he doesn’t have the heart to say that. He’s trying to help him, but he can’t cope with the idea of Leo hating him. It’s selfish of him, he knows. He hopes he can work through it, at some point. That he reaches a state of mind that makes him able to think it’s alright if at the end of this tunnel Leo comes out hating me, what matters is that he makes it out.

He wishes to get there, someday. In the meanwhile, he walks upstairs, swallows everything Leo told him, waits for it to sit at the bottom of his stomach and puts himself to bed for another sleepless night.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Erotico, Introspettivo, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/OC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lemon.
- "The boy who opens the door for him when he rings the doorbell isn’t the same boy he shared an appropriately adolescent teary-eyed goodbye with before departing for Europe, not at all – he can’t be."
Note: Scritta per la terza settimana del COW-T #6, su prompt "scossa". Inteso in senso metaforico, ovviamente, non ci sono terremoti fisici, solo quello erotico-emotivo di Blaine che sta via qualche mese, poi torna a Lima e quando lo fa Leo è UN UOMO.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING NINETEEN

The boy who opens the door for him when he rings the doorbell isn’t the same boy he shared an appropriately adolescent teary-eyed goodbye with before departing for Europe, not at all – he can’t be. Blaine’s been gone for just a little over six months, but Leo’s undergone such a transformation he seems a butterfly finally out of its chrysalis, a completely different human being, though resembling the tiny one he left home six months ago, something almost entirely new. He’s grown taller, his skin looks darker, summer clearly took its toll over the usual winter whiteness of his skin, and he looks like an army of tiny people’s been working at him for nights on end to build him stronger, literally adding layers upon layers of muscles and hard bones on him, to help him go through the change, grow out of his child self and into his man self.

“Blaine…” Leo whispers under his breath, staring at him from the threshold. Then his whole face lightens up with one of those big, big smiles Blaine’s got accustomed to over the years, and for a second he’s the very same boy he left in spring, and he can’t help but smile too.

“Kid,” he says, dropping the bag on the floor to open his arms.

“Blaine!” Leo yells, flying into his embrace. Jesus, he’s grown. He’s as tall as Blaine himself, now, perhaps even half an inch more so, dreadful thought Blaine doesn’t even want to entertain, and not because he feels somehow diminished by Leo outgrowing him, but simply because it gives him quite a precise idea of how much time has passed since he saw him last, and this makes his heart throb painfully if he really thinks about it.

He hugs him tight, Leo’s new frame magically fitting between his arms just as perfectly as his old frame did. “Kid, what ever did they do to you?” he asks chuckling, and Leo backs off, glancing confusedly at him.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve grown so much,” he says, and takes advantage of his being a couple steps away now to watch him fully from up close. He’s not just taller than he was when he left him, he’s bigger. He remembers how thin his arms were before he left, how he could wrap his whole hand around Leo’s slim wrist and how his fingers would touch when he did that. It suddenly hits him, the thought dawning on him with such clarity he feels stupid for not thinking about it straight away. “Have you been going to the gym?”

Leo suddenly blushes, walking backwards into the house to leave him room enough to come in, which Blaine promptly does, carrying his bag with and shutting the door the moment he’s past it. “It’s Adam…” Leo explains, refusing to look at him, “With school and the job and the extra-curricular activities we’re spending way less time together, so…”

“Wait, you have a job?” Blaine asks in half a laughter. Seems like more than just his appearance has changed in the last few months. The lazy teenager he knew back then wouldn’t have lifted a finger to work for all the money in the world.

“Yeah, you know, this,” he says, opening his arms to include all that’s surrounding him, “Isn’t gonna pay for itself.”

“Your parents are making you pay for all this?” Blaine laughs, actually amused at the idea. Something must’ve changed in Kurt too, if he’s letting his baby bird fly out all on his own without even paying for a pair of prosthetic wings, so to speak.

“Yeah,” Leo gestures vaguely, “They say it’s not like I moved to New York for college, this is still Lima, Ohio, and Adam and I could stay home, if we wanted, and attend classes easily. They say this is not really necessary, living near campus, I mean, and so if I really want something unnecessary so bad, I have to work for it.”

“Tough love,” Blaine says, shaking his head, “Preposterous. I don’t believe in tough love.”

“Says the man who usually gives me the cold shoulder whenever I do something he doesn’t like.”

“That’s entirely different,” Blaine chuckles, “I’m trying to educate you.”

“And they aren’t?”

“The fact that I have to do it clearly means they’re not doing a good job, don’t you think?”

“Shut up!” Leo laughs, crossing his arms over his chest, “Sometimes I think they’re right hating you.”

“They most definitely are,” Blaine nods and then sits down on the couch, gesturing for Leo to do the same. He seems a little wary, at first, as if he was wandering what could he do as opposed to what would be inappropriate for him to do after all this time past since they last saw each other.

It’s a short battle, and hunger wins it. In a matter of seconds, Leo’s straddling him on the couch, his long, long legs making the whole thing tragically uneasy for a few horrible seconds that get watered down right away by the blissful feeling of his lips pressing against Blaine’s, of the wet kiss they share when they settle, of the warm hug they find themselves trapped in even after the kiss is over.

Blaine smiles, kissing him on his forehead, speaking against the soft, blackberry-scented mass of his black curly hair. “So you’ve got a job.”

“Yep,” Leo says, hiding his face against Blaine’s neck and rubbing his nose against his skin over and over, “As the charming waiter, mostly.”

“Excuse me?” Blaine asks in a soft chuckle.

“Yeah,” Leo chuckles too, “Adam and I, we’re both working at the same café. He’s there now, he works when I don’t and vice-versa. Anyway, the owner said we were good looking enough that we had to play the charming waiter part. You know, inviting people in and suggesting them to take the most expensive shit and so on.”

“That sounds quite sketchy, if not flat out illegal,” Blaine laughs.

“What people do for a living,” Leo shrugs.

“And when you’re both free, then there’s the gym.”

“Yeah…” Leo sighs, clinging to him a little, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like it, actually I feel better than I ever felt before, it’s like I don’t have to make an effort at doing anything ‘cause I never get tired and shit, but— I mean…”

“What?” Blaine chuckles, searching for his eyes, “What is it?”

Leo looks at him for a second and then looks away again, embarrassed. “I was a little scared you wouldn’t like me anymore.”

Blaine opens his eyes wide, blinking in complete shock. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah…” Leo shrugs again, “Because I’m so different, now.”

“Leo, are you serious?” Blaine can’t help but laugh again, as he moves closer and kisses him on his lips, “Please,” he says in between kisses, “You’re, like, the sexiest you’ve ever been.”

“But I don’t look like a kid anymore,” Leo mutters, Blaine’s kisses melting him already.

“And, as I told you countless times, I’ve never liked kids.”

“So you didn’t like me before.”

“Stop with this nonsense,” Blaine chuckles, “I liked you because it was you, but I don’t have a kid kink. Believe me,” he says, running his tongue over his lips, “I’ve never felt more like ravaging you than I do now.”

Surprisingly, Leo doesn’t blush. Blaine was expecting him to, but he doesn’t. Instead, his eyes turn a darker shade of blue, and start shining of a new, mysterious light Blaine has never seen before.

Definitely the way he looks is not the only thing that changed about him.

“Then what are you waiting for?” he asks invitingly. There’s something tempting and enticing in this voice so low, something that makes it hard for Blaine to hold himself back. It’s not easy to come back after all this time, distance makes them uncomfortable, makes them retreat, makes intimacy harder to achieve, but it’s absolute magic the way their connection’s always able to withstand this, the way they stretch it and then expect it to bounce back in perfect shape like a spring.

Blaine reaches out for him, bringing him in for a hug. He wraps his arms around his waist, reveling in how much thicker it feels, how distinctly he can detect the muscles right underneath his skin. He pulls up Leo’s t-shirt and where there were only hipbones and the soft curve of his belly before there’s an inviting, firm belt of muscles now, leading Blaine’s eyes’ way down to his crotch. “Good Lord,” he says, closing his hands around Leo’s waist to pull him up, making him stand on his knees so he’s at an appropriate height for him to need only to bend over a little to kiss his chest, “Thank God for gyms. A gift to all gay men around the world.”

“I can assure you,” Leo smiles, his hand already lost in Blaine’s hair, pushing him down, “Girls appreciate too.”

Oh, Blaine thinks with a tiny smile that goes, thankfully, completely undetected, so that’s what changed. He’s started fucking around.

There will be time to ask about it, there will be time to let other people in again, but not right now. Right now, he wants to be alone with Leo and the gorgeous young man he became while he was looking away. That’s the only silver lining of having to look away, actually: that when he looks back Leo’s always more beautiful than the last time, and that he keeps falling for him more the longest he’s looked away. Time doesn’t have a meaning for them – if not as a device to make what they have even more precious.

“I appreciate more,” he says as he slides down on the pillows, settling right in front of his crotch. He looks back up at Leo from there, shivering in pleasure when he sees the knowledge of what he’s going to do arise in Leo’s eyes all of a sudden. “Take it out,” he says, and he has to hold a laughter in as he watches Leo hasten to unzip and push down his pants, letting his erection emerge free from his pants and underpants.

His cock seems to have changed too, somehow, it’s grown into shape better, it looks like a man’s cock, and Blaine’s mouth waters at the sight. He swallows and moistens his lips as he holds Leo’s erection in his hand only long enough as he needs to guide it into his own mouth. Then he lets it go, lets his lips and tongue take care of it, and when Leo starts to moan louder and thrust into his mouth Blaine lets him free to do it, without asking him to hold back.

“Blaine,” he says in a little whine, “If you keep going, I’m gonna come.”

The fact that Blaine doesn’t stop blowing him is signal enough that it’s not a problem if he does, and Leo understands it as he always understands what Blaine tells him during the mute conversations they always entertain when they’re having sex. There was a time in the beginning when Blaine needed to be very loud about what he wanted Leo to do, how he wanted him to move and so on, but that time’s been past for a while, now, and Leo always knows what Blaine wants soon enough, and Blaine doesn’t have to ask anymore.

Leo puts both hands on Blaine’s head, keeping it still as he thrusts inside his mouth. Blaine doesn’t even have to move, Leo’s doing all on his own, fucking his mouth more than he’s getting a blowjob done, and when he comes with a loud moan Blaine instantly grabs him by his hips not to make him pull away. He keeps him close, keeps him trapped in the warmth of his mouth, the head of his cock barely touching the back of his throat while he keeps the gag reflex at bay, and then Leo shoots and Blaine swallows, as naturally now that they haven’t met in six months as he’d do when they used to meet every day.

Leo collapses on the couch next to him, his legs all over the place, an arm brought over his face to cover his eyes. His forehead’s shining with perspiration and his lips are all red and swollen with kisses and bites. Blaine crawls over him as if following a primal instinct, and when Leo feels him he brings down the arm and looks at him, instantly offering his mouth for yet another kiss.

Blaine kisses him as he’s going to fuck him, hard and deep, pinning him down on the couch. Leo’s whole body rises for that promise, his cock hardening again almost instantly – thanks teenagers for that. He pulls his pants down blindly and then parts his legs right away, shamelessly offering himself for the taking. And there’s nothing Blaine wants more than taking him, so he pushes his pants down just enough to take his cock out and then guides it towards Leo’s opening, trying to force it open. He’s shut tight like the gates of heaven and this only makes Blaine want to fuck him harder.

“No boys?” he asks against his lips as he rubs his cock all over his opening, smearing pre-come on it.

“A few,” Leo answers confusedly, holding onto his shoulders and swinging his hips to try and take him in faster than Blaine’s planning for him to do, “But no one fucked me.”

“So I was the last,” Blaine says with a rough, deep voice, biting Leo’s lips and demanding another kiss.

Leo simply nods, and then moans louder, crossing his legs behind Blaine’s back, annoyed at his procrastinating. Just push it in, his body says eagerly, and Blaine decides to comply.

He thrusts just once, hard enough to pass through the tight ring of muscles and sheathe himself inside Leo’s body. Leo screams, sinking his nails into his shoulders while he blindly searches for something else to hold on to with his other hand. He ends up finding the back of the couch, and he sinks his nails in that too.

“Fuck,” he says with a shaky voice, a couple small tears born of sheer pain blooming discreetly at the corner of his eyes.

“You alright?” Blaine asks under his breath, kissing him all over his face.

“Fuck yes,” Leo answers with a deeper moan, before swinging his hips again, “Now move. Fuck me. Oh, God, fuck me hard as you can.”

He doesn’t really need to ask, but it’s nice to hear him talk like that, saying things young Leo would’ve never said, especially in broad daylight. There’s no trace of shame nor embarrassment in the way he moves and speaks, now, all that made him childish and unready has disappeared leaving a grown man behind. Unshackled and free, Leo moves wildly underneath him, taking him inside deeper than Blaine remembered he was able to do, asking him to move faster, to fuck him harder, to make him feel it.

He’s never heard him say anything like it, and he loves it. He loves that he’s so wild, he loves how missing him made him ready for him, ready to give all to him. When he comes, a few thrusts later, he makes sure to do it when he’s buried the deepest inside his body. He fills him up with his orgasm because it’s only fair that if Leo gave it all to him, he must do the same in exchange.

Afterwards, he lies on top of him, spent and weary, unable to move. They breathe off one another’s scent, and Blaine doesn’t ever want to leave. These passing moments are the most precious for him, the dearest to him. These passing moments in which leaving’s just a ghost, something that can’t be touched, that Blaine can despise, instead of being something he longs for, something he needs, even, to some extent.

He doesn’t want to think about it, not now. Leo’s breathing more slowly, now, and there’s the tiniest blissful smile on his face. Blaine wants to kiss him, and he does. Leo chuckles against his lips and kisses him back, wrapping his arms around his neck for a few cuddles. “Adam’s gonna be back in an hour or so,” he says, “Let’s keep it in mind if we don’t want him to kick us out the moment he walks in and sees us like that.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Blaine smiles, kissing him again. “Now,” he says, “These boys and girls you were talking about?”

There’s a shadow in Leo’s eyes, it lasts only a moment but it’s there. That enticing darkness’ gone entirely, that special glimmer’s off, but the shadow’s there, an old shadow Blaine’s already seen but doesn’t recognize. It fades away pretty soon, though, and Blaine decides to think maybe it was only embarrassment hitting at last, that his kid’s still his kid, after all, he’s allowed some kid things, every now and then.

Leo starts telling him about the boys and the girls, what he’s done with them, how he met them and how long it lasted. Blaine catches up with the six months he couldn’t spend with him, and pretends not to have ever gone away at all. He’s building a castle on top of a lie that’s just the thinnest layer of ice, he knows that. He only hopes, comes spring, it will melt instead of break down.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Prequel di Adam's Hands Less Than Epic Adventures
Genere: Erotico, Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OC, OC/OC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Angst, Lemon, AU.
- There’s nothing Adam hates more than when Blaine comes visit. Nothing.
Note: Scritta per il MMOM ♥ In realtà è anche una sorta di prequel alla storiona che ho scritto sempre per il MMOM un paio di anni fa, Adam's Hands Less Than Epic Adventure, in cui Adam, diventato recentemente il fidanzato di Leo, correva da Blaine, il di lui ex ragazzo, per farsi insegnare a scopare meglio prima che Leo si annoiasse di lui e decidesse di lasciarlo (bless you, Adam). Questa storia mostra quanti problemi aveva Adam già prima di questo, quando ancora Blaine e Leo stavano insieme e lui era il migliore amico frustrato con una cotta per entrambi.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
IT’S NEVER DARK ENOUGH WHEN YOU DON’T WANNA SEE

There’s nothing he hates more than when Blaine comes visit. Nothing.

He likes to think of this house, the house Leo and him share near college, this place they found for themselves and they’re paying for by themselves, as some sort of sacred domain. It’s a bubble -- their place. People are allowed inside, it’s not forbidden or anything, but they had never brought in people for sex specifically, before Blaine, and this is something unacceptable from his point of view.

It’s not just because he’s jealous.

(Oh, he is. Of course he is. Jealousy consumes him day after day. Jealousy’s been consuming him day after day since attraction became a word with a meaning in his head. Because it’s always been linked to Leo. But Leo never managed to link it back to him.)

It’s that Leo forgets about him entirely, when he’s with somebody. And it’s one thing to know he’s been forgotten, if only for just the few weeks or months the new relationship will last, but it’s another thing entirely to have it rubbed against his face every time the man decides he’s tired of only seeing Leo outside, or in Westerville, and wants to come pay a visit to where his boyfriend lives.

It’s excruciating. Not only he has to live with Leo ignoring him completely when the fucker’s around, but said fucker is absolutely despicable. He’s, like, poster boy for despicability. He’s got it all: he’s cocky, confident, constantly relaxed and at ease in his own skin, he’s rich, famous and living extraordinarily well with it, he’s got the loosened up, snobby and kind of classy New Yorker’s attitude despite being from shit-hole Westerville, he’s a free spirit, he came barging in and teaching Leo questionable things like having an open relationship, fucking around, clubbing all night and all that jazz and, of course, he’s dashingly beautiful. ‘Cause no, obviously, he couldn’t be ugly, he had to have those ridiculously shiny and full hair, that tan, fit body, who the fuck’s so fit passing 40s? It’s just not normal, but he is. No wonder Leo lost his shit about him.

They met almost a year ago, at this point, at one of Leo’s parents’ parties. Apparently they knew each other when Leo was very, very small, because Blaine used to be one of Kurt’s best friends at the time, but as it turns out the man Kurt thought was just one of his best friends was also his ex-boyfriend, and had still a few unresolved issues with him, namely was more or less still romantically attracted to him, so after a few years he basically ran off as far as he could possibly go, so Leo went from seeing him weekly until he was, like, five, to ever see him at all until he was twenty.

Time can work magic on people, and so it did with Blaine, who managed to forget Kurt in fifteen years, and with Leo too, who managed to shrug off easily the fact that once upon a time this man used to make him bounce on his lap offering him sweets before he could even speak, and fall hopelessly in love with him the moment he set eyes upon him again.

They’ve been glued together since that day. Adam’s not sure what happened after that party, but he knows he lost track of Leo that night, and he only saw him again the morning after. Maybe he spent the night with Blaine, maybe he just came back very late. He doesn’t know, honestly he doesn’t care because he’s a practical man and he’s only interested in the final result, which is that now they’re together, they’ve been for months and they spend together every single second they can. Which is already unbearable as it is. Without having to add sharing the house.

Blaine usually comes by unannounced, which means Adam never has the chance to plan something to stay away. If he knew in advance, he’d do things differently. He’d ask Annie to stay at her apartment in the meantime, she’s almost never there anyway. Or he’d go back to his mother for a few days. Sure, it’s a 40 minutes bus ride from his mother’s house to the campus, but he’s never been a lazy person, he doesn’t shy away from early wake ups, he would find a way to make it work. It’d only be for a few days anyway, he wouldn’t mind.

But Blaine never asks and never warns beforehand. He just arrives, acting like he was some God-sent gift to mankind, to show off how perfect man could be if he only worked out a little.

When he arrived this afternoon, Adam was home alone. As it always happens, Leo was out grabbing a coffee with one of his no-ones. This time it was probably Candice, the black haired pretty girl who started working at the tea house a few weeks ago. Leo set his mind on her the moment the manager came in and told him “Leo, this is Candice, show her around, tell her how it works here, then show her to the locker room and have her in her uniform in ten minutes, it’s almost five, the tsunami will hit soon.” She’s extremely pretty, fair-skinned and green-eyed as she is. She’s short and thin and she looks very fragile, but Leo told him she’s strong, she carries boxes upstairs from the storage room like it’s not a big deal, which of course fascinates him – he’s always been mesmerized by this kind of contrast.

Adam has only seen her a couple times, they don’t share turns at the tea house. He doesn’t share turns with Leo anymore either. He used to, but since Candice arrived Leo moved his own to always be there when she is. That’s how Leo is, once he set his mind on someone he turns into a predator, he’s like a lioness, waiting and waiting, flattened on the ground, until his prey comes close enough for him to grab it by its throat and kill it.

Maybe he’s dramatizing a bit. But still.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Candice’s time is clearly over now that Blaine’s here. That’s how their stupid arrangement works. They’re free to have everybody they want, as long as it’s not when they’re together. When they’re together in the same place, they only share one another and no one else is allowed. Adam’s almost sorry for poor Candice. She’s been fooled around with for weeks, and now she’s gonna be discarded with no previous notice. Easily. Just like that.

He knocked on the door as he always does, playing some stupid tune with his knuckles against the wood. That’s how he announces himself. He could ring the bell, but no, that’d be too mainstream. He just knocks. Expecting the whole world to fall in silence just long enough to let them hear him from inside.

Surprisingly enough, more often than not, the world does.

It didn’t have this afternoon, though, it was already silent the moment Blaine arrived. Adam was studying, hunched over his books, and there it was, the stupid knocking. It was awful. It’s always awful when Blaine comes around, but it’s twice as bad when Leo’s not around to welcome him when he arrives, ‘cause he wants to make conversation, he follows Adam around, he asks him questions. Adam already can’t see him without feeling the urge to pin him down on the couch and draw him and smash his face against the wall all at the same time, it’s bad enough without having him follow him around like a fucking puppy, asking questions and saying things with that annoying deep and confident voice of him. Christ, he hates him.

He had to endure it, though. Leo gets angry when he leaves him outside and ignores him. He’s perfectly able to stop speaking with him for days in retaliation. Adam can’t stand it, so he had to stand up, open the door and soldier through every single minute he spent alone with the man, until Leo finally came back and his whole face lightened up in that annoying way it does every time Blaine and him meet, and there, there it was, Adam completely disappearing from Leo’s eyes, the whole world fading away to nothing, leaving only Blaine.

How is it possible that his heart still breaks, after almost a year, every time he sees that happen?

He has locked himself up in his room in retaliation. Not that he thinks this changes anything for Leo, he barely even noticed it. He was disappointed in him, actually. “Come out,” he said, “Don’t be a baby.”

Adam doesn’t know how not to be a baby when it comes to Blaine. He upsets him in so many different ways he doesn’t know how to face him. That’s why he prefers not to, it’s easier like that. Easier than pretending to hate him when he doesn’t, or not to hate him when he really does. He’s not sure yet, it’s something in between. He knows it’d be easier to at least understand what’s going on with him if Leo wasn’t involved, because jealousy makes everything more confused, it muddles feelings up. Sometimes he even gets as far as to think he’d find Blaine to be a perfectly nice human being if it wasn’t for the fact that he put his filthy hands on Leo. And then some other times he wonders if it isn’t the fact that he finds him so goddamn outrageously beautiful clouding his judgement, making him think he could potentially be a nice man when he’s a sick bastard, really, just because he’s used to hold beauty high as the most important judge of character.

He’d like for this to be less fucking conflictual. He wonders why do these things always have to be so fucking conflictual at all. Like, is loving Leo any less conflictual, really? He’s desperate for him, and at the same time he finds the mere idea of getting close to him in a sexual way so upsetting it makes him want to throw up. How can people go on and on about love as if it was life’s most wondrous wonder? All he got from love in twenty years is that it’s confusing, messed up, it deprives you of any control you might pride yourself to hold over your body and it sometimes makes you wanna puke. How’s that for life’s most wondrous wonder.

It’s past 2 AM when they finally come back from their night out. Adam’s lying in bed, still awake, of course. He was waiting for them. He keeps hoping and fearing they’re gonna fight, that Leo’s gonna come back alone, one of these nights, and will knock on his door, asking him if they can sleep together. “We broke up, Adam, we broke up. I’m so sad. Can you hug me?”, something like that. Something he knows Leo would never say. He feels his heart burst if he only thinks about it. It’s dreadful and amazing, like everything else linked to the specific state of mind he slips into whenever he thinks there could be a chance between Leo and him. He’s pretty sure somebody would call it madness.

They’re together, of course. Chuckling softly, not to disturb him. They think him asleep – they always do. Or maybe they’re not thinking about him at all, maybe their voices aren’t so low because they don’t want to disturb him, maybe they just want to keep their happiness all to themselves. If they were too loud about it, they’d already be sharing. Adam knows Leo’s jealous of his happiness with Blaine, of his time with Blaine. It hurts to think that, with him, Leo’s always laughed the loudest. Wasn’t jealous of their happiness enough to keep it quiet.

They walk inside Leo’s bedroom chatting under their breaths. Blaine tells some joke Adam cannot hear, but he can hear Leo’s soft laughter in response. Then the smack of their lips, the click of their tongues. The wet sounds. Adam squeezes his eyes shut and tries counting sheep, to no amount.

They chuckle some more, then get undressed. For a few seconds everything’s the clinking of their belts and the rustling of their clothes. Then their steps, their naked feet on the floor. One of them gets into bed, the other turns the light off and then joins him.

It’s silence, after that. Adam’s heart is beating so hard and fast he almost feels sick.

He barely has time enough to delude himself into believing that silence is sign enough to think they’ve fallen asleep already, and then Leo moans, and Adam wants to die. Damn these cardboard walls, the proximity of their rooms, the endless reserve of energy allowing them to want to fuck despite it being so ridiculously late. Leo moans and Blaine shushes him sweetly, a discrete sound that melts into another kiss. Those wet sounds again. It’s unbearable.

He tries and turn on his stomach, slowly, as silently as possible, not to make them suspect he was awake all the while. A useless courtesy, considering they don’t care about him being awake or asleep. Even if he got out of his bedroom and to the kitchen, even if he started dropping plates on the floor just to hear how the smashing sound would echo through the night, they wouldn’t notice.

He hides his face against the pillow. He bites at his bottom lip and tries to keep it in. Whatever it is that’s pushing to come out. He hopes it’s not tears, he hopes it’s just rage because holding tears back would be as bad as actually crying, right now.

It isn’t tears, though. He realizes it when he feels that push moving. Away from his eyes, away from the tension in his neck and shoulders. It rolls down his spine in a shiver and it pools in his underbelly, drop after drop, growing with every suffocated moan, with every wet kiss.

He’s aroused.

The realization hits him in the face like a punch. It can’t be, must be a nightmare. And yet he’s hard, and his hardness is pushing against the mattress, now, impossible to be left alone.

Leo keeps moaning, beyond the wall. “Yes,” he’s saying. He must be tipsy, ‘cause he’s never so vocal. “Yes, Blaine, harder, right there. God, it feels so good.”

Blaine doesn’t answer, but Adam hears him grunt, hears him breathe heavily. He hears the bed creaking under their shifting weights, and it’s a moment: he closes his eyes and he can see them. Naked on the bed in the blue light of the night. He can see the outlines of their entwined bodies, and so many details. The different grain of their skins, how the texture differs in color and pattern. How softly their curls, so similar to the eye and yet, he likes to think, so different to the touch, bounce with every movement. How their eyelashes flutter. The shiny wetness of their lips. It should be darker. It’s never dark enough when you don’t wanna see.

He doesn’t touch himself. That’d sicken him. The mere thought sickens him already. His hips move, though, and he prefers to think they’re moving of their own volition. He clings to the pillow, pressing his face hard against it as his erection slides up and down against the mattress through the thin fabric of his pajamas pants. He feels hot and sweaty, his muscles ache, he’s breathing so heavily he can’t believe they’re not hearing the wheezing sound echoing through the entire house.

If they do, they don’t seem to notice. More probably they just can’t hear it over the sound of their own noises.

Leo muffles half a yell against Blaine’s skin. He’s coming, and he must’ve bitten Blaine, because he hisses and slaps him on his ass. Adam hears the sound, he hears Leo yell again as the shivers overwhelm him and he bites hard at the pillow as he comes too, shivering as wildly as he thinks Leo’s doing.

He’s virtually following the curve of Blaine’s spine with his fingertips as he relaxes on the bed afterwards, still shaken and unable to tame the wild beating of his own heart. He imagines feeling his weight upon his own body. He imagines feeling the touch of Leo’s fingers over his face and neck. He pictures himself lying in the bed between them. For the very short moment his heart manages to bear the thought, it feels dangerously good.

Then he forces it to the back of his head, locking it away when it starts to sting.

Leo and Blaine chuckle among themselves for a few more minutes, speaking softly under their breaths. They still kiss, every now and then. Adam tries to ignore the wet feeling underneath himself. He doesn’t wanna think about it now. He just wants to sleep.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Erotico, Romantico, Commedia.
Pairing: OC/OC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Interspecies, Dub-con, Lemon, AU.
- Leo and his friends are Space Tourists, which means they're a bunch of teenagers who travel the unexplored planets both within and without the Solar System as a (quite expensive and original) hobby. This time, they've arrived in a very remote and small planet just a few hours from Pluto. The planet hasn't even been named yet, but it sure has a lot of beauty to offer, among which extraordinary high and icy mountains, beautiful lakes with the clearest and warmest water, fascinating big blue flowers and... Cody.
Note: Scritta per la seconda settimana delle Badwrong Weeks, a tema BDSM, Non-con, Dub-con e Violence, su prompt sex pollen :3 Ho sempre voluto scrivere sull'argomento perché è la cosa più sexy ever ma non avevo mai trovato i soggetti adatti finché il Leoverse non mi ha dato la gioia \o\
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
FUCKING POLLEN

He’s been here a few weeks already, and he’s spent with Cody way more time than he should’ve, that’s for sure, but this is the first time he sees him act like this, and it is starting to become quite alarming, in a way.

The first thing Cody does when Leo joins him in the clearing where they usually meet in secret, away from Leo’s friends, of whom Cody’s still quite scared, wary and cautious as he is, is wag his tail as his cat-like ears twitch in his direction. Then he smiles. Then he suddenly sneezes, and the next thing Leo knows is that Cody’s running towards him and soon pins him to the ground, sitting on his lap and rubbing himself against him while kissing his face in a way that’s so completely alien to his usual behavior to make Leo suspect this isn’t Cody at all, but someone else of his same species that looks exactly like him while not being him at all.

He doesn’t even know enough of this planet and its inhabitants to know if such a thing is possible or not, which makes him feel like an idiot for a little while, before Cody kisses him again and makes him lose any contact with reality whatsoever for almost a full minute. But despite how pleasant this is, he knows – he can feel – there’s something wrong. He doesn’t wanna be the kind of guy who takes advantage of a clearly sex-crazed alien creature just because said alien creature’s begging for it. Not when it’s so obvious Cody’s only doing it ‘cause there’s something weird going on with him.

“Cody…” he says, holding him by his shoulders and gently pushing him away from himself, “Not that I’m complaining, but what’s gotten into you?”

Cody sits on his heels a few inches from him, batting his impossibly long and curved eyelashes as he gives him a puzzled look. “What’s gotten into me?” he asks back curiously.

“Are you serious?” Leo groans, passing a hand over his hair as he sits up, “You just assaulted me.”

“What is assault?”

In the few weeks they’ve been meeting, Leo’s been trying to teach him his language. It was funny not to be able to communicate if not through gestures in the beginning, but it had soon become pretty tiring, especially considering the fact that Cody was so damn beautiful Leo had fallen in love with him right away, and he was desperate to get to know him better.

Cody’s been quite the talented student up to now, but every now and then he still trips on a few terms he doesn’t know yet. He’s ridiculously cute when he tilts his head like a confused puppy every time it happens, and Leo doesn’t mind teaching him, but right now he wishes he was up to speed with basic vocabulary, so this conversation would be swifter, and probably a little easier too.

“It means you just jumped on me without reason,” he says with a sigh.

“There is reason!” Cody smiles, his catlike tail swinging slowly behind his back, “The reason is I like you a lot,” he says. And then he sneezes again.

“What— Why are you sneezing so much?”

“What is sneezing?”

“This thing you do,” Leo says, imitating the sound, “You’ve done it twice since I arrived.”

“Ah,” Cody chuckles, crawling towards him on all fours and placing a little kiss on his chin, “It’s the blue flower.”

“The what?” Leo asks, trying to search for his eyes – something that turns to be quite difficult, because the moment Cody’s done kissing his chin he starts kissing him up his jaw, and in less than a few seconds he’s straddling him and sucking his earlobe inside his mouth, covering in tiny bites. Leo feels the vaguely pleasant, vaguely painful puncture of his sharp canines against his skin and moans, putting his hands on his shoulders and trying unsuccessfully to make him pull back. “Cody, listen to me for a second.”

“No,” Cody answers, purring softly in his ear.

“What do you even mean no?!”

“I don’t want to,” Cody explains nonchalantly, letting a hand slide between their bodies and using it to palm him at his crotch, “I wanna do things.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Leo breathes heavily, trying to grab Cody’s wrist to make him stop. He keeps eluding his hold so easily he almost seems slippery. “But this isn’t like you. It’s never happened before. You’re always waiting for me to make the first move.”

“Today it’s me,” Cody simply answers, pushing him down with his back against the ground.

“Yeah, no,” Leo shakes his head, closing his hands around Cody’s hips and holding him still, “That’s not how it works.”

“How do you know how it works?”

“Well, I don’t, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this!” Leo protests, blushing, “You seem a little out of control.”

“You worry too much,” Cody chuckles, placing his hands over Leo’s and moving them away from his hips, freeing himself from his hold. He leans in, pinning his hands to the ground and kissing him on his mouth as he rocks his hips, rubbing against him. Leo’s not proud to admit he’s horny, and the fact that he can feel Cody’s horny too only barely does something to quench his guilt.

“Cody…” he moans, his hips moving in circles to follow Cody’s movements, “I don’t… think this is wise at all, and it’s getting hard for me to think if you distract me like this, so please…”

“But I want you to stop thinking,” Cody answers, kissing him again, “Look.”

He lets go of one of Leo’s wrists, only to hold his hand and guide it between his thighs. He’s hard, but that Leo already knew, and it’s not what Cody wants to show him anyway. He guides his fingers, making them rub against his own opening.

He’s dripping wet.

“Oh, God,” Leo whispers in a strangled voice. They’ve had sex already, more than a few times, but Cody’s never been wet. Leo’s pretty sure – no, he’s entirely sure about it. Given the fact that he’s clearly male, despite him being alien Leo has always taken for granted he would work exactly like a human being, because ears and tail aside he’s almost exactly like him in all things, and so he believed he didn’t have any means to self-lubricate.

Apparently, he was wrong.

“See?” Cody says. His voice sounds low and intense, and it vibrates, “I’m wet.”

“Cody— this has never happened before,” Leo tries to put up some form of resistance, weak as it may be considering the fact that he can’t for his life stop touching Cody’s opening, fascinated as he is by its wetness and warmth, “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be,” Cody insists, rocking his hips. The movement makes Leo’s fingers curl upwards, and they end up slipping inside his body easily, with no friction at all, which makes them both moan in pleasure, especially Cody, whose muscles instantly clench around Leo’s fingers, trapping them inside his body. “I want it…” he whispers, licking his lips and then biting at them, “But not your fingers.”

Leo swallows uneasily, his eyes locked on Cody’s lost expression. He wishes he was strong enough to stop fingering him right now, but he isn’t. He knows this is wrong, he knows Cody’s not himself, he’s even vaguely aware of the fact that he himself doesn’t like the idea of having sex with Cody in these conditions, but he can’t help it. Cody’s so wet, so hot, and his muscles are closing so tightly around his fingers he can’t help wishing for them to be his cock already. “No?” he says, his voice coarse and raw, as he pushes his index and middle fingers deeper inside Cody’s body, “So what else do you want?”

“Your cock,” Cody answers, moving his hips in circles, his fingers wrapped around Leo’s wrist to keep his hand in place underneath himself, “I want it inside,” he says. Then he sneezes again, and Leo whines, covering his eyes with his free hand.

“This…” he breathes out, “This isn’t fair.”

“What is fair?”

“Fair means…” Leo moistens his lips, looking at Cody with heavy-lidded eyes, “Right by you. This isn’t right by you. Or by me.”

“Am I doing something wrong…?” Cody asks distractedly. He sounds almost really concerned, but he can’t stop rocking his hip, which makes pretty clear what his priorities are right now.

“I’m… not even sure,” Leo answers, whining softly, “Frankly, I’m starting not to care anymore.”

Cody sits on his hand and arches his back enough to take his fingers in up to their knuckles, and lets out a soft, low mewling that creeps underneath Leo’s skin, turning his brain off. “Good,” he says. Right after that, Leo holds him by his hip with his free hand ad overturns their position, pushing him on his back on the ground and settling between his spread legs.

He doesn’t even stop fingering him, he doesn’t want to, right now: when Cody was sitting on top of him, he couldn’t see his fingers move in and out Cody’s body, but now he can, and he wants to enjoy the sight. He makes Cody spread his legs wider just to expose him more, and then looks at his opening as it stretches to let his fingers through. He’s so wet he keeps squirting every time Leo pushes his fingers through the ring of muscles, and the squishy sound they produce after each and every thrust is going to his head, making him deaf to the sound of his conscience’s voice.

“Leo…” Cody whines, swinging his hips according to his movements, “Please… I said not your fingers.”

“Yeah, I got it,” Leo slurs, unwillingly pulling his fingers out of him, “Sorry, I got it, I was just— you’re so hot.”

Cody wraps his arms around his neck, covering his face in half-wet kisses. “Put it inside,” he whispers, his legs finding their way around Leo’s waist and crossing behind his back, drawing him closer, “Put it in me.”

Leo just manages to moan as he complies, kissing him voraciously, thrusting his tongue inside Cody’s mouth just as hard as he thrusts with his cock inside him. He’s hard and he fucks him fiercely, but Cody’s body opposes no resistance to that, there’s no friction, no hostility whatsoever, his muscles don’t even clamp around his erection. He’s just so open and wet he gives Leo the impression he could keep thrusting and thrusting until he gets to the bottom of him, until he hits the back of his throat from the inside.

It’s so amazing he doesn’t ever wanna stop. And yet his body can’t take such pleasure for much longer, he already knows that, he can feel it in the way his toes curl in spasms every time pleasure washes over him like a tidal wave. He can feel it in the way his muscles tense to the point of hurting as he wraps Cody in a desperate hug and he can feel it in the way his heartbeat accelerates, in the way his breathing goes wild, broken and erratic every time he pushes inside him.

Cody mewls and moans and growls and hisses, lightly baring his claws and scratching Leo’s shoulder blades through his clothes. Leo groans at the burning feeling, but it’s not real pain, he can feel no pain, pleasure shielding him from it like a suit of armor. He tilts his head and bites down on Cody’s neck, he bites down hard, not in retaliation but because he’s felt Cody’s need for it in the way he scratched him. He wouldn’t know how to explain it, he just knows, and he knows he’s right the moment his teeth tear through Cody’s skin, drawing a little blood, and, as an answer to that, Cody comes hard, shooting all over his stomach.

He comes too, filling him up in long, hot shots that make Cody shiver wildly. When he pulls out, his orgasm drips out of his stretched opening, translucent and thick, and Leo’s shaken with the sudden urge to dive between his thighs and lick him clean. He’s about to do that when Cody grabs his head with both hands and drags him down, kissing him deeply. That distracts him enough and soon the urge’s gone, and Leo vaguely realizes he would’ve done something he’d usually be disgusted to just think about, because it’d be done on Cody, and that simple fact alone would’ve made it sexy, would’ve made it feel right. The lengths he would go just to please him kinda scare him a little, but the thought fades away to nothing as soon as Cody breaks the kiss and looks up at him with those huge baby blue eyes of his, smiling gently, seemingly back to his old sweet self.

“Are you okay?” Leo asks him, stroking his cheek.

Cody tilts his head. “What is okay?”

“It means alright,” Leo explains, “Are you alright? Do you feel good?”

“Ah,” Cody smiles, closing his eyes, “Yes. I feel so, so, so good.”

Leo breathes out, pushing his nose against Cody’s, listening to him as he purrs softly. “You scared me,” he says, “What was all that about, huh?”

“I tried to explain,” Cody chuckles, hugging him, “It’s the blue flower.”

“What the hell is this blue flower even?”

“It’s a flower,” Cody nods, “And it’s blue,” he adds, sneezing.

Leo sighs deeply. “I’m so lucky there are no prisons on this planet,” he says, “I meant, what does this blue flower do?”

“Comes springtime, it releases pollen,” Cody explains, “It affects some of us. My people, I mean.”

“Are you serious?” Leo answers, blinking, “You mean every year when spring comes all your people turn into sex-starved, dripping little animals?”

“Not everyone,” Cody chuckles, “Just a few. I’m the only one in my family, for example.”

“I can’t believe it,” Leo sighs, passing a hand over his face, “Fucking pollen.”

Cody chuckles again, amused by his overdramatic reaction. He kisses him on his nose, and then hugs him again. This is ridiculous, Leo thinks as he hugs him back. But then he closes his eyes and gives in to the soothing smell of Cody’s skin and the soft sound of his voice as he purrs right into his ear, and it doesn’t really matter much anymore.

*

“Yo,” Matt greets him back with a huge smile, ruffling his hair, “We were startin’ to worry. You been gone forever, bro.”

“Sorry,” Leo apologizes, offering him a smile too, “I lost track of time.”

“Doing what?” Adam asks him suspiciously.

Leo shrugs, looking away. “Just walking around,” he lies. He could tell them about Cody, but then they’d want to see him, and he’d have to tell Cody, and he’d run away like he did last time Leo tried talking about it with him, and honestly he doesn’t even know how long they’re gonna stay on this planet, and he doesn’t wanna waste a single minute fighting with him.

“One day I’m gonna follow you,” Annie chuckles, offering him a sandwich that he eagerly accepts. He’s famished. “We missed you today. The lake was amazing, the water was so warm.”

“I’m gonna come with you tomorrow,” he promises, feeling guilty because he knows it’s a promise he will struggle to keep.

He tries not to think about it and grabs a bite of the sandwich. It tastes good, and it makes him feel better for a little while.

Then he sneezes.

Fuck.

Annie, Adam and Matt all turn to look at him, startled by the sound. “What was that?” Adam asks, blinking stupidly, “Why did you sneeze?”

Leo sighs, scratching his itchy nose. “Allergy,” he answers. That’s as close to the truth as he’s gonna go.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/OC, OC/OC.
Rating: PG-13.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Het, OC, Fluff.
- Annie has been selected for a mission on Mars, and this means she's going to be away a year and a half. This also means Adam will soon fall into a pit of drama, loneliness and desperation, if his best doesn't do something to help him snap out of it. And Leo does his best.
Note: Questa fic è principalmente il regalo di compleanno per la mia Tab, che l'ha praticamente richiesta qualche settimana fa XD Ma visto che sono una persona opportunista e prima di valori morali, utilizzo questa storia anche per il settimo turno della Fandom League, che prevedeva che infilassimo nella storia un campo e (la) Madonna. L'ho tirata via, ma ci sta XD
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
FIELDS OF GOLD

Adam opens his eyes to the strong, hot mid-morning sunlight, bathing the hotel room in yellow and white, and to the distant echo of water flowing, and someone singing an old Madonna song.

“Come on, vogue!” Blaine sings from the bathroom, while he clearly has a shower, “Let your body move to the music, mooove to the muuusic!”

Must be a nightmare.

“Ah, there you go, you woke him up,” Leo chuckles, speaking to Blaine, despite him being obviously unable to hear him. He’s too close for comfort, especially at such an ungodly hour (whatever time it is, if he’s just been woken up, it’s an ungodly hour), and Adam instantly retreats, backing away a few inches, even though Leo doesn’t even seem to notice. “You were sleeping so peacefully. Were you dreaming about Annie?” he asks with an evil grin curling his full lips upwards.

Obviously he was.

Lifting a hand and pressing it against his face to move him away as he turns on his side and hides his head under the pillow, Adam groans loudly. “Leave me be,” he says, “I don’t even know where I am. This was a terrible, terrible idea.”

“But you’re here, now,” Leo says cheerfully, as he grabs him by the collar of his t-shirt and tries to drag him out from his hiding place, “Come on, be sociable. Blaine ordered a proper English breakfast and they’re gonna deliver it in ten. If you’re not up by then, I’ll eat your share too.”

“Whatever,” he mutters, “I’m not hungry. I wanna go back home. She might call.”

“Yep, I’m sure that’s exactly what she’s thinking about as she walks the surface of Mars,” Leo nods, “Calling you.”

“She thinks about me!” Adam instantly snaps, coming out from underneath the pillow to glare at him.

He finds Leo already smiling. “You came out,” he notices with clear and unbearable satisfaction.

Adam groans, lying back down on the bed. “I hate you.”

“I can live with that,” Leo lies without so much as a flinch, “What matters is that you don’t get under that pillow again.” As an answer to that, Adam grabs said pillow and pulls it over his head, but Leo stops him quickly. “Ah!” he laughs, “Nope. Don’t be ridiculous, now. Come on, get out of bed.”

“I don’t want to,” Adam pouts, “I hate England. I hate you. I hate your boyfriend. I don’t wanna be here. I wanna go home.”

“Yeah, we all want what we can’t have. Think of me, I wanted to have sex, yesterday night, but Blaine wouldn’t let me.”

“You did have sex!” Adam protests vehemently, “I heard you! You pigs!”

“Adam,” Leo blinks, “I know your girlfriend’s been away six months already, and you must have forgotten what sex looks and sounds like, but I can assure you that was just smooching and cuddling.”

“Why were you moaning, then?!”

Leo tilts his head to the side, pensively. “Blaine’s a great kisser,” he answers in a shrug, as if that could ever be enough of an explanation.

Adam groans again, covering his face with both his hands. “Whatever,” he says. He knows it’s no use.

“Come on…” Leo tugs at his t-shirt again, “You need to get out of bed.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you know how Blaine is,” he answers vaguely, “Whenever he sees a boy lying down on a bed, he needs to put his hands on him.”

Adam lowers his hands and then turns to look at Leo with a mechanical movement, his eyes wide in sheer terror. “What?”

“Yeah, it’s starting to become a problem,” Leo sighs dramatically, “I can’t even lie down to read a book, back at home. He’s constantly all over me. Whenever I’m on the bed, bam!, there he is trying to get in my pants. I can’t stop him, it’s a disaster, a catastrophe. My life as I knew it has been destroyed completely. I have to lock myself in the bedroom whenever I want to work, he can’t even respect that.”

Adam slowly sits up, staring at him. “You can’t be serious.”

Leo simply shrugs. “Why take the chance?”

Adam counts his options. He wisely decides to get out of bed, stand up straight and wear his clothes before Blaine even comes out of the bathroom, just to be safe. Had he brought the spare space suit Annie keeps at home for show, to boast with their friends when they come visit, he’d put that on too.

When Blaine finally does come out of the bathroom, fresh out the shower and with his hair still a little damp, Adam jumps away from him so quickly and suddenly one would think Blaine threatened him with a fiery stick or something.

He turns to look at Leo, puzzled. “What’s his problem?”

Leo chuckles, walking closer to kiss him on his lips. “He didn’t wanna get out of bed,” he answers, “I told him you’d have raped him if he didn’t.”

Blaine raises an eyebrow, not amused at all. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Leo reassures him, “I told him it’s a condition of yours.”

“How is that any better?”

Leo waves his hand mid-air, ignoring the issue. “I had to get him out of bed.”

“So you used me as the boogeyman.”

“What was I supposed to do?!”

Blaine sighs theatrically, casting a look to the ceiling, pleading for mercy from whatever deity might want to take charge of his prayer. “Remind me why did we even invite him on this trip,” he says.

Leo smiles tenderly, and kisses him again.

*

Adam always starts having a very hard time every time Annie’s away for more than a couple full months. He’s not ever completely alright when she leaves, but if it’s within two months’ time he soldiers on. He counts the days, waits for her, distracts himself a great deal, basically takes camp inside Leo’s house and compensates with the warmth of his full home the lack thereof in his empty one, and he makes do.

But when it’s longer than that, none of those measures really works anymore. He starts thinking about her too much, starts worrying for her, especially if she’s traveling, and though he’s always Adam, never refusing to go out, never locking himself in obsessively watching the news, always keeping the house clean and always dedicating himself to his art and job, there’s something dark in him, something that grows.

Leo doesn’t remember ever witnessing such a thing when they were children, mostly because back then he was Adam’s other half, and they were never apart. Adam never had to miss him, and that dark thing doesn’t grow if he doesn’t have to miss the person he loves most.

In time, though, his affections shifted. Both their affections did, as they were bound to do sooner or later. A bond such as theirs, bigger than romantic love, even, is always bound to make room for what it cannot be. They couldn’t love each other as partners (they tried, they gave it a shot, then they wisely decided it was safer to stop it before it turned into something bad for them both, something that would’ve destroyed what they were for one another forever), so when the person they could actually love that way finally came along, everything changed, even that.

And suddenly the person not to miss wasn’t Leo anymore, it was Annie, and Annie was dangerous. She was lovely, but she was dangerous.

That’s because she’s as much as a free spirit as Leo’s a clingy one. Adam never really had to worry about Leo leaving him alone until Blaine came into the picture. But Annie? Adam had to worry about her leaving him behind even before they were a thing. Because that’s what Annie is: she’s boundless, unlimited, like the sky, and like the sky she can’t be captured, can’t be held in a box, kept in a drawer to make sure she won’t ever run away.

The only way he could try and keep her with him all the time was to paint her. And so he used to put her in all his drawings. She was always his model. Whenever he was free to use one, her picture was the one he always put in all the characters, all the paintings he felt like working on. Again and again he trapped her on canvas, hoping that’d be enough to make him feel safe about her. It never was: the only way for him to make sure she’s with him, is when she actually is. When he can feel her, touch her, kiss her, breathe in her scent in the morning, catch a glimpse of her smile as they walk around the house cleaning out together.

So when she’s not there, the dark thing grows.

And Leo’s scared of it.

He knows enough about dark things growing to know at some point they grow too much, and you can’t handle that anymore.

So, when Annie told them she had been scheduled for a mission on Mars, and that she’d have to be away one year and a half to complete it, Leo already knew at some point he’d have to do something to stop the dark thing growing. And when, a few weeks ago, he went to visit Adam at home and saw a shadow of it in his eyes, he knew right then he had to act sooner rather than later.

And so, since Blaine and him were already planning a little trip to old, beautiful Europe, het set out to convince him to tag along.

Hasn’t been easy to convince him, of course. There’s nothing Adam dreads more in the world, Leo suspects, except being apart from Annie, than to spend time alone with Leo and Blaine. When the kids are with them, and so he can distract himself playing uncle, sharing funny stories with Timmy and making the twins bounce in the air, he works perfectly. But when he has to interact with the two of them alone he closes up, becomes pouty and stubborn, and there’s no way to make him smile. It’s not jealousy and it’s not hate, not even disapproval of their relationship, not anymore, at this point. It’s just a habit that stuck with him, feeling uncomfortable when it’s just the three of them. Leo tried to talk it out with him, once, but he found out Adam puts a wall up when it comes to discuss things that make him feel bad at such a deep level he can’t even explain how it works. He’s a practical man, and so whatever he can’t practically describe feels to much like a threat to be carelessly analyzed. And if Adam can’t analyze something, he can’t understand how it works, and if he can’t understand it, he can’t explain it to people, and if he can’t explain it, then he won’t talk about it, won’t utter a word. That one time Leo had tried to push him in that sense, Adam had fallen into the deepest, most stubborn ad resentful silence ever, and after a monologue of a few minutes Leo had decided it was best to let it go.

So convincing him to come with them had been hard enough even without having to share the same room at the hotel, but when they had called to include Adam in their reservation the hotel staff had answered they didn’t have another room at their disposal, and staying in two different places would have defeated the purpose of the trip entirely, being it trying to spend as much time as possible with Adam so he didn’t have to feel alone. So they had decided to ask the staff to put a second bed in their room.

That hadn’t been a problem.

Convincing Adam to sleep in it, though, that had been one.

But they had managed, just as they always manage to do whatever it is they set out to do. It’s their strength, the one they rely upon the most: they went to hell and back, they both did, and they survived. There is no task, no matter how hard it seems, that’s really impossible for them to accomplish.

So they took Adam out to dinner, then they took him out some more, to drink, this time, had him swallow a few pints of good German beer and by the time he had done whining and complaining about his woman being on a different fucking planet than he was he was so drunk and tired they basically had to drag him to the room and put him to bed like a little kid. He even whispered “thank you”, as Leo tenderly tucked him in.

He must’ve woken up at some point during the night, if he somehow managed to hear them kiss in the bed on the other side of the room. Which makes things more complex, now, because if Adam has learned how to live with the idea of Blaine and him being together, he’s still trying to get there when it comes to live with the living proof of it, which means them kissing, touching, holding hands and so on. He knows it’s childish, he admitted it a hundred times, but there’s nothing he can do about it, or so he says, and Leo tends to believe him, because his looks like the immediate, impossible to conceal reaction children usually display when they see their parents kissing.

He knows because he has seen Timmy when he was younger and the twins now react the very same way when they kiss. They made a face, they averted their eyes, sometimes they even spat out a loud, disapproving “yuck!”, and that’s exactly what Adam does, with less theatrics, perhaps, but following the same principle: he looks away, he grimaces lightly, he falls silent. He can’t stand them being too cuddly with one another when he’s in the room, and so they tend to tone the public displays of affection down whenever they know he’s looking.

They didn’t know last night, they didn’t think of it. Now it’s gonna be trouble to even get him out the room, moody and disappointed as he is.

“Come on, Adam, I promise you there’s a place,” Leo pleads, trying to convince him to part ways with the slice of toasted bread he’s been buttering up for the past five minutes, “Come with us, I’ll show you. You’ll love it.”

“No, I won’t,” Adam shakes his head, “England is boring and ugly. There are no places. We’re in the middle of London, anyway! I’ve been here already, I know it. I didn’t like it the first time either.”

“Funny,” Blaine says, “I’ve got a friend. He’s a photographer. He had his first international showcase here in London, and he told me it was quite the perfect setting for his works.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a photographer, I’m an artist, and I don’t produce works, I make art, and I’m telling you now London is a gray, chaotic, rainy, damp, smelly, trafficked, polluted old city, and it didn’t make up for a perfect setting for my shit at all,” Adam snaps, putting the bread down in a nervous movement.

“Whoa, whoa,” Blaine backs off, raising his hands in surrender, “Calm down. I’m not attacking you.”

“Aren’t you?” Adam frowns, “You kidnapped me.”

“Oh, come on,” Leo groans, “Don’t be absurd, now. We didn’t kidnap you. You agreed to come with us.”

“I must’ve been drunk.”

“Nonetheless,” Leo sighs, “You’re here now. Please. I’m telling you, there is a place. You’re gonna be happy about it. Can you please come with us? We’ll show you.”

“I don’t trust you and I think you only wanna drag me out of the hotel because you think that’s the solution to all my problems, but it’s not,” Adam looks down, annoyed, “It’s not.”

Leo and Blaine both sigh, looking at one another. Blaine clears his throat, pressing a little kiss on Leo’s cheek. “I’ll be downstairs, calling for a cab,” he says, before disappearing behind the door.

Adam looks up and frowns. “He could’ve called the reception and ask them to do it,” he says angrily, “If he thought that you can convince me just because now we’re alone in the room and you can try and have some useless, ridiculous heart-to-heart with me, then I’ll—“

“Shut up, Adam!” Leo finally snaps, interrupting him and raising his voice, “For fuck’s sake! Are you done?!”

Adam instantly falls silent, biting at his bottom lip. Leo knows he knows he’s being unbearable. He knows Adam feels like shit because of that. He knows he can’t help it. But he also knows he’s not even trying.

“I take you are,” he goes on, sternly, “Good. Now you’re gonna stand up, put your jacket on and come downstairs with me. We’ll grab the cab Blaine is kindly calling for, and we’ll go to the fucking place which is the very reason why we brought you here with us to begin with. Once we’re there, I can assure you you’ll feel so much like an idiot you won’t be even able to find enough words to beg for forgiveness, and then I’ll be satisfied, I’ll kick your ass and then forgive you anyway, ‘cause that’s what I’m here for. In the meantime, though, you’ll do me the favor to shut the fuck up and come with me, or I swear I’ll drag you down the stairs on a leash.”

Adam holds his breath, his lips trembling lightly. When he’s about to answer, Leo precedes him.

“And, for your information,” he says, “Yes. Blaine could’ve asked the reception to call for a cab in his stead from here, but he still respects you enough not to want to be around when I’m about to scold you like a five year old kid. God knows how he manages. So be sure to thank him, one way or another, when you see him downstairs.”

Adam instantly frowns. “Don’t push your luck,” he says.

“I was aiming high to try and reach something in between!” Leo finishes, yelling in frustration. Then he sighs and calms down. “So?”

Adam sighs too, standing up. “I’m coming with,” he says, “Will that be enough for now?”

Leo’s lips part into a sweet, understanding smile. “It will,” he answers, “For now.”

*

That whole “place” thing had actually started months before, when Annie was still around. She was preparing for departure, true, so she was in Washington, mostly, but she came around often, especially over weekends, and, well, at least she wasn’t on Mars yet, so Adam knew that, no matter how far she went, she was at least still on the same planet he was walking on.

He was starting to get used to the thought of her not being around for an incredibly long time, which meant he needed to find something absorbing, something he could keep himself occupied with for longer than just a few weeks.

So he had started painting the house’s back wall.

He had a general idea, some sort of landscape – something evocative but not unrealistic, something beautiful, of course, pleasing to the eye, and a few human figures scattered around, inspired by the people that had changed him, that had had a weight in his life, a place in his heart, one way or another –, but he didn’t want to start from scratch and go by just his imagination alone, he wanted reference, a real place to paint on that wall. “If the people are to have the faces of people I know and love, the place must be something real too, something concrete. I wanna go to that place, see it, take a picture and then use it for my art. It cannot be done differently,” he had told Leo.

Naturally, Leo didn’t understand the concept behind it. As a fantasy writer he did literally nothing but picture people he knew in never-seen-before worlds he could have no practical references for whatsoever, he did it all the time, every day, and he thought it worked perfectly. Besides, he had seen countless times Adam do exactly the same, take Annie’s picture – no reference whatsoever involved, he drew it out of his own mind – and transfer it over a fantasy landscape, or an imaginary one, or something he couldn’t have seen before anyway.

In the beginning, he had simply thought that maybe Adam just wanted to try something new. “Artists!” he had thought with a little contempt, before remembering technically he qualified for the title too.

But when, after more than five months, the perfect landscape was still nowhere to be found, and every place Adam saw never seemed enough to be the background Adam was searching for, Leo had finally understood the problem behind it.

It wasn’t that Adam couldn’t think of a landscape on his own, and it wasn’t that he was trying a different technique, and it wasn’t that nothing he had around was beautiful enough either.

He didn’t want to start the painting. Simple as that.

He had conceived it to be the one thing that would’ve pulled him through that eternal year and a half without Annie, but once in front of the empty wall, once facing the practical issues, a background to be found, people to be selected to appear in the painting, colors and nuances to be chosen for it, he had backed off. Putting the brush to the wall and paint seemed too much of a definitive action, it was too real to be done. Putting the brush to the wall and paint meant acknowledging Annie had gone, and she wouldn’t be back for the longest time she had ever spent far from home – far from him.

Adam didn’t want that. He didn’t want that mainly because he knew that, no matter how slow he could’ve taken the whole process, there was no way that painting could be done on the very same day Annie’d be back. It was simply impossible: no painting could’ve ever taken him one year and a half to be finished. No painting, not even the biggest he had ever done, had ever taken him more than a couple months tops.

He had suddenly realized at some point down the road the painting would be finished. But Annie would still be away. And he had found himself unable to bear the thought.

Leo had talked about it with Blaine, who had smiled and kissed him, and had agreed with him that that was probably the problem. He had asked for counsel, and Blaine had told him it wasn’t much, at this point, that Adam needed to find the perfect place, he also needed to be pushed towards it. He needed something so stunning that would rekindle his need to paint before anything else, and he needed to be dragged there, forcefully if it was needed, because what he mainly needed was to snap out of it, and in his personal experience no one ever snaps out of anything if they’re not forced to do so.

Leo had looked at him and they had shared a deep, warm, understanding smile.

“Then Adam’s coming to the UK with us,” he had said cheerfully.

Blaine’s jaw had instantly dropped. “Wait, what?”

Leo chuckles as he thinks back to it now, to the effort it took him to convince Blaine to turn their long-time planned and long-awaited romantic trip to England into an intervention, but as he stands next to Adam on the field one hour and a half away from London, he knows it was worth it.

Adam’s looking at it with wide eyes, his lips parted, his breath low and silent. He’s stunned. The sun’s shining high above their heads and every single crop looks like it’s made out of pure gold. They swing gently in the wind, bending over and then straightening up once again, and they go on forever, forever, up to the horizon, where they meet with the bluest sky in a vaguely grayish mist that looks painted in watercolors. If warmth had a color, that’d be it. If beauty could be smelled, they’d find it in the scent of the wind. If happiness could be touched, it’d feel rough like the long stem of the crops, if it could be linked to a picture, it’d be the picture of this field. Open, enormous, bright and without borders to be seen anywhere. Wild, and yet manmade.

Leo offers Adam his phone. He takes it in his own hand, brings is up and takes a picture.

“How did you know of this place?” he asks. He’s already selecting shades of colors in his head.

“Blaine and I came here when he took me on our World Tour,” Leo says. He speaks softly, he doesn’t want to distract Adam from the sight. He’s thankful to Blaine for having wandered off. He’s taking a walk between the crops, now, several feet from them, singing that old Madonna song softly under his breath again. He seems to be in the general direction Adam’s eyes are looking to, but Adam doesn’t seem bothered by him being in the picture. Good enough. “We stumbled across it, really, we were never planning to come here. We didn’t even know this place existed. But I was moody because we had had a fight the night before, about something I can’t even remember now, and I didn’t wanna go out the next morning, so Blaine grabbed me by the collar and dragged me out. I asked him where were we going and he said he didn’t know, just around, exploring the wilderness.” He laughs, shaking his head. “That’s exactly what he said. That he wanted to explore the wilderness. In London.”

Adam smiles vaguely, closing his eyes to the caress of the wind. “Sounds like him.”

“Yes,” Leo nods. “Anyway. He rented a car, we left the city and we got here. It was beautiful, so we stopped. You know I’m not much of a country guy, but this seemed unreal. Completely different from our fields back in the USA. It looks too beautiful to be true, like a painting, and we decided to spend the day here. I don’t need to tell you doing what,” he chuckles.

“Thanks,” Adam chuckles too. Then he breathes in the pungent scent of the crops, and opens his eyes again to look at the landscape. “So what’s your point?” he asks.

“Do I have to have one?”

“Yes,” he nods, “Gimme something. Link this to a thought, a sentence, I don’t know. Give it a meaning for me.”

“Can’t you find a meaning for it on your own?”

“I could,” Adam shrugs, “But you dragged me out here, so I want you to do it. It’s the least you can do.”

Leo giggles and reaches out for him, holding his hand. Adam squeezes his right back. “Fair enough,” he says. “I’ll go with this one: your friends love you even if you’re a dickhead, so don’t be a douche and when you put them into your painting back at home don’t give horns and moustaches to Blaine, thanks.”

Adam bursts into laughing, shaking his head. He’s happier than Leo’s seen him in the last six months. Even if nothing else but this laughter came out of this trip, it was totally worth it. “Fine,” he says, “But how did you know I was gonna put him in the painting too?”

“I just knew,” Leo smiles tenderly, leaning in to kiss him on his cheek.

“What did I miss?” Blaine asks, walking back towards them with a smirk on his face, “What’s with all the kissing? Do I have to abandon you here as a punishment? Remember who’s paying for the trip.”

“Shut up and kiss me, idiot,” Leo laughs, letting go of Adam’s hand to grab Blaine’s face and pull him in for a kiss.

Adam looks at them for a few seconds, before turning back to the field. He’s still smiling. He takes another picture, with Leo and Blaine in it, this time. Just to be sure he gets the landscape right.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico.
Pairing: OC/OC.
Rating: PG-13.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, OC, Underage.
- Timmy goes on holiday with Alex as a guest with Alex's best friend's family. They go out camping, and Timmy's pretty excited about it... until he realizes there's gonna be just a tent that he's gonna have to share with Alex and his best friend too, meaning Alex and him will have no privacy whatsoever, not even at night, for two weeks.
This triggers a series of idiotic and ridiculous thoughts that ultimately lead Timmy and Alex to fight.
Note: Io non scriverò MAI PIU' una storia PG-13 XD Nel corso degli ingiustificabili MILLE GIORNI che mi sono serviti per scrivere questa storiellina ho capito una verità fondamentale della mia persona: coi rating, non ho vie di mezzo. O scrivo una cosa totalmente gen, e allora sarà safe, oppure la mia naturale tendenza sarà scrivere porno. Scrivere questa storia e mantenerla PG-13 (il quinto turno della Fandom League mi imponeva di parlare di punizioni... ma di tenere il rating safe. GRAZIE TANTE EH) è stata una sfida non indifferente che sono riuscita a portare a termine solo al prezzo di copioso sangue e sudore. E quindi, anche se in fondo le vu bi perché parla non solo del Talex che è una delle mie cose preferite al mondo ma anche di Neri e della sua surreale famiglia, grazie ma no grazie, mai più XD
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
IT’S JUST A MINOR THING, AND I’M A MINOR KING

It’s so hot Timmy feels the need to lose his t-shirt the very moment they arrive at the campsite, and he carelessly does it, deliberately ignoring the prying looks that instantly fix upon him from each corner of the clearing when he does. He inhales the fresh and intense smell of the pines surrounding the place deeply, filling his lungs with such a clear air as he can never breathe in back home, and then exhales with a satisfied smile on his lips.

He opens his eyes and he finds Alex looking at him with an amused smirk on his face, his arms folded loosely under his chest as he slowly taps his foot on the ground. “Seriously?” he says.

Timmy chuckles, passing a hand through his hair. He arrived in Italy not more than a couple weeks ago and his hair are starting to grow already. He always has them short when he arrives, and he always makes so that, when he goes back to Lima at the end of his holidays, he has them long enough to make Leo throw his arms up in disgust screaming they’re gonna have to mow him like the fucking lawn.

“What?” he says, “Did I do something wrong?”

“You just undressed,” Alex points out, “And then started showing off like a bodybuilder at a muscle contest.”

“I did no such thing!” Timmy laughs, picking his t-shirt up from the ground and throwing it at Alex after having cramped it in a ball that his boyfriend swiftly avoids by moving to the left in a graceful, soundless movement.

“You kinda did,” Neri says, coming along with the huge bag containing the tent, “Everybody’s staring, now. Plus, I don’t want my little brothers to grow up having unrealistic ideas about men bodies, so please, cover up before you give them a complex.”

Said little brothers basically threw themselves out of the trailer the moment Neri’s father parked it in their lot nearby, and are now climbing a tree with the clear intent of throwing themselves to the branches of the one next to it the moment they reach the top, and don’t seem really concerned with his nakedness, his muscles, his body or any related complex at all. But Timmy knows the one who’s really bothered by it is Neri himself, so he retrieves his t-shirt and puts it back on, even if it’s hot and he’s certainly going to sweat the moment they start putting the tent up.

Neri is Alex’s best friend, they’ve been knowing each other since they were criminally little and their bond was strong enough to survive attending different high schools and living so distant from one another they usually need to catch two buses and a train if they want to hang out at each other’s house. Despite being so different, Alex being the professional, committed artist and Neri being the practical madman who keeps changing hobbies as often as he changes his underwear, they’re ridiculously close, metaphorically joint at the hip. Timmy knew all of him before he even got to meet him, because Alex had spent the majority of his first summer there filling his head with notions about Neri in preparation of the event, and he was pretty sure he’d have grown jealous of him to the point of hating him for that special bond connecting them, but he found out the moment he actually came to know him it was impossible to get jealous of such a bond, because it was so firmly channeled on the friendship track it was preposterous to even think about being worried by it. Alex’s absolute and totalizing friendship with Neri could coexist pretty easily with another relationship as deep and demanding, and Timmy and Neri found themselves getting along pretty well right from the start, being Neri the simple, easy-going kid that he is and being Timmy a fairly understanding guy on his own.

Besides, Neri’s got the greatest family. Like, for real. His father is the most awesome thing ever. The man has the kindest heart, and Timmy loves him to shreds, even if most of the time they can’t communicate if not by vague gestures, given he wouldn’t know an English word from a Sumerian one for his life. It doesn’t matter: Timmy firmly believes they’re connected in a deeper way, the silent mutual understanding of the real men who know you’ve gotta learn how to dress in pink and sip fake tea from flowery purple tiny plastic cups if your kids ask you to, or you can’t in any way be the real man you claim to be. And this is something Neri’s father has had to learn how to do pretty fast after he was left on his own by his wife shortly after she delivered the twins.

Twins which are the most amazing things, really. Lapo, Jacopo and Vieri. Timmy couldn’t tell one from the other for his life, he couldn’t speak their names correctly if he had to choose between that and being blown up to pieces of the spot, but he loves them, ‘cause they’re batshit crazy. Being brought up by a single father soft and caring as Neri’s father is, they’re growing up as reckless as little kids can be, they’re basically one step away from being tiny savages. Every time they see Timmy, they assault him and try to put him down like Lilliputians did with Gulliver. They made a proper game out of it, the goal of which is to render him incapable of moving just long enough to really believe they managed to subdue him, before he finally sets himself free from the restraints they put on him and starts chasing them around growling like Godzilla while Neri sighs deeply and shakes his head, putting his headphones back on, and Alex laughs softly, curling on the couch and looking longingly at him, sipping at the ice tea Neri’s father’s serving him with the sweetest smile curling his thin lips upwards.

Oh, Timmy would pay for an eternity like this. Playing with somebody else’s kids while Alex stares at him knowing soon they’ll be home and they’ll be alone and ready to take care of one another after having had fun like idiots for the rest of the day. Timmy’s very idea of paradise.

“Oh ragazzini,” Neri’s father says, snapping his fingers at them as he sets the trailer down so it cannot move, “Che si dorme? La tenda.”

Neri puts the bag down and pulls the zipper open, starting to take out everything they need. “He’s saying we should put up the tent,” he translates, as Timmy watches his father walk up to the tree from which the kids are hanging like oversized fruits, holding to the branches with their tiny, chubby hands.

“Oh bestioline! Venite giù!”

Timmy has no idea what he’s saying, but the way he speaks makes him smile wholeheartedly. He loves Italian, it’s one of the very few redeeming qualities of Italy. He can’t understand a word of it (Alex tried to teach him something, but Timmy’s not really talented for foreign languages and he needs relevant rewards to keep himself focused; said relevant rewards, though, coming from Alex tend to be even more distracting than they should, so they gave it up. He managed to pick up a few curses, though, and he’s very proud of that: he can go on for entire sentences if he sets to use all of them), but he loves the sound, and that’s usually enough.

They set the tent up in less than ten minutes. They’re all used to take care of such things, Alex having gone camping with Neri’s family since he can remember anything at all, Neri being used to go on such holidays since before he could crawl, Timmy having picked it up by camping out in the garden of their own home to look at the stars with his father since he was tiny as an oversized bean.

Timmy’s glad to be here, he’s glad to be spending the holidays with not only Alex but people Alex cares for and he likes himself. The only thing he isn’t exactly ecstatic about is having to share the tent with Neri too.

Alex and Neri always share the tent when they’re camping together, since the trailer is already full with Neri’s father and the twins. When Timmy decided to tag along the moment Vince told him he could do less of him at the farm for a couple of weeks, Alex made sure he understood clearly that wouldn’t have changed. He had to adapt.

He decided not to complain out loud and up to now he hasn’t really thought much about it, but the reality of it strikes him the moment he sees they’re only inflating one air bed.

It’s not sharing the bed in three per se that’s bothering him, it’s that this means Alex and him will never be alone at night, not for the next couple weeks, anyway. At some point they’ll be back to Alex’s parents’ home, and they’ll go back to sharing a bedroom (and occasionally a bed too) just the two of them, and then they’ll be alone, and they will be able to cuddle and kiss and make out and Timmy will be able to fuck Alex stupid for hours and hours until they both collapse in exhaustion.

But not yet, not now. Not for the next fifteen days anyway.

Such a thing never sits well with him. It all started when he came back to Florence last year, after one of their usual off periods, this one having lasted for an unlikely and never experienced before period of almost six months. The break-up had been bad as none of them had expected it would be, and they both had felt the need to put some distance between them for the months that had followed, but the result of that had been that, while Timmy was busy running back to Tana as he usually did in such situations, for the first time Alex had wandered off too. And his wanderings had taken him to Sasha.

Sasha the Devil. Evil, evil Sasha.

Timmy hates Sasha. He hates him probably because he knows perfectly well he’d have fallen for him almost as hard as Alex did when they met, possibly even more, ‘cause Sasha’s the kind of charmer everybody falls at the feet off. Tan, fit, fun, hip, constantly smiling, ass like a Levi’s model, the kind of attitude that makes you ready to do impossible things just to see him flash that perfectly white smile right back at you. Of course Alex followed him around for weeks, of course he followed him around on the first night they met, of course he followed him when Sasha suggested a quickie in the men’s restroom at the club right before they left for his place, where he probably proceeded to pound him again and again until Alex couldn’t take it no more – but still wanted it nonetheless.

Well at least that’s what Timmy thinks happened. He knows they had a quickie at the club ‘cause Alex confessed. He also knows they spent the night together, ‘cause Alex admitted that too. The details were never told to him, and he wants to know them as much as he dreads the thought of truly knowing them, so he has never really asked, out of pure, sheer fear.

Still. What he knows is enough.

And he lives with it, like, most of the time he manages to go on with his life without constantly thinking that after years and years of circling him, after years and years of trying (and trying) (and trying), and waiting for him to be ready, for his body to stretch enough to welcome his inside, he wasn’t the one taking Alex’s virginity.

(He wasn’t. Doesn’t matter how many times Alex can actually repeat they did have sex before he slept with Sasha, that it was sex to him, that they did all they could possibly do without getting to the actual penetration, that they came, and so it was sex, it was full and proper sex for him, it wasn’t proper sex for Timmy, it wasn’t all the way, and it didn’t count as such.)

To live with it, though, he needs to remind himself often that no matter who took him first, he’s the one who can take him every time he wants. Which basically means whenever Timmy’s in Italy (also, actually when he’s not too: Skype helps with that) he must have sex with Alex every day. And it must be the whole thing. Jerking off together and considering it sex is not allowed. It is unacceptable.

And right now Timmy doesn’t even know if he’s gonna have at least that.

“You’re moody and disappointed,” Alex says, stopping behind him and wrapping his arms around his neck to hug him, “You’re thinking about all the sex we’re not gonna have.”

“Shut up and stop reading me,” Timmy whines, closing his hands around Alex’s forearms and bending forward a little to suggest him to climb on his back. Alex promptly does it, clinging to him like a monkey right away, his long, long legs firmly wrapped around his hips as he settles comfortably on him and leaves a kiss under his ear to tell him he’s done, “It’s creepy.”

“I see how creeped out you are about it,” Alex chuckles, clinging to him as Timmy starts to move. “Where are you taking me?”

“I don’t know,” Timmy pouts, “Away from the tent. Where we can be alone.”

“We can be alone in the tent,” Alex chuckles again, “Neri’s gone to the pool with the twins.” He leans in, whispering in Timmy’s ear. “We could have some fun while he’s away.”

“Ew,” Timmy makes a face, stubbornly shaking his head, “Not in there. We’ve gotta sleep with him in there, I’m not gonna mess around on that bed.”

Alex laughs out loud. “He wouldn’t even notice!” he says.

“I would notice!” Timmy protests, “Because I would know!”

“Technically,” Alex muses, tilting his head in a pensive way, “One can’t notice what he already knows. Either he notices something, or he knows it, ‘cause you can’t notice something, really, if you already know it’s there. You just know.”

“I don’t care,” Timmy mutters, “My point still stands.”

“So,” Alex goes on, taking a look around, “You’re dragging me to the woods where you’ll have your way with me and then kill me and bury my body so that no one ever knows what you did?”

Timmy groans loudly, letting go of Alex’s legs and putting him down on the ground. “Whatever!” he says, “I don’t feel like it anymore.”

“I suppose I should be glad you don’t feel like killing me and burying my corpse anymore,” Alex giggles at first, but when he realizes Timmy’s frowning and not playing along as he’d expect him to, he frowns too, and finally understands there’s something off. “Hey…” he tries, “Are you angry at me?”

“I’m not,” Timmy instantly answers. He always instantly answers that. It’s an automatic reaction. Whenever Alex asks him if he’s mad at him, Timmy always denies. No matter if he is actually angry at him. And that’s because deep down inside he knows he’s got no right being angry at him for something like that. So not only he feels ashamed about it, but he genuinely fears Alex’s reaction whenever he catches wind of him feeling that way.

(That’s because Alex never shies away from conflict, on the contrary. If Timmy comes at him too hard, he usually responds even harder, being it verbally or physically. He’s like a rabid squirrel, still cute but also potentially lethal. Well at least if you’re a squirrel too.)

“Except you clearly are,” Alex insists, frowning more deeply and crossing his arms over his chest, “What’s your problem?”

“Obviously,” Timmy frowns too, annoyed at his attitude, at that crossing of his arms over his chest that basically means: we’re done, we’re not talking anymore, we’re fighting, now, “It’s gotta be my problem. It’s never something you might have done.”

“Why,” Alex arches an eyebrow, talking in a detached, distant way, “Is it something I’ve done?”

“That’s beyond the point,” Timmy groans, “I was just saying. Generally speaking.”

“I don’t give a fuck about matters of principle,” Alex answers snarkily, “I wanna know if I did something to upset you. Because I’m almost certain this is just you being upset at something ridiculous as it often happens, and I wanna hear it from you.”

“I was just thinking about Sasha, okay?!”

“Oh, God,” Alex covers his face with his hand, “You can’t be serious.”

“Don’t mock me.”

“You only deserve to be mocked!”

“Thank you,” Timmy recoils as if Alex had threatened him with a fiery stick, “Always nice to know you mock the things that make me feel bad.”

“You don’t feel bad, you’re just an idiot! A stubborn, ridiculous idiot, who likes to torture himself over details of no importance whatsoever!”

“It is important to me.”

“And it is offensive to me,” Alex says, darting a flaming glare at him, “I told you a thousand times. This is my first time we’re talking about. Only I can decide which one got it. And I told you it’s you. I told you a thousand times. But you refuse to listen. You just don’t care. So,” he finishes, clutching his hands in fists down his sides, “I might as well just stop talking already.”

Timmy doesn’t see it coming until it’s too late to stop it, but when he sees Alex turn around and leave he realizes he should’ve known better. Isn’t this the very reason why he had decided to keep it quite right from the start, not to complain about sharing the tent with Neri, pretend everything was alright and he wasn’t bothered by it at all?

“Hey,” Neri walks towards him, his eyes following Alex as he walks away. The twins are running after one another just behind their brother, but when they see Neri’s gravitating around Timmy they decide they wanna be satellites too, and start running in circles around him, playing the little Indians, letting out war cries and preparing to assault him. “What happened?”

Timmy sighs, passing a hand through his hair. “He stopped talking to me,” he answers tiredly.

“What?” Neri asks, blinking confusedly, “Like, forever?”

“Likely,” Timmy answers with another sigh.

Neri decides it’s better not to inquire any further, and just follows Alex down the path he disappeared through a few seconds ago.

The twins, instead, finally decide it’s time to attack.

*

There’s nothing worse than Alex when he’s angry. Timmy himself turns into quite an harpy when he’s furious, he becomes mean, aggressive, ruthless in using his opponent’s weakness against him with no shame whatsoever nor apology afterwards (truth be told, he rarely fights except with Alex and Leo: when he’s fighting with Alex, Alex is usually always right, so Timmy rarely finds any ground to become a pitiless punisher, and therefore he never needs to apologize for having been an horrible human being during a fight; when he’s fighting with Leo, though, Leo is mostly wrong, so Timmy feels entitled to metaphorically hit him with an emotional hammer right where it hurts every single time, therefore making any kind of apology unnecessary), but his fury is nothing compared to Alex’s coldness, the way he becomes an entire different person when he’s angry at you, the way he always manages to let his anger weigh on the person he’s fighting with, so that they can never forget they’re being shunned.

Alex never truly stops talking to you, never really avoids you. On the contrary, he makes sure you know he sees you very well. And gives exactly no fucks about you being there.

Timmy cannot imagine any worse punishment, especially after having lived more than half his life almost exclusively off Alex’s attentions. He still remembers himself as a seven year old meeting this chubby two year old boy for the first time, and instantly deciding he wanted to have those huge baby blue eyes fully locked on himself for as long as he was to spend time in his house.

That basically never changed. It just evolved with time. Gotten worse, some would say. Timmy wouldn’t know: his irrational thirst for Alex’s attention never seems to be a problem until suddenly it becomes one when he’s deprived of it.

He watches him all day long carry on as if he was nothing more than some sort of pretty annoying and quite unlikeable distant cousin, and every minute of it is hell. They spend almost half of the day at the pool while Neri’s father finishes to set up camp on their lot, and after lunch Alex stands up and asks Neri if he’d like to go for a walk in the wilderness just outside the camping perimeter. As always, Neri says yes right away, and Timmy, who’s busy trying to balance two twins on his bended knees while the third tries to climb on his brothers’ shoulders to form a pyramid, sits up so suddenly all three of them roll down his legs as if they were rolling down a hill, laughing like crazy.

“Can’t I come too?” he asks desperately, knowing perfectly well if he loses sight of Alex now he won’t see him again until night.

Alex tilts his head, pretending to be thinking about it. “I don’t know,” he says, “Someone’s got to stay with the twins, don’t you think?”

“I— I can walk them back to the trailer,” he insists, standing up while the twins gather around him and whines loudly, complaining that they don’t want to go back to the trailer, they want to keep playing with him, “It’s gonna take me five minutes top, if you just wait for me…”

“Nah, I wanna go now,” Alex interrupts him, shrugging carelessly, “We’ll start walking. Just come find us when you’re done.”

“But— I don’t know which path you’re taking,” he points out uncertainly.

Alex grins. “Yeah, you don’t, right?” he says. Then he turns to look at Neri, who’s been standing awkwardly next to him without saying a word up to now, always feeling a bit uncomfortable, a bit out of place when they fight in front of him. “Andiamo,” he says.

The fact that he’s talking in Italian gives Timmy all the confirmation he didn’t need anyway to know he’s not welcome to join them at all. There’s no point to even try: even if he did manage to run to campsite and back in five, even if he managed to somehow find them on the path they’ve chosen for their walk, Alex would find another excuse, something different to push him away, and even if he didn’t find any he’d still be keeping him at a distance, showering him in fake, cold smiles as he only speaks with him when he’s forced to out of politeness, and ignoring him for the rest of the time.

He sits back down on his towel, and soon enough the twins are surrounding him again. He forces a smile up to his own lips and spends the rest of the afternoon playing with them.

*

When he walks back to the campsite, carrying two twins asleep in his arms and the other, barely awake, over his shoulders, with his tiny arms clutched around his forehead, the sun is already setting. Neri’s father’s already lighting the fire, and though the flame is still very tiny and would require some tending to, when he sees him arrive covered in children he hastens to walk towards him and free him from the little boy sitting on his shoulders, one second before said boys finally falls asleep, collapsing in his father’s arms.

“Will they be alright?” he asks, “Isn’t it a little early to go to bed? They haven’t even eaten yet.”

Neri’s father casts him a puzzled look. Of course he got nothing of what he just said. Timmy sighs, having no idea what to do to translate what he just said in a language this man could understand. But it doesn’t matter: Neri’s father smiles and gestures him to come along, and together they put the twins to bed, meaning it’s okay if they sleep now, after all. They’ll eat when they wake up, whenever that might be, and Timmy got his answer without really needed to ask.

Afterwards, they sit together around the fire. They wait for Neri and Alex to come back, but they don’t. Neri’s father calls his son, at some point. They talk a while over the phone, Timmy has no idea what it is they’re saying. When the phone call’s over, Neri’s father turns to look at him and just stares at him for a few seconds. Timmy knows he’s searching for whatever way to explain to him what Neri said, but he’s clearly at a loss, and in the end he simply shrugs and shakes his head. That could mean an enormous variety of things, and Timmy’s too tired to inquire any further and throw himself in an endless at the same time bilingual and one-sided conversation that’d just be uncomfortable and fruitless for them both.

They eat a couple sandwiches together, then they share some fruit. If Alex was there, after dinner he and Timmy would probably go out to explore the woods, or try and see if there’s some club they can go to dance a while, inside or outside the camping, but Alex isn’t there, who knows when he’s gonna be back, and who knows if he’s going to want to spend time with Timmy once he is, let alone dancing, so, around ten, given that the twins are still sleeping peacefully and Neri’s father seems very much inclined to follow their wise example in but a few minutes, Timmy says bye and walks to the tent.

He’s surprised to see the lamp inside has been turned on while he was away.

He approaches suspiciously, crouching in front of it and carefully crawling inside, and he stops, his heart beating faster and quickly climbing up his throat in excitement, when he sees there’s only Alex inside.

“You’re back,” he says, as if he had been away for months.

Alex casts an icy look at him as he sits on the mattress and pushes his trousers down those endless legs of his, to change for the night. “Yeah,” he answers.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Timmy asks, crawling towards him and then kneeling by his side, looking at him intently, as if he was scared he might disappear if he stopped doing so.

“I just arrived,” Alex shrugs, putting his shorts on and turning around to retrieve a tank top from the bottom of his bag, “And anyway I wasn’t planning to come back so early. I was hoping your farmer’s biological clock would’ve had you already asleep when I was back, so we wouldn’t have to talk. But since Neri decided he wanted to spend the night eating some girl’s face by the poolside…” he clicks his tongue in disgust, “I was at least hoping I would be already asleep by the time you came here.”

“Please…” Timmy whines, “Stop being so angry at me. I did nothing wrong.”

“Yeah?” Alex groans, wearing his tank top and then lying down on the mattress, grabbing the pile blanket at the feet of the bed to cover himself, “Keep believing that.”

“Stop,” Timmy says, closing his fingers around Alex’s wrist.

Alex turns to look at him, his fingers still clutched around the blanket. “Let me go,” he says, “I’m cold.”

“Don’t fall asleep, yet,” Timmy pleads, but he doesn’t let him go, “Let’s talk.”

“I told you I don’t feel like talking. Maybe tomorrow.”

“No, please…” Timmy whines again. He lies down next to him, wrapping his arms around his waist. “Come on.”

“Let me go right away!” Alex hisses, trying to free himself from his hold. As an answer to that, Timmy just holds him tighter, pressing his face between his shoulder blades, left naked by his tank top. Alex tries to free himself for a few seconds more, but in the end he relaxes, sighing deeply and resting his hands on Timmy’s forearms. “Will you ever stop being such an idiot?” he asks in a low, kind of sad, vaguely sweet voice.

“That’s not the most important question,” Timmy answers, rubbing his nose up and down Alex’s spine.

“Yeah?” Alex lets out a small shaky breath, pushing himself back against him, “Then what?”

“Will you want to be with me even if I keep being such an idiot for the rest of my life?”

Alex chuckles softly, shaking his head with resignation. “You’re unbelievable…” he whispers, turning around in Timmy’s embrace.

Timmy lets him move, and by the time Alex’s done doing that he’s already smiling, ready to press their lips together in a soft kiss.

“So?” Alex asks then, his hands moving up along Timmy’s arms and then resting on his shoulders, “How did you spend the afternoon?”

“Pining after you,” Timmy answers honestly, kissing him again, “And playing with the twins. I love them, they’re amazing. They’re completely fucked up. Totally crazy, I’m telling you. I will be surprised if they survive past their fifteenth birthday.”

“Don’t say that!” Alex laughs, hitting him lightly on his nape.

“I’m serious, they actually tried to climb a tree nearby the pool, today, because they wanted to dive in the water from its branches,” he says. Then he pauses a little, before adding “The tree was a good ten feet away from the pool.”

Alex laughs again, hiding his face against Timmy’s chest. “I will talk about it with Folco, tomorrow,” he says, “He needs to know his baby sons have a death wish.”

“Yeah, please, do it,” Timmy sighs, “I wouldn’t even know how to introduce the topic. Even if I knew the language, I mean.”

“Which you don’t,” Alex chuckles.

“Which I don’t,” Timmy echoes, smiling softly.

Alex must feel the change in his voice, because he looks up and his baby blue eyes shine in the dim light of the lamp as he leans in for a kiss. “You’re forgiven,” he whispers on Timmy’s lips before kissing him again, “Even though you didn’t say you were sorry.”

“I can’t apologize for something I don’t feel guilty about,” Timmy says as he draws him closer and kisses him deeply.

“Shut up,” Alex whines, slipping his knee between Timmy’s legs, “Don’t ruin it.”

“Oh, no, no,” Timmy backs away instantly, shaking his head, “I told you. I’m not doing shit in here. Uh-uh, not an option.”

“God Almighty,” Alex snorts, turning his back at him as he finally manages to pull the pile blanket up to his shoulders, “You’re so annoying, really. You better stop being an idiot right now, because I can’t stand the thought of having to spend two weeks with you if you behave like this.”

Timmy laughs, hugging him again and placing a tiny kiss on his naked shoulder. “Can I hold you through the night?” he asks on his skin, rubbing the tip of his nose against it.

“Whatever,” Alex answers, shrugging lightly, “Do what you want.”

But he entangles their legs underneath the blanket, and holds onto his forearms, making it impossible for Timmy to move away, even if he wanted to.

That’s how Timmy knows the answer to his questions. Even the most important one.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico, Erotico.
Pairing: OC/OC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Het, OC, Lemon.
- It's been a few weeks since Leo started talking online with a cute girl named Connie. Considering he's been out of the dating market for a few months following the ending of an important relationship that left him heartbroken, he considers it quite a milestone when he realizes he wants to change his online relationship into a real life one, but the truth about Connie is about to hit him right in his face, and it's going to be one hell of a ride.
Note: Questa storia è stata plottata ventordici anni fa, perché la mia donna subba Catfish per MTV e mi ha trascinato nel vortice di questo programma delizioso che spesso però mi dà i brividi. Non c'è niente di brividesco, però, in questa storia, ci sono solo io che volevo trasformare Cody in un Catfish per usare il suo alter ego femminile, Connie, che amo tantissimo XD Nella realizzazione ha aiutato il terzo turno della Fandom League, su prompt "incontro" e con la limitazione che dovevano essere presente degli abiti femminili. Curioso come, ogni volta che sento parlare di abiti femminili, il mio primo pensiero sia Cody e non una donna.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
HARDNESS AND SOFTNESS, CURVES AND CORNERS

He’s been staring at the picture for almost twenty minutes when Adam finally decides to stop by and ask him what’s wrong.

“Dude,” he says, “Don’t tell me you’re surfing Creepypasta again. You know real creepy things comes out of nowhere with no forewarning, and there you are, searching for some ridiculous fun story about haunted house and suddenly you stumble on one of those diabolical internet legends with dogs smiling and shadows creeping up in webcam screencaps and you stop sleeping for a month.”

“No… Adam, shut up,” Leo says, reaching up with his hand randomly, trying to slam it over his mouth to make him stop talking, “I’m experiencing a miracle.”

“What?” Adam groans, slapping his hand away, “Dude, you don’t even believe in God.”

“Miracles come from Mother Nature, you idiot,” Leo insists, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and pulling him down, “Look.”

Though frowning, annoyed, Adam complies, only to feel any trace of annoyance fade away from his own face when he focuses on the picture open on Leo’s desktop, and sees it for what it is.

“Holy fuck,” he whispers, “Where did you find this?”

“You remember I told you I’d been talking with this girl for the past few weeks?”

“Who?” Adam asks, and then he realizes, “Ah, the Skype girl. The one who kept refusing to send pictures. What was her name? Cookie? Corey?”

“Connie!” Leo corrects him, outraged.

“Her name’s irrelevant,” Adam shrugs, “It’s gonna be fake anyway. She’s your own personal catfish.”

“Shut up, that’s her!” Leo says, pointing at the screen.

“No, that’s a girl too beautiful to exist in nature, Leo,” Adam sighs patiently, “Come on, be realistic. Someone so beautiful doesn’t need to resort to online fucking dating to get a boyfriend.”

Leo groans, rolling his eyes. “Don’t start with the clichés, Adam.”

“Clichés exist because they’re true!” he insists, “Come on, I’m sure if you do a simple reverse search on Google you’ll find out she used someone else’s picture.”

“I already did that,” Leo frowns, “Who do you think I am? I know about internet frauds. I found nothing. That’s a proper personal picture. Doesn’t exist online.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Adam shakes his head, “Maybe it is her picture, but she manipulated in on Photoshop. Come on, I’d personally be able to grab a picture of my granny and turn it into something like that in two hours’ time! People far less skilled than me would manage in just four! It’s something that can easily be done through one afternoon, you can’t possibly believe that picture doesn’t have any filter or hasn’t been edited in any way! Look at her damn skin, she doesn’t have pores! Either she’s a vampire, or she’s cleared herself out with Photoshop.”

Leo listens to him, his scowl getting progressively more intense with every word Adam says. “You have trust issues,” he says in the end, crossing his arms over his chest.

“No, I’m a reasonable person.”

“You can’t expect me not wanting to meet her!” Leo says, “If anything, to see if she really looks like this or not!”

“Sure!” Adam yells, throwing his arms up in the air, “Let’s run into the arms of whatever psychopath’s trying to lure us into his secret dungeon with fake pictures of a pretty girl!”

“Don’t be overdramatic, now!” Leo whines, “Even if the picture turns out to be fake and she isn’t this pretty, there’s nothing to make us believe there’s a psychopath behind all this.”

“Yes, ‘cause they usually give themselves away so easily,” Adam arches an eyebrow, “That’s the whole point of it. They make it clear what their intentions are, they only wanna see if you’re stupid enough to fall for it anyway.”

“Adam, I’ve been talking to this girl for weeks!”

“An aeon, I’m sure.”

“Don’t go quoting Rhett on me, you’re blasphemous,” Leo grimaces, horrified, “If he had known internet and had ever used online dating, he’d be telling me to run into the girl’s arms right now.”

“You read a version of Gone with the Wind that wasn’t half like mine,” Adam concludes, turning away. He always gets mad when he finds himself unable to move Leo from his reckless and potentially suicidal plans – which happens more often than he’d like, and that he’s willing to admit.

Leo sighs patiently, turning on the chair to look at him. “Adam, don’t be angry at me, now,” he says, “Didn’t you say that the whole online thing was starting to get a little creepy and I should try and turn those online contacts to offline ones? Well, there’s the chance. I like her, I really do.”

“Yeah, I know you do,” Adam growls grumpily, still refusing to look at him, “You’ve been talking about her non-stop for weeks.”

“Don’t be jealous, now.”

“It’s so typical of you,” Adam sighs, “To try and make me pass like the overworried idiot who doesn’t wanna let you go meet strangers because he’s jealous. You know I’m not.”

“Not exactly,” Leo chuckles, “You are jealous. That’s just not the point now.”

“Exactly!” Adam turns to look at him, pointing a finger at him as if he had caught him with his hands right into the cookie bowl after lunch, “Exactly! So you know. Don’t pretend you don’t!”

“I was just trying to lighten up the mood of the conversation,” Leo sighs again. “Listen. I get you’re worried. I don’t share your feeling—“

“Because you don’t have a self-preservation instinct when it comes to sex.”

“Who said anything about sex?”

“You needn’t to!” Adam groans, “It is always about sex with you. How many of the people you’ve been talking with in the past few months haven’t you had online sex with?”

Leo shuts up instantly. It’s obvious he’s trying to come up with a number, a logical one. “Three,” he says, tentatively.

“Names,” Adam urges him.

Leo frowns. “Okay, none,” he bursts out, throwing his arms up in the air, “I’ve had sex with them all. You happy? What do you have against online sex, anyway? It’s the safest kind of sex there is! You don’t even need to have a self-preservation instinct to survive it, ‘cause no one but yourself’s touching you.”

“You still need a self-preservation instinct when somebody you’ve had online sex with tries and get to meet you in real life to have sex in person too, and you know nothing about them!”

“But Connie and I never had online sex! We never even vaguely sexted!”

“How is that any less suspicious?!”

“God!” Leo yells, throwing his head back, “Fine! Whatever! Just tell me what you want me to do. What would make you feel better about this?”

“Well, if she agreed to meet in a public place, for example, and if I could be there to make sure she really is who she says she is, that’d be of great help,” Adam says, shrugging.

“Good,” Leo says. He turns back to his computer and starts writing again. “Hey, Con,” he says, quoting himself, “You look gorgeous. Like, unreal. You think we can meet already? Maybe out for a coffee. My best friend would like to tag along, ‘cause he’s an idiot and he doesn’t trust humankind.”

“Hey!”

“What do you think?” Leo goes on as if he hadn’t even heard him, “Starbucks, this Saturday, four o’clock pm?”

He sends the message and, for a few moments, nothing happens. Both Adam and him stay utterly still, in perfect silence, waiting for something to happen.

Takes Connie quite a while to answer. It’s understandable she needed a few minutes to think about it, so Leo isn’t worried when the chat window starts blinking yellow, notifying him of the new message. He reads it silently, while Adam frets behind him.

“So?” his best friend asks when he can’t take the wait anymore, “What did she say?”

Leo turns to look at him, grinning widely. “She said yes.”

*

Connie’s the first person Leo feels the need to meet for a real date after months of self-imposed hermitage following the Siobhan debacle. Shiv, her stunning beauty and her fresh and entrancing personality were forcefully brought into his life when Adam was asked to shoot a few pictures with her as a model for a school project. Leo saw them, and instantly demanded he introduced them. Adam tried to warn him, of course, he’s always trying to warn him, actually he warns him so often it’s become impossible, now, to understand when he’s being unnecessarily overprotective from when he has some right to be.

This time he did, but caught up in her as Leo was, he didn’t see it, and he ran towards disaster with the dumbest smile on his face, until he hit said face against the hard brick wall of disappointment, but by then it was already too late to stop the run.

Shiv liked Leo about as much as Leo liked her, but she’s a free spirit, she’s always been and she’s very keen on staying that way, especially now that her modeling career is finally starting to take off. Leo and her had fun for a month or so, tested their amazing connection and shared every bit of free time they could possibly steal from their families and friends, but when Leo tried to push things forward and make their fleeting relationship a long-term one, she backed off. “I’m sorry, Leo,” she said, and it was so obvious she really was Leo couldn’t even hate her, “But it wouldn’t be right. I’m not in the right mindset, and I’d be fooling you and myself if I agreed to it. Let’s take some time to rethink this.”

Apparently, “taking some time” meant to book a ticket on the first flight to Los Angeles, to put as much distance between them as it was humanly possible in the shortest possible time. Leo was expecting that, he knew Siobhan didn’t cope well with feeling pressured into doing something she didn’t feel like doing (much like himself), but that didn’t help him suffer less.

Leo is the kind of person who can go on with one night stands and never having a boyfriend or a girlfriend for years, if necessary, but who’s gonna turn out with a broken heart if he only dares putting it in the hands of someone else trustingly enough.

He had done that with Shiv. He had put his heart in her hands without worrying to ask her first if she was up for taking it. And once she had noticed, she had given its shreds back to him, apologizing for having broken it but still unable to do anything to mend it.

Leo simply needed a lot of time to put the pieces back together and glue them carefully enough so that the cracks weren’t too visible anymore. That was the reason behind putting himself out of the market, and the whole online dating thing was a consequence of that, having Leo been gifted by Mother Nature with a sex drive that didn’t let him go on more than three days without a shared orgasm. He couldn’t have solved the problem by jerking off, coming per se wasn’t what he needed anyway: he needed human interaction, talking, getting to know one another, however briefly, and only then sharing a moment of intimacy. He didn’t feel alright enough to go out clubbing to achieve that as he used to do before, so resorting to an online community had seemed to be the best option.

And it worked, as long as it could work. But Leo really wants to meet Connie, so he supposes it isn’t working anymore now.

Connie was different from any other person he met online. They all seemed to expect it, that at some point he’d ask them if they were up for something sexual. They were anticipating the moment, which meant they were there for that very reason – much like, in a way, Leo himself was.

Connie, though, she didn’t give off that vibe. She only seemed interested in chatting about normal things, she sounded so pure Leo almost felt awkward, in the beginning, about even thinking to push things forward in that direction with her. She asked about him, about how he was feeling, what he did every day, what he did in college, and he felt compelled to ask back, not out of common courtesy, but out of curiosity towards that weird creature who carried on as if she didn’t even think that online sex was a thing, as if nobody in the world could ever think it possible, as if all the people wandering those chatrooms were there just to talk, like she was.

Leo wanted to get to know her better. At some point, talking with her in the private rooms of the public chatline started to seem wrong. They weren’t there for the same reason everybody else was, that Connie might not know, but Leo knew for sure. Every time he logged in he felt as if he was entering the backroom of a gay club to ask about the time to somebody while people gave heads all around them. It was just wrong, they didn’t fit, and the longer time they spent there the more Leo started feeling as if he was tarnishing Connie by keeping her there, by not taking her somewhere else.

That’s why he asked for her Skype handle. Moving to a different client had helped a great deal with that feeling, it felt more intimate, more friendly, and it had helped Leo open up about a lot of things, including Shiv. Being able to talk to a friend who wasn’t the usual Adam about it had helped taking that weight off his shoulders. He was thankful to Connie, he appreciated her like a friend, but the more intimacy grew between them the more he had found out he wanted to meet her, to hear her laugh at his jokes in person, not just read her reaction on a computer screen.

The picture had just given him the final push he needed, because she looked gorgeous.

He probably didn’t have any problem believing she could be that beautiful on the outside because, contrary to Adam, he already knew she was stunning on the inside.

“You’re nervous,” Adam tells him as he scans the place with watchful eyes, “You’re scared she’s not gonna turn out to be who she said she was, right?”

“No,” Leo answers him, looking around eagerly, “Can’t you stop talking like that? God, you’re so annoying.”

“Well, sorry for caring about you.”

“There must be a line between being worried for somebody and becoming an obnoxious mother, and you crossed it hours ago.”

Adam frowns, clearly offended. Of course Leo’s nervous. Of course he’s scared. There is a chance Connie’s not gonna be exactly what she said. He’s not stupid, he knows. But Adam’s worry only makes him scared and he doesn’t wanna feel scared now. Hasn’t he been scared to get close to somebody long enough already? Doesn’t he deserve it again? He just wishes Adam could push aside this motherly attitude of his to be supportive.

“Sorry…” he says in a deep sigh, “I just— I know you’re right, but repeating it like that is useless, it’s only making me feel stupid for ever deciding to give this a try, and—“

“Fuck me,” Adam whispers under his breath, his eyes wide as he stares right in front of him.

Leo arches an eyebrow and tilts his head, surprised. “Well,” he says, “Not that it cannot be arranged, but I wish you’d have asked me in a different moment and in a different way, since—“

“No, no, idiot, shut up!” Adam interrupts him nervously, grabbing him by his shoulders and making him turn around, “You fucking won the lottery, you stupid prick.”

Connie just entered the coffeehouse, and she’s looking around awkwardly, clearly not knowing what to do with herself in such a crowded place. She takes a look at the bar and she seems frightened to even get close to the mass of people pushing against it, waiting in line for their turn to place their order. Then she turns to the tables, and she bites her cherry red, plump bottom lip when she notices there’s not a single free chair. The frilly hem of the knee-long black skirt she’s wearing peeps out of the medium-length red coat she’s wearing, and the tiny, red velvet ribbon she’s used to keep her black hair in place on the right side of her head bounces gently every time she turns around, letting those impossibly huge baby blue eyes dart nervously all over the room.

“It is really her?” Leo says weakly, unable to look away from her in fear that she might disappear, “Little Red Riding Hood over there? I mean, I’m not hallucinating, am I?”

“Unless your Connie somehow managed to steal this girl’s picture knowing already she’d be here today, awkwardly looking around for somebody, I think it’s safe to assume it’s her,” Adam says. His voice sounds lighter, for once, he seems relieved too.

Leo swallows hard, trying to move away from his hands to stand on his own feet. “Okay,” he says, clearing his throat, “You can go home, Adam. Don’t wait up for me.”

“What?” Adam says, frowning again, “Are you even serious? I’m not leaving until we’ve spent a little time with her, to make sure she’s not crazy!”

“Adam, look at that girl!” Leo says, impolitely pointing his finger at her to underline the concept, “She’s an angel! Heaven-sent! Oh, I’m gonna fuck her so hard she’s gonna beg me please to leave her to die.”

“Wait, what?!” Adam backs off a little, outraged and, quite frankly, a little scared, “Leo!”

“Sorry,” Leo swallows, trying to regain some sort of control over his thoughts and the way they apparently chose to roll out of his mouth with common decency not even trying to filter them beforehand, “I’m just… do you have an idea when was the last time I got laid?”

“Didn’t you hook up with that Chester guy last week?” Adam tries, “I heard you lock yourself in your room, you only do that when—“

“I jerked off, Adam!” Leo protests vehemently, “I mean, of course, we jerked off together, but he lives in fucking Nebraska, now come the fuck on, I haven’t had a proper shag in months, there’s simply no way I’ll—“

“Oh, God, shut up,” Adam hastens to say, pressing a hand over his face. He doesn’t understand why until he turns around and sees Connie waiting a few feet from them, clutching at her bag and smiling shyly, her pale cheeks quickly turning red.

“Hi,” she says. She’s got the sweetest voice Leo’s ever heard in his life. “You must be Leo.”

“Yes,” he says in a whisper when Adam finally lets him free to speak. And the next thought comes rolling wildly through the hills of his overexcited brain, but he luckily keeps himself in check enough not to say it out loud.

And you must be mine.

*

In the half hour they actually get to spend together after they manage to escape the messy, confusing clutch of the coffeehouse, Leo ends up assisting to a switch in Adam’s behavior, something he had never witnessed before: Adam goes from being worried for Leo’s safety, to being worried for Connie’s. He can see the predatory look in Leo’s eyes and for the first time ever he isn’t really worried anymore that Leo’s fiery sex drive will ultimately get back to him and hurt him, like countless times happened whenever he ended up having sex with sketchy strangers after having had one drink too many just because he couldn’t take abstinence anymore. No, he’s worried Leo will push too far, that he’ll end up cornering Connie somewhere and somehow convince her to do something she doesn’t feel ready to do, just because he wants her so fucking much if looks could be enough for that she’d probably be already pregnant.

Leo can understand Adam’s attitude. Connie really does make out that perfect picture of purity Leo had already scented off her before they even met. It just has two very different effects on him and Adam, because while Adam seems naturally prone to protect that kind of purity, to shelter it from everything bad that could stain it, much like Leo wanted to do before they met, now that Connie’s not a bunch of pixel on a computer screen all that Leo wants to do is dirty her up.

He’s always had a pretty vivid imagination, quite graphic too. It’s never been uncommon for him to start fantasizing about the people he’d end up having sex with at the end of the day even right after having just met them, while they were still drinking something together, possibly even before properly introducing himself to them and vice-versa. But he has never felt so drawn to anybody else as he feels now that he’s walking alongside Connie down a road he knows by heart and can’t remember a single detail of, because everything is her, her pretty, pretty face, those big blue eyes and that kissable, biteable smile of hers. He’s talking to her, asking her questions about what she does – she draws, she’s an artist, like Adam, but not quite like Adam, she’s less certain of her abilities, she’s relying less on her talent because it’s clear she doesn’t think she has one, but Leo can picture that pretty hands of hers handle the brush so fine, oh, God, the miracles those pretty little fingers are surely able to do when they close firmly around the shaft – he listens to what she says, he even answers her questions, but all he’s thinking about is her, naked on a bed, while his hands wander all over her body, making her moan and shiver.

She’s so tiny, so thin. She doesn’t even have any boobs, but she looks so graceful, and the curve of her hips is so inviting, and those legs she’s got, Leo could only take a glimpse while they were climbing the stairs towards the entrance of the park where Adam and him brought her before, but despite her shortness those legs are endless, she’s all legs, and they seem so plump, so full, so rounded, compared to how petite she is. Leo hasn’t dove between a girl’s thighs for month, now, and suddenly it’s all he wants to do. He looks at Connie, gets lost in her smile, wants to die on her cherry lips and be buried in the deep ocean of her eyes, and then something switches inside his brain and he doesn’t feel so romantic anymore, no, all he wants is to grab her, push her onto the bed, tear her clothes off her and lick her all fucking over, dip his tongue in her navel, then inside her, tasting her, feeling her wetness, making her wetter, readier for his cock.

He has never felt this wild in all his life. And he’s been wild. He’s been wilder than anybody else he knows, actually. And still, when he looks at Connie and that sudden sense of urgency overcomes him, he almost believes he has never wanted anything else before, because the intensity with which he wants her now is so strong it wipes out any pale imitation of it he could have experienced in the past.

He feels drunk, inebriated with desire, and needy, needy to the point of physical pain.

He only realizes after a while that it’s because he’s hard, and when he realizes he asks himself how long has he been in such a condition, and he’s amazed at himself and frankly a little scared too when he understands he doesn’t have an answer for that question.

Around six, Adam starts to look at his phone’s display too often, and Leo understands he’s gotta go somewhere, possibly working out at the gym, and he doesn’t really want to leave them alone. The thought kind of unnerves him, because Adam only had to remain until he was sure Connie wasn’t a psycho, and he ended up hanging around for the entire afternoon, and that’s annoying. Especially since he’s dying to see if there’s any chance Connie will bring him home for a couple hours. He clearly can’t even suggest the idea as long as Adam keeps playing the vigil watcher with them.

“Walker,” he asks, taking the chance when he sees him check the time for the umpteenth time, “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

Adam frowns, looking at him. “Well…” he starts out, and then he swallows, casting a quick glance at Connie. She’s smiling, waiting for his answer. God, she looks so pretty Leo has no idea how he managed not to snatch her up and run away with her to hide in some dark corner already, Adam or not. “It’s quite late, isn’t it? We should head back, shouldn’t we?”

Leo pretends to check the time on his phone too, but he doesn’t even register it. Could be midnight, his answer would still be the same. “I don’t know, looks pretty early to me. I’ve got time.” He turns to look at Connie. “What about you?”

She tilts her head to the right in such a graceful movement Leo only barely manages to hold a frustrated moan in. “I’m free,” she says, “I’d love to hang out with you some more.”

An entire legion of angels start singing hallelujah in Leo’s mind. He manages to cling to that tiny shred of decency still left in himself long enough to give in to a grin only, not showing how deeply satisfied of her answer he really is. He turns to Adam and smiles. “Then I’ll see you later, I guess?”

Adam doesn’t say a thing for almost a full minute. He looks at Leo and Leo knows, he can read it in his eyes, that he doesn’t wanna leave, he doesn’t wanna leave them alone, because he doesn’t trust Leo’s judgement right now. Leo can’t say he’s wrong, but what he can say is he doesn’t care. He wants this girl. He needs to kiss her, to be alone with her, to put his hands on her. He needs it now – Adam’ll have to deal with it and leave.

In the end, that’s exactly what he does. He sighs deeply, closing his eyes and shaking his head, and murmurs a vague “yeah” before saying goodbye and walk away.

Connie chuckles the moment he’s out of sight, and her laughter sounds like a million bells ringing softly, drawing Leo close. He chuckles too, just because she did, and asks her, “What?”

“He was so tense,” she answers right away, starting to walk again, “Is he always like this?”

“Not really, no,” Leo laughs a little, shaking his head, “Only when he thinks I’m a ticking bomb or something.”

“And are you, right now?” she asks, looking at him from under those impossibly thick and curved eyelashes.

Leo’s heart almost misses a beat. She’s flirting. She’s fucking flirting. This must be his lucky day.

“Depends on what you want,” he plays along, “Do you wanna try and cut the red wire?”

Connie instantly looks down, blushing vividly. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t need to. Leo laughs, overcome by amusement and tenderness.

“You’re not used to any of this, am I right?” he asks her.

She’s still blushing, but she looks up at him, her eyes shining lightly. She’s so beautiful. “Not really, no,” she admits, “Guys don’t usually hit on me.”

“Do you live among blind people?”

“No,” Connie laughs, amused and embarrassed, “No, I’m just… probably not as interesting as you think I am.”

“Please,” Leo snorts, “Listen to me, I’ve been on the market since I was, like, fourteen, and I can assure you, how interesting are you is irrelevant, in the dating game. And I’m not saying you aren’t, mind me,” he explains, looking at her, “But seriously. You’re stunning. I simply can’t believe you’ve never been with someone. Or that nobody ever tried to catch you.”

She looks away quickly, though she doesn’t seem upset. She’s still blushing, her cheeks pink and smooth like peaches, and she shrugs lightly, barely crouching her shoulders. “Thanks,” she says, “I’m not really good at taking compliments… but thanks.”

Leo wonders vaguely about that, about how can it ever be possible for such a cute girl to have received so few compliments in her life not to be able to take them, to even be unwilling to receive them. He doesn’t wanna live in a world that doesn’t shower a girl like Connie in compliments. He wanna be the one to fix that situation.

“Listen…” he says, and he finds himself swallowing hard, actually nervous, when he reaches out, trying to hold her hand. She lets him, and his heart beats faster when he feels her silky warm skin against his fingertips. “I know Adam kind of… ruined the mood, I guess. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I… I really like you. I actually liked you before I saw your picture, I mean, you were gorgeous and that was really the last push, but I wanted to meet you even before that, because… you know, it’s been nice to know you online, to talk to you and all, but I really wanted to get to know you better, and— and not exactly as a friend, I guess, because I really like you, as I said, I said that already, right?”

Connie chuckles, covering her lips with her free hand. “Yes, you did,” she says in the sweetest voice. Leo wants to kiss her so much he feels like crying.

“Do you think there’s a chance we could go somewhere private?” he asks in a quick whisper, following the tide of his own need, hoping it’s hard and tall enough to wash over Connie’s shores.

She stops for a moment. She purses her lips, looking intently at him, and she doesn’t speak, she doesn’t even breathe. Then, in the smallest movement ever, so small Leo’s amazed at himself for even seeing it, she nods.

*

Connie lives in a small, cute apartment near the campus. Leo’s quite surprised, because he’s pretty sure he’d remember her if he had seen her in class. A girl with a face like that makes an impression. Or at least it would’ve made it on him.

“Are you in college?” he asks as he takes off his jacket and sets it down on the back of the couch, next to Connie’s red coat. She’s wearing a thin, white satin shirt with tiny fawns embroidered in the hem, cuffs and collar. Its pearly buttons almost shine with the sunlight coming in from the huge window eating up almost an entire wall in the sitting room. They look like a shimmering path Leo desperately wants to follow to see if it gets him to heaven.

“No,” she says, shaking her head and offering him a small apologetic smile, as if she felt guilty for such an answer, “I mean, I were for… a year or so. But I dropped out.”

“Really?” Leo asks, “Before we started talking, right?”

“Way before,” Connie chuckles.

“And why?”

Her smile falters and she literally backs off. Though it’s only an inch or so, Leo notices, and his heart sinks down into his stomach.

“Have I been inappropriate?” he asks, his voice filled with concern.

Connie smiles sweetly, shaking her head. Her red velvet bow bounces in the movement, and Leo wants to hold its hem in his fingers and tug at it, see it unfold, fall off to leave her hair free to cascade down her neck. “I’m just not really used to people being that interested in me,” she says, “But it’s no big deal. It just… college wasn’t really for me. I’m a pretty slow person and to be honest I’m kind of lazy,” she chuckles, “I didn’t like to study all the subjects that weren’t my favorite, so I fell behind and ultimately I realized I was throwing money down the drain… so I dropped out.”

“Oh,” Leo nods, sitting down on the couch when she invites him to do so, “So it was a life choice or something.”

“Or something,” she chuckles, “Do you want some hot cocoa? I’m said to make the best in the whole of Lima.”

“Said by who?” Leo giggles.

“By myself,” she answers with a little smirk, “But I’m pretty demanding when it comes to chocolate, so I assure you my hot cocoa is the best you’ll ever taste.”

“Then I can’t really refuse, can I?” Leo asks with a charming smile he doesn’t even have to force, because he wants to charm her so much it all comes natural to him.

“That’s the gist of it,” she answers, and then she turns around, headed for the kitchenette, which is nothing but a corner of the room, but it’s in a light blue color, pretty doll-like and extremely clean, and all in all matches Connie so much, as does the rest of the flat, for a moment Leo clearly thinks he doesn’t wanna leave – ever, actually. He never ever ever wants to leave.

Soon enough the sitting room fills up with the sweet smell of hot cocoa, and in a few minutes Connie’s back, carrying two mugs almost filled to the brim with it. Leo takes the one she’s offering him and tastes it, letting out a muffled approving sound. “You’re good!” he says.

“Don’t sound so surprised!” she complains, chuckling lightly.

“Sorry,” he apologizes in a short laughter, “It’s just that, generally speaking, people boasting about their supernatural abilities are usually lying.”

“Well,” she answers with a tiny, kind of unwillingly seductive smile, “I wasn’t lying, tho, was I?”

That’s it for Leo. It simply is it. He shivers so deeply he needs to bite at his inner cheek not to show it, and his erection makes itself known again sending a sudden jolt of pain throughout his whole body. He puts the mug down on the floor and then reaches out, wrapping an arm around Connie’s waist and drawing her in, kissing her hungrily on her lips.

She lets out the softest whimper, surprised and maybe a little scared, and that tiny sound is able on his own to make Leo harder a thousandfold. She doesn’t back off, and he takes it as an invitation to go on, and so he flicks his tongue over her lips, silently begging her please, please, to let him in, and when she parts her own lips and welcomes his tongue in the hot wetness of her mouth Leo almost feels faint. He moves even nearer, kissing her voraciously, shivering when he feels her hands and those tiny little fingers rest on his shoulders, first, and then wander forward, over his shoulder blades and then upwards, over his nape and between his curls.

Connie’s got warm, soft fingertips. Leo feels them over his skin and wants them around his cock. He wants them in his own mouth, he wants to suck at those tiny fingers, lick them in the oversensitive spot in between them, he wants to hear Connie moan wildly at the feeling, and then he wants to guide her own hand between her thighs, he wants to make her move her wet fingers all over herself, he wants to feel her get wetter around his tongue, as he licks her while she rubs herself.

As these pictures fill his mind, his kiss turns deeper and wetter, more intimate. He moves on the couch, getting up on his knees to get closer to her, and he’s almost ready to straddle her, towering upon her to trap her under his own body and between his own arms, when Connie surprises him, and it’s her taking control of the situation. She sits him back again, whimpering between his lips, and then sits on top of him, her legs locked like the motherfucking gates of heaven but the rest of her body all pressed up against Leo’s, her sweet scent everywhere, her mouth tasting like chocolate as Leo explores it thoroughly, fucking it more than simply kissing it.

He breaks the kiss unwillingly when he feels her tiny hands press against his chest, silently asking him to back off. She wants a time out and that’s understandable, and even if it wasn’t Leo’s completely willing to give her everything he wants, right now. If she wanted the moon, he wouldn’t even ask why, he’d just run fetch a ladder.

“You were right…” he says on her lips, as he puts one hand on her hip and palms the sweet curve of her waist, “That’s the best hot cocoa I ever tasted.”

Connie chuckles, and her laughter, labored and heavy as it is because of her uneven breath, sounds even sweeter.

“Are you always this lame when you’re hitting on people?”

“I wasn’t aware of still being hitting on you,” Leo answers with a soft smile, pressing their lips together in a dozen half-wet kisses, “I already thought you pretty much hit for the time being.”

“I am…” she admits, her voice nothing but a whisper. Leo feels the need to kiss her again, and he does, as his hand travels down her thigh, reaching her knee. His fingers reach down underneath the frilly hem of her skirt. She’s wearing no tights, and Leo shivers as he touches her bare, smooth, warm skin. Once again, he’s overcome by the need to just throw her legs up in the air and dive between her thighs, covering them in bites and kisses before eating her out.

“Connie…” he whispers, his fingers traveling up her thigh, reaching for her panties, “Can I touch you? Please. Let me touch you.”

His words seem to wake her up, and as soon as Leo notices he regrets having spoken them. Maybe, he thinks, if he had simply gone on without asking any question, she’d have let him do whatever he wanted, instead of putting her hand on his over her skirt, stopping him.

Then he realizes how ugly this thought sounds, and he feels ashamed, and stopping his hand doesn’t feel hard at all, once he’s back to his senses.

“I don’t really…” Connie mutters vaguely, looking away, “On the first date…”

“It’s okay,” he hastens to say, his hand slipping out from underneath her skirt to stroke her cheek, making her look back at him, “Con. Listen to me. It’s perfectly okay. You don’t have to justify yourself, first date or fifty-seventh, if you don’t want to, you don’t want to.”

She bites at her bottom lip hard. It’s so red and plump from kissing Leo feels that familiar pain in his loins again, and vaguely wonders how ever is he going to get home alive if she doesn’t let him fuck her right now. He needs a couple minutes to calm down again, but he tries his best not to show it, because he really, really doesn’t want Connie to feel uncomfortable, and he wasn’t lying before, when he said she shouldn’t feel bad for not wanting to do shit just yet, or ever.

But God, she’s so perfect and sexy. Leo’s never been so taken with anybody else. It almost hurts, this burning desire is almost physically hurting him.

Maybe this is what Adam should have warned him about.

“Thanks,” Connie says, offering him the tiniest smile.

Leo kisses that smile sweetly, trying to draw out of that last contact strength enough to get back home without losing his mind.

*

When he comes back home, Adam runs from the kitchen right to the front door and looks at him, and when he sees him he stops and tenses all over.

“You did it,” he says, “You raped her.”

“What?!” Leo yells, throwing his arms up in the air and discarding in a single moment the disappointed mood that has kept him company all the way back, “Are you fucking crazy?! Of course I did no such thing!”

“You have the look of somebody who did something awful!” Adam insists, pointing his finger at him, “Look at yourself in the mirror! A serial killer would have clearer eyes than you right now!”

“Stop this nonsense right now,” Leo sighs heavily, dropping his jacket and then his body face-first on the couch, “I didn’t touch her with a finger.”

“What?” Adam asks, genuinely surprised, walking towards him and standing next to the couch, “Are you serious?”

“Yeah…” Leo whines, hiding his face against the rounded cookie-shaped pillow, “She didn’t feel like it, she’s, like, one of those who don’t have sex on the first date, so she backed off and I didn’t insist. We just kissed.”

Adam doesn’t say anything for a little while, he just stares at him, amazed. “I’m impressed,” he says in the end, “You behaved like a proper good guy.”

“Well, I’ll let you know here and now that being the good guy sucks big time!” Leo protests, lifting his face from the pillow to glare at him, “I was so fucking horny! Actually, I still am,” he says, sitting up and parting his legs, to show the pretty evident bulge at his crotch, underlining it with his hands pointed palms up towards it, “See? Would you even look at this shit?!”

“Not really, no.”

“I’ve been in these wretched conditions since we fucking met her!” Leo goes on, desperation starting to leak in his voice, as if he had walked back home enveloped into a bubble that kept him from fully grasp the reality of his condition until Adam carelessly burst it with his words. “How many hours does that make? Five? Six?”

“A couple, I’d say,” Adam sighs, “Don’t be so dramatic. You worried me. By the look on your face I feared you had done something unforgivable and possibly even punishable by law, and instead here you are, clean like a baby angel’s butt.”

“Yeah, so clean I’d fuck said baby angel’s butt to shreds if he fucking appeared right now in front of me,” Leo growls.

Adam shivers visibly, horrified. “God, you’re completely out of your mind,” he says, “Calm down!”

The urgent tone in his voice makes Leo reconsider his words, and he looks down, actually ashamed at himself. “I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he whines, covering his face, “I have never felt like this. I want her so much.”

“But you walked out of there without doing anything to her, just because she asked you not to,” Adam considers.

“Yes!” Leo agrees, looking back at him. Then he suddenly turns pale, his eyes growing worried. “Do you think I’m gonna die? Do you think I’m ill?”

Adam groans, rolling his eyes. “Yeah,” he answers.

“Oh, God,” Leo whimpers, “Do you think it’s serious?”

Adam shakes his head, chuckling lightly. “Very,” he answers, “You’re falling for her.”

*

Leo had thought calling her back after what had happened would’ve been awkward, but he finds out it’s not, really, because his own need to see her is stronger than any of that dating crap he has kept running away from for the entirety of his life. Silly questions like “should I call her? Should I wait for her to call me? Should I simply text her? Should I just go back to chat with her online and wait for things to develop on their own, if they ever do?”, he has never had any reason to ask himself, because his entire dating life revolved around the one shot, one kill concept: he hooked up with people, talked to them a few hours, then he banged them senseless and the morning after he was gone, and they were gone too. Nobody expected him to ever call back, and he expected nobody to do the same.

Sure, there has been exceptions, like Shiv, but even with her, Leo didn’t have any bullshit to go through, no protocol to follow. They had hooked up and in a second they were hooked, and that was it. Leo had never needed asking himself questions.

When it comes to Connie, though, he’s unbelievably nervous. He second-guesses everything he thinks about, and it’s extremely stressful. To the point that he doesn’t dare calling her for days, after they met.

At some point, though, his need to see her blooms inside his heart like a proper flower, and a huge one too, and he needs to cut it out, or those overgrown petals are going to smother him. And so he picks up his phone and calls her.

“How much of an asshole are you thinking me to be?” he instantly asks her, before she can say anything.

She chuckles, and her laughter sounds sweet despite the phone making it sound a bit metallic too. That’s a keeper, he finds himself thinking, if she sounds like an angel over the phone too, I need to do my best to keep her. “Not much, really,” she answers.

“You’re a freaking saint, then, or a martyr,” Leo says, “I haven’t called you.”

“And I wanted to let it pass, since you’re calling me now,” she says, “But if you insists…”

“Yes, I do, I insist!” Leo almost yells, “I’m so sorry. I should’ve called right away. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s just, I had no idea how soon I could do it, so I kept waiting and questioning myself, why the fuck are you waiting, Leo?!”

Connie starts laughing wholeheartedly. “Leo!” she calls him, and he laughs too, relieved.

“Don’t laugh!” he pretends to complain, “It was awful. I was distraught.”

“I bet you were,” she chuckles.

Leo hears a distant, soft sound, like rustling sheets, and he frowns. “Are you in bed?” he asks, confused.

She laughs again. “You didn’t check the time before calling me, did you?” she asks.

Leo quickly pulls the phone away from his ear and reads the time on the screen. “For fuck’s sake!” he bursts out, “It’s fucking midnight! Connie!”

“What are you screaming at me for?” she asks, laughing out loud, “It’s not my fault!”

“Of course it’s not!” he answers, “It’s me! I’m out of my fucking mind! Why don’t you already have a restraining order out for me? I’m clearly a maniac.”

She laughs again, more tenderly, now. God, he could live and breathe for this sound. He’s never been the clown in a relationship, he never needed to. He needed to be a charmer, a perfect one, to hit on somebody and secure them for the night in the easiest way possible. But Connie’s different. He wants to make her laugh, he wants to entertain her, he wants to become so important for her she can’t go on a single day without hearing his jokes, ‘cause nothing else will make her smile and laugh the same way. “I think I kinda like you,” she says in a dreamy voice.

Leo’s insides tie up in knots and he bites at his lips to suppress a moan. “You just made my day,” he answers, “Or, well, my night. Or whatever. I need you to tell me we can meet tomorrow ‘cause I don’t think I can go on another day without seeing you.”

“I’m free from four to six,” she says in a short chuckle, “Then I need to get to work, ‘cause I’ve got a couple drawings to deliver by eight tomorrow evening. Does that work for you?”

“I’ll make it work, don’t worry,” he answers nonchalantly. He has to, because right now his mind is so caught up with Connie he doesn’t even remember if he has other things to do tomorrow. Frankly, he doesn’t even care if he’s gonna have to move a few things around. Meeting Connie’s more important. “Listen… do you have to go right away?” he asks.

She doesn’t answer instantly. It’s clear she’s fighting between wanting to get an early sleep and wanting to keep talking over the phone with him. She’s so cute.

She gives in with a light sigh, after a while. “Did you want to talk to me about something?” she asks.

“Not really, no,” he smiles, “I just wanted to keep listening to your voice. I missed you.”

“Well, then,” she chuckles, “You should’ve called.”

“Ah, come on!” Leo whines, “Haven’t I already apologized for that?”

“Yes,” Connie chuckles again, “You did. Sorry. I guess I wanted to rub it in a little.”

“You’re cruel and an awful, awful person,” Leo answers, pretending to be way more offended than he really is, which is none at all, actually, “You don’t deserve me.”

“Actually, I don’t,” she says. She sounds more serious than Leo would like her to sound, and he frowns, concerned.

“I was joking, Con,” he says to reassure her.

“Oh, I know,” she smiles. It’s amazing how he can feel her smile in her voice. It’s like a silky caress sliding over his neck. Since when do smiles turn into such physical sensations over the phone? “But you’re right nonetheless. I… I like the way you look at me, but I’m really not… not as good as you think I am.”

“I don’t think you’re anything, Connie,” he says softly, trying to soothe her because her voice sounds like she needs it, “I just like you a lot. I don’t expect anything from you and you don’t have standards to adjust to, to make me happy. Just be yourself.”

“I’m afraid myself won’t be enough to convince you to stick around longer than a few weeks,” she sighs deeply. Her words hurt Leo more than he could have ever expected them to be able to do after such a short time they’ve been knowing each other.

“Don’t… don’t speak like that,” he says, feeling actually sad, “I’m not… I really like you, Connie.”

“It’s not you, Leo,” she smiles, “It’s me. But I didn’t want this conversation to turn so depressing,” she says, whining a little, “See? I’m a mess.”

“I’ll take you messy as you are,” Leo hastens to say. He feels a little better when he hears her chuckle.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Listen,” he insists, “Let’s make a bet. You against me. I bet I’m gonna stick around longer than just a few weeks.”

“Mmmh,” her voice vibrates through the phone, making Leo shiver a little, “Okay,” she agrees, “What are we betting?”

Leo swallows, holding the phone harder between his fingers. “Our hearts,” he says in a whisper, hoping the intensity in his voice is enough to make Connie understand what his words really mean, and what he’s putting on the line right now.

She keeps quiet for a few minutes, and then Leo hears her swallow. “Our hearts, then,” she says. “Are we meeting at my place, tomorrow?”

“Absolutely,” he nods, “I can’t wait.”

“Actually,” she says in a light-hearted chuckle, “Neither can I.”

*

He tries and not think about sex the very moment he sees her, but it’s stronger than him, and there’s nothing he can do about it. She smells as if she was freshly baked, it’s unreal.

“Hey,” he says, smiling on the outside, crying on the inside, “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” she says, smiling too, “But you’re late.”

“I know!” he whines a little, “Adam wouldn’t leave me be. I think he truly believes I come here with murderous intentions.”

“I have no idea what I did to deserve such consideration from him,” she wonders in a short chuckle, as she lets him in. Leo finds out it wasn’t exactly her smelling like a cake, there is a cake, waiting for him on the counter top of the kitchenette. Chocolate cake, of course.

“Being stunning was enough, I fear,” Leo says, “Excuse me, did you bake a cake for me?”

Suddenly self-conscious, Connie blushes, looking up at him. “…yes?” she answers tentatively.

Leo grabs both her hands and squeezes them into his own. “Marry me,” he says.

Connie chuckles again, pulling him in. “I’ll think about it,” she says, “But you shouldn’t ask for people’s hands in marriage pushed by a cake you haven’t even tasted yet.”

Leo knows Connie meant to slip no subtext into that sentence, but it’s there, it’s undeniable, and it makes him chuckle softly, because it’s funny (and it’s funny because it’s true).

“Well, I’ll grab a bite, then,” he says, walking to the kitchenette and cutting two slices of cake for both of them. Its creamy filling leaks out of it, still hot from the oven. Leo bites at its own tongue, because everything keeps reminding him about sex, and he doesn’t know if it’s like this or if it’s just his mind playing tricks on him ‘cause he’s sex-starved, but how is he supposed to behave in such conditions?

He sighs deeply, putting the slices on two plates and walking back to the couch where Connie’s already sitting, waiting for him. She dolled herself up, despite having decided to meet inside. She’s wearing a short pale pink skirt made of multiple layers of a very thin and fluffy fabric that lets the outline of her thighs pass through, and a white frilly short-sleeved shirt that suits her perfectly, despite her chest being so flat. It’s so intriguing how girly she looks despite not having any boobs at all. She’s a walking, breathing miracle.

She’s also wearing thigh highs, the skirt short enough to show their hem around her full, pale thighs. Knowingly or not, she’s dressed for a quickie. It’s amazing. If she didn’t do it on purpose, she’s just amazing.

“You really shouldn’t have put those clothes on,” he says in another sigh, sitting next to her and handing her a plate.

She looks down, a little embarrassed, and crouches her shoulders. “I wanted to be pretty,” she says innocently.

“Oh, I wasn’t being formal,” he shakes his head, taking a bite out of the cake. God, it tastes splendid. “I meant it. You shouldn’t have put those clothes on. I can’t look away.”

“Well, then I chose right, didn’t I?” she smirks, looking up at him.

He laughs, putting down the plate and covering his face with his forearm. “Don’t flirt,” he says in half a whine, “You’re killing me. You’re too pretty. I can’t.”

“What is it that you can’t, exactly?” she mocks him, chuckling.

“I just can’t,” he laughs and whines again, “I have no idea how to deal with you. I don’t wanna do like I usually did with people when I wanted to get some, but I so wanna get some with you.”

Connie blushes again, looking down. “You’re… very frank,” she says, and Leo instantly raises his head, looking at her.

“Did I mess up?” he asks, worried, “I’m sorry. Adam says I need to learn how to back off. Thing is, it’s hard for me to back off when I’m with somebody I’m interested in. And you make my head burst with interest, so to speak, so, yeah, you see, I’ve got issues.”

“It’s okay,” Connie chuckles again. Every time she does that, Leo feels genuinely happy. He wonders if it’s normal to feel so freaking happy just because a girl is laughing. Maybe he’s going nuts. “I’m glad you like me. I like you too. But we established that, already,” she says, tilting her head as she slowly eats her cake, “Let’s move on, or you’ll get bored with me even sooner than I predicted.”

“What is with you and this boredom thing?” Leo inquires, frowning a little, “Why can’t you be cocky and full of shit like all the pretty girls out there? It’d be way easier to leave you, then, knowing you’d walk around setting fire to my things and posting Facebook statuses in which you call me ‘The Asshole’ and insist that I left because I couldn’t see you true colors shining?”

“Was that an ‘80s reference?” Connie actually laughs out loud, folding her legs under her ass, her thighs showing some more as the skirt falls upwards, pooling up in her lap, “Are you even serious?”

“Hey, I’m a learned boy,” he jokes, “I know shit.”

“Clearly,” Connie says in a soft chuckle. Then she nods to the cake slice Leo barely took a bite from. “You don’t like it?”

“On the contrary, it’s delicious,” Leo sighs, “But apparently I can only be one thing at a time. And right now, either I’m horny, or I’m hungry.”

She blushes wildly, looking down. “Stop…” she says, though she doesn’t sound like she wants him to stop at all. Leo swallows, looking at her. Should he take this as some sort of invitation? God, she confuses him so much.

“Do… do you want it?” he says in the end, “I don’t think I’m gonna finish it.”

For a moment, she seems uncertain between her options. In the end, her chocolate craving seems to win the battle, because she nods. Leo grabs the plate, but instead of giving it to her he fetches a piece of cake with the fork and offers it to her. Connie looks straight into his eyes and sits still, just blinking for almost a full minute. Come on, come on, Leo thinks, Come take your treat, baby girl.

And she does it. God fucking Almighty bless her, she does. She moves in, her eyes never leaving Leo’s, and she parts her cherry lips, showing just a bit of her tongue as she takes the cake in her mouth and swallows it.

Leo swallows too, letting out a deep moan. “I can’t do this,” he says, covering his face with a hand, “I wanna cry.”

Connie chuckles, and soon enough Leo feels the gentle weight of her hand over his head, and looks up to her. She’s stroking his hair, affectionately. “You have no idea,” she says, “What it means to me to see you like that… because of me.”

He sighs, leaning into her touch. “Don’t I?” he says, rhetorically.

She shakes her head. She sounds so serious, when she speaks. “No,” she says, smiling sweetly, “You don’t.” Then she stands up, holding her hand out for him. “Come.”

Leo follows her with his eyes and blinks, uncertain. “Where are we going?” he asks curiously.

She looks away, blushing, but her smile doesn’t fade away. “To a place where we can be more comfortable,” she answers.

Leo’s head explodes. Or maybe it doesn’t, but it feels like it. He sees white for a moment, and just when he’s about to ask himself if he’s had a stroke and should be calling for medical attention, he focuses again. Connie’s still there, she’s still holding her hand out for him, she’s still standing, waiting for him to come along. They’re gonna do it. They’re fucking going to do it and Leo’s heart is beating so fast he feels faint.

“Okay…” he says, standing up and following her. He can barely hear the sound of his own voice because of how deafening the thumping of his heartbeat is right now. It rumbles in his ears like an earthquake, making all other sounds muffled and distant. Connie leads him to her room, and he can barely believe his eyes when he sees that she’s guiding him to the bed.

“Listen…” she says. She turn around to face him, but the moment she does Leo decides that no, he doesn’t wanna listen, he wants to kiss her, and so he does, leaning in and holding her face between his hands as he presses his lips against hers, kissing her hungrily. “No…” she mutters, her arms moving up and closing tight around his neck in a hug, “Wait…”

“I don’t think I can,” Leo answers, whining a little, his hands landing on her hips and then traveling down her back, closing around her ass and squeezing it. God, it’s so freaking soft. This can’t be real. He must be dreaming. He’d be sure he was dreaming, if his cock didn’t ache so fucking much, constricted as it is inside his pants.

“No, no, wait,” she insists. They fall on the bed and she doesn’t push him away, but she does reach back for his hands, bringing them back on her hips. She speaks on his lips, alternating words and kisses, “Listen. I wanna touch you.”

“God, please, yes, do it.”

“I will,” she chuckles, short-breathed, “But I don’t want you to— I mean, I don’t feel ready for…” she stops, letting out a tiny frustrated noise, as she tries and not let their hips collide, keeping Leo at some distance, “I just don’t feel like you doing the same to me, for now, okay?”

“What?” Leo asks, looking desperately up at her, “Why? Don’t you want me to make you come?”

“Not yet,” she shakes her head and kisses him to try and soften the blow, “Really, I’m… I just wanna make you feel good today. Okay? Isn’t it enough?”

“No, it’s not enough!” he whines, pressing his whole face against hers and trying to steal another kiss, “It’s unfair. Please…” he reaches down, putting a hand on her thigh and traveling upwards, under her skirt, “Let me…”

“No, Leo, seriously,” she stops his hand, entwining their fingers, and kisses him again, slowly, soothingly, “Just me to you, today. There’ll be time for… for the rest. But for today…” she disentangles their fingers and lets her tiny, pale hand slide down his body. Soon enough, he hears the familiar sound of a zipper being pulled down, and then the soft, warm touch of Connie’s fingertips over his impossibly hot erection. “Can I…?”

There’s no way on earth he can say no now. He doesn’t even want to. He still wants to touch her and kiss her and lick her all over, but that’ll have to wait.

He closes his eyes and nods slowly, letting her work her magic. An amnesiac spell, apparently, because by the time she’s done with him, Leo can scarcely even remember his own name.

*

“Dude,” Adam says, sighing deeply as he offers him a cup of hot cocoa, “I’m worried for you.”

Lying on the couch face up, staring at the ceiling like a motionless, lifeless thing, or like some sort of seaweed eternally traveling the oceans, pushed by the tide, Leo barely turns his eyes to look at him.

“Keep that thing away from me,” he moans, turning on his side – something that takes him apparently a monstrous effort.

“What,” Adam frowns, “Chocolate?”

“Yes,” Leo whines, pushing his face against the pillow, “It reminds me of Connie.”

“Which is your girlfriend,” Adam insists, frowning even more deeply, “And therefore should be something good to be reminded of.”

“No,” Leo whines louder, shaking his head, “You don’t understand.”

“Well then, help me out,” Adam puts the cup down on the coffee table and sits on the couch. Leo folds his legs for a moment, waiting for him to sit, and then unfolds them on his lap.

“You’d mock me.”

“Most definitely, if it’s something ridiculous.”

“I’m not gonna tell you anything.”

“Leo, come on!” Adam sighs, hitting him lightly on his knee, “Spill it. I won’t insist much longer.”

Leo casts him an annoyed look, the last wall he usually puts between himself and Adam before surrendering, something that promptly happens a few seconds later, when he sighs once more and sits up, resting against the back of the couch. “Okay,” he says, “We haven’t fucked yet.”

Adam looks at him in perfect silence for almost a full minute, clearly shocked. “Are you shitting me right now?”

“No,” Leo whines, “It’s… God. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Wait a second,” Adam waves his hand in front of Leo’s face, to get him to shut up a second while he recollects, “You’re telling me you’ve been together how long exactly, three months, now?”

“Almost four.”

“And you haven’t had sex with her yet,” he asks, “Not even once.”

“Not even once.”

“Nothing whatsoever on that front.”

“Well, no…” Leo gestures vaguely, looking away, “We do shit. She jerks me off, she blows me. But she doesn’t want me to touch her, and she won’t undress, and she doesn’t want to have sex. I even proposed intercrural, like, it’s not like I wanna put it inside her at all costs, I mean, I do, but I’m not a rapist, if she doesn’t feel like going full penetration I can understand, but why doesn’t she want me to get close to her? We don’t even dry hump.”

“So… let me get this straight,” Adam insists, “You come.”

“Plenty,” Leo nods, “That’s how I’ve managed to survive up to now. At least I come.”

“Okay,” Adam nods too, “This explains it. But… well, that’s fishy.”

“That’s primarily devastating, Adam, ‘cause I want her so much I think I’m gonna die.”

“Yeah… okay,” Adam concedes with a sigh, “But you have to admit it’s suspicious too. I mean, why won’t she get close? Have you ever asked her? Talked about it or something?”

“I tried…” Leo sighs, “But she clammed up. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, I feel sick with myself when I make her feel bad, so I dropped it. But I don’t know what to do. I can’t go on like this, I’m so frustrated. If I got a straight answer, at least, I think I could put my mind at rest and, I don’t know, maybe accept this whole thing as it is and move on, but she gives me nothing to try and understand and I’m getting obsessed with it. I can’t think about anything else when we’re together, and I know on the long run it’ll damage us. It’s like this small tumor growing, and it grows slowly, but at some point it’ll fucking show, and when it does it’ll be too late, and I don’t want to get there because…”

He stops suddenly, holding his breath. Adam hasn’t disturbed his monologue, up to now, wanting to see where was it going, but now that Leo’s fallen silent he feels like pushing it. “Because…?”

Leo sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t feel like saying it,” he answers honestly, “Sorry. But yeah, you got it. Bottom line is, I need a solution for this. I won’t be able to go on much longer if nothing changes. And it’s breaking me apart ‘cause I don’t wanna lose her.”

Adam pats his knee affectionately, sighing deeply. “I’m sorry, dude,” he says, “At first I thought I needed to protect you from her. Then I was scared I’d have to protect her from you. But now it turns out I was right when it started, after all.”

Leo looks at him, biting at his tongue. Adam doesn’t get it. He doesn’t want to be protected from Connie. If anything, the opposite.

*

Connie never wanted him to stay around while she was working, at first. Probably because she always made herself super pretty, when he was around, which meant wearing skirts, shirts and stockings, admittedly not the most comfortable attire for working from home, especially if said work ultimately imposed her to sit for hours in front of an inclined desk with a light pointed at a picture, surrounded with ink and colors that inevitably left their mark on her clothes and body by the end of the day.

She was good with the graphic tablet, but she preferred to work on the sketch by hand first. It gave a most genuine vibe to the drawing, she said. If any other person had told Leo something like that, he’d have called them a fucking hipster, hated them with a fire and instantly decided he would never buy a single thing they had drawn for in whole his life. Somehow, if it was Connie saying it, it rang true, it rang honest, it didn’t reek fake like it’d have reeked if it had come out from one of those posers’ mouths. He could believe it, he could believe she believed it though he didn’t agree with the general concept, so he didn’t get angry at her.

How she manages to make him so mellow, it’s beyond him. That’s all there is to her mystery. It’s not what Leo doesn’t know about her that draws him near, makes it impossible for him to go: it’s the things she does to him, how she changes him without making him feel different, a mystery there’s no answer to.

In time, she got used to him staying around while she worked. Nowadays, when it’s time for her to sit at her desk and draw incessantly for hours, she grabs more comfortable clothes, excuses herself and disappears into the bathroom for ten minutes. When she comes out of there, she’s usually dressed in her jumpsuit, or some other anonymous combination of house clothes like pajama pants and a hoodie. She looks so cute, when she lets him see her like that. She looks cute because she is cute, despite looking like some sort of androgynous thirteen years old kid, and she looks cute because she always keeps something pretty on, like a bow or a frilly headband, and that creates a nice contrast with the simple way she’s dressed, but most of all, most of all she looks cute because she looks familiar, because she looks relaxed, because she shows herself as she is in her daily life, messy and dressed in oversized, boyish clothes, and still she looks amazing, the most perfect girl Leo has ever seen in his life.

He loves to stay overtime, and he’s so glad Connie finally came around the idea of letting him stay.

And yet, of course, staying around has its perks, but it’s got also a few downsides, like for example the little embarrassment that always surrounds them when Connie finishes to jerk him off or blow him and Leo has to back off and pretend he doesn’t want to throw her on her back on the bed to fuck her senseless. Or the temptation she is, sitting at that desk with her legs folded under her ass, unwillingly drawing him close despite Leo knowing he can’t disturb her, because he earned the right to stay around while she works on the agreement that he’d let her actually work in peace. Or, well, boredom, of course. Leo never feels completely at ease in houses that aren’t his own, he never knows what he can touch, what he can read, what he can pick up from the shelves, where he can stick his nose and where he cannot, so he always ends up lying on the unmade bed with nothing to do except stare at Connie and suffer in silence, which is most times enough to turn a perfectly good and pleasant afternoon into a nightmare.

He’s been sitting there with his hands on his lap for almost an hour, already, when he decides he can’t do this anymore, and he stands up, walking aimlessly around the room in a symphony of sighs and soft whining.

Connie chuckles, lifting her head and looking at him. It’s one of the lazy days, this one. She doesn’t have any pressing deadline to meet, but she knows if she slacks she’s never gonna get her pace straight back again, so she lets herself work slowly, but she works nonetheless. She looks so cute with her pencil in her hand, her fingertips dirty with the dark shadow of graphite. “You’re bored, aren’t you?” she asks, her voice sweet as candy.

“Yeah…” he answers in a childish whining, and she chuckles again.

“See, this is why I rather you wouldn’t stay around while I work,” she says, “I know it’s boring.”

“But I wanna spend time with you,” he insists, “Can’t we do something together?”

“I have to work,” she sighs, crouching her shoulders.

Leo pouts, looking away. He knows he’s acting like an idiot, but he also knows this isn’t just about having nothing to entertain himself with at all. The problem’s deeper, it’s his dissatisfaction, his frustration, which boredom only manages to amplify.

Connie must know. She must feel it. She’s not stupid and she’s not half as slow as she puts herself out to be, Leo knows it now, because he knows her, despite not understanding her half the time, and that makes him even more annoyed.

She bends over, reaching down for the bottom drawer in her desk and opening it, to retrieve an old bloc notes. “Can I show you something?” she asks.

In a second, Leo knows she isn’t giving him something to fight boredom with. She heard him. She listened to his silence more than she listened to his words, and she got what his whining really meant. I know nothing of you, except what you let me see on the surface. I don’t get you. Please, give me a chance to get to know you better. And that’s what she’s doing now. Giving him something to distract himself with is just an excuse. The truth beneath it is far more interesting.

Leo nods, sitting back on the edge of the bed and waiting for her to come over. She sits next to him, her sweet smell surrounding him and making him dizzy as usual, and she hands him the bloc notes, offering him a tiny, pretty smile together with it. She’s got no lipstick, but her lips are still red as cherries. Such prettiness can’t be real, Leo thinks, kissing her as a vague, silent thanks.

He starts flipping through the pages, looking at the drawings hidden in there. They look more alive, more vibrant than any other work Connie ever showed him. He’s only seen her illustrations for her job, things somebody else had committed, but these, these are things she drew for herself, and they’re impressive. It’s just humanlike figures, and much like she is now it’s impossible to tell their gender. Their features are beautiful, perfect, but they’re completely sexless. They look unreal, but the detail hitting Leo the most is their expressions. They’re so intense. The glisten in their eyes make them look as if they were staring at him from the page, as if they were indeed alive, and trapped in that paper cage, desperate to come out but unable to do so.

Leo holds the bloc notes in his hands, squeezing it a little. “They’re… they’re amazing,” he says, “What are they?”

“I… kind of invented them a few years ago,” Connie explains, “They’re called Neverboys and Nevergirls.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re… people, I guess,” she says, “Some sort of fairy folk. They’re born boys or girls, but they never know what their gender really is until they reach maturity, which happens after centuries they’ve been alive. So they wander the majority of their life not knowing what they are, who they are, and when they finally understand it it’s usually too late, and they only have a few years to enjoy their newfound identity, before they die.”

“…that’s so sad,” Leo says, looking back at the figures on the page.

“It’s a metaphor, I guess?” Connie says, offering him the tiniest smile, “Of, like, knowing yourself. You never really get there, right? And when you do, if ever, it’s usually when you’re old already, so you don’t get to enjoy that condition much.”

“It’s true, but…” his fingers move gently across the face of the Neverperson he’s looking at now, “I don’t know, it sounds so hopeless.”

“I guess that’s…” Connie hastens to say, and then she stops suddenly, biting at her bottom lips. She looks like she doesn’t wanna go on anymore, but her eyes are shining as if she was dying to speak. “I guess that’s how I feel, though,” she finally says, looking down.

Leo feels his heart sink into his stomach, his body aching all over. “No…” he says, putting the bloc notes aside and moving closer to Connie, “Please, don’t talk this way. It breaks me. You should be happy. Why shouldn’t you be happy? You look so beautiful, and you’re so talented. These— These Neverpeople, they’re beautiful. They’re sad, but they’re beautiful, and you could do something with that. A graphic novel, maybe, or— or something else, I’d like to help you! You’d be someone, you’d be famous, you’d do something relevant, ‘cause this is the kind of concept that helps people all over the world coming to terms with themselves, can’t you see? It’s beautiful and it’s genius and it’s yours, you made it, so why should you feel hopeless? You’ve got so much. You’ve got me. Don’t feel bad.”

“I’ve got nothing, Leo,” Connie answers, shaking her head, “I certainly don’t have you.”

“No,” Leo holds her face between his hands, drawing her close, kissing her, “Please. Don’t say that. You have me. You so have me, Con. I’m so yours. You have no idea. On the first day we met I wanted to make you mine, but you made me yours. You have me.”

“I don’t,” she insists. She’s crying, but she doesn’t back off, “I don’t have you. I don’t deserve you. You should leave.”

Leo never thought he could ever feel such an amount of pain without fainting. Isn’t that what people do? During car crashes or when they fall off a cliff or something? Their bodies endure the pain as much as they can, but at some point they shut down in self-defense. Leo wishes he could shut down now, because hearing such words coming from Connie’s killing him inside.

“But I love you,” he says desperately, “I love you so much…” his hand lands on her inner thigh, and starts traveling upwards, “If you only let me in…”

Connie stops him right away, putting her hand on his and squeezing it. She keeps her eyes closed, refusing to look at him, but she’s still crying, shaking a little, and the sight breaks Leo’s heart.

“Leo… “ she says, “There’s something you need to know.”

“Nothing you could ever tell me would make me love you any less,” he says instantly, not even giving her the time to form the thought in her own mind, “Say all you want. I love you. God, I’m crazy about you. I wanna know you. I’m not scared of you.”

Connie finally looks at him, her watery eyes reddened by tears. “You should,” she says grimly. Then she stands up, moving a few steps away from him. Terrified she’ll leave, Leo doesn’t say a thing, but he breathes again when she stops right in front of him. She swallows hard, searching for his eyes. He looks back at her, trying to make her understand that he won’t run, whatever she’s going to say. “My name isn’t Connie,” she says.

Leo frowns, clutching his fists over his knees. “What?” he asks.

Connie looks down, and grabs the zipper of her hoodie. She pulls it down slowly, the sound making Leo shiver. When it reaches the bottom, Connie lets it go and pulls her hoodie off her shoulders.

She’s not just breastless.

She’s a boy.

“…what…” Leo whispers, completely breathless. His heart’s beating so fast the rumble of his blood is making him dizzy. His head feels like it weights a ton, he’s not sure he can keep sitting straight.

“My name’s Cody,” the boy says. He remains half naked for a few seconds, then he blushes wildly and shivers, and pulls the hoodie back over his shoulders, pulling the zipper up right away. “I get it if you wanna leave.”

“If I…” Leo breathes out, standing up, “No! I want answers! I want… what?! What is… what do you even… Connie, why?!”

“Cody,” the boy insists, “My name’s Cody.”

“I don’t fucking— God,” he covers his face with both his hands, “This is… this is so fucked up,” he lowers his hands and looks back at him. He feels lost. He has no idea what’s happening. His heart’s going to explode and so is his head. “Why didn’t you tell me? You know I like boys too. Is this why…” his heart shrinks as if somebody was holding it in his fist and squeezing it, “Is this why you wouldn’t let me get close? Why you… you were a boy all along, and we had sex, or, well, whatever it was what— and you never thought you should’ve told me?!”

“I knew I should’ve told you!” Cody looks up, his eyes filled with tears. He doesn’t look changed to Leo. His voice sounds the same, his eyes look the same, he’s pretty sure that, if he dared to reach out for him and stroke his cheek, his skin would feel exactly the same too. “I knew that. I was just— I was so ashamed.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m like them,” he nods towards the bloc notes, now lying abandoned on the bed, “I was born a boy but I don’t…” he stops halfway through the sentence, closing his eyes, breathing deeply. Before he even says it, Leo knows, by instinct, that this is the first time he admits it out loud. “But I don’t know. Most of the time I don’t feel like a boy at all. Sometimes I’m okay, but most of the time I’m not.”

His tears have a weirdly soothing effect on Leo. He supposes that if Cody sounds just the same as Connie, and looks just the same as Connie, then he can’t ask his heart to feel any different about him than he felt about her.

“You’re trans, then?” he asks softly.

Cody covers his face with both hands in a nervous movement, his shoulders shaking violently. “I don’t know.”

“Or maybe you’re genderfluid,” Leo tries again, “Is that it?”

“I don’t know,” Cody sobs, his voice muffled by how hard he’s pressing his hands over his mouth, “Sometimes everything seems so clear. And then some other times I’m just confused. I don’t know. I really don’t know. But you didn’t know me, and I liked you, and all I wanted to do was to try and… and feel okay,” he sniffles, “I could never get close to people. Because I never felt okay. Whenever I dressed as a boy and tried to be with someone, it just felt so wrong, and I was so uncomfortable, and I thought that maybe if I could go with the flow, put something pretty on, try and be… be okay, for once, then…” he sobs again, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to tell you. I wanted to, I really did, but I was so scared and so ashamed… I know that doesn’t justify me, but I… God. I understand if you hate me. Please. Just— Just go.”

Leo walks closer to him, raising his arms to put his hands on his shoulders. When he touches him, Cody jumps back, lowering his hands to look at him. His eyes are red and flooded by tears. He looks so small. So fragile. Leo feels the urge to protect him, to envelope him into an indestructible shell and not let any harm ever come to him. It’s a painful need, shaking him deeply, overcoming everything else.

“Don’t run from me,” he says softly, getting closer again.

“You can’t want to stay,” Cody mutters, his eyes filled with disbelief and uncertainty.

“You don’t know what I want,” Leo insists, “Clearly. If you did, you’d have known I would have wanted to know about this, if I had ever suspected something so big could have come in between us. You think I’ve been okay these past few months? That just because you jerked me off and made me come I was alright? I knew there was something wrong. You knew what it was, and you left me all alone facing insecurities I couldn’t trace back to anything. You wanna feel sorry? Feel sorry about this. We made a bet. I put my heart on the line. You did not.”

“I love you,” Cody answers, putting his hands on his chest and clinging to his t-shirt.

“I believe you,” Leo says, nodding, “But you still kept your heart safe in its comfortable vault. That’s not how you make relationships work. I know, because I’ve had a working relationship, and it broke my heart. It broke it because it had the chance to do it. I could have never broken your heart. That’s why it wasn’t working.”

Cody looks down again, big tears falling from his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. He nods faintly, keeping his gaze locked to the floor. “I know,” he says, his voice shaky, “I’m sorry. I will always regret this.”

“You better,” Leo nods, “I’ll be reminding you every day.”

Cody slowly looks up, his eyes still confused. “What…?”

“Of course you’re gonna be mocked forever for this,” Leo shrugs, “Every time I’ll need to tell you something, I’ll be like ‘hey, Cee, remember when you dressed up as a girl and made a fool out of me for almost four months?’. We’re gonna have a ball.”

“Don’t…” Cody raises a hand and presses it against his mouth, “Don’t. Please. If you wanna leave, just—“

“I just told you I don’t wanna leave,” Leo frees himself from his hand and keeps talking, “Here, nor you.” He sighs deeply, as Cody looks back up at him with eyes so huge and shiny they’d melt a rock. “Don’t look at me like that…” he says, whining, “You’re so unfair to me. You know you have powers over my weak mind, and you take advantage of it.”

“I… I don’t,” Cody answers, confusedly.

Leo forces a smile. Surprisingly enough, after he pushes to make it come up to his lips, it ends up blooming pretty easily. “I know,” he says. He leans in, pressing his lips against Cody’s in a soft kiss that lasts but a moment. Then he pulls back an inch or so and their eyes meet, Cody’s teary ones and Leo’s darker ones, and then they kiss again, their lips parting, their tongues moving slowly in search of one another, their bodies pressed tightly into a firm hug.

“Wait…” Cody whispers on his lips, trying to pull away.

“You lost every right to ever use that word again,” Leo says, drawing him in.

“No, yes… I mean,” Cody clears his throat, “You… You still want to…?”

“Listen,” Leo says, holding his face between his hands, “I’m not okay with what happened. I’m still angry, somewhere inside. And I’m still hurt by what you did to me, by the fact that you didn’t trust me. But right now my brain is rewinding these last four months and I just realized you’ve been showing yourself to me with skirts all the time and that you had a dick underneath all those laces and satin, and you can’t ask me not to be crazy about that thought.”

Cody blushes so furiously and so suddenly his legs weaken, and Leo’s forced – not that he’s complaining – to tighten the hold of his arms around him just to keep him on his feet. “I don’t… really know how to react to what you just said,” he admits, honestly.

“Good,” Leo nods, “I have no idea what the fuck I’m even talking about. I’m just— This is very confusing, but I liked you before and I still like you. You didn’t have boobs as a girl, you don’t have boobs as a boy. Sure, you’ve got a dick I didn’t know of, but it’s not like I’m exactly disgusted by the thought. It’s like I bought a white chocolate box and I found out there was a dark one inside. It’s a surprise, but it’s okay.”

“Unless you hate dark chocolate.”

“Okay, but I’m gay for dark chocolate, so that’s not really a problem,” Leo insists, and Cody lets out a shaky laughter, and something in Leo’s brain explodes. If he ever needed proof that his feelings for him haven’t changed in the last few minutes, there, he has it: his laughter is still the only thing in the world which manages, on its own, to give him joy to the point of making his heart swell. “Listen…” he tells him, speaking softly against his lips, “I wanna see you naked.”

Cody blushes again, looking down. “Are you sure…?” he asks weakly.

“Yes, Cody, yes, I’m sure,” Leo answers impatiently, holding him tighter. Then he calms down and sighs. “I mean. If you’re decided on not ever wanting to let me touch you, or have sex with you, or do anything with you… I guess I’ll have to deal with it. But if you ever, ever wanted to let me in, if you ever wanted to feel me and never let it happen out of fear… please, don’t be scared anymore. I love you. Let me see you.”

Cody looks back up at him, his clear blue eyes shining, not just because of the tears anymore. “I’ve wanted plenty,” he says, his hands sliding back down Leo’s chest, “You have no idea. I’m not made of steel. When I said I didn’t feel like letting you touch me, it didn’t mean I wasn’t aching for it.”

Leo doesn’t need to hear a single word anymore. He leads him to the bed, helping him climb on it and then waiting for him to lie down to join him. He keeps himself up on his arms, not to weigh on him as he looks intently at him. He couldn’t have seen he was a boy if he had read it written on his ID. Those eyelashes, so long, so black, so thick, and those lips, so plump and red, and his features, the proportions of his body... there’s no wonder Cody’s confused, his body is confusing. In the best possible way, sure, but still confusing.

Leo lets his hands move upon it, following the gently curved line of his waist and hips. Cody shivers, closing his eyes. Leo’s hands move up, feeling the soft curve of his belly first, and then the flatness of his chest right after. Hardness and softness, curves and corners live together in his body in such a perfect harmony if Leo believed in God he’d probably find in Cody definitive proof of his existence.

He pulls down the zipper of Cody’s hoodie, uncovering his chest again. He’s so pale, and his nipples are so pink, so inviting. He leans in kissing his way down Cody’s neck, over his collarbone and then, finally, around his nipple. He licks it, then squeezes it between his lips as he does the same with the other between his thumb and index finger, and Cody moans loudly, arching underneath him, leaving enough space between his back and the mattress that Leo manages to slip his free arm in, to hold him tight.

His other hand lets go of Cody’s nipple soon enough, and while his mouth is still caring for the other his fingers travel lightly down to the hem of his sweatpants, hooking around the waistband to push them down his legs. Cody’s thighs emerge from the fabric like a feast set for him alone, and he can’t help but palm them slowly, feeling their softness, their smoothness, their warmth.

Then he moves up, his knuckles gently stroking his inner thigh and then rubbing against Cody’s crotch. He was expecting thick fabric, but he finds out Cody’s wearing lighter panties, and when he looks down he discovers it’s because they’re girl’s panties. Pretty simple, nothing too cutesy, nothing even too colorful, but still girly.

He lets out a deep hungry moan, biting at his lips. “Unreal…” he says, “Even if I couldn’t see them, you were still wearing them.”

“I… I told you,” Cody says as he breathes heavily, covering his eyes with his forearm, “I was trying to feel okay.”

“You look beautiful,” Leo answers, moving down along his body, stopping only at his crotch. He places a small kiss on the tip of Cody’s erection, the outline of which he can see through the panties, and then he moves away the tiny strip of fabric covering his opening. He instantly decides he’s gonna keep those panties on him, fuck him while he still wears them. If they make him feel okay, he needs to keep them on. Besides, it’s gonna be a sight to behold.

He dives in with no second-thoughts, despite the fact that he has never rimmed another boy before. It’s been done to him, countless times, actually, by a lot of boys he’s been with, but he has never felt the urge to do it he’s feeling now with Cody. As furiously as he wanted to lick him all over when he still believed he was a girl, he keeps wanting to do now, and so he pushes his tongue inside him, hard, fast, holding his hips with one hand and keeping his panties on the side with the other.

Cody arches his back once again, mewling softly. The sound of his voice makes Leo’s cock twitch with desire, but he chooses to ignore it, he chooses to go on with it for a little while longer, because he wants to taste him long enough to feel satisfied, and that takes time.

A few minutes, actually, during which Cody’s body starts to shake, and his hips start to swing, moving uncontrollably, trying to follow the fast pace of Leo’s tongue’s movements. When he starts touching himself, Leo reaches out for his hand and covers it with his own, palming his erection slowly. He looks up, and Cody’s looking down at him, his cheeks red as ripe apples, his eyes glistening, his lips plump and moist. He needs to have him. He can’t wait anymore.

He moves up his body with feline grace, looking at him with predator’s eyes. Cody shivers, and Leo finds out he loves to feel him shiver that way. He’s thinking to add that to the already very long list of things he loves about Cody, when he surprises him with another movement, the slowly parting of his legs, to let Leo fall between his thighs.

There’s something so natural about that movement that makes Leo’s entire body go numb for a moment. His ears start ringing, he sees white once again, and once again he wonders if he’s having a stroke, but when a few seconds later he calms down and he feels alright he ultimately decides it wasn’t a stroke, just a surge of love. He’s gonna die an old man between Cody’s white thighs, and they’ll all say it’ll be a stroke who killed him, but from beyond, whatever there is beyond, he’ll know. Won’t be a stroke killing him, it will be love.

He kisses Cody deeply, shivering when he feels his arms circling his neck. He reaches down with his hand, pulling his panties aside with two fingers and feeling his wet opening with two other. Cody moans and pushes his hips down on his hand, trying to suck his fingers in, but Leo resists temptation and just rubs him from the outside, teasing him. When he hears him sob and whine in frustration, only then he removes his fingers and presses the head of his cock against his opening, breaking in slowly, carefully, one inch after the other.

Cody parts his legs wider for a moment, whining loudly, and then closes them around his hips in a sudden movement, crossing them behind his back and using them to pull him in, making his hips spring forward as his erection gets buried inside his body. They both lie down motionless for a few seconds as they get used to the feeling, their breathing deep and irregular, now, and then Leo starts moving, his hips drawing back and then pushing forward, slowly at first, faster and faster as seconds go by. He adapts his pace to Cody’s moaning, and keeps stroking his cock all through it, aching for release but determined not to come until he has made him come.

It happens suddenly, with no forewarning. Leo thrusts particularly deep in and Cody tenses all over, his back arching for the last time as he yells with no control left over his voice, and comes all over his own stomach. The sight is enough to trigger Leo’s own orgasm, and he comes violently inside Cody’s body, shaking deeply and then collapsing over him, completely spent.

Cody locks his arms around his shoulders, hugging him tightly, hiding his face against the curve of his neck. He’s shaking a little, and Leo caresses him soothingly, placing small kisses on his temple and cheek. “You okay?” he whispers.

Cody whines softly, hugging him tighter. “Don’t be too kind with me…” he sighs, “I don’t deserve it.”

“Listen,” Leo chuckles, kissing him on his neck, “Now that your dirty little secret’s out in the open, lose the self-shame. Doesn’t suit you at all.”

Cody pulls back, looking at him with annoyed eyes, his lips pursed in the most delicious pout. Leo kisses it, laughing softly. It’s a pleasure to feel it straighten out to the touch.

*

“You look too happy,” Adam says, staring at him, eyes filled with suspect, “You must’ve done something bad.”

“Yeah?” Leo chuckles, dropping his jacket on the couch and heading straight for the kitchen to get some orange juice from the fridge, “Entertain me, what do you think I did?”

“I don’t know,” Adam follows him around, his eyes reduced to two narrow cracks on his face, casting their doubtful light over him, “Maybe you killed her. You went there to confront her, demanded that she gave up and had sex with you, and when she refused, you grabbed something heavy and hit her on her head, killing her on the spot. And then you disposed of the corpse by throwing it in the river.”

Leo laughs out loud, amused. “Nice, you should try the HBO,” he says, “But no, that’s not what happened. We had sex.”

“What?” Adam asks, genuinely surprised, “Oh.”

“Yup,” Leo nods, putting the juice back in the fridge and the passing him by, headed to his bedroom, “And, Adam?”

“Huh?”

“She’s a boy.”

“Oh,” he says. Then a long silence follows. “Wait, what?”

The only answer he gets is Leo’s door clicking closed, while he laughs on the other side.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/OC(s).
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Underage, OC.
- Leo and Blaine spend an afternoon together in Blaine's room at the hotel. Emotional analysis of their relationship based on metaphores vaguely related to card games (?) ensues.
Note: La mia donna voleva una storiella sul Bleo canon ambientata intorno ai quindici anni di Leo, ed io sentivo il bisogno di riconnettere con quel Bleo dato che se Dio vuole presto riprenderemo a scrivere il nuovo capitolo di BHS, e la fortunata convergenza con il primo turno della Fandom League (su prompt "gioco") ha dato una grossa mano d'aiuto \o\
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
LOVE IS A GAME BUT I’M NOT REALLY A PLAYER

Spending time with Blaine when they’re not having sex is a dreadful, dreadful affair.

Leo didn’t know it before – how could he? He barely knew him as a human being, after all, his idea of Blaine being “that annoying jerk who comes and goes with no forewarning and sometimes, but only sometimes, makes me think bad, bad things, things I shouldn’t think at all but I like to dwell in when I’m alone in my bed at night” – but he found out hanging out with him.

Or, well, whatever it is this thing they’re doing, which Leo isn’t certain could be defined as hanging out with.

Fact is, Blaine’s old. Sure, not decrepitly so, but he’s old nonetheless, and what’s worse is he’s old in his brain before he’s old in his body. Him being so fit leads to great sex, sure, but that deep oldness inside of him, that makes for very, very boring hours after sex is over and they have to find some way to spend time together even though there’s literally nothing they’ve got in common.

Before he started this thing he has with Blaine, “age difference” was just a vague concept in his mind. The words had a meaning, sure, but it was just that, nothing practical, just a meaning, and an exciting one too, something connected with MILFs and very bad and at the same time extraordinarily arousing porn movies watched on his phone while hiding under the blankets in his bed at night.

He found out – thanks to Blaine and his ridiculous last-century-ness – that there’s much more to age difference than something potentially sexy. And when you take that sexiness out of it, only boredom is what’s left. Because sure, Blaine’s experienced, and he uses his hands and mouth in ways that make Leo forget entirely how he’s called, where he lives and even what time in history this is, but boy, he’s so precociously middle-aged sometimes Leo looks at him and he only wants to cry.

Like now, for example.

Blaine’s sitting at the desk in a corner of the hotel room they’re sharing for the afternoon. He’s wearing a fucking dressing gown that’s so ugly it manages somehow to make Leo forget he’s naked underneath. And he’s staring at his computer, reading some paper on it or something, with fucking glasses sliding down his nose, and he doesn’t simply look old, no, he looks ancient, and Leo’s been watching him for the past twenty minutes and all his brain’s been able to produce in all this time is a question: what the hell am I doing here with Methuselah’s last living son?

“Didn’t know you wore glasses,” he says, stretching like a cat on the bed, making sure the covers don’t fall off him, leaving him naked. Doesn’t matter how many times Blaine has seen him like that already, he can’t bear to show himself when they’re not in an explicitly sexual situation. And even then, he prefers to do it when the lights are off, no matter how many times Blaine has tried to convince him already that there’s nothing shameful in having sex while looking at each other, other than simply feeling one another in perfect darkness.

“In fact, I don’t,” Blaine answers nonchalantly, never moving his eyes away from the computer screen, “It’s for my new show. My character there wears glasses.”

“And, don’t tell me,” Leo snorts, “You’re one of those actors that really climb the Everest barehanded when they’re gonna play a dude who did that, right?”

“Not really, no,” Blaine chuckles, “I just hate the feeling of glasses weighing on my nose, and so, since I’m bound to wear them for at least three months, six days a week, two times per day, I thought it’d be smart of me to get used to it before I’m forced to do it.”

“Even your parts are boring,” Leo sighs, hiding his head underneath the pillow, “I bet you play some sort of old professor whining about his old age and envying a younger, hipper teacher everybody loves.”

“You’re wrong,” Blaine shakes his head. He still refuses to look at him, and this is starting to bother Leo a great deal. “I do play a professor, hence the glasses, but he’s a cool one. He wanders the world searching for items of great value, some of them imbued with magic or with ancient curses, to protect the world from the end of days that would surely fall upon it if he didn’t do his job correctly.”

Leo emerges from under the pillow, staring at him. “You kidding me?” he asks.

Blaine laughs shortly. “Yep,” he says, “I play an old professor whining about his old age and envying a younger, hipper teacher everybody loves.”

“Seriously?!”

Blaine laughs out loud, this time, finally turning the chair to look at him. “I’m fucking with you,” he reassures him. “I play no professor at all, it’s just a guy with glasses. Boring as it may be.”

Leo blushes vividly, embarrassed for having been played around. “You’re awful,” he growls, glaring at him, “I wouldn’t come watch one of your shows if you paid me.”

“I have two nude scenes in this guy with glasses thing.”

“How much did you say those tickets cost?”

Blaine laughs again, throwing his head back. “Still fucking with you.”

“Can you stop?!” Leo yells, blushing even more, “At least come back here and do it properly, I’m dying of boredom.”

“Alright, first of all,” Blaine says, counting on his fingers, “I’m not your personal vibrating self-warming sex toy, I do not exist to entertain you when you’re bored.” Leo groans, rolling his eyes, and Blaine chuckles, amused. “Secondly, we literally just had sex.”

“You mean two hours ago.”

“No, kid,” Blaine shakes his head, “You arrived around half past four. It’s half past five. Do the math.”

“…no chance it was a very quick, very brief sex session, huh?”

“You came twice.”

“That’s irrelevant, I’m fifteen.”

“And you love to remind me,” Blaine laughs tenderly, shaking his head, “But no, wasn’t a short session and you certainly didn’t come twice because you’re a teenager. Anyway,” he sighs, “Even if we had had sex two hours ago, I still wouldn’t be up for it again, because I’m not fifteen at all.”

“And you love to remind me,” Leo sighs, receiving a pillow on his face as an answer.

“So find a different way to distract yourself,” Blaine goes on, “Don’t you have homework?”

“Yeah,” Leo snorts, rolling on the bed, “If I had them, this is totally the place I would bring them to.”

“Ah, so as long as you’re staying with me, you’re not studying,” Blaine inquires, raising an eyebrow.

“Of course not,” Leo answers, frowning, “This,” he says, pointing at Blaine and then at himself quickly, “Is not a studying situation. Nor a… reading at your computer situation. Is that what you do with your lovers? You screw them once and then you sit down at your desk and read or whatever it is you’re doing?”

“So we’re lovers, now,” Blaine grins.

“Don’t bug me with the technicalities,” Leo grunts, waving his hand in mid-air.

“So sorry,” Blaine chuckles, amused. “Now I’m curious, though. What do you expect lovers to be doing when they finish having sex?”

“More sex?” Leo asks, tilting his head. He’s genuinely surprised at the question, because he thought the answer was pretty obvious.

“…yes, right,” Blaine chuckles, “So what about when they’re not fifteen anymore?”

“You keep insisting only fifteen years old have sex multiple times per day.”

“You were the first suggesting the idea.”

“Shut up, you’re so annoying!” Leo growls, throwing his hands up in the air, “You can’t be talked with. You’re confusing and obnoxious. Stop.”

“Stop doing what?” Blaine chuckles again, “Being annoying, confusing or obnoxious?”

“All of the above!” Leo concludes with a louder grunt, “Enough of the silly talking. I can’t make sense of you. Now you do something I like.”

“More sex?”

“No,” Leo glares at him, “I’m angry at you and I hate you right now, if you touch me, even with a stick, I’ll set you on fire.”

“Fair enough,” Blaine smiles and stands up, walking back to the bed and sitting next to Leo, “So, what should we do?”

That’s a scary question, one Blaine shouldn’t be asking. In fact, Leo frowns. The man knows he should be the one providing the fun entertainment. Not because Leo can’t think of anything fun on his own, but because apparently all his propositions – and they’ve been through them a lot – are unsustainable for them.

Like for example going out for an ice cream and a movie, or just a fucking walk, for example. Blaine seems convinced that, the very moment they’ll step out of this hotel room to enter the world of the living, everybody will look at them and understand in an instant that they’re fucking, breaking at least a couple laws while doing so, and so they’ll – or better, Blaine will – be looked at like monsters and someone will report them to the police, ending their life and breaking hell loose upon them or something equally and uselessly overdramatic.

Not that Leo wants to have a date with the man, of course. That’d be ridiculous and gross. But it’d still be better than spend the entirety of their afternoon locked in there in self-inflicted incarceration in fear of a real life one. If only for the thrill.

But no, that’s not an option and every time they discuss it Blaine ends up scolding him for being childish and irresponsible, and every time they do Blaine turns cold and he seems to rethink the whole matter of being together, as if he was suddenly realizing he made a huge mistake, and Leo can’t afford that to happen, for some reason, can’t afford the thought of hearing him say “listen, kid, it was good while it lasted, but this can’t go on, we’re just too different, too far apart, we have to break it off” and watching him walk away, so no. The Dating Issue won’t be brought up, not by him.

“Well,” he concedes with a sigh, “I’ve got cards.”

Blaine looks at him, puzzled. “Cards?” he asks, “As in, Blackjack cards? Bridge cards?”

“Obviously not,” Leo answers, making a face, “Who plays those games anymore?”

“I have no idea,” Blaine shakes his head, “Uno, then?”

“What are you, twelve?!” Leo snorts, annoyed, “I mean trading cards.”

“Oh,” Blaine blinks, surprised, “Like Pokémon.”

“Yeah,” Leo sighs, “Except I’m not five, so it’s not Pokémon.”

Blaine chuckles, tilting his head. “You’ve got a lot of age-related limitations, don’t you? You’re too young for classic cards game, I’m too old for Uno and you’re definitely too grown-up for Pokémon. How does that work?”

“That’s how it works, you shut up and listen,” Leo cuts the argument short, blushing a little as he stands up, goofily wrapping himself in the blanket and walking towards his backpack, that he dropped on the floor right next to the door the very moment he stepped into the room and flew between Blaine’s arms.

“We’re nervous, aren’t we?” Blaine chuckles again, looking intently at the bundle of covers crouching on the floor.

“We’re not, and stop using first person plural, it’s creepy.”

“You just used it too.”

“You’re infecting me with your creepiness,” Leo concludes, standing up and turning towards him again. He’s got a small cardboard box in his hands, pretty colorful, clearly not new but kept in outrageously mint conditions, especially for having been into a teenager’s backpack up until thirty seconds before. “I seem to recall having asked you to shut up and listen.”

“You most definitely did,” Blaine nods, offering him the most charming of his trademark smiles, “But I never agreed.”

Predictably enough, Leo turns away and blushes.

“Well, agree now,” he mutters, walking back to the bed and sitting cross-legged on it, hidden by the cover as if they were a tent from which only his head popped out.

“You know you look like a bunch of broccoli, don’t you?”

“Blaine!” Leo whines, and Blaine laughs, raising both arms.

“Alright, alright,” he concedes, settling more comfortably in front of him, “I will shut up and listen.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Blaine swears solemnly.

That’s enough, Leo thinks, and then nods, putting down the box on the bed and opening it, spreading the cards in between them. “Okay,” he says, “This game is called Majik Revolution, and it’s set on Noeïn, a fantasy world in which magic has been wiped out of existence for a decade, throwing the people back into the Dark Ages.”

“Wait a second,” Blaine arches an eyebrow, “These people were sent back into the Dark Ages by being deprived of magic? What’s been of cellphones, cars, computers, hot water and electricity?”

“It’s a fantasy world,” Leo groans, “They used magic for everything, from boiling water to turn their devices on.”

“Unpractical,” Blaine arches an eyebrow, “But, more importantly: in ten years no one up there was ever able to discover fire?”

“Oh, come on!” Leo whines again, “I thought you had promised to shut up and listen! You said ‘cross my heart and hope to die’, why aren’t you dead now?!”

“You’re right,” Blaine chuckles, “You’re right, I’m sorry. My bad. Please, do continue.”

“Mhn,” Leo puffs, pouting a bit. He waits for a few seconds, just to be sure Blaine isn’t going to interrupt him again with some other silly question, and then he moves on. “Okay, so, magic’s been gone, as I told you, but now it’s coming back. A group of heroes has managed to find a way to open the portals that kept magic away, and magic’s slowly pouring back through them into the world.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Blaine nods, “Now the good people of Noeïn can finally have a shower.”

“You are unbelievably stupid,” Leo sighs, passing a hand over his face, “And you need to stop talking now.”

“No, but I’m curious,” Blaine chuckles, “I wonder where the cheap fantasy novel stops and the card game begins.”

“They’re one and the same, you impossible, unbearable man!” Leo growls, throwing his arms back up in the air, “This is a trading card games, so it has a set and a plot to follow! It’s not that hard to understand.”

“That’s right,” Blaine giggles, “So what is it, this plot we must follow?”

“Well, the game is for two up to five players,” Leo explains professionally, “Each player chooses a role and a side. There are five categories from which you can pick your role, majis, kingslings, poorelings, knafes and overlaws, each having its own power points and weakness points. As for the side, the game works with a basic fantasy alignment system, which means you can be Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil. You following me?”

Blaine blinks a couple of times. “It all sounds rather confusing, I must admit.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leo snorts dismissively, “Adam got it.”

“Who’s Adam?”

Leo sighs. “My best friend.”

“Oh,” Blaine nods, “In that case, Adam’s fifteen.”

“Who’s having all the age-related limitations, now?”

“God, you are so annoying,” Leo sighs again, “It’s not that hard! You have cards, you make yourself a good selection of them, then play accordingly to what your role and alignment dictate.”

“Still trying to figure out there the role playing game ends and the trading cards one starts, then,” Blaine chuckles.

Leo doesn’t answer, and decides it’s best to turn away and give it up entirely. Sometimes it seems like the problem is not even that they can’t communicate anymore, no, it’s something deeper. It’s like they didn’t even speak the same language, as if they came from foreign countries. Nothing Blaine says makes sense to Leo, at best it’s annoying and bothering him to no end, and what’s worse is that he can’t even blame Blaine entirely because he senses it’s just the same for him, that the things Leo says makes as much sense for him as the things he says make for Leo, which is very little, if any.

How could it be possible to feel so connected with him in the most weird ways when they’re having sex, or in sudden ridiculous moments in which they don’t even need to speak to share a thought, and then fall so far apart from one another as to be unable to conduct a conversation without hating each other’s guts, that’s completely beyond him. He doesn’t understand. It shouldn’t even be possible.

Blaine sighs deeply, moving closer to him on the bed. “You’re angry at me, aren’t you?” he says sweetly.

“Yes,” Leo answers right away, “You promised you shut up and you didn’t. Your promises are worth nothing. I don’t even know why you keep making them, if you fail them every time.”

“I can’t help it,” Blaine chuckles, “I love to see your happy face, and that face only shows up when I promise something good.”

“Well, that same face goes away rather fast if you don’t deliver, doesn’t it?” Leo retorts, kind of angrily, turning to look at him.

Blaine’s still smiling. There’s an air of complete surrender and serenity to his smile, as if he already knew where this thing is leading them, and had already make his peace with it.

Sometimes Leo wishes he could see as far as Blaine seems to be able to do. Maybe then it’d be easier for him. To know what’s gonna happen and decide if it’s worth it or not.

“Don’t smile like that,” he says, looking down.

Blaine slips his arms around his shoulders and Leo surrenders to him instantly, resting his head against his chest. “Sorry,” Blaine says, his voice echoing all around Leo’s head, making him feel wrapped up in some sort of warm, softly purring blanket, like a personal Totoro. “Sometimes I have no idea how to act around you.”

“Please, don’t start again with the age difference crap,” Leo whines, rubbing his face against the soft fabric of Blaine’s dressing gown, which might look ugly, but feels heavenly soft, “I’ve had my fill for a lifetime, both from you and my parents. And even my best friends, actually, so don’t.”

“Well,” Blaine chuckles, placing a tender kiss on top of his head, “I just meant that I don’t really know you as a person that well, yet, do I? But yes, the age difference crap might be one of the reasons too.”

“Shut up,” Leo sighs, his arms emerging from the blanket to close around Blaine’s waist. In the movement, the blanket falls off his shoulders and pools around his hips, leaving him bare.

“You’re practically naked,” Blaine notes, leaving a soft kiss on his temple, “Doesn’t that bother you now?”

“Not really, no,” Leo answers, slowly shaking his head, “Probably ‘cause there are so many other things that bother me right now that nakedness doesn’t even show up on the list.”

“Again, I’m sorry,” Blaine smiles, “Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

“I suppose playing cards with me is out of the question?” Leo asks, raising his eyes on him.

Blaine chuckles wholeheartedly. “Kid,” he says, “I wouldn’t know where to even start and, let’s face it, you’re not the most patient of teachers.”

Leo sighs, hiding his face against his chest again. “That’s right,” he has to admit. Not that it makes him feel any better.

“But if you want,” Blaine goes on in a soft whisper, “I can be a kingsling and you can be the pooreling I might want to have my way with,” he adds in a little chuckle, “I work better with role play than I do with card play.”

Leo looks up at him again, blushing faintly. “I’d have to call you Sir,” he says.

“You don’t sound bothered by the thought.”

“’Cause I am not,” Leo answers quickly, tilting his head up and leaning in for a kiss.

Maybe that’s just all there is to it, he thinks as Blaine kisses him deeply and lays him down on the bed, maybe there’s no need to fret over speaking the same language or two very different ones, there’s no need to fret over kept promises and broken ones, no need to fret over how far apart they seem at times and how scary and confusing it feels when the rope tying them together suddenly tighten its knot bringing them back too close for comfort to one another. It can be just like this, swimming through the dark waters of when things are off, floating on the surface when the waters are clear and blue and things are perfect and they feel good.

Maybe it’s not that they’re not the same and could never be. Maybe they just aren’t yet. And they just ought to give themselves some time.

Whether it turns out to be a winning bet or not, Leo doesn’t need to know right now. As long as he can keep playing.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Seguito di Growing Into Trees.
Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico.
Pairing: Blaine/OC(s), OC/OC.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Angst, Underage, What If?, OC, Threesome.
- No rest for the wicked, or so they say, so Timmy must be very, very wicked, 'cause there's certainly no rest for him: he just made peace with being in love with his (almost, but not really) brother and he just managed to survive coming out to his family about it, and there his family goes, messing up once again. For once, though, this isn't Timmy's fault.
Note: La Storia sul Divorzio di Liz 2k15 quest'anno arriva presto: siamo appea a marzo, ed eccomi già qui a ricicciare fuori il Rootsverse per quello che, almeno questo!, dovrebbe essere il suo ultimo capitolo. L'idea era nata spontaneamente mentre scrivevo il finale di Growing Into Trees: Leo, Cody e Blaine hanno fatto cose indipendentemente dalla mia volontà, è qualcosa nel mio cervello è scattato, facendomi urlare "ma certo!" XD La reazione della Tab è stata un NOPE talmente potente che ancora ne sento l'eco, e infatti questa storia non l'ha letta. Shame on her. Comunque, se ci state, qui ci sono 11k di Timmy che sta M A L I S S I M O. Ma che sul finale ottiene qualcosa di molto, molto bello. E, vivaddio, cresce un po'.
Scritta per la sesta ed ultima settimana del COW-T #5, Missione 2, quell'allettantissimo "cinque personaggi" (Leo, Cody, Blaine, Alex e Timmy) al quale non ho saputo dire di no.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
BRANCHES STRETCHING TO THE SKY

There’s someone tugging at the sheets right beside the bed. Doesn’t make a sound, but keeps pulling at them, and each and every time the covers slide off Timmy’s body, exposing his bare skin to the hard winter cold of December.

He whines, holding the cover between his fingers and turning on his side. His warmth finds Alex’s and they mix into one, and he smiles in his slumber, wrapping an arm around him.

The presence keeps tugging at the sheets, stubbornly.

He whines again and holds Alex close, using him as some sort of (barely) oversize hot water bottle, sighing in relief when he feels his hot breath against his neck.

“Timmy!” says Lisbeth all of a sudden, inflicting one last, hard pull at the sheets and tearing them off both their bodies, leaving them half naked and forcing Alex to wake up suddenly with half a scream, while he jumps sitting up, looking worriedly around himself.

“What?!” he yells, “Who died?!”

Lisbeth stands still a few steps from them, rising from the floor like a beautiful spring flower in the full glory of her two years old. She seems majorly annoyed. Her fine, thin black eyebrows come together right above her huge baby blue eyes in the middle of her forehead, and her cherry red soft lips are pursed in a dangerous pout, the one she only uses when she feels outrageously wronged and is about to let you know that by throwing her plastic unicorn doll right on your nose.

Lisbeth’s almost never angry. She compensates her not being a cheerful girl at all with being overall pretty calm. Nothing ever shakes her. She rarely cries, she never screams, she sleeps the night away, she’s not a whimsical child, true, she doesn’t smile very often, but it’s incredibly rare to see her angry.

Which means something bad must’ve happened.

“Lissy?” Timmy asks her, sliding on the bed, closer to her, “Is everything alright?”

“What’s the matter?” Alex asks too, standing up from the bed and walking around it, to kneel in front of her, one hand on her shoulder, the other gently stroking her cheek. Timmy follows him as he moves around, perfectly at ease with himself despite only wearing his underpants, and as always his blood rushes South, and he needs to look away and breathe in and out for a few seconds to focus on the matter at hand. “Are you sick?”

“No,” Lisbeth answers, shaking her head, her ponytails swinging right and left as she does it, “But there’s something weird in the kitchen.”

Alex and Timmy exchange a puzzled look, having no idea whatsoever what she might be talking about. “Is there nobody home?” Timmy asks, “Couldn’t you find anything for breakfast? Is that it?”

“No,” Lissy shakes her head again, “There’s too many people in there.”

Alex frowns. “Too many,” he repeats, as if trying to make sense of what his sister’s saying.

“Yes,” Lissy nods, “It’s like that story you told me, Ally,” she insists, “With the monster pretending to be a person in a group of friends. But with no monster.”

Timmy sighs, lying down on the bed with a hand on his face. “I told you countless times not to tell her horror stories,” he complains, “You see how they affect her. She starts lying.”

“Shut up, Timothy,” Alex answers sharply, “You’re not her father.”

“I’m her brother.”

“A part-time brother.”

Timmy sits up suddenly, frowning. “Don’t go there,” he says.

Alex holds his gaze for a moment, defiantly. Then he sighs, looking down. “Sorry,” he says, “You know I don’t think that. But I hate it when you attack the way I deal with her.”

“Maybe you should stop feeling attacked all the time,” he says harshly. Then he sighs too. “Sorry,” he adds after a short while.

After assisting at the whole scene in perfect silence, Lisbeth finally lets out a tiny laughter. “You’re so funny when you do this,” she says.

Both Alex and Timmy smile, because they know it’s true. It’s been a year since they came out of the closet about their relationship with their parents, and it’s been a year they’ve been trying to get used to this new situation. It’s taking more effort on their side than on their parents’, that’s for sure. Put in front of a done thing, them saying “we’re together, we’ve been together a while already, we have no intentions of splitting up”, Cody and Leo could do nothing but bow their heads, so to speak, and accept it. Nothing really changed for them – they were already used to Timmy coming and going from this house, they were used to him sharing the most of his time with Alex. They just had to let the fact that their interest in one another wasn’t brotherly, but romantic, sink in. But nothing in their daily life changed, except these jokes Leo every now and then drops on Cody, about being co-fathers-in-law, now. “Practically related,” as he puts it. God knows why he insists on the matter and why both Cody and Blaine laughs about it, considering it’s a pretty disturbing way to joke about the borderline incestuous mess that’s going on in this family – that’s been going on for years, actually, since Timmy seems unable to stop flying from a relative to another as far as romantic relationships are concerned.

It was different for Alex and him. Coming out gave them a whole new bouquet of opportunities, things they had never dared doing before are now well within reach, and they grab them eagerly. Having dates, sleeping all through the night in the same bed without being torn between locking the door not wanting to be seen and not locking it in fear of arising suspicions in their parents, kissing in public, even in front of their siblings, holding hands while watching family movies on the couch with the others, being able to go to their parents for a talk when something bad or weird happens between them and they don’t know how to cope with it.

A lot of things have changed, and they don’t seem to be able to find any time to let any of them sink in naturally, after years of only dealing with each other in secret and shame, so they had to start giving themselves rules, rules to follow, to try and create some sort of healthy habit as far as their relationship as lovers is concerned.

The “apology routine”, as Blaine named it when he taught it to them, is one of those rules, and one of those they have to follow the most – and apparently also the funniest one for Lisbeth. Whenever they start saying rude things at each other, slipping in the old, comforting habit of attacking one another to fight and put a stop to discussions that felt uncomfortable to both of them, they have to stop and think about what they said, and if they realize they said something hurtful, no matter if they still believe it or not, they must apologize.

Sometimes that’s enough to stop fighting. Sometimes it’s not, and it takes them a little longer, and endless conversations all made up by various combinations of apologies and insulting sentences take place, so it’s not rare to see them go on for hours on the line of “I’m sorry, but I think you’re an idiot” and “well, I’m sorry too, but I think you’re an asshole”, which end up to be pretty funny for whoever’s watching – except them, of course.

They’re okay with the whole thing. They know they just need to get used to it. At some point, they’ll stop acting like that and they won’t need the rule anymore. Or maybe they still will, who knows?, maybe they’ll keep needing it forever. They don’t really care. They’re both okay with a lifetime of calling each other names and then kissing themselves stupid while asking for forgiveness.

“Alright,” Alex says, standing up and walking around the bed again to put his pants and an hoodie on, “Why don’t we go downstairs? See this non-monstrous monster you’re talking about?”

Lisbeth nods, satisfied with her brother’s proposition. Timmy sighs, standing up too. “There goes my lazy Sunday morning in bed,” he whines, putting his clothes on.

“We’ll have a lazy afternoon after lunch,” Alex says, casting a grin in his direction, “And we’re gonna be awake about it.”

Timmy smirks, trying not to look at him. “Don’t push me, there are minors in the room.”

“More than one, actually,” Alex laughs, referring to himself. Timmy laughs too, and then leans in and wraps his arms around Lissy, pulling her up.

“Ah, you’re growing heavier,” he says, pressing his nose against hers, “Soon enough you’ll be a real young lady.”

“Timmy,” she says, as if trying to focus him back to what matters right now, “The people in the kitchen.”

“Right, right, the people in the kitchen,” he nods.

They all walk out of the bedroom and downstairs, and once they get there Timmy realizes that he doesn’t really know what he as expecting, but that for all his life this was something he could never imagine it’d happen, and that he’s not sure how to face either.

Leo’s sitting down at the kitchen table, lazily flipping through a magazine and pulling from a bowl one piece of fruit after the other, having breakfast as Timmy’s seen him do almost every day of his life since they’ve been living together. Except this isn’t the right house for him to be doing it, and Cody’s standing in front of the stove, slowly stirring a mix of milk and chocolate in a tiny pan, and they’re chatting in a low voice about random things as if this picture they’re forming was normal.

But it’s not.

“See?” Lissy says, pointing at the scene with a tiny finger, “Too many people.”

Her voice catches Leo’s and Cody’s attention, and they turn to look at them. Leo puts the piece of fruit he was holding between his fingers back down on the bowl, but it’s not as if it was falling. He willingly puts it down in a calm, controlled movement. Overall looking not like somebody who’s surprised or scared to see this whole thing happen, but like someone who was expecting it, almost waiting for it.

“Good morning, Timmy,” Leo says, “Alex.”

Timmy can’t even talk. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t feel Alex anywhere around, it’s as if he disappeared. For a moment he even thinks he might’ve run away in shock. He only realizes he hasn’t because suddenly he speaks.

“What’s going on here?” he asks, “Where’s Blaine?”

“He went out for a run,” Leo answers. His voice sounds so steady, so firm. Timmy doesn’t remember ever hearing him speak with this kind of voice, not in the last few years, anyway, not since the divorce. It’s so creepy. He can feel his brain buzz like a fucking computer that just tripped over a process it can’t in any way run smoothly. He can’t wrap his mind around what’s happening, it’s something unconceivable. It’s wrong. This shouldn’t be happening. It’s like he woke up one day and the sky had turned green. It simply can’t be happening.

“Timmy?” Leo calls for him. His voice shows a little uncertainty, finally. “Please, say something.”

He keeps his mouth shut because he doesn’t trust himself right now. He doesn’t know what he’d blurt out if he opened his lips. He’s not even sure if he’d say something at all. Maybe he’d just scream and run upstairs to cry. Maybe he’s overreacting?, he muses distractedly. He doesn’t care. He’s confused and weirded out. He doesn’t know what else to do.

“What’s going on here?” Alex asks again, stepping forward and taking Lissy from Timmy’s arms, to put her down.

Cody and Leo look at each other for a second. Then Cody turns the stove off. “Do you want some chocolate?” he asks.

Alex frowns. “Dad, don’t avoid questions. This is ridiculous. What is even happening right now? Why is Leo here? Does Blaine know?”

“Alex,” Cody tries sweetly, putting the pan down on a support on the table and reaching out for two mugs from the cabinet above the sink, “It’s alright. Of course you’re confused. But please, don’t be upset. Sit down, have some chocolate.”

“I want no fucking chocolate!” Alex snaps, closing his hands in fists down his sides. Timmy can feel his eyes on himself. He wants to tell him not to look at him, but he can’t find the words, or a voice with which to speak them, for that matter. “I want you to tell me what’s going on,” Alex adds, a little bit more calmly.

The entrance door clacks open and then closed, and from the kitchen they can hear Blaine come back into the house, sighing with clear satisfaction. They all stop, as if that new set of sounds coming from another room had popped the bubble hey had been held captive into up to that moment. They turn simultaneously, staring at the kitchen door. Blaine appears in the frame soon enough, unzipping his hoodie.

“Oh,” he says. He stops on the threshold, his arms falling limp down his body, “Oh.”

Timmy searches for his eyes, finds them, stares into them and ultimately, afraid of what he might find at the bottom of them, the turns around and runs away.

*

Blaine comes upstairs soon enough. Timmy hears him knock on the door and he knows it’s him even before he says so. “Timmy, love, let me in,” his father says. Timmy doesn’t even answer.

He undressed the very moment he stepped into the bedroom. He looked at the bed, still unmade since when Alex and him had woken up, and the first clear thought he could extract from his own mind was: maybe, if I undress and slip back under the covers and get to sleep, when I wake up I’ll find out this was nothing but a weird dream, and it’ll be like it never happened.

So he undressed. He kicked his slippers off, pulled down his pants, threw away his t-shirt, and he laid down, his face pressed against the pillow, shutting out from reality entirely.

He knew Blaine was going to come up to talk. Of course he knew. He isn’t ready for that, though. Frankly, he doubts he ever will. This is just too much. It’s just too weird. And he knows he himself brought a good deal of weirdness and awkwardness into this family, but he’s a fucking child. Even if he’s grown up now, even if he’s of age, even if he can almost drink legally everywhere in the world – just a few years more for that, not that he’s counting – he’s still a fucking child. Blaine’s fucking child. Children are supposed to bring mayhem to families. Sons and daughters, that’s what they do. They mess up. Parents should fix that mess, not add to it with their own.

And he doesn’t even know what fucking happened yet.

But coming to think about it, he doesn’t even need to. He doesn’t need to know if something really happened, divorced parents simply aren’t supposed to sleep at each other’s house. Even if all they did was sleep, even if Leo slept on the couch, even if nothing generally weird has happened at all, the simple fact that Timmy woke up and Leo was there, having breakfast with Cody like it was no serious business, that’s enough. That’s more than fucking enough.

Timmy spent the last five years of his life trying to accept the concept that his parents were no more, that there was no family still unbroken in his life, that if he had to accept the idea of having a new one he needed to forget about what he had had for the first years of his life, stop hoping that kind of family will ever come back again and get used to the new one.

And he finally managed, last year. He was finally fucking okay. After that awful Christmas, and what happened with Tana, and what happened with Alex, and coming out with their parents, and all the shit that came before, and all the shit that came after, he was finally motherfucking okay.

He was. And there it went. Down the fucking drain.

As he keeps his face down against the pillow, stubbornly refusing to even turn around for air, drawing the little oxygen his body needs to keep itself functioning in its stillness from the pillow smelling of Alex he keeps pressed against his nose, he listens to what’s happening outside the locked door.

Around ten, the twins wake up. They vehemently ask for breakfast, and when they see Leo’s there they don’t seem upset. They’re happy to see him. “You came to visit?” Harper asks cheerfully, “You came to have breakfast together!” Logan says, excitedly. The twins loved Sunday breakfasts when Leo and Blaine were still a thing just as much as Timmy himself did. No wonder they’re so happy now. They’re kids. They’d take having Leo with them even if this means he’s gotta share a table with Cody any day over not having Leo at all.

Blaine keeps knocking. “Powder puff,” he says, “Do you want to be left alone for a while?”

Yes, yes, leave me alone, Timmy thinks. He just thinks it, though, he doesn’t manage to utter the words. He just can’t, right now, he wouldn’t know why. It’s freaky, but he can do nothing about it.

Blaine sighs deeply. For a moment, he leans against the door with all his weight. Timmy hears it creak lightly, and he knows his father’s considering breaking in, because not hearing a single word from him, not even the sound of crying, scares and worries him.

“Fine,” he says in the end, deciding not to, “I’m… I’m sorry about it. I’ll come back later. Maybe then we can talk.”

No, they can’t. No, they won’t. Timmy shuts his eyes closed, squeezes them, squeezes them, until he gives himself an headache. He drifts through the pain pulsing in his temples and then flowing through his body, and in a matter of minutes he’s fast asleep.

*

A different knocking wakes him up a few hours later. This is not his father. His father makes music with everything he does, including knocking on doors. There’s always some kind of melody guiding the tempo with which his knuckles hit the wooden surface. Even when he’s worried, even when he’s upset. It’s stronger than him, it’s inside him, part of him.

Leo’s way of knocking is completely different. He always just knocks twice. Knock knock, and then silence.

“Timmy,” says his voice, “Wake up. It’s late.”

For a moment he wonders, how does Leo know he was asleep and not merely awake and locked in there, refusing to see them or speak to them?

Then he realizes: leave it to Leo to know exactly how fucked up people react to fucked up situations. No one’s better than him at that, he’s a motherfucking worldwide recognized authority on the topic.

Timmy could answer to him. He woke up suddenly, but the step between sleep and watch was extremely short, and he’s already fully aware of what’s happening around him – the high early afternoon sun, birds signing outside, Lissy and the twins playing in the garden despite the intensely cold wind blowing through the crowns of the trees, making the leaves shake and rattle with a soft crispy sound – and he’s aware of what happened this morning, and he knows he’s holed up in there to avoid thinking about it, though he’s failing spectacularly at the task.

He could answer. Tell him no, Leo, it’s not late. There’s no late to this, ‘cause I will only come out of here when I’m better, and I can deal. And I strongly suspect I never will.

He stays silent, instead. His voice doesn’t seem to even be there. He doesn’t need to try using it to know. He just knows.

“Timmy,” Leo calls him again. His voice is more stern, now, almost hard. What’s happened to his voice? What’s happened to the thin, weak man who walked through the house lightly as if he didn’t even touch the floor? What’s been of him, who is this man who speaks certainly and firmly and demands to talk with him about things he doesn’t wanna talk about at all? “Timmy, you can’t hide in there forever, you do realize that, don’t you?”

Really, now, can’t he? And why should he listen to Leo about it? He’s done nothing but run and hide for the entirety of his life. Whenever something bad happened with Blaine, he withdrew. When shit hit the fan, he kicked him out. He hid in his books, reliving his life story over and over again through his novels, giving them the happy ending he couldn’t have given to his own. He hid behind depression when Blaine left him alone the first time, he hid behind that horrid fake smile of his when they broke up for good, he hid behind the parties, and trying to keep that wretched family together against all odds not to face the fact that it was over, and now this. Whatever happened. He stays around because he can’t accept that whatever there was is lost, lost forever, can’t be retrieved anymore.

He hates him. He hates him like he’s never hated him before. He didn’t even know he could hate him like this. He never had. He had decided to stay with him because he loved him, he wanted to protect him, because he understood why he wanted to hide and he thought he was right, right because people don’t have to face what hurts them, they can, but they don’t have to, sometimes things are too bad, much too bad to be faced and come out unscathed at the other end of the tunnel, and Timmy understood that, he felt for him because of that, and he wanted to help him out with it.

And now he comes to him, shamelessly like this, and he tells him not to hide. He tells him not to run. How dares him?

Leo sighs. Much like Blaine did a few hours ago.

“Okay,” he says, “I’ll come back later.”

No, Timmy thinks, don’t. I don’t wanna see you. I don’t wanna speak with you. Maybe, he thinks, if I tell him, he won’t come back.

But he still can’t speak. He listens to him walk away with another sigh, knowing he’s gonna come back later, inevitably. He already dreads the moment.

*
If Leo did come back or not, in the end, he doesn’t know. When he wakes up next, it’s because someone’s touching him, and that someone’s none of his parents. Soft hands, smelling like freshly cut fruit, something sweet and juicy, like a pear. He presses his nose against the warm palm stroking his cheek, and he whispers, “Alex.”

He doesn’t answer. Not that Timmy was expecting him to. Alex never speaks much. He’s certainly an happier boy now than he was two years ago, but he’s never been – and Timmy suspects never will be – a talkative one. That’s part of his beauty, Timmy supposes, he’s some sort of uncrackable riddle, if he gave himself away too much he’d probably be way less intense than he is. Still fucking beautiful. But intensity’s all Timmy ever wanted from love. So he prefers this overcomplicated version of his boyfriend to a much simpler one that wouldn’t make his stomach somersault in his belly every time they touch.

He opens his eyes. It’s only ‘cause he wants to see him. Reality floods back in his vision at once: it’s dark outside, it’s not nighttime yet but it’s probably time for dinner already. His stomach checks in with him, growling loudly, and Timmy silently tells him not yet, too soon, not yet.

Alex smiles down at him. It’s a mocking smile, but there’s a sweeter undertone in the way his lips curl upwards. “Is it over?” he asks, “Can you stop being a drama queen, already? And come down, maybe?”

“I’m not being a drama queen,” he answers. There’s no rage in his voice, he’s not annoyed. Merely tired, perhaps.

Alex’s fingers stroke his cheek again, ever so gently. “I know,” he says in a low breath.

Timmy moves onto the bed, crawling towards him. He rests his head on his bended knees, wrapping his arms around his waist and hiding his face against his tummy. He can feel the tiny pressure of the jewel hanging out of his navel, even through his clothes. He missed him so.

“How did you come in? The door was locked.”

Alex smiles a little, shrugging lightly. “I used the emergency ladder outside. Put it up against the wall, climbed through the window. Someone needed to be in there, and since you weren’t letting anybody in…”

“Do they know you’re here?”

“Of course they know,” Alex sighs, “Who do you suppose helped me with the ladder and made sure I didn’t slip and fall to the ground? Come on. They got you didn’t wanna talk to them. They thought you’d talk with me. And they were right.”

Timmy can do nothing but nod, because that’s true. As much as he hates them right now, and resents them for the spot they just put him in, they’re still his parents. No one knows him better than them. Not even Alex.

“What happened?” he asks, clinging more tightly to him, hiding his face in his lap. “This morning, in the kitchen, I mean. What was that about?”

Alex tenses, his hand landing on Timmy’s head, stroking his hair. “What do you think was that about?”

“I’m not sure,” Timmy answers, “Have you spoken with them?”

“I did,” Alex nods.

“What did they say?”

“What do you expect they’d say?”

“Stop answering my questions with other questions,” Timmy answers, his voice weak and shaky, “It’s making me crazy. You sound like you don’t wanna tell.”

“Because I don’t,” Alex sighs. He keeps stroking his head with his hand for a while, silently, before speaking again. “You know, I’d like to have a hug too. I’ve been dealing with this shit alone all day. It isn’t any easier on me.”

“I know,” Timmy says. He doesn’t bulge an inch, though. “I know, I’m sorry. But I can’t. Not right now. I need you to be the stronger one, now.”

Alex stays still for a moment. Timmy wonders vaguely is that wasn’t an answer he expected. If maybe he expected him to say right, yes, of course, come lay down with me, let me hug you too. Doesn’t Alex know? You need an extraordinary amount of strength to hug someone else. He doesn’t have it in himself right now.

“Timmy,” Alex says after a while, his hands now moving again, “You know what it means to love somebody more than one can afford to. You know, ‘cause… ‘cause I’ve seen you loving me that way. And you’ve seen me loving you that way. And you’ve felt that kind of love – the kind of love that doesn’t die, that simply refuses to die out even though it should.” He stops abruptly, taking a deep breath. “I’m not good with words,” he says then, “I’m not good with explanations. I can’t try and explain to you what came over them, how… how they decided this was right and necessary and they had to do it. But I can tell you, I looked at them as they spoke to me and even though my entire being screamed no so loud it was deafening to myself first, my heart knew that look. My heart knew and it… it understood. What happened exactly, they will tell you. They told me, but I won’t repeat it, ‘cause it made me uncomfortable downstairs and it’d make me uncomfortable here too, and I don’t want you to always remember this moment and hearing my voice saying that, I don’t. So they will tell you. They will explain. All I wanna do is let you know.”

Timmy doesn’t remember starting to cry. But he feels dampness underneath his face, Alex’s t-shirt, wet with his tears, sticking to his feverish cheeks. “Let me know what?” he asks in a tiny, broken voice.

“That even though my heart knew, and it made me understand, and even though I’ve had time to face the situation and make some sort of peace with it… I’m still with you.” He says it, and then keeps silent for a moment. Only a moment, to let the weight of his words fall gently upon Timmy, so that he can feel it. “I’ll be with you whatever you decide.”

Timmy looks up at him. He can barely see him through the thick veil of tears clouding his eyes. He lifts a hand, stroking his cheek. It’s soft and warm and smooth and so pleasant to the touch. “You’re so mellow,” he says, “So sweet. It’s unusual. You don’t sound like yourself at all.”

Alex holds his face in his hands, pulling him up a little as he leans down as much as he can. “My heart could only see that kind of love if it had it in itself, Timmy,” he answers, kissing him lightly on his lips, “That’s the kind of love that makes you forget yourself when it’s needed.”

But is it that what’s happened to his father, to Leo, to Cody? What is it, they forgot themselves for a brief moment and that was it? Isn’t that too much of an easy way out?

He closes his eyes, giving in to Alex’s kiss, to his warm embrace. He falls asleep right away, exhausted.

*

He wakes up again in the middle of the night. Clock on the nightstand says almost 3 AM, and the house is utterly silent, and the sky outside is utterly dark. Not a single star, not even the moon. Appropriate.

Alex’s sleeping quite peacefully by his side. He’s breathing softly, lying down on his side, facing him. His face is so beautiful, dark hair falling over it, giving him a mysterious air. He’s got lashes casting shadows over those pale, perfect cheeks of his, his one true love. He looks like a sleeping fairy out of a children’s storybook. An otherworldly creature, night-born, magic-spirited. He’s unreal and he wields such a gravitational pull over him. Timmy’s barely awake, and he’s already moving towards him, wrapping his arms around his waist, pulling him close, smelling the curve of his neck, calming himself down through his warmth.

Alex doesn’t even wake up. He leans into his touch naturally, settling comfortably between his arms, and keeps sleeping, breathing slowly in and out. Timmy closes his eyes and tries to follow the rhythm of his breath, hoping that’ll be enough to pacify him.

It’s not.

He feels nervous, restless, how he felt when things were messy with Alex and he couldn’t stand going through the entire night in this house. He needs to run. Run back home. Where it’s quiet. Where it’s safe.

He slips out from Alex’s embrace. He doesn’t wake up, he doesn’t even change position. Timmy stands next to the bed and looks down at him. He just left him, and his body’s already longing for him.

The kind of love that makes you forget yourself when it’s needed… maybe he’s not capable of that kind of love at all, he wonders as he covers him with a blanket and then turns around to put some clothes on.

He could take the car, but he decides to walk. Home isn’t far away from there, after all. Blaine wanted a place the kids could reach on foot, once they were old enough to walk on their own. Well, lucky him it’s also a place you can run away from on foot easily too.

He walks the silent roads of the quiet neighborhood, the night cold wind blowing in his face, messing up his hair. He knows the way by heart, and as he steps on the sidewalk and lets his memory guide him he closes his eyes and thinks about his farm. The farm he will one day own. That’s gonna be a quiet place too. A quiet, nice place he won’t want to run to, nor from. He won’t want to run from it, because he will belong there and nowhere else, and that’s the very same reason why he won’t need to run to it either. There, he’ll live peacefully, surrounded by simple, honest things. The grass, the animals, the crops. Blue sky above him, thick brown earth underneath him. Maybe Alex will want to come visit, every now and then. Maybe he’ll even live there.

He opens his eyes and he’s in front of his house. Leo’s house. He doesn’t know anymore, at this point, does this house even have any single reason left to still exist? To still mean something to him? Except the ruin of his family, as it stands dark and desperately empty at the end of this private road?

All the windows are shut, there are no lights coming from within. No voices. Nothing at all.

He rummages in the pockets of his coat and takes out the keys. He’s got just one keychain for all the keys in his possession. He suddenly feels the urge to take them all and throw them away. Just run and never look back. Wouldn’t that be easier?

He lets the moment pass. He knows that’d be madness, he’s not that stupid. The need comes, overcomes him and then fades away. He’s still holding the keys in his hands. He uses them to open the door, and in one step he’s in.

The place looks as desolate on the inside as it seemed on the outside. Empty and cold. Leo must be at Blaine and Cody’s, still. The mere thought makes Timmy want to crawl out of his skin. That they could do something like that in such a natural way, as if they suddenly woke up one day and decided it was absurd they hadn’t given it a try already… makes him shake with anger. The kind of love that makes you forget yourself, said Alex. Timmy isn’t sure that’s it. He’s not sure his parents or Cody ever forgot themselves while they were moving in that direction. On the contrary, he thinks they thought about nothing else but themselves. Unable to give up anything either of them might have held some owning right over back then, they simply took it back. Selfishness, not love. That’s what it was.

He walks upstairs, feeling the stairs creak under his weight. How weird. This house has always been alive with noise. With the twins and all… Timmy never had the chance to hear its voice, all those little sounds typical of huge houses like that. Every empty house’s voice is creepy. The feeling makes him tense, makes him want to run away again. But he’s heading to Leo’s bedroom – his parents’ former bedroom – for a purpose, and he won’t stop until he gets there.

The room is empty too. The bed is made, the window closed, the curtains too. He heads straight for the closet, opens it and pulls out the first drawer under the pile of Leo’s hoodies, searching for the purple file with the divorce papers.

The spouses have reached an amicable agreement on the terms of their separation. The file’s not there.

“You think I didn’t know you came in here to read it?”

Timmy turns around, his heart beating so furiously in his chest it almost hurts. Glued to the closet, startled by how sudden the voice had sounded, he stares at Leo, as if unable to believe he’s really there.

He seems calm. Peaceful, even. His arms loosely crossed over his chest, leaning on the doorframe, he looks at him with clear blue eyes. He’s not smiling. He doesn’t even look angry, though.

“What…?”

“You came here,” Leo says, “For years. Every time you could. Whenever you thought me too busy to notice. You came in here and reached for that file. You sat down and read it. Over and over again. I used to wonder why you’d do that to yourself, God knows I couldn’t. Then I got it. You needed to face it. Face it in writing. To remind yourself, or maybe just to try and understand it better. I don’t know…” he sighs, “At some point, I decided I’d let you have it your way. I saw your face whenever you came out of here, your eyes. You looked so sad and lost. And every time I thought why, why does he do that, and shouldn’t I put a stop to this, forbid him to come in here again, or at least hide that file better, where he won’t find it?” he shrugs, “I never did. I thought I didn’t have a right to tear you away from it. It was my divorce, but it was your family too. You must have had some right over those papers. They had to be yours as much as mine.”

Timmy lowers his eyes, closing his hands in fists down his sides.

“How did you know?”

“That you came in here to read it?”

“No,” Timmy shakes his head, “That you’d find me here tonight.”

Leo moves away from the doorframe, and closer to him. “The same way I knew you came in here to read it. I watched you, Timmy. I always watched you.”

“Shut up,” Timmy growls, casting a fiery glare at him, “You don’t care about me. Don’t pretend you do.”

Leo backs off a little, frowning. He seems angered and outraged by his words. “How can you say that?”

“How? It’s the truth!” he insists, “You care nothing for me! For how I struggled! If you knew how hard it’s been for me—”

“You think it’s been any easier for me?”

“I don’t care how it’s been for you!” he yells, his voice breaking halfway through the sentence as his eyes fill with tears, “I don’t care! I’m the son! I’m not supposed to care for your fuckups! You’re supposed to care for mine! You’re the fucking parents, for Christ’s sake! I don’t have a responsibility over you, it’s the other way ‘round!”

Leo tenses, lowering his arms. He keeps looking at him, the mane of his wild curls framing his face, making his skin stand out easily despite the darkness in the room. “You’re right,” he says, “You’re absolutely right. But parents aren’t superheroes. They’re people— we’re people. We’re allowed our fuckups too.”

“That what it is? Huh?” Timmy asks, “That what it was this morning? A fuckup? You in that kitchen, having breakfast with him as if— as if he hadn’t stolen your man, my father, as if I didn’t have to abandon my father choosing to stay with you because of him?!”

“Don’t,” Leo says sternly, shaking his head, “Don’t blame Cody for you siding with me, Timothy. He had his faults. He had plenty. As I did. As your father did. But this you can’t blame him for, not the actions of a child he had no power over.”

“He ruined our life!”

“He did,” Leo nods, “And what of before? I ruined his. And your father ruined mine. So, now that we’ve put that out in the open? I still love your father. And your father still loves me. And Cody, he loves us both, and we love him back. What do you want me to tell you, Timmy? Something easy? Something simple? Something that won’t scar you? You want a lie, then.”

“I want the truth!” he screams in frustration.

“Oh, but you don’t, baby boy,” Leo shakes his head again, “You don’t, ‘cause you’re not ready to face it. That’s why you hid out in your room, and then you ran back here. You’re running from the truth, you don’t wanna hear it.”

“Stop pontificating about running, goddamnit!” Timmy screams again, hitting the closet behind himself with both his fists, “You don’t have that right! You’re the best runner in this family, running’s all you ever do!”

“Yes, and where did that get me?!” Leo says, raising his voice too. Surprised, Timmy falls back against the closet, locking his lips. Leo sighs, passing a hand over his face. “This isn’t easy for me, T. T. That’s the hugest failure of my life and a burn that won’t stop hurting for as long as I live. Twice I tried to live my life without your father, and twice I came back to him, one way or another. Twice I tried to cut back from Cody, to pretend he hadn’t meant to me much more than I was ready to admit, and twice I found myself unable to do so. What do you want me to tell you, Timmy? Do you want to hear what happened? We were together, last night, all of us. They held me, and we slept together, and it was the first moment of peace of mind I’ve had in years. You want me to say I’m ashamed of that? I can’t, unless you want me to lie. It’s true that I ran for most of my life, but running only got be back full circle. I can’t allow you to do the same. I won’t let you waste half your fucking life, like I did. Pain isn’t worth it, son. Only love is.”

Timmy looks down, his eyes stinging painfully. Is he crying already? He doesn’t know. He probably looks ridiculous. Not that he cares anymore, at this point.

“Where did you put the file?” he asks in the weakest voice he’s ever heard coming from himself.

“Away,” Leo says, “I took it away from you, Timmy. I did what I should’ve done when you were just a kid. I was wrong. It was your family, but it wasn’t your divorce. I should’ve been there with you, Timmy, should’ve gone through that file with you, should’ve done it once and then I should’ve put it away for good. You needed me more than I needed you, and I wasn’t there to support you, and somehow… somehow I think that’s why we’re here today.” Timmy hears him breathe in and out, and then move closer. “Those days are gone. Timmy. Look at me.” He puts his hands on his face, pulling it up. Their eyes lock. Timmy can’t understand if Leo’s crying too. “It’s over now. No more going through that file. No more obsessing over your father and my mistakes. Timmy,” he leans in, wrapping him in a warm hug, squeezing him tight, “It’s time we took care of you already. Messed up as we are. Stubborn and stupid and full of imperfections. It’s time we took care of you. Let us take care of you.”

Something in Timmy just cracks at those words. And it’s not his heart, no, it’s something more superficial, something epidermic, an outer shell, a cocoon, something that’s been covering him up, he doesn’t know for how long, but it must be a fucking lot, because the moment it cracks, the moment its shards drop to the floor, he feels a thousand times lighter, and a thousand time freer.

He melts in Leo’s warm embrace, tilting his head forward, resting his forehead on the curve of his shoulder. He exhales a deep, surrendering breath, feeling his limbs weaken, his body growing heavier. He trusts Leo will be able to hold him up.

He somehow manages.

*

It’s almost 4 AM when they finally make it back home. They walked all the way back, they walked slowly, actually, none of them wanting to rush the moment they’d face what they have left a few hours before. They spoke for a while. Timmy asked questions, mostly about the past, about what really happened between him and Cody when they were younger, and Leo answered honestly and openly about it for the first time in his life.

He told him Adam often said they really loved each other, back then, and Leo smiled and shook his head. “It was so much more than love, Timmy,” he said in a sweeter voice than Timmy could remember ever coming from him, “I adored him. I lived and breathed for him. Woke up in the morning thinking I had him to look forward to, him to take care of. He was a broken little thing and I felt responsible for him, and I wanted to drown him in love to the point of making it impossible for him to go on one day without him. It was something at the same time completely selfless and utterly selfish. Never knew how that worked. But it was absolute and amazing, and it stuck with me. It’s not one of those things you can let go, even after they’re over.”

“Like with dad,” Timmy commented, looking down at his feet.

Leo nodded and smiled. “Precisely,” he said.

Those were the last words they spoke on the subject, before arriving home.

“God, I was so worried,” Cody says in a little whine, letting them in, “You disappeared and, when I got to Alex’s room, I saw he was alone in the bed, and I didn’t know what to think.”

Leo smiles and wraps an arm around his waist, kissing him on his cheek. “Calm down,” he says, “Timmy and I just needed a talk.”

Cody turns to look at Timmy and instantly looks down, blushing vividly. He must be so embarrassed. Timmy doesn’t even know how to deal with him, he’s so different than Alex. He looks so fragile and sweet, always worried to do the wrong thing, like a kid finally gaining access to his father’s studio, a place he’s wanted to see for years, hiding so many treasures he can’t even count them, but then refusing to touch any of them in fear he might break one.

“Would you like some milk and cookies?” he asks, “You had nothing to eat all day.”

Timmy doesn’t even think he really hates him. Not any more than he hates his parents, at least, which turns out not the be that much, all in all.

He doesn’t really know. Everything’s confused. But he is indeed hungry, so he nods.

“I’ll go talk with Blaine,” Leo says, “Where is he?”

“In his studio,” Cody answers, sighing a little, “He wouldn’t speak a word.”

Leo lets out half a laughter, shaking his head. “Like father, like son,” he says, disappearing down the hallway.

Timmy follows Cody to the kitchen and sits at the table, exhaling deeply. He feels so tired and sleepy. He hates days like this, those endless days time seems to have no control over. It’s like you’re expecting them to be over when the sun sets, but they go on. They go on indefinitely. No matter how tired you are, how sick you are of them.

“I know it’s been a huge blow for you,” Cody says. Timmy looks up at him, as he serves him a glassful of milk and a few chocolate chips cookies on a plate, “Leo said it would’ve been better to act normally about it, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t really want to come down. I was hoping we could have a little chat before… before it came out.”

“What difference do you think it would have made?” Timmy asks, sipping at his milk and then resting back against the chair, “Do you think it’d have been less traumatic if you had called us up, sat us down around a table and told us formally, like, we’ve got something to tell you, kids, you might wanna sit down? You’re delusional.”

Cody recoils as if Timmy had struck him down with a wooden stick or something. He looks down, his shoulders dropping in a troubled sigh. Timmy sighs too, taking a bite out of a cookie.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t wanna be rude. I just don’t know how to deal with this. I know nothing, actually. Like, is this a thing, now? Is this how it’s gonna be? We’re gonna live together in one single house full of children with a huge bedroom for three like some sort of fucking Mormon family?”

Cody bites at his inner cheek, still looking down. He feels uncomfortable and awkward, it’s so obvious it almost makes Timmy want to torture him, keep insisting on the topic, see how long he can hit on it, how far he can push things until Cody breaks and finally leaves. Wouldn’t that solve everything? Leo said Blaine and him still love each other. Wouldn’t it be easier if Cody simply went out of the picture?

“If you’re asking,” Cody says, “I don’t know. You seem to think your parents and I should have all the answers, but we don’t. All we know is that something happened last night – something’s been happening for the past few months, and we wanna see where it leads us.”

Timmy widens his eyes, his heart missing a beat. “The past few months?” he says weakly, “You mean this wasn’t…”

“It was!” Cody hastens to say, looking up at him and blushing even more, “It was. Nothing like that had ever happened before. But that wasn’t my point. Things changed inevitably, last night, but they had been changing from before. I don’t know how, or why. And I’m sure it’s our fault, that we could never really break the rope tying us together, and then trying to free ourselves from it without breaking it we just ended up tying ourselves more and more with it. Of course it was our fault. Of course it was irresponsible of us. Stupid, even. But,” he sighs, sitting down in front of him, “I don’t know. It happened. We can’t turn our way from it. I dread having to be the one who tells you this. We’ve never been close. You never forgave me. And I don’t resent you for it, on the contrary, I understand it, but your father and Leo won’t answer you clearly on this, ‘cause they just can’t. I have to. I can be honest for them both and myself. We don’t know where this is going to lead us. We don’t know how we’ll explain it to the children, and to our friends and families. But this is happening, Timmy, and it’s not going to stop.”

“I was right,” Timmy growls, dropping the cookie back on the plate, “You’re so selfish. You all are. You— even if I told you this is hurting me, this is confusing me, you wouldn’t stop. You don’t give a fuck.”

“No, Timmy, that’s not it,” he sighs, passing a hand over his face, “We care. We love you. We love you all so much, you’re our children, how could we not? But Timmy, we’ve been miserable half our lives. There’s a breaking point— when people get to that point, to the point they’re so dramatically unhappy they’d do anything just for it to stop, they do stupid things. And believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I know— Leo knows. Blaine knows too. It’s been years, now. You and Alex are almost adults, Timmy. The twins are growing up. Except baby Lissy, we don’t have children to raise anymore. You’re not little babies we have to shelter from everything real, from everything complicated. You’ve faced your good deal of complications yourself, you should know.”

“I was never—“

“Weren’t you, Timmy?” Cody sighs, trying a little smile, “You went through it last year, my dear. It happened with my son. You know what I’m talking about. You were facing a choice, either we take the hard road, and we tell everything, and we try to endure it, and we go on, or we take the easy one, and we let it go.” He looks down, his eyes shimmering in the yellow light of the kitchen. “That’s exactly what’s happened to us. This… this thing came to us. We could either embrace it, or refuse it. But both choices would have changed everything for good.” He looks back up to him. His eyes are clear, stern, almost defiant. Timmy’s scared by what he’s going to say. “Don’t think, not even for a moment, that if we had decided to refuse it everything would have gone back to normal. There are things you can’t just forget. Some things, when you see them, you can’t unsee. Your father and I would have probably broken up. Your father and Leo would’ve never gotten back together. Every single hope of happiness we might’ve had… shattered forever.” He reaches out for Timmy, covering his hand with his own. “It wasn’t a choice, Timothy. It was never a choice.”

Cody’s hand is warm, and his eyes are too. There’s some sort of infinite sadness in his smile, and at the same time some sense of inevitability that makes Timmy feel at a loss.

Adults are scary. They’re just as lost as little kids are. They’re bound to make the same mistakes little kids would selfishly do, and there’s no stopping it. There’s so making it better. Over and over again, people fuck up, and other people are hurt for those fuckups, and it just keeps coming.

As he looks at Cody and this knowledge fills his head, making him feel scared and unsafe, completely unbalanced, like somebody suddenly pulled the rug from underneath him, he thinks about Alex. Is it going to be the same with him? For all their life together? Will they keep trying, and making mistakes, and hurting each other, over and over?

If there’s no escape to this, then he needs it to be with him. And as he realizes it, he finally seems to be able to see it. That spark Alex talked about, that thing in Cody’s eyes, the reason why this is happening. It’s the same for them. If all they can do is keep making mistakes, they at least want it to be together in it.

It’s dreadful. And weirdly reassuring all the same.

“Timmy?” Leo calls him. Cody withdraws instantly, pulling his hand back. Timmy slowly turns to look at Leo, standing on the threshold of the kitchen, looking at him. “Your father wants to talk to you.”

Timmy’s heart sinks down into the dark black pit that is his stomach now. “Do I have to?” he asks weakly.

Leo smiles softly, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Go on,” he says, “He’s waiting for you.”

*

His father’s sitting still behind his desk, in his studio. He looks tired. Tired and older than he ever seemed to him. For a few seconds, the sight breaks Timmy’s heart, and he regrets making such a fuss. Locking himself up, running away in the middle of the night like that. No matter how many mistakes he makes, his father doesn’t deserve that.

“You scared me half to death,” he says.

Timmy walks towards the desk and sits on one of the chairs in front of it, feeling like a little boy as his father looks at his sternly, with such sadness in his eyes Timmy can’t even look back.

“I’m sorry,” he says. There’s a voice inside of him saying you’re nineteen, you can go out in the middle of the night if you want, you don’t have to apologize, man up and stop acting like a kid.

He can’t listen to it.

Blaine could keep scolding him, Timmy knows that. He could stand up, raise his voice, make him feel all the weight of the distance imposed on them by their age and roles, but he doesn’t. He never has, actually. Blaine’s never been the scolding kind.

“I think I did a pretty good job with you, for as long as it was just the two of us,” he says instead. Timmy wasn’t expecting such words, and he looks up at him, frowning. “I mean,” Blaine says, offering him a tiny smile, “As a parent. You were such a happy child. It seemed all so easy, back then,” he sighs, “It was just us, no one in between, no complications of any sort. I seemed to always know what to do, somehow. People were complimenting me from all over the place, I couldn’t walk down the street with you in your stroller without somebody stopping me to tell me how brave I was for doing such a thing on my own, how kind and generous my heart was for taking you in, how good of a job was I doing with you, how beautiful and well-mannered you were despite being just a baby.” He smiles distantly for a second, lost in his memories. “Seems a thousand years ago.”

Timmy looks down, biting at his bottom lip. “You shouldn’t keep thinking about these things. Everything changed. As it always does. That’s what living means, right? The changing of things.”

Blaine nods slowly. “Still,” he says, “Something went wrong down the way, hasn’t it? It has to. Now, I know it couldn’t just have been the two of us forever, but something change in the way… I don’t know. Maybe in the way I talked to you, or in the way you listened to me. You grew distant.”

“So it’s my fault,” Timmy growls angrily.

“I made you grow distant,” Blaine corrects himself. Timmy doesn’t see how this should be better. “I’m sorry, honey,” Blaine says, passing a hand over his face, “I’m really sorry. I have no idea what I should do to fix this situation. Every solution I could think of would probably just make everything worse. Should I grab you and move somewhere else, somewhere far, maybe Europe? Tie the bond back and so on? But I’d be pulling you away from Alex. Away from Leo. Away from your brother and sisters. I don’t have that right. Should I just stop seeing Leo? Or break up with Cody? And then what, move away? Stop seeing them, stop seeing you? I can’t even see myself…” he stops all of a sudden, holding his breath as if he was in physical pain.

As always, when something like this happens, Timmy holds his breath too, petrified on the spot out of worry.

What would he have his father do? What choice could he impose on him to try and fix this, what choice that wouldn’t break everybody’s heart?

There’s none. Timmy thinks he knows why.

“Are you happy?” he asks, looking straight at him.

“Not right now, no,” Blaine admits with a short chuckle, “Right now, I feel miserable.”

“I’m not talking about right now,” Timmy shakes his head, “I’m talking about… them, I think. This… thing you kind of have. This thing nobody seems able to explain to me in clear words.” He sighs, “You all say something happened, this is good for us, it was inevitable, we wanna see where this leads us, but what is something, this and it, you can’t tell. And I can’t understand. Because it’s easy for me to say I love Alex and I can’t do without him. Shouldn’t it be just as easy for you to say the same about them?”

Blaine smiles apologetically, crouching his shoulders. “Somehow, when you grow old, things that were ridiculously easy before becomes worryingly complicated. It is a thing of life. I think you’ll get to understand it in the future. Though I hope you never need to.” He rests his shoulders against the chair. “It’s something that’s got to do with the shape and conditions of one’s own heart. When you’ve suffered long, and you just know you can’t take another blow, you hide from much too defining words. So yes. There’s a thing, right now. A thing none of us wants to name, as of the moment. You won’t hear me say what kind of relationship this is going to be. Or how we’ll handle this. Because I don’t know. We need to go down this road, but we also need to protect ourselves. I know you probably can’t understand, right now. But we do.”

Timmy lowers his eyes, playing lazily with the hem of his shirt.

“So, what you’re telling me, basically… is that I can’t ask you anything practical question, right now. Like, how will this work. Or if Leo and the twins are gonna move in here. Or anything else, actually. ‘Cause you don’t know and even if you did you wouldn’t say it out loud not to make it become too much of a hard thing to face.”

Blaine nods, the ghost of a smile lingering on his lips. “That’s it,” he says.

Timmy nods too, slowly, letting it sink in. “Okay,” he says in a deep breath, “In this case, dad… I can’t live here anymore.”

He raises his gaze and his eyes meet Blaine’s halfway, and his father looks so worried, for a moment, Timmy fears he’s gonna panic.

“What do you mean?” he asks. His voice is so weak.

“I mean…” Timmy says, lowering his eyes again, “I get it. You’re doing what you think it’s best. All of you are. You don’t wanna overcomplicate things, and I agree that’s the best choice. But it’s a choice that keeps things to vague. I can’t deal with vague things. I can’t… did you know for years, after the divorce, almost daily I sneaked into Leo’s room and grabbed the divorce papers, to read them through and through, even several times before I considered myself satisfied and could walk away? That’s who I am,” he explains, pressing a hand over his own chest, “I’m the kind of person who needs simple things to understand. Situations put down into words, so I can get used to them. I can’t… I can’t get used to what you want right now. I can’t go to bed never knowing if I’m gonna find Leo in the kitchen, or in the bed with you and Cody, or if I won’t. I can’t deal with this from inside this house. I need to be someplace else. Put some… some distance between this and myself.” He sighs, closing his eyes for a moment. “I don’t know, maybe that’ll make me see it clearly, so that I can cope with it. But not like this. Not in this place.”

“But we had just…” his father looks down, biting at his inner cheek, “We had just found each other again.”

“You’re not losing me, dad,” Timmy says, “Actually, you might, if you don’t make me do this.”

“What is this, a threat?” Blaine asks, frowning lightly as he looks up to him.

“I would never dare,” Timmy answers right away, shaking his head, “I would never dare, dad. But I’m scared it might happen. Because as it is… I’m just so…” he lets out a tiny whimper, covering his face with both hands. “I’m just so angry. And I don’t want this anger to destroy us. So please… I need to go. I need to do this. Let me to this.”

He lowers his hands to look back to his father, and he finds him already looking back at him. They just stare at each other for a few long, silent moments, and then Blaine nods. The tiniest swinging of his head. It means the world to both of them.

“Alright,” he says, “What did you have in mind?”

*

It’s half past five when Timmy slips back into Alex’s room. He’s still sleeping, in the very same position he was when Timmy left him hours ago. The blanket’s still covering him, and Timmy takes off his clothes and lies down underneath it, next to him, his hands already searching for his body the moment they start sharing the same space.

Alex leans into him, resting his head on his chest. Timmy lies still, looking up at the ceiling as its dark night blue turns to a lighter shade, as the sun outside prepares to rise.

Alex’s breathing changes slowly. In a few minutes, he’s awake, but he keeps lying down, not wanting to break the peaceful quietness of the moment. Just his index finger moves slowly, as it starts drawing random, irregular circles over Timmy’s chest.

“Do you come from a long journey, stranger?” he asks. His voice sounds sleepy, but aware. It’s the sweetest sound ever.

“I’ve been out,” he answers with a soft smile.

“I know,” Alex nods lightly, “Where have you been?”

Timmy sighs a little, settling better underneath him. “Places,” he answers vaguely.

“Good places?”

“Not really.”

Alex moves up, his head now resting on Timmy’s shoulder, his warm breath caressing the curve of his neck. “You still there?” he asks, a little worried.

“No,” Timmy shakes his head, “Actually, in a few days I might not even be here anymore,” he adds with a short chuckle.

Alex opens his eyes suddenly, tilting his head to look up at him. “What the fuck do you mean?” he asks.

Timmy smiles gently, pressing his lips against Alex’s in a barely wet kiss. “I talked this whole shit out,” he says, “With Leo, Cody and dad. We all agree I need some time out of here.” He shrugs, “I don’t know, maybe I’ve just grown out of this house. Or Leo’s house, for that matter. Maybe I just need a place of my own.”

Alex looks at him warily, blinking in clear confusion. “So?” he asks.

Timmy’s smile widen. “I think I’ll need some help at my new place,” Timmy answers, “Crops aren’t going to grow by themselves.” He stops suddenly, realizing what he just said. “Actually,” he says, “They will. Crops grow by themselves, mostly. What I meant was, they’re not gonna sow themselves. Yes, that’s more accurate.”

“Wait, wait— wait a fucking second,” Alex stops him, pressing both hands against his mouth and looking straight into his eyes, “Are you fucking serious?”

Timmy smiles against his palm, and then kisses it for good measure. “Never been more,” he answers, looking back at him.

Alex stares at him speechlessly for a few seconds, his eyes wide, his lips parted in complete astonishment. Then he laughs, tilting his head, resting his forehead against Timmy’s shoulder once again. “You’re completely out of your fucking mind,” he says, lightly shaking his head.

Timmy wraps his arms around him, pulling him into a tight hug. He is. He totally is. But given the seeds he’s coming from, how could it have been any different?
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, AU, Underage, Angst, Threesome.
- Blaine was recalled to war for the third time, and though having briefly been declared missing in action he has now returned alive and well, and he's been welcomed by his Nation as a hero. He's about to be awarded with the Golden Medal of Honor, but the not-so-funny thing is that his father's the one who's going to give it to him on behalf of the Army. Yes, the very same father that almost disowned him not longer than a few months ago because he was disapproving of his personal life choices, such as being married with a boy twenty years younger than him and having recently included in the relationship a sex slave he, as a married man, shouldn't even be allowed to keep.
Despite knowing it's probably going to cause a great deal of distress, Blaine decides to bring such sex slave along, together with his husband, to the award ceremony. Emotional confrontations ensue.
Note: L'ultima volta che ho scritto dello Slavesverse è stato ormai l'anno scorso, in occasione del compleanno della mia donna. Torno qualche mese dopo con un nuovo pezzetto di questo 'verse che sia io che lei amiamo parecchio, e che è (quasi) diretto seguito della storia da lei scritta qualche tempo fa, It's sunny, then it's night, in cui appunto Blaine veniva richiamato alla guerra. Da qualche parte in mezzo dovrebbe esserci la storia che spiega come Blaine sia stato dato per disperso e pianto per morto dai suoi ragazzini per mesi, prima o poi la scriveremo e ve la faremo leggere XD Nel mentre accontentatevi di Blaine e Papa Anderson che finalmente, dopo tanto tribolare e insultarsi e minacciarsi a vicenda, fanno pace ♥
Scritta per la terza settimana del COW-T #5, Mission 1, a tema libero ♥ L'importante era rovesciare sul counter quante più parole possibile. Ed io ho optato per dodicimila \o\ Scritta anche per la Maritombola, prompt #82, Slaves!AU (quite obviously).
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
THE CRASHING DOWN OF HOLLOW YEARS

The invitation arrives during breakfast.

Quite obviously, none of them is expecting it. Not Leo, who didn’t even have an idea such an event was going to take place at all. Not Cody, who – though knowing the reward was bound to arrive – honestly thought Lord Anderson would’ve chosen to handle matters privately, possibly coming by for a quick call to deliver the medal of honor to his son personally. Certainly not Blaine, who was a hundred percent sure that, the moment the Army would’ve called on his father to ask him to give such an award to Blaine after his glorious comeback from the battlefield, he’d have certainly answered not only that he didn’t want to have anything to do with his degenerate son anymore, but that he also didn’t think the general staff was making the right choice by awarding such a person with such a formal and important recognition, considering his arguable – to say the least – life choices, despite his unquestionable military valor.

And yet, there’s no doubt about it. The letter is authentic. Anderson’s family seal, carved on red wax and holding the envelope closed, has to be proof enough, even to their unbelieving eyes.

Blaine puts down the fork and discretely wipes his mouth with a tissue, before taking the envelope from the silver tray one of the maids is offering it upon, and both Cody and Leo stare at him motionless, eager to read its contents. Leo even stops messing with the food in his plate, eating only half of it and pushing on the side the things he doesn’t want just to unnerve the maids.

Blaine silently cuts the envelope open and unfolds the letter inside, reading quickly through it. Then he smirks. “Father wishes to invite me and my husband to Anderson mansion, to celebrate my victorious and heroic comeback from the war.”

“He surely is slow at noticing things,” Leo comments, pointing both elbows on the table and resting his chin on his palms, “You came back a month ago.”

Blaine smirks, folding the letter again and putting it back on the tray. “Don’t be fooled, kid,” he answers, “He’s not doing this out of love. Right now, he’s just the highest grade retired army head still living. Of course the general staff wanted him to award me. I still am the only commander who managed to go to war and come back alive,” he adds with a proud grin, “Thrice.”

“Mhn,” Leo shrugs. He doesn’t seem impressed, either way. He starts picking at his food again, while the maids standing at the four corners of the room, waiting to tend to their lords’ every need, cringe visibly. “So, let me get how this works,” he says, talking with his mouth half-full, “They send you to die and then, when you miraculously make it back alive, they give you a medal. Wow. Like, ‘you managed to survive despite us trying our very best to kill you off! Here, take this useless piece of metal and be on your way’. Amazing. Just amazing.”

Blaine laughs wholeheartedly, reaching out to ruffle Leo’s hair. “I understand you disagree with the whole process?”

“Damn right I do,” Leo snorts, swallowing a grape, “It’s stupid and ridiculous. As the rest of your stupid army shit. And the war, of course.”

“The Golden Medal of Honor,” Cody says, after having been uncannily silent the whole while, “Is a very important recognition. Only two other people in history have gotten it.” He turns to look at Blaine and reaches out to stroke the back of his hand, smiling sweetly. “And now they’re three. I’m proud of you.”

Blaine smiles back, his eyes, as usual, filling with sweetness when he lays them upon Cody. “Thank you, pet.”

“Ugh,” Leo grimaces, sticking his tongue out and looking away, “I hate it when you turn into the main characters of a classic romance novel. You’re so cheesy.”

“You mean it wasn’t you who laid down his jacket on that mud puddle in the garden, two days ago, so that Cody could safely step over it without getting his precious slippers dirty?” Blaine teases him with an amused snicker, “That’s outrageous. Who were you out with, my love, if it wasn’t Leo?”

Cody laughs softly, while Leo looks away and blushes, folding his arms over his chest but refusing to answer (because he knows it’s true; he can be just as corny as Blaine is, when dealing with Cody).

“Anyway,” Cody says after a while, drinking some orange juice, “I think we should go.”

Leo frowns, turning to look at him. The invitation only mentioned Blaine and his husband, of course. Not him too. He isn’t even supposed to be here – let alone coming with on such an occasion.

He knows that. It still makes him angry, though.

“Obviously,” he says, standing up in a sudden movement, the chair producing a screeching sound as it scuffs against the marble floor, “Sure. You go wherever you want.”

He leaves the room before anything else can be said, and both Cody and Blaine follow his movements with eyes wide open and a puzzled expression on their faces.

“He didn’t let me finish,” Cody notes, blinking slowly.

Blaine sighs heavily, giving in to a tender smile. “When does he ever?”

*

He’s still pouting when he joins them in the bedroom, more than ten hours later. He’s made himself scarce all day, despite Cody and Blaine’s attempts to find out where he was hiding, but of course, no matter how grumpy and pouty he was, he’d never willingly renounce to sleep in the bed with them at night. He used to, at first, when he thought there was nothing more important than his own rage, his own fury, his own disappointment. He used to, but he stopped.

It’s a matter of principle: he can be annoyed at them for whatever reason, but that spot in the bed is his own, the only thing he knows he can claim as his own in a general situation that leaves him with but a few things he can reasonably claim any property on including himself, and he won’t give it up, not even for one night, not for all the anger his moderately tiny size can contain.

“Ah, Leo,” Blaine smiles, already sitting on the bed with a newspaper half folded on his lap, “We searched for you all day.”

“I’ve been busy,” he mutters as a reply, looking away and swiftly starting to take off his clothes to give himself something to do.

“I can’t imagine doing what,” Blaine chuckles, putting the newspaper away on the nightstand.

“None of your business,” Leo snorts, remaining in his underwear and climbing on the bed.

The bathroom door clacks open and then closed again, and Leo turns to look at Cody just in time to see him walk into the bedroom, his long black hair still a little damp, curling at the end around the perfect oval of his face, making his pale skin even whiter, almost glowing.

He lets out a soft whimper, while Cody’s cherry lips curl into a little smile. “You’re offensively beautiful.”

“And you’re back,” Cody chuckles, amused, “I’m glad.”

Leo moves on his knees to the edge of the bed, stretching out his arms towards Cody, who walks to him slowly, drying his hair with the towel he wears loosely around his shoulders. When he’s within reach, Leo grabs him and drags him closer, pressing a hungry kiss on his lips, his tongue already pushing against them, to gain access to his mouth.

“Ah,” Blain says, a soft smile curling his lips upwards, “Is that how it’s going to be? Silly me, who wanted to talk.”

“We don’t need to talk,” Leo grumbles, moving away from Cody’s lips to look at him, “Why don’t you move your ass and come join us, instead?”

“Mmh,” Blaine pretends to be thinking about it, tilting his head to the left and casting a playfully pensive look to the ceiling, “Can’t I just watch for a while? My old, heavy bones make it impossible for my body to move with a cold start.”

“You’re ridiculous and I should punch you in the face,” Leo answers in a little growl, “You just came back almost unscathed from a freaking war.”

Not more than a few months ago, such a sentence would have caused a deep frown and some seriously scolding words from Blaine, but what happened during last year – fighting with his father and living in fear of being disowned and lose everything for months, then being called back to war to risk his life for the third time in his career, something no one else had ever achieved before, and only barely managing to come back after seemingly disappeared from the face of earth for weeks – clearly changed him, molded him into a softer man. Perhaps a little more tired man, certainly a more pliable one, or maybe just somebody who was slapped in the face by life more than enough to understand that there’s no amount of pride and honor that can compare with the warm embrace of your loved ones.

Which is why, instead of getting angry and scold him, Blaine just smiles, casting a warm, intimate look towards Cody, who answers with a soft laughter and places his hands on both sides of Leo’s head, making him turn back against himself. “He wants to watch,” he explains, making Blaine’s intentions clear enough even for Leo, who usually refuses to understand anything until it gets shoved down his throat.

“Mmh,” he mutters, lowering himself on Cody’s neck and pressing his lips on the soft spot under his earlobe, “Whatever. Come here. Watching you right now isn’t even an option, for me.”

Cody lets out a faint chuckle, melting like hot wax in Leo’s arms, letting him drag him on the bed and lying down, his head on the pillow, his legs slightly parted. The towel wrapped around his body leaves his milky thighs completely bare, and Leo puts his hands on his knees and then pushes them upwards along them, feeling the smoothness of his warm skin against his palms and fingertips, gently inviting him to part his legs.

Cody does it, turning his head to look up at Blaine and smiling sweetly. He looks so pretty it makes Leo’s heart melt into a pool of warm love and affection that courses through his veins, slow and sticky like honey, warming up his limbs.

The curve of his ass emerges from the towel as it unfolds, falling by the sides of his body and resting limp on the mattress, while Blaine reaches out for his head and affectionately strokes his hair. Leo looks at them, at the way they look at each other, and they’re so perfect and beautiful he feels drawn towards them to the point of physical pain.

He waits for the pang to subside, and only then he leans on him, demandingly snatching his lips away from that smile he’s offering Blaine, catching them into an hungry kiss as he lets his hands travel on the back of his thighs, up and down and then up again, closing around his buttocks, squeezing his soft flesh, feeling it give in under the pressure.

Cody moans between his lips, his hips swinging upwards, rubbing against Leo’s crotch. Feeling him hard makes him whimper, it makes him part his legs a little wider, ask for a little more, but Leo doesn’t wanna give it to him, not yet, not so soon. He parts from his lips, licking them one last time, as red and puffy and oversensitive as they are, just to feel him shiver, and then starts kissing him down his neck, slowly traveling down his body, tasting him as he opens and closes his lips on his skin in wet, hot kisses that make Cody whine in pleasure and frustration.

“He’s torturing you, pet, isn’t he?” Blaine asks sweetly, stroking Cody’s cheek with his thumb and then moving it over his lips, to make him stop biting at them. Cody stops, but only to catch Blaine’s finger between his lips, sucking it into his mouth and playing in swirls with his tongue around it, forcing another soft smile on Blaine’s lips.

Leo looks up and takes a bite out of Cody’s tummy, annoyed. “Don’t get distracted,” he says, and Cody lets go of Blaine’s finger to look back down at Leo, a sweet smile curling his lips upwards.

“I’m not,” he says, but Leo isn’t convinced he’s got his full attention, so he moves lower, pushing Cody’s legs up and apart, exposing his tight, pink opening.

Leo’s not a huge fan of oral. His first blowjob he gave to Blaine, and it wasn’t exactly what could’ve been called a satisfying experience, for a few reasons Leo doesn’t like to go through now that so much time has passed and so many things have happened to them, that changed their relationship and situation so much. Still, the memory persists, and he’s thankful for the fact that Blaine seems to understand it, and never asks for anything in that sense, always waiting for him to make the first move whenever he feels up to.

Now, eating Cody out is a different thing entirely, though.

Leo’s not sure he could point out a single moment in which he looked at Cody and he realized he wanted to rim him. It’s a kind of hunger that’s probably always been there, since the first time he laid eyes on him, even before he fell for him, even before he realized he liked him. Looking at Cody and wanting to lick him all over are consequential things, because Cody looks so freakishly good he basically seems edible. And licking him all over kind of includes his ass too. Leo never stopped to think about it, but he knows, even if he did, he wouldn’t freak out about it. Cody just isn’t capable to inspire him with horrified thoughts. There’s just no chance in the world anything related to him could ever sound or feel disgusting to Leo. Things he wouldn’t dream of doing with anybody else, not even Blaine, not only become possible with Cody, they become necessary. They have to be done or Leo goes out of his mind. That’s just how it works.

So, when he leans in and presses his lips against Cody’s opening, his kisses are already hungry and open, his lips moving slowly against Cody’s hot skin, his tongue flicking out every now and then, to tease him.

Cody moans, arching his spine and throwing his head back, as he grabs at his own knees and pushes his own legs upwards, to expose himself more, giving way to Leo, that receives and accepts the invitation right away: crouching close to him, he tilts his head upwards a little and pushes his tongue inside Cody’s body, in and out, in and out, shivering in pleasure every time he feels Cody shiver too, squeezing his muscles around his intruding tongue, sucking it deeper in.

Soon enough the air in the bedroom is heavy with the scent of sex, and echoing with Cody’s moans. Leo lets a hand slide up Cody’s body, stroking his barely rounded tummy, rubbing his fingertips against Cody’s nipples. They’re hard and standing out like cute little pink buttons, and Leo holds one of them between his thumb and his index finger, playing with it just to hear Cody moan louder, his voice getting shakier and weaker by the second.

When Cody grabs him by his wrist, Leo’s expecting it, and he has to make an effort to stop himself from smiling right against his now wet and hungry opening. He knows Cody by heart, at this point, all his needs, what makes him feel good, all the little things he aches to do when he’s horny. So he’s not surprised, he’s not surprised at all when Cody drags his hand up, towards his own mouth, and starts sucking at his fingers, hungrily.

“Baby wants something to suckle on, doesn’t he?” he asks, parting momentarily from Cody’s opening and gently stroking his hardness with his free hand.

“Yes,” Cody mewls, his voice muffled by the fingers he’s still keeping buried in his own mouth.

“I figured,” Leo smirks, and then he turns towards Blaine. “Have you watched enough?”

Blaine’s horrified look is, as always, extremely funny. Leo can remember very well the very first time they talked about this issue of his, his complete inability to ever taint Cody with any kind of sex that went even just slightly beyond the most common position, and the very basic act of penetration. It was hilarious. Leo couldn’t stop laughing, nor he could ever believe that somebody could have someone like Cody as their husband and not want to fuck him senseless in every possible position and with every possible technique ever conceived by the human mind.

Obviously, Blaine knows how to satisfy his husband, that’s never been questioned by Leo or Cody himself, but he’s always very reluctant whenever Cody asks him to do something out of their (pretty lame) ordinary, or Leo dares him to. Like he’s doing now.

“…I don’t know,” he says, guessing what that mischievous light gleaming in Leo’s eyes means, “Can’t I just—”

“No, you can’t,” Leo says, possessively squeezing Cody’s buttocks in his hands and giving him one long, wet lap that makes Cody shake with pleasure, “This is mine, tonight. But you can fill some other hole.”

Leo can see him shake in horror at the mere thought, but there’s something else, obviously, the very same shiver that always shakes Leo from the inside whenever he thinks about doing something extremely dirty to Cody. It’s not as if Blaine doesn’t want to do those things to his husband (Leo firmly believes only a very, very sick man wouldn’t want to stick his own cock down Cody’s throat, given the chance), it’s just that he doesn’t live well with the thought of dirtying up his precious little prince, the very king of his heart, the perfect, undefiled angel doll he’s always kept under a glass dome so that nothing could tarnish it.

That’s why the thought is horrifying.

That’s also why it’s so sexy.

“I don’t think so,” he says, shaking his head, “I—”

“Please,” Cody’s voice is low and tiny, but it echoes in the room with the roar of a thousand thunders, “Blaine, please… let me suck it.”

Leo looks up at him. ‘That’s it,’ he thinks, ‘If he says no to this, no matter the consequences, I’m having him committed.'

He doesn’t have to find out about the consequences just yet, because luckily Blaine seems to decide that, although there are a lot of temptations he is able to stand up against with just the strength of his own willpower, his husband begging him to let him suck his cock isn’t one of them.

He lets out a soft whimper, as his hands slowly move to the belt keeping his robe closed, to untie the knot. “Alright, pet,” he says, his voice filled with sweet resignation, “Do as you please.”

Leo only waits long enough to make sure he sees Blaine bare his already majestic erection and offer it to Cody, who swallows it whole in one swift and hungry move, and then, with a satisfied grin, he lowers himself on Cody again, licking him a couple times before pushing his tongue inside his body.

It’s so easy to get lost like that, to miss the flowing seconds, not to notice them as they pass by. Everything is Cody, ‘cause he’s all Leo can taste, and everything is Blaine, ‘cause his moans are the only sound echoing in the room, since Cody can’t moan anymore and everything else is just the wet lapping of Leo’s tongue against Cody’s glistening, hot skin.

Leo grabs Cody by his hips, squeezes them hard enough to leave his fingerprints on them, and dives right in between his buttocks, half his face buried against Cody’s ass, who tries to moan and only manages to produce some sort of low purring that vibrates around Blaine’s cock, making him moan louder, even pant, as he holds onto the heavy wooden headboard of the bed.

When Cody starts swinging his hips, basically squatting on Leo’s face to take his tongue deeper in, Leo gives his all, licks him deeper than he’s ever licked him, thrusts his tongue inside his little tight hole hard and deep as he’d do with his own cock if he was fucking him, and he feels himself almost pushed over the edge when he feels Cody move away from Blaine’s cock with a loud, wet popping sound, to spit out a loud yell as he arches his back and comes, his orgasm raining over his own creamy white stomach pooling in his navel and dripping down its little curve in drops that leave translucent milky traces over his skin.

Leo lifts his face slowly, his eyes heavy with lust, his breath erratic and deep, his face covered in mess, his cock so hard it’s probably gonna explode if somebody doesn’t touch him right away, and when he’s about to ask for something, anything, really, just to get off, he feels the strong hold of Blaine’s arms close around his own waist and pull him up, and the next thing he knows is he’s sitting on Blaine’s lap and his cock is ramming past his opening and into his body, and he has to give his all not to just open his mouth wide and scream in pleasure and pain.

He waits for that first, overwhelming moment to pass, listening to the dirty nonsense Blaine whispers in his ear as he moves him on top of himself, holding him firmly around his hips, and only when he feels in control of his own feelings again he dares to moan, closing his eyes and resting his head back against Blaine’s shoulder, relaxing his muscles to take Blaine deeper, his body echoing with distant pleasure already, whenever Blaine hits deep and hard enough.

He reaches out for Blaine’s hand and brings it over his own cock, knowing better than to ask him to do anything when he’s so lost in his own pleasure he barely recognizes which one of the two he’s fucking, and when Blaine’s fingers close firmly around his hardness, stroking it, he opens his eyes and, through the veil of tears covering them, he looks at Cody.

Lying down covered in his own mess, as he looks at them with heavy, sleepy eyes and the sweetest smile on his plump, peachy lips, he looks nothing short of a vision. Something too beautiful and perfect to exist. He’s so beautiful just looking at him makes Leo want to lose control. He wishes Blaine had decided to fuck him in a different position, so now he could reach out for Cody, touch him, stroke him, jerk him off, anything just to see that pretty little face of his lighten up in shameless pleasure, anything just to see those big blue eyes of his get watery and heavy with another upcoming orgasm.

Just thinking about it makes him harder, just thinking about him makes him want to come.

He squeezes his fingers around Blaine’s, demanding for him to hold him tighter, stroke him harder, but then he sees Cody move up on his knees with a tiny moan, and he stops asking for anything, waiting to see what he’s up to.

Cody crawls towards them silently, his lips slightly parted, his body still shaking with the aftershocks of his orgasm, but that’s not enough to stop him. He stops right in front of Leo and crouches between his parted legs, and Leo barely has any time to realize what’s going to happen and thank all the gods for it, that Cody’s already lowering himself on his cock, taking it in his mouth, changing the hold of Blaine’s finger with the much softer, much wetter one of his lips, changing the occasional stroke Blaine gave to its head with his thumb with the swirls of his tongue around it, and over it, pushing lightly against the crack and then down, just a little past his foreskin, to reach inside.

That’s just too much for Leo to bear any longer. He moans louder, shamelessly, closing his muscles hard around Blaine to suck him inside his own body just as hard as Cody’s sucking him into his own mouth, and when, as a result of that, he milks Blaine’s orgasm out of him, and feels him shoot and fill him up with his come, he grabs Cody by his hair and pulls him back, just in time not to come into his mouth – just in time to shoot his orgasm right on his face, see it drip down his cheek, his nose, see it cover his lips in transparent drops, see Cody’s pink, little, kitten-like tongue flick between his lips to lick them off, tasting them and swallowing them with a faint shiver.

If the heaven religion promises awaiting for souls after people die is nothing like this, then the gods are a fraud.

He falls down on the mattress, completely spent, breathing heavily and keeping his eyes closed as he tries to regain some vague semblance of control over himself. He hopes Cody and Blaine both had enough, for tonight, to want to sleep immediately, and as far as this upcoming trip to Lord Anderson’s house goes, Leo doesn’t want to know anything about it, because it’s easier if he doesn’t think about it, it’s easier if he just forgets it and pretends it’s not happening, that he’s not being left behind, willingly or not.

“So,” Blaine says instead, talking softly as he brushes Leo’s hair away from his forehead, “Can we talk now?”

Leo groans loudly, crawling towards Cody and hugging him close, hiding his face against the curve of his neck and talking on his skin. “Can’t you just let it go?” he asks in a whiny voice, as Cody chuckles and strokes his nape, “I don’t wanna hear about it.”

“But I think you’d like what we’d say about it.”

“That’s unlikely,” he answers with a sigh.

“You’re wrong,” Cody says, smiling against his cheek and then leaving a soft kiss on it, “The fact is, we want you to come with us.”

Leo instantly raises his gaze on him, his eyes wide as two perfectly rounded moons. “What?”

“If you had let us speak this morning,” Blaine goes on, lying down on the bed with his arms crossed behind his head, “You’d have known sooner, and you’d have been of better company, today, instead of running here and there like a frightened rabbit every time we entered a room.”

“Shut up,” Leo grunts, throwing a pillow at him, before turning back to look at Cody. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Cody answers in a short giggle, evidently amused by Leo’s surprise, “We talked about it, but we were thinking it before we even discussed it. Isn’t it, like, the perfect vengeance you can think of? Lord Anderson had to invite Blaine over, but it’s not like he’ll enjoy one single second of it. So I say,” he adds with a very uncharacteristic grin that makes him look like some sort of mischievous fairy for a wonderful second, “I say we make it worse.”

Leo looks at him for a while, and then turns to Blaine. “Is he out of his mind?” he asks, pointing the finger at Cody.

Blaine laughs out loud, shrugging. “If he is, we both are. To be honest,” he grins too, “I can’t wait to see my father’s face when we show up in grand style… with you by our side.” He laughs again, shaking his head, “Oh, it’s going to be glorious.”

Leo doesn’t know if glorious is exactly the word he’d use to describe the carnage that will take place the moment Lord Anderson lays eyes on the three of them waiting on his doorstep, but the mere thought of traveling with Cody and Blaine just to spite him makes his skin swarm with pleasure.

He simply can’t wait.

*

Leo thought Blaine’s house was big, but Anderson Mansion forces him to rewrite the definition of big entirely, and for a full minute – the time they have to wait outside before somebody actually comes and gets their luggage to take it inside – he is unable to form words that seem accurate enough to do that. Or, well, any word at all, actually.

“This isn’t a house,” he says, jumping off the carriage, his eyes glued to the building in front of him, “This is a castle.”

“You wouldn’t say that, if you had ever seen a castle,” Blaine chuckles, as he closes his hands firmly around Cody’s waist to help him down, “Luckily, we can fix that after we’re done with this.”

“I can’t imagine why somebody would want a castle if they already have a place like this,” Leo says distractedly, his eyes still seeing nothing except the mansion, his brain still unable to conceive anything else beside it. Until the dreamlike bubble he’s been losing himself in for the last few minutes pops open, and he realizes the implications of Blaine’s words. “Wait a second,” he says, turning to look at him, “You have a castle?!”

“Not me, specifically,” Blaine chuckles, amused, “But my family does.”

“Dalton Castle,” Cody adds, tidying up his clothes and wrapping an arm around one of Blaine’s, “I’ve been there a couple times, before you arrived. It’s a fascinating place!”

“Yes, spider webs and drafts tend to give a building that certain air of mystery and Medieval antiquity about itself,” Blaine comments with a short chuckle, moving towards the door as the servants who came to welcome them part to make room for his stride, “I never really liked the place, and father deems it one of his most valued possessions only as long as he doesn’t actually have to set foot into it.” His smile softens a bit as his eyes grow distant, as if they were scanning his memory for some feeble pictures of a long-forgotten past. “Mother used to love it. That’s where our family would hold all parties and spend all holidays, as long as… well, as long as she could take care of it. Then the illness came, and it…” he sighs, shrugging a little, that silent smile still curling his lips, but fading like frost comes the morning sun, “It changed everything. And when my older brother ended up missing at war, well, a lot of what we were used to do got forgotten, it became something we locked up in the past and didn’t really want to face again, and so did Dalton Castle too.”

“That’s… kind of sad, actually,” Leo says, walking beside them, “But I kinda wanna see it still.”

“It’s not far from here, if I remember correctly,” Cody says, looking up at Blaine, who nods in agreement.

“Just a few miles east of here, past the bridge,” he says, “I’ll send a few people there tomorrow to clean it and warm it up a bit, so that it’s ready for us when we’re ready for it. It’s going to be a good place to hide out for a few days until we wait for the storm to subside after father sees we brought you along,” he finishes, looking at Leo with a sly grin.

“Oh, Gods,” a female voice says in a soft but anxious whimper, and when Leo turns around to identify the source of it he finds an old woman standing on the doorstep, her hands over her mouth and her eyes deeply worried as she looks at them approaching, “Young Master, you will be the death of me, and the death of your poor father.”

“Mrs. Appleby,” Blaine greets her, letting go of Cody just to hold both her tiny, wrinkly hands in his own, squeezing them warmly, “You haven’t aged one day.”

“Please, Young Master,” the old woman says, modestly looking down, “Do not flatter me. I am extremely concerned for you. You shouldn’t have done this. Your poor father will have an heart attack. And these two poor kids!” she goes on, turning to both Leo and Cody and embracing them with warm eyes as she strokes both their cheeks with hands that Leo expected to be rough and lumpy but that are, instead, extremely soft and smooth to the touch, and delicately vanilla-scented. “Why did you have to involve them too? You know who’s going to pay for this, oh, this poor kid,” she sighs, focusing her icy blue eyes, made twice as big by her thick glasses, solely on Leo, “Don’t you worry, child, you will be under my protection for as long as you’ll be a guest under this roof. You have no fault in this.”

She must be the governess, Leo guesses by looking at her dark and austere outfit, only barely lightened up by the creamy white apron and headpiece. And she seems nothing like Leo would have thought her to be. If he had known there was going to be one, obviously.

He rarely ever stops to think about Lord Anderson, and whenever he does it’s only to mentally cover him in insults and hate for the way he treats them and his complete inability to understand their relationship. The few times he has ever tried and picture him, he has always visualized him as some sad, lonely old man living in a sad, lonely stone manor, using just a candle to save on wax and matches and spending his days sitting on an old velvet armchair in the darkness, staring cold-eyed-ly into nothing while silently cursing his only alive son without any pity or remorse. He certainly didn’t want to think about him as the extremely rich and extremely proper old man he probably is instead, surrounded with adoring servants, taken care of by a loyal governess, as he lives in his beautiful white marble mansion surrounded by yards of wonderful woods, full of regrets and concerns for his son’s life choices.

“Um… thank you,” he answers, trying not to sound as surprised as he really is, “That’s… very kind of you.”

“That’s not very kind of you at all, Mrs. Appleby!” Blaine says in some sort of whiny, childish voice Leo has never heard coming out of his mouth before, “If you really want to know it, it was my beloved husband’s idea.”

“Oh, don’t go blaming that poor, innocent soul for your mischiefs!” the old woman argues, turning to look at him and facing him with the same sternness of an extremely old, affectionate grandmother, “Whatever trick he learned, he learned from you, Young Master. Ah, it’s you who hasn’t aged a day!” she says in a dramatic sigh, “Since you were five, actually!”

Blaine bursts into laughing, covering Mrs. Appleby’s narrow, fragile shoulders with an arm and dragging her into an hug as he energetically rubs her back. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Appleby. You’re right, as always.”

“I’ve known you all your life, Young Master, and I have never been wrong.”

“Indeed,” he nods, the smile on his lips now full and radiant, “I still remember what you told me when you found me busy trying to put cayenne pepper in Cooper’s soup. You said I would never be able to ever go a single day in my life without doing at least something wicked and outrageous,” he winks, throwing a glance at Leo and Cody, “And I’ve tried to go by that as well as I possibly could.”

“Oh, Young Master,” the woman sighs again, completely unimpressed by Blaine’s shameless show, “Please, do stop playing around already. This needs to be handled carefully. Let me escort your young companions in their rooms, and—”

“Mrs. Appleby!” Blaine exclaims, pretending to be way more shocked than he really is, “I cannot believe that father didn’t utter the words ‘bring him to me the moment he steps foot into the house’, before I arrived!”

“He did, in fact, but—”

“Then, by no means I am going to disappoint His Lordship by disobeying such a direct and straightforward order. There will be time to show my kids their rooms. Now bring us to father at once!” he nods with theatrical solemnity.

“Young Master,” Mrs. Appleby almost whines, “I beg you please, this is not something you should be joking about.”

“Who’s joking about what?” he says with another open smile.

Leo looks at the scene, mildly amused and only vaguely worried, and his heart skips a beat when he understands this woman was the only person who could talk some sense into Blaine and prevent the next five minutes to happen, and she didn’t manage. Whether he’s more happy than he’s preoccupied with what’s going to happen or the other way around, he can’t say. He honestly doesn’t even care.

“Fine,” Mrs. Appleby says, showing them inside, “But please, try and be careful, Young Master. His Lordship hasn’t been in his best shape, recently.”

“Ah,” Blaine says with a vague smile, following her and making way for Cody and Leo too, “I’m sure he hasn’t. Must’ve taken a lot of effort to find enough strength to stomach the thought of not only having to invite me here, but also award me.”

Mrs. Appleby, walking just a few steps ahead of them, stops in the middle of the corridor and quickly turns around, throwing Blaine the closest thing to a glare he can possibly afford to address him with, and that stare, on its own, it’s enough to stop Blaine, something that not even opposite armies of thousands of people have proven to be able to do. “I’m afraid you’re out of line, now, Young Master. Please, do remember you’re still talking about your father.”

Blaine looks down for a few seconds, his smile quickly fading away. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Appleby. That was cocky and immature of me. Do accept my apologies, please.”

The old woman sighs, nodding slowly. “You still wish me to announce you to His Lordship, though, don’t you?”

“Yes, please,” Blaine answers with a short nod, “I have come here, today, to make a statement, and only after I was, you will agree, clearly provoked, one way or another. Now, you may disagree with my intentions, but I still need to do this my own way. Wicked and outrageous as it may be,” he finishes with a smile.

Mrs. Appleby sighs for the umpteenth time, and turns around. “Follow me,” she says. Blaine does, and Cody and Leo move behind him, silently.

She asks them to wait for a little while outside in the hallway as she announces them to Lord Anderson, and they do. In the long, silent moments that follow her disappearance behind the heavy, golden lacquered wooden door, Leo turns to look at Blaine, and his heart starts beating faster when he notices he’s nervous.

Not that Blaine’s making a show out of it. Oh, no, he never does. He’s been raised as a soldier and by a soldier, thinking it a flaw to ever show any feeling that might bring anybody else to think him weak. That’s what makes him so stern and strict, an attitude that stuck with him despite how much softer he’s grown over the last few years, his hardness, coming from his upbringing, bending to the rules of the passing years and the constant outpouring of love coming from his kids and directed straight towards him.

Despite that, despite that hardness that’s always with him, the thought of his father is always able to shake Blaine inside. It’s the only thing that does. Which is why, despite being the most fearless person he knows, Leo’s frightened of him too.

Mrs. Appleby comes out of the studio a couple minutes later. She’s visibly upset. Leo’s quite sympathetic towards the woman: it mustn’t be easy to deal with such a father and such a son, especially when they’re being at odds with one another, which, Leo can only imagine, must be like a natural condition, for them, knowing how they think.

“His Lordship will receive you, now,” she says.

Blaine offers her an apologetic and warm smile, getting close to her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders, showing off a kind of intimacy that he shouldn’t be allowed to share with servants. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Appleby,” he says softly, kissing her on her cheek, “We’ll see you later.”

“Yes, Young Master,” she nods politely, “Just try and be still alive by then.”

Leo wants to think of it as a joke, but he can’t help swallowing at the not-so-veiled warning lying underneath it.

Lord Anderson’s study is a big, dark room, filled with heavy furniture and the sweet smell of extremely old books. There are three windows on the wall looking at the garden on the front of the mansion, but they’re all covered in heavy, brown velvet curtains that are longer than the wall itself and fall on the floor like the long tail of a wedding dress, mimicking the movement of the waves when they come ashore.

Lord Anderson is sitting silently behind his desk, and doesn’t stand up when he sees them walk in.

“Good morning, father,” Blaine says, smiling dashingly as he walks into the room, followed by Cody and Leo, “I just arrived.”

“So they tell me,” Lord Anderson answers. His voice is low and rough, his expression stern. He only looks at Blaine. “It also seems like you’re not alone.”

“That’s correct,” Blaine nods, “My dear husband and lover are here.”

Lord Anderson looks at him coldly for a few seconds, not a word escaping his lips. Silence falls so heavily upon them all that Leo quickly starts feeling uncomfortable, and regretting ever wanting to come here, let alone accepting the invitation.

“You just couldn’t help it,” he says, his voice trembling lightly, rage making his words harsher, “You couldn’t help coming into my house with him. To embarrass me.”

“I couldn’t help being unable to accept the honor you’re about to give me without him by my side, father,” Blaine answers, just as harshly as him, “Since he, together with my husband, was the only one who cried for me, and mourned my loss, when he believed me lost at war.”

Lord Anderson clutches his hands around the armrests of his chair, staring at him with such outrage in his eyes for a second Leo is genuinely scared and genuinely expecting to see him stand up, cross the room and slap his son across his face.

It doesn’t happen, though, and in a few moments Lord Anderson’s expression goes back to what it was before, a still, stern mask of indifference and vague bother. “Very well,” he says, “You’ll have your whore by your side for the ceremony. He better have something to wear for the occasion. You wouldn’t want to show him in the same condition you dare to let him walk around your house, and that I was forced to witness while I was a guest there.”

Blaine concedes himself a smirk, as he shrugs nonchalantly. He knows he won the battle, and he clearly takes pride in it. No matter how silly the argument, it’s always war between his father and him. “You needn’t worry, father,” he says, “I’ll make sure Leo looks at his best, tomorrow night. He’ll be on everybody’s mouth.”

“I’m way more concerned about his mouth being on everybody, than the other way around,” Lord Anderson says, darting a sharp glare in Blaine’s direction.

Leo clutches his fists down his sides. “How dare you—“ he starts out, gritting his teeth.

Blaine smiles, and puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Don’t fall for it,” he says, “He’s at his worst when he knows he’s losing.” He bows elegantly, inviting Leo to do the same as Cody tilts his head in a silent and polite greeting. “Good evening, father,” he concludes, “We won’t be having dinner with you, tonight. We’ll see you for the ceremony, tomorrow.”

Lord Anderson doesn’t speak, and simply turns around, gesturing him to go away.

*

"I'm having second thoughts about this," Leo says, looking at his reflection in the mirror.

"There's no need to," Cody smiles encouragingly, walking slowly around him as he supervises the job the seamstress is doing on the clothes that have been bought for him specifically for this occasion, "Blaine knows what he's doing."

"See, that's exactly why I'm having second thoughts," he insists, lifting his arms when the seamstress orders him to do so, to measure the right length for the soft, dark red blouse he's wearing, "I'm not convinced at all he does."

"Why?" Cody asks softly, as he leans in to tell the seamstress to keep the blouse as long as possible and to tighten the trousers, instead, so that they fit his legs like a glove, "Has he ever disappointed you?"

"Countless times!"

Cody looks back up at him, frowning. "What's the problem?" he asks.

"The problem is, I'm afraid we're pushing our luck," he says, "I think the only reason that disgusting man didn't kick Blaine out of the family last time we kicked him out of our house was because he's the only progeny he's got left. This might be enough for him to decide he doesn't need a progeny after all, and that the Anderson name better die with him, though!"

"And what do you care about it?" Cody blinks, genuinely surprised, "You never cared for Blaine's title, or his family name. You were the one suggesting we should drop everything and run to a foreign country, starting off from scratch as common nobodies."

"Cody, people change," Leo sighs, "And they grow mature. That would've been my greatest joy, back then, a dream come true, because I only believed in the kind of love that's so overwhelming you'd drop everything you have just to follow where it leads. I'm not that person anymore, I've learned. I know that Blaine doesn't love me less just because he doesn't drop everything for me, I know there's more to life than just being with the people you love. And it even took me a huge deal of thinking and convincing myself to get there, so please don't waste all my efforts like that!"

Cody chuckles, leaning on the frame of the mirror, overseeing the silent work of the seamstress. "Sorry," he says, "I'm glad to hear you say that. The more time we spend all together, the better you get to know me and Blaine," he smiles, "That's adorable."

Leo looks away, embarrassed. "Shut up."

"Anyway," Cody goes on, "I don't exactly know what Blaine has in mind. But you've got to understand, his father never really approved of him, of anything he ever did, actually, except being and exceptionally good soldier. Blaine has lived a good half of his life trying to please Lord Anderson, but he never looked at him twice. How could he, when he had a much more dashing, much more mature, much more heroic firstborn to concentrate all his hopes on?" he shrugs, "At some point, Blaine simply stopped trying his best to please him, and started trying his best to please himself. And ironically, that's exactly when Lord Anderson's gaze started to finally linger on him. To criticize everything he did."

Leo frowns, tilting his head. "You mean he was disapproving of him since before I came into the picture?"

"Yes," Cody nods, "He never approved of me."

Leo opens his eyes wide, looking at him in shock. "How is it possible not to approve of you?" he asks, truly astounded at the concept.

Cody laughs, amused at his astonishment, looking down at the seamstress. "That'll be enough," he tells her, "The outfit looks good."

She nods and thanks him, and then stands up and quickly leaves the room, knowing she's not welcome there anymore. Leo looks at her until he sees her respectfully close the door behind her, and then turns his gaze back on Cody, who's only waiting to have his full attention back to start talking again.

"I'm a boy, so I can't give him an heir that it's his by blood," he explains, "Some of the oldest and more traditional families still frown upon same sex marriages for this reason, despite it being common practice now. Plus, I'm too young. I was way underage when my relationship with Blaine started. We kept it a secret, mostly, but Lord Anderson always knew. He never said it out loud, but of course he knew, he's not stupid and he knows his son. And finally," Cody smiles softly, "I'm a commoner."

Leo's eyes grow even wider, as he stares at Cody in disbelief. "Are you kidding me?" he asks, "You're not blue blood?"

"I'm not," Cody chuckles, "Blaine and I met because of the war. I had a brother, you know?" he smiles tenderly, "A twin brother, Casey. Mine was a pretty poor family, we had a little bakery in the old city. We had our clientele, we didn't make a lot of money and reaching the end of the month paying all our creditors was hard, but we managed. I was content with it, but Casey wasn't. He was the bright mind and roaring heart of the family," his smile breaks a little, but still widens lightly, as he lowers his eyes, getting lost in his memories, "He wanted to join the army, make a name for himself, climb the social ladder and so on. He was one of Blaine's cadets. He had taken him under his wing, admiring his spirit, his inventiveness and his passion. He brought him at war and they fought side by side, but only Blaine came back." He stops for a second, taking a deep breath, as if he needed to calm himself, even though he doesn't look upset at all.

"I..." Leo swallows, "I knew nothing of it."

"I don't like to talk about it, and Blaine respects my wish and never brings it up," Cody explains, "But you don't have to worry, I was waiting for the right occasion to tell you because it felt weird that you didn't know. You just gave me the chance."

"I'm..." Leo looks down, uncomfortably, "I'm still sorry."

Cody chuckles and steps closer, lifting himself up on his tiptoes to kiss him on his lips. "Don't be, please," he says.

"So..." he inquires curiously, unable to stop himself despite knowing he probably should, "He came back and..."

"He insisted to be the one to bring the Purple Heart to our home," Cody's tale goes on, "He too had lost a brother at war, so he knew what it meant and he felt for me and my family. He said words of praise about Casey, told us he had been the bravest and the smartest and the most fearless soldier he had ever met in his entire life. He told us that if he had been given the chance to keep his life, Casey would've provided for all of us, and then promised that, since my brother couldn't anymore, he'd have done it in his stead."

"And that's how you started hanging out together..."

"And eventually fell in love, yes," Cody nods. "But it wasn't out of pity that he fell for me. At first that's what I believed, but the more time I spent with him the more I came to understand that us falling in love wasn't a way for him to fix my broken family. It had just been serendipitous."

"Of course," Leo nods, smiling softly, "It's impossible to fall for you out of pity, Cody. You're too amazing for that."

Cody chuckles, amused and embarrassed. "I wasn't amazing enough for Lord Anderson," he says. "Can you imagine? The only living son of the head of one of the oldest families of the nation marrying a common baker son. Twenty years younger than him!" he chuckles again at the thought, "We were the talk of the whole city for months. Lord Anderson never forgave us that."

Leo nods slowly, letting all the new information sink in. "I see..." he says, "Silly me, thinking I was the only bone of contention around!"

"Isn't it entirely like you thinking yourself the very center of the universe?" Cody jokes, smirking at him.

"How dare you!" Leo laughs, wrapping his arms around Cody's body and tickling him in retaliation, "You bad-mouthed princess."

Cody laughs out loud, trying to free himself from Leo's grasp. "Stop it! Oh my God," he laughs again, "Stop it, you're gonna kill me." Leo chuckles and stops tickling him, his hands lingering on Cody's body in soft, intimate caresses. "You see now," Cody reprises, leaning on him, "This thing Blaine's doing, it's not just about you, and it's not just about us. It's about him and his father. Wherever this leads us, it's at the end of a path Blaine chose because he believed it righteous, because there's still something he wants to show his father, possibly that he's not the weak, dissolute and stupid man his father believes him to be. I don't know," he sighs, "I think the evolution of Blaine's relationship with his father over the years was leading them up to this very moment. I think whatever's going to happen tonight and in the days that will follow simply needs to happen. We just need to stand by Blaine through it."

"That goes without saying," Leo reassures him, nodding at him and at himself.

"Are you done with preparations?" Blaine asks, knocking on the door twice and then simply walking in, his expression turning into a playfully annoyed one when he sees them hugging. "Boys!" he scolds them, "I can't leave you alone two seconds. What are you doing all tangled up like that? We're going to be late."

"No, we won't," Cody smiles, parting from Leo to walk towards him and kiss him sweetly on his lips, "We're ready to go. Is everybody waiting for us?"

"Eagerly," Blaine nods. He turns around, offering his arms to both Cody and Leo. "Shall we go?"

Cody and Leo both nod, as Leo jumps off the stand the seamstress had put him on to take care of his outfit. "We shall," he says, hanging on to Blaine's arm.

*

The hall is filled with people, all orderly sitting at their places around the small rounded tables that have been placed everywhere in the room, to offer a seat to every guest. There are mostly men in the crowd, and they’re all wearing the dress uniform of the highest offices of the Army, but there’s a few women, too, mostly wives or honored widows, wearing the richest and most exquisite dresses Leo has ever seen on anybody.

Nobody’s more beautiful than Cody, anyway. He’s wearing a long, white tunic with a tail that follows him wherever he goes, decorated with the smallest diamonds man could possibly craft, making the dress shine under the bright lights of the chandeliers. The dress leaves his shoulders bare, and the number of people following that sweet curve, from his neck to his arm, is astounding, both between women and men.

He sits straight at Blaine’s right, holding one of his hands between his own. Leo sits by Blaine’s left, instead. Blaine offered him a hand too, but Leo chuckled and told him not to be ridiculous, that there’s no reason to flaunt in his father’s face things that they’re not used to do at home either, and that he’d look ridiculous anyway if he were to have both his hands busy with two different kids. Blaine laughed and kissed him in front of everybody, and the surprised oohs that followed the gesture were enough to keep Leo satisfied for the entire night.

Dinner was good, but no one cares for food, tonight. Not Blaine, nervously waiting for his father’s move, not Lord Anderson, probably preoccupied with the poor show his son’s making of himself, certainly not the guests, all busy chatting under their breath about the dashing general Blaine Anderson, and about how such wonderful military qualities and such awful and depraved sexual inclinations can coexist inside him.

Blaine waltzes through the night with effortless class, literally, at some point, when the string quartet starts to play and guests are invited to join in the dancing. He dances with Cody first, making him swirl on the dancefloor like a cloud in the summer sky, turning and turning, clearly showing off, in a mesmerizing movement Leo can’t keep his eyes off. And then he dances with Leo too, a slower, more intimate dance, with his left arm wrapped around his waist and the other held up high, their fingers entwined as they hold hands, turning on the spot, barely swinging to the rhythm of the music.

When dances are over, they sit back around their assigned table, waiting for the hardest moment of the night to come. Lord Anderson stands up from the table he shares with the most relevant representatives of the Army and the political and economic life of the city, and slowly walks to the stage that’s been arranged in the room, and that is now empty after the string quartet left. Blaine follows his movements carefully, and Leo does it too, his heart beating faster and harder than it should, or than it had reason to do.

Lord Anderson stops behind the stand, placing a few notes on the holder. He raises his gaze on his audience, and then his eyes stop on Blaine, and something changes in them. Leo’s heart skips a beat as the man appears to him for the first time as the old, old and lost man he really is. A man who’s let his only remaining son grow so distant from him he can’t even understand him anymore.

It’s a weirdly heartbreaking sight.

“First of all,” Lord Anderson says in a deep sigh, “Let me thank you all for coming here to celebrate my son and his miraculous venture, tonight. You honor my house with your presence, and you honor my son by wanting to award him with the Golden Medal.” He clears his throat, while the audience claps their hands at Blaine, who bows lightly, accepting the applause. “I had prepared a few words,” Lord Anderson reprises after a while, “That was before this night was organized, when I was first contacted by the chief of staff who told me about the Medal’s assignation. I’m not sure if things have changed since then, but I would still like, if you have the patience to bear with this old man for just a few minutes, to make the speech as I had originally planned it.”

Another round of applause starts from the audience, and Lord Anderson waits for the clapping to subside before speaking again.

“When I lost my first son at war,” he says, as silence falls heavily upon the hall, “I refused to surrender to grief. I was a much younger man, back then, perhaps a much stronger one, and the thought of having lost my firstborn to a war I believed righteous, serving a Nation I myself would have laid my life down for, somehow softened the pain. It was heartwrenching, and I was broken, but I could take pride in my son’s heroic deeds, and I could be at peace. Deep down, it was because I knew.” His eyes once again linger on Blaine. Leo, who was looking at the old man, follows them, and sees on Blaine’s face an expression he had never seen before. He looks much, much younger than he is. And simply terrified. Though of what, Leo couldn’t tell. “I knew I had another. Someone else who would carry the family name, someone else on whom I can put all my hopes and dreams for the future on. But I soon had to realize that, despite being the embodiment of all I ever believed right and just for a soldier, my second son wasn’t somebody I could rein in. He wasn’t a person I could control, and that put at risk all those hopes, all those dreams. And I simply couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t accept it, and so I did the only thing I knew we both were equally capable of: I declared war.”

Blaine holds his breath, his lips turned into a thin, almost invisible line. Cody looks at him, a little worried about his tension, and squeezes his hand. Blaine squeezes it back, so hard Cody’s knuckles turn whiter than they already are. Equally worried, Leo puts a hand on his forearm, trying to snap him out of whatever dark pit he’s fallen in. Blaine relaxes, but only a bit.

“I led this war without backing off once in all these years, but when I received news of your disappearance at war, son, I felt what I hadn’t felt when it happened to your older brother. Everything came back to me, twice as intense as it would’ve been ten years ago, because of my age, and because I was so sure, so sure you’d come back, so we could go on with our private war, that had become so much more important than the actual war, over the years, because it was ours.” Lord Anderson stops again for a few moments, catching his breath. The audience is awfully quiet. Not a single word can be heard, not even a whisper. “And it was then that I realized that I could’ve lost you twice, dead to me for two different wars. Ours, and the Nation’s. And I couldn’t stand it. I did things—” he has to stop again, his eyes getting watery, the crows united in a single exclamation of surprise, because that man has never been seen crying in public, “I did things I had forgotten how to do. I prayed. I cried. I begged for forgiveness looking at your picture. And then you came back.”

He stops to swallow. Blaine swallows too.

“So, as former general and leader, tonight I award you, on account of the Army, for your valor in battle. But as a father, son, I don’t award you. I celebrate you. For coming back to me.”

The audience remains quiet for almost a full minute. Then, slowly, everybody starts standing up. They cheer and applaud, somebody’s moved, somebody’s filled with pride, somebody’s been made weak by Lord Anderson’s words.

Everybody’s smiling.

Except Blaine, who’s crying silently, staring at his father, and his two kids, who look completely overturned, staring at him.

*

Blaine always asks for a little privacy, whenever he's distressed or particularly upset by something. Leo was very annoyed at this attitude, at first, because he's not like Cody, he doesn't have a talent for always getting what Blaine wants and why he needs it at first sight, but he learned to understand it over time. To the point that now Blaine doesn't even need to ask anymore: they can recognize the signs, they see them, and when they do, they automatically back off.

Sometimes they're reluctant to let him go, though, which is why, this time, they both followed him. They know Blaine doesn't want them around, so they make sure he doesn't notice them, but they're close, close enough to hear him sigh deeply as he sits at one of the benches of the immense garden surrounding the mansion, leaning against its back and raising his eyes to the night sky, staring at the stars.

The party's been over for an hour or so, and all the guests are long gone. Both the house and the garden are utterly silent, there's not even a night bird in sight, no crickets shaking the air with their voice, no steps, no whispers, nothing. Leo and Cody don't even need to talk, just to look at Blaine to know he's better off on his own, right now, that he needs to deal with his own thundering emotions by himself.

When they finally hear something changing in the night, a new sound echoing around them, steps approaching, all their senses heighten. They narrow their eyes to try and recognize who's walking towards Blaine in the darkness, but they only manage when the figure moves into the light Blaine's lamp is casting around himself.

"...Father," Blaine whispers, looking up. He quickly stands up, but Lord Anderson stops him with an assertive gesture, and Blaine sits down again.

Soon enough, the old man's joining his son, sitting next to him on the bench, staring at the same night sky.

They exchange no words for the longest time, and it's Blaine the first to break the silence. "I... I don't know what to say."

Lord Anderson doesn't even look at him, but he inhales deeply, the sweet scent of the roses surrounding them. "You think we need to talk, but you don't even know where to start, don't you?"

"Yes," Blaine admits, lowering his gaze.

Lord Anderson nods slowly. "I knew that speech would've confused you," he says, "In fact, I wasn't even sure if I should've made it. Or if I wanted to make it at all. We've been opposing each other for so long... I struggle to imagine a life in which we don't."

"It was never because of me," Blaine blurts out, "Or, well... at least it wasn't always. Back then, father, I would've given anything to—"

"To impress me," Lord Anderson finishes for him, "I know. And I don't really know what exactly was it that I was expecting from you. Probably that you could do something huge, something world-changing, something that could wipe out everything else you've done in your life, so that you could always be remembered for that. I wonder, now... is that what all fathers want for their children? That they can be heroes, their legacy unfolding through time, for centuries? I don't know. I wanted that for you. And I thought everything else you did, all the things you liked, you did and liked to spite me. Because you knew of this dream and it wasn't the same as yours, and so you were set on standing as far from it as you possibly could. And since you couldn't help being an outstanding soldier, being it in your nature to be one, then you consciously decided to compensate that quality with being as dissolute and unruly as you possibly could. Just because you hated me."

Blaine raises his eyes on him briefly, before going back to stare at the ground. "That's... That's an extremely self-centered vision of a relationship."

"And still, that's how I saw it," the old man sighs. "Besides, is there really out there a vision of a relationship, whatever relationship, that isn't self-centered? What about your vision of our relationship? What about your... your kids' vision of their relationship? With you, with one another. We're all people trying to understand how to deal with each other, and experience taught me we mostly never manage."

Blaine keeps silent for a minute or so, letting his father's words sink in. "Father," he asks then, "Are you apologizing?"

Lord Anderson doesn't answer right away. His lips curl into a barely visible smile, as his dark eyes shine under the moonlight. "I am," he admits, "If it is true that you never did anything to try and make me understand what you were going through, as I always believed and still believe, it is also true that I simply never asked. And that even if I did, I wouldn't have been in the right state of mind to really listen." He finally turns to look at his son, smiling a little more convincingly. "So yes, I apologize, son. And I'm not sure I'll ever understand what you want and what you need... Frankly," he breathes out in half a laughter, "I'm not even sure I want to, but what I do know is that I'm old and I'm tired, and I can't take a single day of this war anymore. Life..." he swallows, "Life unexpectedly gave you back to me. And I'm done depriving myself of the joy of being a father. I know it might be too late, but I still want to..." he stops for a second, looking at him, "Son, are you crying?"

"You have no idea..." Blaine sobs, "How long I've wanted to hear..."

"No, son," Lord Anderson says, placing a hand on his shoulder, "I do. Believe me. I do."

Blaine's shaking so violently Leo looks at him from the bushes he's hiding behind with Cody, and he's frightened he might fall to pieces and disperse on the ground. He keeps crying, silently, and his father keeps a hand on his shoulder until he hears his crying subside.

"I'm going to leave you, now," he says then, standing up, "I'm tired and it's been an intense, heavy day for us both. Go to sleep, son. Enjoy your kids. We'll talk again tomorrow at breakfast."

Blaine barely manages to nod vaguely, and sits perfectly still, his hands on his knees, his gaze locked to the ground, as his father slowly walks away and gets back into the mansion. Only then he covers his face with both hands and inhales and exhales deeply, still sobbing every now and then, trying to calm down. "You can come out, now," he says. His voice sounds still broken, and Cody and Leo's hearts sink into their stomachs upon hearing it.

They come out of their hiding place, looking down. "We're sorry," Cody says, "We didn't--"

"It's fine," he stops him right there, lowering his hands and looking up at them. He's smiling, but he's still crying. "I'm alright."

Leo moves a little closer, stroking his cheek with his hand. "You're crying..." he says, as if wanting to warn Blaine in case he didn't notice.

"I know," Blaine says in a short, shaky chuckle, "I don't seem to be able to stop."

They both wrap their arms around him, hugging him silently, holding their breaths when he hugs them too, squeezing their bodies in an embrace that's so tight it almost hurts. Much like happiness when it's too intense.

*

They leave the mansion a couple hours after breakfast, but way before lunchtime. Blaine said there's a small, fine tavern on the road towards Dalton Castle, serving the best mutton steaks he's ever tasted in his life. He wants his kids to try them too, so they're going to stop by the place to eat before they proceed for their final destination.

Breakfast was surprisingly good. Lord Anderson still wouldn't address Leo directly, but he wouldn't refuse to share the table with him, and he'd generally conduct himself as if he was indeed aware of his presence right there with the others, something that, as small of an improvement as it is, he had never done before. He asked them what were their plans for the day and Blaine told him he had promised Leo and Cody a visit to the Castle.

"That old place," Lord Anderson sighed, "It's full of drafts. You're all going to catch a cold."

"I sent servants there to warm the place up," Blaine smiled, "We'll be fine, but thanks for your concern. We're going to spend the night there, and we'll be there tomorrow too, until late afternoon. Perhaps you could come visit for tea."

"Perhaps I could," Lord Anderson smiled too. He didn't promise to come, but he didn't need to. Blaine will be expecting him tomorrow by four, and he's going to be there.

Mrs. Appleby said goodbye to them on the door, while a couple servants loaded their luggage on the coach. "Can I dare hope we'll be seeing you around here more often, now, Young Master?" she asked softly.

Blaine smiled and hugged her warmly. "Dare, my old friend," he said, "We'll see you soon."

Before she let them go, she recommended Leo and Cody to keep an eye on Blaine, take care of him. "He's growing old too," she said, "He's growing soft. That's the age men start to melt. It's your job to keep him in one piece."

They both took their responsibility very seriously.

"So," Leo says, looking out the window as the coach bounces along the road, "How long till this amazing house of quality mutton?"

"It's still early," Blaine chuckles, stroking his hair.

"But I'm hungry," Leo complains, sitting back down, "Don't we have anything to eat?"

"You just finished having breakfast..." Cody chuckles too.

Leo crawls towards him, capturing his lips in an hungry kiss. "I'll eat you, then," he whispers on his lips.

Blaine relaxes against the back of his seat, heavily breathing out. "You two will be the death of me," he says in a surrendering voice.

Leo and Cody both laugh, amused.

"If war didn't kill you," Leo says, "I'm pretty sure we can't either."

"You're wrong, my love," Blaine says, kissing him, "War was just one. While there's two of you."

"Time to shut up," Cody says softly, holding Blaine's face in his hands and kissing him to silence.

The trip proceeds smoothly, not a single bump in the road.

When they arrive at the tavern, Leo is twice as hungry as he was before.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico, Erotico .
Pairing: Blaine/OC, OC/OC, OC/OC/OC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lemon, Het, Gender Fluidity, AU, OC, Threesome, Polyamory.
- Cody divides himself between two different genders, two different families, two different boyfriends. And then, every now and then, what's divided becomes one, and he can be more fully himself.
Note: Il COW-T è ricominciato e si vede perché io sto scrivendo a ritmi surreali XD Tira più un pelo di challenge che un carro di buoi. A questo giro, torno a bomba sul Leoverse, lanciandomi su uno degli AU che con la Tab non abbiamo ancora ufficialmente esplorato, anche se ufficiosamente praticamente abbiamo ruolato tutta la storyline principale della storia ed anche un buon numero di robe randomiche settate nello stesso 'verse, che stiamo esplorando in ogni suo dettaglio perché è una cosa un sacco divertente da fare.
Scritta per la M1 della seconda settimana del COW-T #5, questa storiella si colloca più o meno dopo la fine della storia originale, nel corso della quale Adam, guidando un gruppo di rivoluzionari, ha spodestato il governo reazionario che aveva cancellato l'intera comunità LGBTQIA dagli USA, rinchiudendo tutta la gente queer in ghetti quando non ammazzandoli senza pietà. Blaine, Leo, Cody e più o meno tutti gli altri personaggi del canon hanno dato il loro apporto, chi in un modo e chi nell'altro, e nel mentre Leo si è innamorato di chiunque e ha imbastito una relazione poliamorosa con un po' tutti, mentre Cody si dibatte fra la sua relazione con lui e quella che invece lo ha legato ad Adam per anni senza che si combinasse mai niente, anche se ora combinano cose.
Questo riassunto, domineddio.
Viva la gender fluidity \o\
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
DATING FOR GENDERFLUID KIDS
a novel

Adam usually comes pick him up around seven.

Sometimes he calls before, sometimes he doesn’t. He says it’s because calling to set a time and a day takes all spontaneity out of a date, but Cody knows better. He lets him go by whatever excuse he prefers because there’s no point in trying to show Adam something he’s dead set on not wanting to see, but that doesn’t mean Cody doesn’t know the real reasons why he doesn’t call.

Adam lives to charm him. Cody doesn’t know why and he’s not sure he’d ever be able to find out, even if he started thinking about their history together since day one, but Adam seems to take some sort of pleasure in always trying to do things that make Cody look at him like he was heaven-sent, that make him smile at him as if he was grateful for his mere existence in the same world as his.

Cody guesses it has to do with how huge his ego is. After all, you don’t start a revolution to change the world solely because you want to do something good for the people. You do that because you’re a hero at heart. And you can’t be a hero without being a bit of a show-off too.

Whatever the case, Cody likes that. He likes when Adam shows up unannounced and, leaning against the doorframe, smiling dashingly in that way that usually makes everybody cream their pants in a five hundred miles radius, tells him to get up and get ready, ‘cause he’s taking him out for a date.

Leo hates him when he does it. He hates the mere idea that Adam’s always able to sweep him off his feet with nothing but a smile and a careless invite out, and that’s because, for a variety of reasons (among which the fact that they live together, and showing up unannounced doesn’t have the same effect if you haven’t crossed half the city in secret to do so; or the fact that he has another boyfriend and a girlfriend to organize his schedule around, so he can’t just ask him out whenever he wants, considering his obligations to the other two), he just can’t.

And that’s exactly the second reason why Adam keeps doing it.

*

Dates with Leo usually start early in the morning. They’re events, more than dates, entire one-day festivities. Leo doesn’t care much for charming Cody, as long as he can have him the longest. That’s what he has over Adam, that’s the only thing he knows it’ll never change in their relationship: Adam can make Cody feel like a princess, charm him and spoil him as much as he wants, but he’s still going to see him once a week, and bang him once a month. He can’t even compete.

Competitiveness has always been an issue, with them. Cody tried for so long to make them stop with this continuous battle for the supremacy of something (namely, himself) that none of them were allowed to own as if he was an object, that it took him a huge blow to finally surrender to the fact that, no matter how hard and long he might try, they’d never stop.

(The blow has been delivered by Blaine, as most of the blows in his life had been previously delivered. Cody can still remember how hard he scolded him, that day. “Stop insisting! Can’t you see?! They’re idiots! They’re never gonna stop! Either you accept it as it is, or you break up with both of them. I’m tired of the fighting. You all sound like little kids, and I want it over now.” He never was the patient one of the bunch.)

Cody’s over it now, though. He did as Blaine suggested, he accepted them as they were. Hearing them fight or seeing them spite one another in stupid ways, or even getting caught in between their war for power over him makes him feel bad, every now and then, but when it happens he knows better than try and make them understand why they should give it up already. He knows it’s not like they don’t understand, and more like they can’t do without. So, when it happens, he just retreats in his room and stops seeing them for a couple of days, after which they usually come saying they’re sorry, and after that life can resume as peaceful and pleasant as it was before.

Besides, this competition of them has a lot of pros Cody accepts enthusiastically (for example, knowing he can’t compete with being the President and flying back home from whatever world state he’s visiting just to show up at Cody’s door for a quick make out session, Leo decided to put aside his everlasting laziness and started to plan their dates in such a grand and extraordinary way he’s been an inspiration for a TV show based on the same concept -- Shake your date, airing Monday and Thursday at 9/8c on FOX; at the same time, Adam, knowing he can’t compare with how frequently Leo and Cody have sex, both because they live together and because Leo’s constantly active, sexually speaking, while he swims between very active periods that don’t last more than a couple days and extremely long inactive periods in which sex is as far from his mind as climbing the Rocky Mountains bare-handed, has learned how to overdo in the best possible way the few times they do have sex, making him come always at least twice and generally putting his hands on him whenever he has a sense of Cody vaguely wanting him to, even when he himself doesn’t really wanna have sex, to keep him satisfied at all times), so he’s not about to start complaining now that complaining would be useless anyway.

All in all, he thinks, things could be worse. He knows he shouldn't, 'cause he's not supposed to, 'cause as Blaine says that's letting them off way more easily than they deserve, if Cody compares the situation now with what it was merely a year ago, it doesn't sound so bad. Sure, Adam and Leo are at war with one another, but it's not like still being at war with an entire society order, an actual war in which people actually lost their lives. Right now, the only thing fighting makes them lose is a good night's sleep or the chance to bed him every now and then. In Cody's book, that's an awesome step in the right direction.

*

"Ah," Adam jokes, smiling at him when he stops at the threshold of his room and looks at him, lying down on the bed in his pajamas, busy reading a fantasy novel Leo suggested him a while ago, "It's one of those days, isn't it?"

Adam has a talent for always getting at first sight if Cody feels more like a boy or a girl in a specific day. Cody supposes it's because he saw him grow up, especially when they were little kids. At some point, he was stripped away from Leo by the Government and the transfer into the ghetto, but even though Adam stuck around longer, while being involved in the rebellion by wanting to meet his mother, who was leading it back then, that doesn't mean he was always around. At some point, he had to move to the Refuge, and since that moment on it was hard for Cody to meet him, being basically locked up in the ghetto for a good eighty percent of the time.

However, having stuck around for those couple years more before he had to move has let him be a part of Cody's life around his early teen years, which means he was there while Cody was going through the process of finally understanding and defining himself as genderfluid.

This made him able to understand the change better, something Leo finds incredibly harder. Cody used to resent him for that, early during their newfound relationship, because he blamed Leo for having disappeared from his life despite knowing it wasn't exactly something he had control over, but he's over that, now. He can't blame Leo for being less perceptive than Adam is. Getting him with a single glance is a talent of Adam's and Blaine's alone. He prefers to be a mystery, to Leo. It's funnier like that.

He doesn't know what gives him away to Adam, anyway. Even if he's always able to understand his gender for the day, Cody never feels like he did something in particular to make him understand. He always acts the same way, it's not like he believes there are behavioral differences between genders he has to follow to be considered one or the other, it's all about how he feels deep inside whenever he opens his eyes to the dawn of a new day, and for some reason he can't for his life understand Adam is always, always able to read him perfectly in that sense.

At first, Cody thought he was guessing and was just being extremely lucky with the outcomes. Then he understood. It's just the kind of connection they have.

"That's extremely sexist," he smiles, stretching out on the bed like a lazy cat, "That's what you say to girls on their period. I'm not on my period. I'm never on a period."

"Luckily," Adam grins, walking in and sitting on the edge of the bed, "It's already complicated enough to schedule our time together so that we can meet when I'm on, try and imagine what a tragedy it'd be if we had to plan around your period too. If I was only on once a month and that was always the time you have your period!"

Cody laughs out loud, sitting up and putting the book away. He folds his legs under his ass, lifting himself up on his knees. "You're an idiot," he says, stretching his arms towards Adam to invite him closer.

"Definitely true," Adam says, wrapping his arms around Cody's waist and kissing him lightly on his lips, "But I'm not sexist. And I can't be! I led a revolution, remember? For gender and sexual equality. How could I ever be sexist? I think I've stashed enough credit not to ever be called sexist one day in my life."

"Shut up," Cody smiles against his lips, pressing his whole body on Adam's. The fabric of his pajamas' so thin Adam's hands on him feel as if they were already prying underneath his clothes, though they're not. "You keep saying 'sexist', I keep hearing 'sex', and it's making me very, very confused."

"Not today," Adam smiles tenderly, rubbing his nose against Cody's as he strokes his back affectionately, "I don't have it in me."

"You're a lazy ass."

"I'm a lazy dick."

Cody laughs again, resting his forehead on Adam's shoulder and then pressing a small kiss on his neck. "Fine, then. You just wanted to see me?"

"Actually, I wanted to take you out," Adam nods, letting him go to let him free to move, "We haven't been out together in a while, have we?"

"You're always so busy," Cody smiles charmingly, slowly getting off the bed and heading to the wardrobe, "Mr. President."

"Shut up," Adam chuckles, "And get dressed."

"As you want, Mr. President."

Adam chuckles once more, the softest laughter ever. Cody knows he digs the President joke more than he likes to admit. His ego is as huge as he always thought.

Trying to convince Adam to have sex with him has been a challenge for so long, in his life, that the things Cody used to do to tempt him before they were together stuck to his usual behavior. Whenever Adam comes pick him up, for example, Cody has an habit to always get undressed and then get ready in front of him, putting up a bit of a show as he does that. It's stronger than him, he loves to show off for Adam because he loves the look in Adam's eyes when he assists. Eyes that say he can't possibly fuck him right now, because he just cant, but oh, if he could. If he could.

Feeling that unsaid if he could make the air heavier in the room is usually more than having actual sex with him. Cody has learned to make do with it a long time ago.

"You do that on purpose," Adam says, approaching him from behind and hugging him around his waist, his lips sliding slowly over the curve of his neck, upwards, searching for a way to his lips.

Cody turns his head and accepts the kiss with a tiny smile, lifting a hand and passing it through Adam's wild, blonde locks. "Yes," he admits, "But you love that about me."

"I love everything about you, doll," Adam answers.

"Cheesy as always," Cody laughs at him, slapping his hands away.

But it doesn't matter, because he's sincere.

*

"Doll yourself up," says the text he receives while he's thinking about whether he should walk downstairs for a quick mid-morning snack or stay at his desk, profiling the kid he's been working with in the past few days, "I'm taking you out for lunch."

The text's Leo's, of course. Only him in the whole world could be lazy enough not to even want to unglue his own ass from the couch in the media room to invite him out on a date.

He grabs the phone to answer. "Where to?"

"Does it matter?"

"Well, yes. How else could I know how to dress?"

"You just make yourself as pretty as you possibly can."

"Is it a place where you can only enter when at your prettiest?"

"If you were to be taken as a prettiness standard to decide who's allowed into a place and who isn't, nobody but you could ever get in."

Cody chuckles, blushing a little. "Shut up. I'm serious. Do I have to dress up for the place?"

"You have to dress up for me," Leo answers in his own voice.

Cody turns around to find him at the door and smiles. "Finally, you show up."

"I was getting bored of the texting," Leo smirks, showing his phone for a second and then putting it away in his back pocket, "Besides, I wanted to see you."

"You wanna have a say in the dressing up process?" Cody grins, standing up.

"I wanna have a say," Leo answers, approaching him slowly, "A do. And everything in between."

Cody laughs, and he already knows how to dress.

He retrieves a black blouse, a short denim skirt and black leggings from the wardrobe, and as he picks the clothes out one after the other he watches Leo's expression as it changes, his eyes as they darken, his lips as they get wetter while he moistens them and bites at them.

Whether he feels more like a boy or a girl, that's completely irrelevant when it comes to dress up for Leo. A skirt must always be involved, especially if it's a boy day. Leo loves to see him in a skirt when he feels like a boy. Something in his brain switches and he loses his shit. Cody loves that.

"Do these look good?" he asks, rhetorically.

Leo swallows and nods silently. Cody looks at him, stiff as a stick as he is now, clutching his hands in fists down his sides as if he was trying to hold on some imaginary reins to control himself, and smirks with satisfaction.

He has already worn the blouse and the skirt when he sits down on the edge of the bed to put the leggings on too. He's well aware of the fact that he should've worn them before the skirt, but what would've been the point then? He couldn't have shown his legs off for Leo. Which is exactly what he wanted to do.

He crosses his legs as he gathers the leggings in his hands to wear them, and he can almost count down from five to zero waiting for the moment Leo's hand lands on his wrist, stopping him.

"Wait a second," Leo says. His voice is shaking.

Cody turns to look at him. "What for?" he asks.

Leo answers by kneeling on the floor, right between Cody's legs.

Cody laughs. "Didn't you want to take me out for lunch?" he asks, amused by the look of complete abandon and hopelessness on Leo's face.

"Lunch can wait," Leo simply says, diving under his skirt.

Cody grins, leans back on his elbows to half-lie down on the bed and rocks his hips upwards.

*

Adam has booked a table at Le Tulipe, the best French restaurant this side of town.

During the dark years of the past Government, foreign restaurants (or clubs, or pubs, or boutiques, or anything, for that matter) were impossible to find anywhere in the country. Either you had money enough to book yourself a one-way ticket to Europe or any other civilized region of the world, or there simply were things you could never hope to experience in your life.

It’s mostly because of that, more than because he likes French cuisine, that Adam constantly takes him to the best foreign restaurants in the city. He knows he’s got a taste for anything new and previously unexperienced, and he tries to keep him pleased by allowing him into the most exclusive and expensive places he can possibly find, because where money can’t buy them a last-minute seat, his presidential title certainly can – something Leo cannot offer, despite probably being just as rich, if not more, as Adam himself.

“Let me get this straight,” Cody smirks, gesturing to the waiter to go easy with the red wine. He’s been half-horny since he saw Adam come into his bedroom, if he gets drunk now he’s probably gonna drag him to the restroom only to fall on his knees in front of him, and then Adam would have to sigh patiently as he always do when Cody doesn’t seem to be able to take a no and forcibly push him away, something Cody hates. “If you want me to go back home later and tell Leo about this so he can feel inadequate and diminished as always, I’m not gonna play the game.”

“I wasn’t even thinking about it,” Adam chuckles, sipping at his wine, “I was actually planning on spending the night together without allowing you to spend a single second in Leo’s company.”

“Ah,” Cody glances at him, tilting his head to the side, “You wanna share the bed? Then it’s you who’s playing a dangerous game.”

“Why, can’t you keep your hands off me for one night, even if we sleep together?”

“You know as well as I do that I can’t,” Cody chuckles, covering his face with both hands.

Adam chuckles too, satisfied with the answer. Cody can’t even begin to explain how good it makes him feel that now they’re able to joke about the Sex Issue. It’s been such a heavy weight on their shoulders for so many years that at some point Cody had simply started to believe they’d never solve it. Adam didn’t seem interested. Did he love him? Well, maybe, but he wasn’t interested, and Cody couldn’t for his life imagine an eternity of gravitating around him without ever having him.

That changed, luckily enough, and it changed so much that now they’re able to play around with on and off periods as if it wasn’t an issue anymore – because it isn’t. They found their way around it, as most people do when they’ve got a problem. Which is why Cody decided to keep hoping that, at some point, Leo and Adam could do the same with theirs.

“So,” Adam smiles brightly, leaning towards him, “Do you like the place?”

“You know the answer to that question,” Cody chuckles, “Stop asking questions that I can only answer by boosting your ego even further. Isn’t it inflated enough, Mr. President?”

Something changes into Adam’s eyes, they start shining, they smile together with the rest of his face, upon hearing those words.

Sometimes Adam’s off and there’s no way to turn him on.

Sometimes he’s off, though, and by pushing just the right button in just the right way, Cody manages.

“You wanna know what else is inflated, now?” Adam asks in a half laughter.

Cody covers his face again, trying not to laugh too loud. “There’s no end to your cheapness and dirtiness,” he says in a surrendering whisper.

“Okay,” Adam says in a short laughter, reaching out to cover his hand with his own, “But don’t you think we should pay a visit to the bathroom and at least wash our hands before dinner?”

“Oh, my hands are perfectly clean, thank you,” Cody chuckles, shaking his head.

Adam smirks, already knowing he’s gonna win the battle. “They won’t be ten minutes from now,” he says.

And he’s so sure of it, Cody honestly doesn’t know how to contradict him anymore.

*

“I can’t believe it.”

Cody stares at the hall of the house he used to live in when he was locked into the ghetto. It’s so different from the last time he saw it he wouldn’t be able to recognize it, if he didn’t know exactly where they were.

“Do you like it?” Leo asks.

Cody looks at the house, and he almost feels weak in his legs. The walls have been entirely covered in the most exquisite cream-colored and flower-stamped wallpaper Cody has ever seen in his life. The floors are covered in burgundy colored carpet that looks so soft Cody almost wants to kick off his boots and walk barefoot up and down the whole apartment, just to see how it feels like. New furniture has been bought, brought in and arranged, and so have paintings, curtains and knick-knacks of all kinds.

The house feels warm. Feels exactly like Cody would’ve wanted it.

“How…” he whispers, unable to find enough strength to speak louder, “How did you…”

Leo hugs him from behind, cradling him a little in his arms. They swing together, left and right, left and right. Cody tries to resist the urge to cry.

“Do you like it?” Leo asks again, whispering sweetly in his ear.

“… I’m conflicted,” Cody admits in a short chuckle, “This is… it’s amazing, really. I love it. It’s exactly… it’s amazing,” he says, chuckling a little more. “But you’re such a show-off.”

“Does this beat dinner at Le Tulipe?”

“I hate you,” Cody says, but he’s laughing, so it doesn’t count. He turns in Leo’s arms, facing him and hugging him around his neck. “I’m not gonna tell Adam.”

“Why not?” Leo sounds disappointed, and Cody kisses his disappointment away.

“’Cause you overdid it,” he explains, kissing him a little deeper, “And it’s not right.”

“By whose rules?” Leo insists, his lips pursed in such a kissable pout Cody just can’t stop brushing his lips against it.

“By the unwritten ones of love triangles,” he chuckles, “You can try and top the other, but if you overdo then you have to be prepared for the other to overdo too. It’s as if Adam came in one day and told me he was gonna take me on a fly around the world on the Air Force One. What would you say?”

“That he’s a cheater and he uses his title as an advantage, and that’s against the rules!”

Cody smirks. “Whose rules?”

Leo whines loudly, and hides his face against the curve of his neck. “Shut up,” he groans, “Don’t you like it?”

“I love it.”

“Well, you could show a little appreciation, then!”

Cody smiles again, pressing a soft kiss on Leo’s cheek as he swiftly unbuckles his belt and slips his hand past the waistband of his pants and underpants.

“Thank you,” he whispers, as he starts jerking him off.

Leo swallows hard, clinging to him. “You’re welcome.”

*

Some days are very okay. Some days are all Cody could wish for.

Sure, there are days Leo and Adam spend fighting for the entirety of their time, days in which he ends up bouncing from one side of town to the other because he can't stand neither of them, days in which he runs to Blaine and begs him to bring him out of town for a few hours' trip just to distract himself from how awful his two boyfriends can get when they're really set on making life as hard as possible for each other, days in which he runs to his brother's place and stays locked in his room for hours, lying down on the bed next to him, clinging to him, while Casey walks on the very thin tightrope between what he can do to him and what he cannot, just because he knows the moment he will tell Adam and Leo that he has spent the night at Casey's they'll feel awful and angry, and that'd make them pay for making his life a living hell for fighting all the time.

Some days, though, are perfectly fine. Some days Adam and Leo don't fight at all, because they responsibly and maturely decide to keep each other at a distance not to collide over the smallest things. Some days they're even able to share the same house, the same room, him, without jumping at each other's throat.

And then there are special, special days in which, with just the right push, Cody can make them do even more.

He comes back home after dinner, 'cause he's been hanging out at Prince of Persia for most of the night. The fact that his best friend works at the bar makes him able to, and he likes to take advantage of privileges, when he can. (He knows he shouldn't, that every now and then he slips and plays by the same rules the old government played by, but it's stronger than him. He's been living in complete deprivation of any possible right for so many years it's an irresistible temptation, now, to take advantage of those few privileges he can have.)

He certainly isn't expecting to find Adam and Leo playing videogames together in the media room.

"You're here?" he asks, standing at the threshold and looking at them as they beat the shit out of each other at some beat 'em up game.

"Oh, hey, babe," Adam smiles, pausing the game and turning to look at him, "Yeah, I had to discuss a few things with Blaine, so I passed by after work."

"And then he decided he wanted to impose his presence on me even after he was done," Leo explains, dropping the joystick to stand up and walk towards him, one of his arms quickly slipping around Cody's waist to pull him closer for an hug and a light kiss on his lips, "So I decided I had the moral obligation to at least beat him a thousand times at twenty different videogames."

Still so surprised he can't even fully accept the fact that Adam stayed overtime, Leo let him and they weren't even bleeding each other dry when he came back, Cody doesn't even manage to let Leo's words sink in. He nods vaguely, looking at them both with a puzzled expression. "Where's Blaine?"

"He was tired," Leo answers, "He went to sleep."

"He left you two alone without cuffing you to the opposite corners of the room?"

Adam chuckles, amused. "This wasn't a fighting night."

"Oh," Cody just whispers. He can only imagine what happened, but he's pretty sure his guess is the right one. Having been best friends for half their lives, Adam and Leo have a pretty complicated relationship. They hate one another because they share the same boyfriend, but the love bond that tied them together when they were children was never truly severed, and it's holding on even now. It's a thread Adam often reaches out for, when Leo's on the edge and needs to be calmed down. The kind of thread following which he can kiss Leo down to serenity, taking advantage of the fact that Leo's extremely weak to kisses, and that he himself is, well, a very good kisser, having done nothing but kissing people stupid for most of his adult life.

When Adam told Leo he was going to stick around to wait for Cody, Leo must've bared his fangs. And Adam must've kissed him until he calmed down as he often does. And that's how a potentially fighting night turned into a no fighting night.

That's totally one of the privileges Cody can in no way refuse to take advantage of.

"How long have you been playing?" he asks, nonchalantly leaning to the doorframe and knowing that single movement will be enough to capture their attention completely – as it actually happens.

"Um..." Adam mutters, pensively, "A couple hours? And a half?"

Leo quickly glances at him and nods in agreement.

"Aren't you tired?" Cody asks, curling his lips into an inviting smile.

He can see them both shiver. Adam closes his fists down his sides, swallowing hard, while Leo bites at his lips, quickly growing nervous. Cody can almost hear his heartbeat from where he stands, so loudly it's beating.

"Cody..." he says, his voice a little whiny, "Don't do this to me..."

"Why," Cody chuckles, amused, "What am I doing?"

"You know exactly what you're doing."

Cody moves away from the doorframe, standing straight again. He's wearing an oversize black shirt over a tank top, and he slowly starts unbuttoning it. "It's hot in here, isn't it?"

"It's February," Leo whines, averting his eyes, "There are three feet of snow out there."

"But it's warm inside," Cody goes on, slipping the shirt off his shoulders and simply dropping it on the floor.

Adam swallows and turns to look at Leo. "Dude," he says, "I'm sorry but I don't think I'm gonna be able to resist much longer."

"What?" Leo whines again, panic levels quickly rising in his brain, "You're on?"

"Nope," Adam shakes his head, while Leo breathes out, relieved, "But I still wanna put my hands on him. You fuck him, I jerk him off? Come on, give me a hand, let's work together."

Leo whines loudly, covering his eyes with one hand as he leans on Adam's shoulder, as if he wasn't strong enough to keep himself up on his feet anymore. "I hate you both. Why do you make me do this?"

"Dude, I ain't forcing you," Adam shakes his head, "I can do it by myself."

Cody purses his lips into a saddened, disappointed pout, looking at them both. "Won't anybody ask for my opinion?"

Leo sighs deeply, dropping his hand to look at him. "Which is?"

"That I wanna fuck you both," he simply says, shrugging, "So drag your asses upstairs."

They obviously comply.

It hasn't happened very often that they could be somehow convinced to have a threesome with him. They're both extremely jealous, they both have an inferiority complex towards one another (though Adam shows his way less than Leo shows his own), they both tend to try and top each other actions with Cody to reach some sort of imaginary first place that was never up for reaching in the first place, so of course the idea to have a direct confrontation in bed scares them both. Leo in particular is always terribly afraid that, by having them in the same bed, at the same time, Cody could suddenly understand he likes one better over the other, and that would lead to one of them losing him, and Leo's obviously convinced that person would be him.

There's naturally no chance anything like that could ever happen. Cody believes himself an extremely smart person. Why would he ever choose between them, if he can keep them both? Why would he ever want to go with just one kind of love, when he knows he'd be missing the other one minute after it was over?

But there's no making Leo understand that, because his fears are irrational and absolute. All Cody can do is try and remind him as often as he can that he could never do without him.

Strangely enough, the easiest way to do so is in a bed.

The few times they've had a threesome, Cody noticed something weird, that he had never noticed before. It's true one never fully understand oneself, and the longer one lives the more one finds out about oneself.

Up to their first threesome, Cody had always believed his kind of gender fluidity made him a boy on some days and a girl on some others. Sharing the bed with Adam and Leo both helped him understand that's not always the case.

They push different buttons in him, buttons that make him feel some way a moment and the opposite way the next. So that when it's Adam pressing his hands on him, Cody feels more like a girl than he does when he puts a skirt on, and when Leo ungently presses himself against his ass from behind, he feels more like a boy than he does when he's jerking off.

It doesn't translate in any specific behavior – when he's fucking, whether he feels a boy or a girl, all he ever wants is to be fucked, hard –, but it does feel different. And it's fascinating, and amazing. He's never more fully himself than he is when he can share himself with them both.

Adam kisses him forcefully, pushing him towards the bed, making him kneel on it, move backwards on the mattress until he finds Leo's body pressing against him, stopping him from moving any further. Pressed between both their bodies, feeling Adam's firm chest in front of him and Leo's hardness insistently pressed against his ass while their arms find their way around his waist, holding him possessively, he closes his eyes and bathes in the blissful feeling that always surrounds him when they have him together.

Adam kisses him down his neck, smirking wickedly when he hears him whimper. "You hungry, doll?" he asks, wet lips brushing against the curve of his shoulder, "You always are, aren't you?"

"God, please," Leo whines, resting his forehead on Cody's other shoulder, "Don't even start with the dirty talking. It's creepy and ugly. Shut up."

Adam raises his gaze on him, smiling shamelessly. "Make me," he dares him.

Cody moans loudly. "Please," he begs, feeling himself growing harder at the mere thought, "Kiss."

He rarely happens to see them kissing each other. He knows they do that, and even pretty often for not being officially together, but whenever he's in the room they're always all over him, or fighting like idiots for him, so he doesn't really have a chance to ask them to make out in front of him only so that he can enjoy the show.

When Leo leans in, pressing his lips against Adam's, Cody whimpers, starting to swing his hips. He rubs back against Leo's cock and front against Adam's hand, biting at his lips as, from the first row seat he's occupying, he watches the kiss as it grows more open, deeper and wetter. Adam keeps his lips more parted than he'd need to purposely to make him watch, and Cody follows the movements of their tongue as they play with one another, run after one another, stroke one another in hungry caresses.

Pushed and pulled between wanting to be part of that too and just wanting to keep sitting back and enjoy, he lets out a frustrated huff that Leo welcomes with a scoffed laughter, parting from Adam to look back at him. "Jealous?" he asks.

Cody shakes his head, looking at him through heavy-lidded eyes. "I'm not you," he says, "I'm just so horny," he says, his hips rocking a little faster and harder against them.

"You're such a little slut," Adam says, one of his hands sliding down the curve of Cody's spine, following it until it dives between his buttocks. "Leo made you all sticky and wet," he comments in a low, coarse voice, his fingertips rubbing against his opening, wet with pre-come after the long minutes Leo spent rubbing the head of his already leaking cock against him.

"I begged you please to give us a break with the dirty talking..." Leo sighs, trying to kiss him again just to shut him up, but Adam backs away with a short laughter. His hand moves further down, two of his fingers gently breaking into Cody's body, making him whimper and arch his back. "What are you doing?" Leo asks, too confused and lost to understand what to do on his own.

Adam smirks, pressing a soft kiss on Cody's lips to muffle the wild sounds already leaking out of his mouth. "Look down," he says.

Leo does, and Cody feels him hold his breath behind himself. "God..." he breathes out after a couple seconds. Adam's keeping Cody's opening stretched for him, inviting him to put it in him.

"You like the sight, don't you?" Adam whispers, "Look at him. He's ready to suck you in."

"Don't..." Leo moans, rubbing his cock in circles around Cody's stretched opening, "Don't dirty talk me... I'm... I hate it..."

"Yeah, it shows," Adam mocks him, pressing against Cody's body to make him lean back against Leo, whose cock slips past Cody's opening in a natural, fluid movement. There's no need to even push, and the thought makes both Cody and Leo shiver in pleasure.

"God, Cody..." Leo moans, rubbing his nose up and down Cody's neck, "You feel so good..."

"Now who needs to stop with the dirty talking?" Adam asks in a short-breathed chuckle, as he closes his fingers around Cody's erection, jerking him off.

"That wasn't dirty talking..." Leo whispers, fucking Cody at a slow pace, his hands firmly wrapped around his hips, "I was merely... commenting on... the quality of..."

"Shut up," Cody whimpers, half-turning his head to capture Leo's lips in a needy, messy kiss, "You both shut up and fuck me. I wanna come. Make me come."

"As my princess wants," Adam smiles against his lips, kissing him.

"He's a prince, you sexist asshole," Leo protests, covering Cody's neck in light bites.

"I said shut up," Cody insists, squeezing his muscles around Leo's cock to cut him out of breath and then kissing Adam deeply to make him forget whatever answer he was getting ready in that smartass Prince Charming head of his, "Tonight, I'm both."

*

He couldn't sleep, still too much on the edge after how pleasant sex had been. The moment they dropped on the bed after having come (twice, in Cody's lucky case), it was clear Adam and Leo couldn't have moved a single muscle anymore. They were spent.

Cody knelt up and looked down at them, chuckling at their heavy breathing and messy hair. "I'm going downstairs, I want some hot cocoa," he said. They both looked at him like he was some sort of crazy alien.

"Thanks, but no, thanks," Adam answered in a short chuckle, while Leo curled against his side, whispering a vague "I'm so sleepy" before instantly falling asleep.

Cody chuckled. "Rest," he said, "And take care of Leo, don't make him invade the entire bed. I'll be back in half an hour and I'll want to sleep by then."

"I'll do my best," Adam answered with a smile, wrapping an arm around Leo's shoulders to keep him close to himself. Cody spent just a few more seconds looking fondly at them, before walking downstairs.

He made himself some hot cocoa (nothing is better than chocolate after sex; actually, nothing is better than chocolate after pretty much everything) and he's sipping it from his mug, now, sitting on the couch, in the silent calmness of the night.

The lights turn on suddenly, and Cody takes a peek from above the back of the couch, recognizing an extremely sleepy, extremely confused Blaine looking at him from the door. "What in the world are you doing awake at such time? It's almost four in the morning."

Cody smiles at him. "Hi. I just couldn't sleep."

Blaine studies him silently for a few seconds. "Do I want to know?" he tentatively asks.

Cody smirks. "I just had a threesome with Adam and Leo. It was amazing. I came twice. I needed to top that with chocolate and now I can say I just had the best night of my life."

Blaine listens to him with an horrified expression, and then shakes his head. "I didn't want to know," he croaks, turning around.

Cody's cheerful laughter follows him upstairs, and back to his bedroom.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico.
Pairing: Blaine/OC(s), OC/OC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Angst, Lime, What If?, OC.
- Timmy never really recovered from that deeply scary moment when his life changed completely to welcome the presence of his father's new partner. More than ten years later, Timmy's a profoundly damaged teenager with little to no control over his own emotions and only one viable option to deal with it (except, of course, his meds): whenever things get to intense, he rates how intense they are with a number from one to four and then visualizes that number on an equalizer with a lever he can pull to tone it down.
It often works.
But sometimes it just doesn't.
Note: E boh, a 'sto giro: le malattie mentali. Con Timmy protagonista, ovviamente, perché io e Timmy abbiamo una connessione speciale e io gli vu bi e queste cose tremende posso scriverle solo su di lui (io dimostro affetto verso i personaggi fittizi in questo modo, deal with it).
Scritta per la quarta ed ultima settimana del WRPG, si tratta della quarta storia (su quattro) più lunga di 10k che scrivo per questo gioco. Non so, sarà una malattia.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
SLEEP TWITCHES

The rating technique was the first Doctor Williams had ever taught him to keep anxiety at bay, and the only one that had kept working for more than a few months’ time, for a longer time than the one Timmy’s head needed to work some way around it, to throw himself back into the familiar arms of the illness as quickly as he possibly could. The only one except meds, of course, but those were hardly a technique at all. They were more like the cage he voluntarily – or unwillingly, depending where he was at the moment, emotionally speaking – stepped in when he felt he was about to lose control over himself entirely.

It was four years before, give or take. Maybe a little more, since the twins had to be still in the making at the time. She’s always been one to take her job seriously, Doctor Williams, but she probably had no idea of the scale his panic attacks could reach before she saw him having one before her very eyes. That had been the first moment she had introduced the system to him.

“On a scale from one to four,” she had told him, “How intense are your emotions right now, Timmy?”

“Three,” he had said, tears pooling in his eyes, the tremors shaking his body to the point he couldn’t stand up, he couldn’t sit down, he couldn’t stop holding himself, and he was forced to remain bent over her desk, hugging himself tight, knowing for sure if he’d stopped he’d have fallen apart.

“Good,” she had said, “Now I want you to focus on that number. I want you to visualize an equalizer in your mind. That goes from one to four too. There’s an arrow pointing at that number. Is it still a three?”

“Yes,” Timmy had said in a shaky breath, rattling his teeth while tears started rolling down his reddening cheeks.

“Fine.” She had kept sitting behind her desk. She hadn’t stood up to touch him, hadn’t tried to reach out for him, hadn’t asked him to calm down, or to sit and take a deep breath. She had just kept on talking. “Now I need you to picture a lever, right beside that equalizer. You’ve got to pull the lever down. You’ve got to pull it until the arrow’s down to at least two. Can you do that? Close your eyes, if you need to.”

Timmy had tried closing his eyes to focus on the picture better, but the moment he had done it he had seen only darkness, and he had opened them up again in sheer terror, shaking and crying and looking around to make sure Doctor Williams was still there, that he hadn’t been left alone, that he was still there and hadn’t disappeared into nothingness as he sometimes imagined to do at night, in his bed, when he listened to Leo and his dad talk about the twins in the next room, choosing names, laughing softly between themselves.

“I’m right here,” Doctor Williams had said patiently, “Still a three?”

“It’s a four,” Timmy had answered, crying louder. He was only ten, and he didn’t remember ever feeling any worse than he felt back then.

“It’s okay,” Doctor Williams had said, nodding slowly, “We can still pull the lever down. Think of the equalizer. The numbers. Keep your eyes open. Pull the lever.”

It had took Timmy five extenuating, miserable minutes to do that. But he had done it. He had gradually stopped shaking. Stopped crying. Then suddenly he was able to move his limbs, to disentangle himself from the tight knot the illness had tied him into, and he had sat down, breathing slowly in and out, staring at a blank spot on the wall to give himself something to concentrate on as he calmed down.

“I’m proud of you,” Doctor Williams had said, offering him a tiny smile and a huge cookie, “Now, let’s talk about what just happened.”

Suddenly, what had only been a mandatory meeting with a woman he knew nothing of at all, something his parents had imposed on him, to do once a week, since he had started having panic attacks, had assumed a whole new different meaning. Timmy felt better, when he could talk about what was actually happening to him during panic attacks. The practical side of it – “I’m sweating”, “I feel nauseous”, “My heart is beating too fast”, “I can’t breathe properly” – erased the emotional side of it. By erasing the emotional side, Timmy went back behind the helm. He was in control of his body again. And then he could start thinking about everything else too.

Four years from then, the trick still works. Timmy has learned how to recognize when he should use it, and he uses it without hesitation whenever he needs it. When it gets too much, when his feelings threaten to overflow like water breaking through a dam, he rates how he feels, one to four, visualizes the equalizer and the arrow, and then pulls down the lever. Sometimes it’s easy enough to pull it down back to a one. Some other times it’s harder, but Timmy’s content enough when he can get to at least a two. He doesn’t feel okay when he’s at a two, but he can still function without shaking. Some days, that’s enough of a conquest.

The illness comes in waves. He’s never always sad, never always anxious, never always nervous, never always scared. Some days he’s okay. Some days he doesn’t even need to be on his meds to be okay. (He still takes them, though. He knows what happens when he stops because he doesn’t feel like he needs them even though Doctor Williams said he does. That’s never pretty. That’s like running barefoot down a rollercoaster with a cart chasing after him. That’s something Timmy tried and is not eager to try ever again.)

Some days are hell, though, meds or not. If he’s not on meds he’s shaking, he’s crying, he’s constantly over the edge, walking on a two inches wide road coasting the side of the tallest mountain on Earth, and if he’s on meds he’s drowsy, confused, slow like hell, like he weighted a thousand tons, and the only thing he wants to do in both cases is to stay in bed, curl in a ball, hide under the covers and never come out of it.

It wasn’t always like that. It wasn’t so destructive, before. He didn’t feel good, but the illness wasn’t everything there was to life. He had school, people he talked to, even a very close friend, just one, but it was there. He still had something that wasn’t just the confusing cycle of his own mood swings.

And then there was an even older time. A time in which he was alright. In which the illness wasn’t a problem because there was no illness yet. But he remembers very little of that period. Only flashes, and a generic feeling of peace, of happiness.

Something he hasn’t felt in a very long time, now.

*

He can see the window, from his bed, and outside of it the blackness of the night, and then the white perfection of the crescent moon. It’s beautiful, and concentrating on it makes him feel better.

First day off his meds after three months. He needs to be on a cleansing period, that’s what Doctor Williams said. Things have been going well, up to now. He’s been responding great to the new dosage. After two months and a half Doctor Williams was already suggesting he stopped taking them for a little while. He felt insecure, though. She understood. She let him go on. Downed the dosage, but let him go on.

Last week, though, she insisted. Timmy learned to listen to her, when she insists. She usually knows what’s going on with him better than he does. He agreed he was feeling better. He agreed it was time to walk on his own for a little while.

He’s been generically nervous all day. Not really nervous, though, more like on edge. He wasn’t really surprised by it, he’s always nervous on a first day without Celexa. But he held on, counted only a couple twos today, one when Leo asked him if he wanted to come along for grocery shopping (he didn’t), another when he heard Blaine discuss the possibility of taking a couple of days for himself and Leo in a month or so, maybe go to the Hamptons’ house, if Timmy’s still okay then (he probably won’t).

Just those twos. No ones. Definitely no threes. Everything’s in control. He knows, if something goes wrong tonight, he’s got Xanax on his nightstand. It’s there, within reach. But he won’t need it. He’s fine. He feels pretty good, all considered. He can manage.

He tries to relax, closes his eyes. Darkness is a hell of a lot to take, as usual. He can’t sleep with his window closed. They tried with lamps, but they hurt his eyes, he couldn’t sleep well. He just needs natural light, doesn’t matter how dim. He needs to be able to know, if he opens his eyes, he’ll see the window, the sky, the moon, the trees, whatever landscape the night has to offer him. Complete darkness is unbearable, since the closet.

Even with his eyes closed, the gentle light of the moon follows him. It’s hypnotic, and Timmy relaxes by the second, his limbs growing heavier, his brain clouding up. He can’t stop thinking ‘cause his brain never really stops working until he falls asleep, but he starts losing the threads of his thoughts. He’s thinking about his parents and that vacation they wanna take, but then the thought drifts away, so he concentrates on something else.

He thinks about the twins. Today dad asked him if he’d be up for a walk in the park with them, tomorrow. Timmy isn’t. He never is. But he thinks maybe he should. He tries to think about it, tries to picture himself doing it. Playing with his siblings. Out in the park. Where it’s sunny and the air is fresh and there are other kids laughing and screaming and crying and making a mess everywhere. He frowns, and then the thought fades away, and he thinks about something else.

Something else it’s food. He’s hungry. He shouldn’t eat. The timing is not right. He had dinner already, anyway. Maybe he could, though. Just get out of the bed, walk to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, check out what’s in there, maybe make himself a sandwich, not like last time, not like the milk incident. That can never happen again. Leo and dad were so horrified. That can never happen again.

He’s thinking about swimming, now, cos that’s always the first thought after food. Doctor Williams insists it’s a guilt-induced reaction, but Timmy’s not sure about it. It’s just that the thought calms him down.

He pictures himself in the pool. There are people all around, but in the water he always feels at peace. Nobody bothers him. Under the surface, he can hear no sound. Only the warm embrace of the water, and how pleasant it feels to swim through it as if his body didn’t even exist. As if he was nothing but oxygen bubbling upwards. Dispersing.

Sleep is coming. It’s coming, he can feel it. He loves it when it happens so fast. It’s always such a fucking problem to fall asleep when he’s not on meds. But not tonight, apparently. Maybe Doctor Williams was really right. Maybe it was time to walk on his own. Maybe he can even sleep on his own.

His shoulders drop. His chin, too. He can feel his breathing grow deeper, slower. His body growing number.

And then he twitches in his sleep, and it’s like somebody pulled the bed from underneath him, and it feels like falling, and all his muscles contract in a nervous spasm and he clutches at the sheets, gritting his teeth and opening his eyes wide, terrified, asking himself “have I fallen? Have I hit the ground? Where am I?”, and right there, right in front of him, crouching on the floor at the end of the bed, there’s a boy.

Timmy can only see the upper half of his head, his hands, clutching at the board at the feet of the bed, and the sweet curve of his naked shoulders.

He’s pale, as pale at the moon. Timmy looks for it, for the moon, for a tangible proof of reality. It’s still there, crescent and white and big just as it was when he closed his eyes. He thought seeing it would be enough to determine whether this was a dream or not, but he doesn’t know, now. It feels like a dream. But maybe it’s not.

The boy stands up. He’s so thin and tall, he doesn’t even seem three-dimensional. Timmy can’t understand if the short dress he’s wearing is white or if it’s translucent, and it only seems white because of the whiteness of his skin.

His eyes, though. They’re huge, and so magnificently blue. They’re the most concrete things in the room, together with those dark, shiny hair, falling straight down his shoulders.

The boy climbs on the bed. One knee, then the other. They’re as white as the rest of him, and they look so smooth. His skin looks so untouched. Not just by other hands, but by time, by life, by ageing. He looks perfect, shiny new as if just drawn out of his mold. Like an angel, or at least Timmy thinks that’s how angels would look, as if continuously newly born, if they existed.

“Who are you?” he asks. He doesn’t feel his lips moving. Maybe he’s really asleep.

Then the boy touches his knee through the covers. His white hand lands right on the very spot where Timmy’s knee is, and he feels it. He feels his touch. The warmth radiating from his fingers.

He looks up to him. The boy is smiling. And Timmy shivers deeply.

Something stirs deep down into his stomach. It stirs and it stirs, and it’s like nausea, just not quite as violent yet. But it’s gonna get there. If the boy doesn’t move. If he doesn’t go away. If he keeps touching him. If he keeps smiling. Timmy will surely scream.

“One,” he says, his voice nothing but a whisper. “One,” before it gets to two, “That’s a one.”

He twitches once again, he opens his eyes but he’s not sure they were ever closed to begin with.

The boy is gone.

*

“A boy.”

She doesn’t even look surprised by his tale. Nothing ever fazes Doctor Williams. Timmy knows. Back when he was younger, around 12, he wanted to impress her. He had nothing except the illness to try and do that, so he used it. He tried telling the truth. She never flinched. Once, he exaggerated something, just to see if that would’ve forced a different kind of reaction out of her. She just said ‘you don’t need to lie, Timothy’. He had never tried it again.

“Who was him?”

“Was it supposed to happen?” Timmy asks eagerly, torturing his fingers, “Because of the meds? Should I start taking them again?”

He’s nervous, and she can see it. She never simply tells him to calm down, though. She knows it’d be useless, since he has no control whatsoever over that. She usually just keeps talking with a soothing voice. That often works on its own. When it isn’t enough, she uses the cookie.

She’s got a metal jar of handmade cookies in her drawer. She bakes them with her daughters. She’s got twins too. A little older than his siblings. Timmy remembers first hearing about them, and the cookies, and he remembers thinking, wow, to do something like that with your parents. He could’ve baked cookies with Leo, he’s the one doing all the cooking.

The thought had made him feel dreadful.

But the cookies themselves were linked with something pleasant. Doctor Williams’ calm, low, deep, soothing voice. Her gentle smile. Those black eyes filled with understanding. Whenever her voice wasn’t enough, she always used the cookie. The cookie never failed. Anything the cookie couldn’t solve, needed Valium to be solved. Timmy tries not to ever get to the point of needing drops on an emergency, though. They make him feel numb, slow and sleepy. It’s extremely unpleasant.

He’s nowhere near that, now, though. He’s nowhere near needing a cookie either, at least for now. Doctor Williams’ voice is enough, at the moment.

“Would it make you feel better if I told you it was expected?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I was expecting something to happen,” Doctor Williams nods, crossing her legs under the desk and relaxing against her chair. Timmy’s body instantly sets to follow her lead, and he relaxes too against the back of the armchair.

“But not the boy.”

“I never know what to expect with such precision,” she explains, “What you see is always personal.”

“So it was normal,” Timmy insists, trying to make sure he isn’t slipping already. That’d be such a failure. After only one day.

“I believe it was,” Doctor Williams says, “You said you were aware.”

“As if I was awake. But I couldn’t be awake. There was no boy in the room. But I saw him. I felt him. He touched me. I couldn’t move, though.”

Doctor Williams nods, quickly writing something on her tablet. “It sounds like lucid dreaming, to me,” she says, “It had never happened to you before, right? It can be a rather scary experience for some people, especially when it’s not tried on purpose.”

“Lucid dreaming…” Timmy looks down at his own hands for a second. His skin is so much darker than the boy’s. “How does that work?”

“You basically keep being vigil even during the REM sleep,” Doctor Williams says. She searches for something on her tablet, then sends it to Timmy’s with a couple taps of her fingers, “I sent you a couple links on the topic, in case you want to try and understand better. The term basically refers to the condition of dreaming while aware of being dreaming. Expert oneironauts can sometimes control what’s happening during the dream, or surpass the dream’s boundaries themselves, traveling through it.”

Timmy listens carefully, and doesn’t move. “It didn’t feel like I was in control,” he says.

Doctor Williams stay silent a while. “How did you rate it?”

“One,” Timmy answers. The fact that she knew already he would have rated something like that makes him feel particularly safe and inclined to share. “Do you wanna know what happened?”

“Only if you want to tell me, Timmy.”

Timmy nods eagerly, and tells her everything about the boy. His whiteness, his clothes, those shockingly blue eyes. “He touched me,” he insists, “On my knee. It felt so real.”

Doctor Williams listen carefully, keeping quite through the whole tale, and then nods. “Did you want to be touched, Timmy?”

Timmy freezes on the spot and says nothing. He clutches his hands around his knees. The one closed around the knee the boy touched, just a little tighter.

“Do you remember us talking about the eventuality of your sexual drive awakening again after interrupting your meds?”

He looks down. He can feel himself blushing. He doesn’t like to talk about these things.

Doctor Williams sighs just a bit. “Can I insist on talking about it, Timothy?” Ah, his name. She only uses his name when she’s dead serious. “You remember what happened last time, don’t you?”

He remembers. The sickness. Lots of crying, that time. It’s pretty hilarious, in retrospective, but it wasn’t so while it was going on. It felt kinda dreadful, while it was going on.

“Okay…” he says in a short sigh, closing his eyes, “Let’s talk about it.”

Doctor Williams nods and offers him a pleased smile. “Did you like the boy?”

“You mean how he looked like?” Timmy shrugs. He knows what the answer is. “He was okay.”

Doctor Williams smiles a little wider. “Did you like the boy, Timmy?”

“He looked like a girl, but he was a boy,” Timmy answers, and looks up at her. “I liked him, yes. It was confusing in the right way.”

“Good,” she nods slowly, “Did you feel any sexual attraction towards him?”

“I don’t know!” he whines, looking away. His heart’s beating a little faster. Doctor Williams bends over, retrieves a cookie and offers it to him. Timmy grabs it and starts eating it nervously. Then he feels the taste, and he remembers it’s not just food, it’s Doctor Williams’ cookie, and he takes a breath, and he calms down. “I don’t know,” he repeats, “I just— I didn’t really have the time to think about it. When he touched me, I freaked out.”

“Which takes us back to my first question,” she says, “Did you want to be touched?”

Timmy bites at his inner cheek until he tastes blood. It’s disgusting. He takes another bite out of the cookie, to cleanse his mouth out. “Maybe,” he finally says, “I can’t say anything more precise. I just don’t know.”

“That’s enough,” Doctor Williams nods, “But if I can suggest something, this whole thing might simply being your body reacting to the absence of meds to quell your desire. Since you don’t have any other let out, that urge haunts you in your dreams, so to speak. It might be wiser to go with it.”

Timmy looks up, feeling his chest tightening. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Doctor Williams says, “That since you refuse to touch yourself, which is okay as long as you’re still not ready for it, you might want to at least let your dreams lead you where you need to go. See if that’s what your body’s trying to do. It might not, but if it is, then it could be better for you to go with it. To follow the boy, in a way. Or at least try.”

No way.

“And if it ever gets too much, you simply pull the lever.”

If he can reach.

*

The first panic attack he can remember of is the one that started everything. He remembers vague episodes of anxiety of every kind even before that, of course, especially at night when for some reason somebody forgot his window closed, but that was the first proper panic attack, even if back then he wouldn’t have known how to call it, the first thing that had forced his parents to sit on the couch with him – he still remembers it so well, Blaine sitting right next to him, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his knee, and Leo just a little aside, respectfully keeping his distance but showing interest nonetheless as he had probably been instructed to do by Blaine himself – and ask him if there was something wrong, and if he wanted to talk about it.

It was because of the darkness, of course. That was what triggered the episode mostly, when he was a child.

That was a winter night. Probably just a few days after Christmas, not even a week. Talking of the possibility of having another child had intensified, recently. He didn’t know what to do with the thought. Didn’t know what to do with himself at the prospect of a new child to arrive in the family. Especially since there already was one, a grown-up child, that already stole all of Blaine’s attention. That child being Leo, of course.

Timmy had never really gotten over Leo. Not that his father had ever tried and make the whole thing any easier on him. Blaine didn’t even talk about it with him beforehand. Sure, he was too young to take part in the whole decision-making process, but still, it wouldn’t have been a crime to at least explain what was going on, why was he being forced to move from Westerville – from a life he knew and love, a safe life, all alone with his daddy, his undivided attention all to himself – to Lima, a place he didn’t even remember ever being to, a place he didn’t know, didn’t like, far away from his grandparents, from his school friends, from everything he called his daily life.

Some things about his father and Leo he couldn’t have known back then. Some things he doesn’t know even now. What he knows now is that his father and Leo had a very complicated relationship that started out when Leo was nothing but a 15 years old boy, and that said relationship had messed up both their lives to the point that Blaine had simply walked away when he had the chance, leaving Leo back to protect himself and his life, hoping that distance would heal Leo too. Distance hadn’t healed him, though, as distance rarely does, it just made things worse, as it more often happens. And in a few years, after a couple ups and a lot of downs, Leo had broken, and Doctor Williams, the very same Doctor Williams who’s taking care of him now, had called upon Blaine to come back, take responsibility and help Leo heal.

Back then, though, Timmy didn’t know any of that. All he knew was that he was forced to move into this very big two-story house in Lima, together with his father and this young man he knew nothing of, who dressed like a teenage boy, talked like a teenage boy, acted like a teenage boy and – with all his meds and whims and constant whining – demanded Blaine’s full attention all the time, every day, with no exception, like a newborn baby.

Suddenly, Timmy wasn’t top priority anymore. Suddenly, there was another child, more important than him. A sick child, a suffering child his father was supposed to heal. And Timmy could’ve acted out, broken his toys, refused to eat, to go to school and whatnot, to get his father’s attention back, but he never even tried. Because he was scared. What if I do my worst, he asked himself, what if I do my worst and he still prefers to take care only of Leo?

He didn’t want to find out the truth.

So he had played the good kid. He had been silent, never made a fuss, slept when he was told, ate what he was told, waited for it to get better. He even tried to get along with Leo. But Leo wasn’t something he could get along with, back then, he wasn’t something anybody could get along with. Now, Timmy understands why. (The illness. The illness takes away all that’s you. Empties you out. Fills you up with something different. Something unrecognizable. Something ugly. Something not even you want to see in yourself, let alone other human beings.) Back then, though, he didn’t. He was four, maybe five years old, too young to understand anything, let alone something as complex as his father’s lover’s broken heart.

Because of that, trying to stay close to Leo had only resulted in getting hurt.

Leo hated him. As much as Timmy did, but in a more reckless way. He had no control whatsoever over his own choices, and all he wanted, much like Timmy himself, was for the other tiny attention-sucker to go away, disappear into nothingness, so he could have Blaine all to himself.

One day, Timmy was – as usual – trying to find some sort of connection with him, insistently trying to convince him to plat together. He knows now Leo simply snapped. He couldn’t take his insisting anymore, and he snapped. His brain disconnected. Timmy would do the same thing now, if his parents ever let the twins close to him long enough to force such a reaction out of him. So he doesn’t resent Leo for doing what he did. For accepting to play hide and seek and then locking him into the closet for four hours. He knows it’s not something he can hold Leo responsible for. Rationally, he knows.

But he hates him. He hates him. For forcing him to move. For stealing his father from him. For saying yes when Blaine proposed him to have another baby – that later turned into two, even if that wasn’t planned. He hates him for existing, for being a thing, and for some reason all of this just ends up being summarized in the closet episode. Because something changed in Timmy, while he was locked in there, and he cried, and he cried, and Leo wouldn’t come open the doors. Some switch got turned on, the illness switch. The darkness ate Timmy up whole and then puked him out a sick child. One terrified by closed, tiny, dark spaces. One terrified by anybody’s proximity. One terrified by anything changing, even for just a few details.

Leo had come opening the doors a few hours later, of course. Possibly after taking his meds. He was crying and he was saying sorry and he was holding Timmy close, stroking his hair, and Timmy had clung to him for dear life, hating him for leaving him there and loving him to the point of hysterical cry for coming back to get him, and no other episode like that had ever happened again. That had been Leo’s lowest point, and from there on he could only get better.

Timmy had never told Blaine. He didn’t wanna be the one to cause a fight. He hoped Leo would tell him, but Leo never did, clearly out of fear, and Timmy can understand the choice. He doesn’t resent him for keeping the secret. But he resents him for creating one to begin with.

Fear of the dark stuck with him, anyway. Fear of the dark caused the first panic attack. On that winter night. The air was so cold. Blaine had begged him, let me close the shutters, let me close the curtains, but Timmy had said no, no, he wanted to see the sky, he needed to see the moon, please, daddy, please. Blaine had finally surrendered, but when Timmy woke up in the middle of the night everything was dark and he couldn’t see a thing, and his brain had turned off.

The first and only thought he could come up with being am I still in the closet? Are the door still locked? Did Leo never come pick me up, did he leave me to rot in here, did I never come out, am I still fucking trapped in here?

He had clearly felt his heart explode. He remembers thinking: I’m gonna die. It was obvious, to him, that he was gonna die, because his heart was beating so fast and hard, pounding in his ears, and he couldn’t breathe. He kept trying, and some air filtered through his nose and his open mouth, but not enough to fill his lungs, never enough to fill his lungs, and he was dying, suffocating, in the darkness, in the closet, and his heart was going to explode, and nobody would ever know he had died, and his dad would’ve never come for him.

So he had screamed. And his scream had pierced through the night, and in a few seconds both his parents were by his side asking Timmy, Timmy, what happened, what’s going on?, and then Leo had seen the shut closed window and had screamed “why the fuck is that window closed?!”, and Blaine had answered “it was so cold, I didn’t want him to catch something”, and Leo had screamed “fuck you, Blaine, don’t you get it?!”, and he had slammed the window open, but it hadn’t been enough, Timmy still couldn’t breathe, and his heart was about to escape his body through his mouth, and he was screaming, screaming, breaking the night apart, exactly like it was happening to his body, torn in pieces by the deepest fear he had ever felt.

They had to call the paramedics, get him to the hospital. He had to be sedated. First time in his life. He remembers sleeping for days, even though maybe they were just hours. It felt like days, anyway.

Even now, panic attacks always feel the same. Even the ones that don’t directly involve darkness. If he’s deep into it, really deep into it, even shutting his eyes closed is enough. And he’s back in that closet, locked in, crying and crying and nobody hears him, and if they do they simply don’t care, and he’s gonna get lost, get lost and disappear, and those are always a four, always a four, the lever out of reach, the number glowing red, fear coursing through his veins instead of blood, while he reaches for something, something, something that’s never there. A handle to push the doors open. Though they’re locked from the outside.

*

It’s been weeks since the last episode. It’s like, the moment Doctor Williams told him to try and go with it, the moment he realized exactly what the dreams could mean, what the boy could want, the moment he realized what would have probably happened if he really let himself go to the feeling, he instantly shut it out, he locked his brain up, made it impossible for anything, anything at all to happen.

It’s not that he wants the tragedy of last time to repeat. Actually, he’d give up anything to avoid that.

(As funny as it is, now, to think that eight months ago, when he got off his meds, his body suddenly remembered it possessed a penis and that organ could inflate with just a tiny rush of blood sent in the right direction, and that the whole thing was so freaking overwhelming he cracked up and demanded to get back on his meds immediately, he’d give up anything not to go through that kind of shit ever again. It doesn’t matter that he rationally knows that when he’s horny – which is a fucking natural condition – he should just jerk off and make the problem go away, together with some frustration, possibly: he cannot touch himself.

He tried a few times, and it’s more than he can take. It’s just too much. When he comes, he loses control of his body. He shivers and then he shoots and then his hands are dirty and his heart beats too fast and he’s flushed and he cannot move and he doesn’t like it, it’s just not worth it, not for that single second of blinding pleasure that pushes him over the edge without any assurance he’d be ever able to regain control once it’s over.

Sometimes the thought is so overwhelming he has to stop even before he actually comes. He jerks off and there’s too much pleasure, and weird, random pictures and fantasies start filling up his mind, confusing him and making him feel dizzy, and he has to stop, which is even worse.

No, touching himself is not an option. But if he doesn’t touch himself arousal keeps mounting and mounting and there doesn’t seem to be a fucking end to it, and he can’t do a thing about it, and he’s frustrated and his balls hurt and he feels sick and then the crying comes, the unstoppable crying, as always when he feels completely powerless and helpless.

He knows he should find a way to deal with it. He just hasn’t cracked it up yet. Maybe he should talk about it with Doctor Williams. Again.)

It’s just, there are some things he’s completely at a loss against. He’s learned, through the years, to deal with some of the shit messing up his mind. He learned how to deal with Leo through a mixture of affection and resentment that both ties them together and keeps them apart, at a reasonable distance, the two poles around which Blaine revolves, trying to split in two or at least to gather enough strength to divide himself between the two of them without breaking apart himself. He learned how to deal with the twins by ignoring them most of the time, not letting them be a part of his life unless he feels good enough to be in the same room with them without thinking there are now two more tiny people sucking up his father’s attention and leaving none for him to prey on. He learned how to deal with the sudden cravings for food when he feels to nervous, he learned how to deal with his own panic attacks if they’re between a one and a three as most of them are these days, he learned how to deal with the thousand little things that make him feel scared or uncertain about what’s gonna happen and how things are gonna change, but overwhelming emotions, he has no idea how to deal with them yet. They cloud his mind, take control of it, make his body feel weak and heavy, and he can’t stand it. Too much pleasure and too much pain are things he’s not prepared to find a way to cope with, not just yet.

And Doctor Williams wants him to do that, to just lie down and let his own body be overpowered by such a stream of coursing pleasure that’d leave him shaken and spent for hours, if not for days. He can’t let himself go through such a thing. He doesn’t want to. He can’t, not now.

He lies down on the bed. The lights are off, the twins are sleeping in their bedroom, Leo and Blaine are talking softly in the room right next to his own. (He got to keep the room next to his parents’ bedroom when he was eleven years old. The twins were still very little, but enough to have their own room and stop sleeping in the twin cradles next to Blaine and Leo’s bed. They should’ve moved into Timmy’s bedroom, and Timmy should’ve moved to another bedroom a little further down the hallways. When they had tried talking to him about it, he had had such a terrifying breakdown, crying and crying and screaming for almost a full hour while they tried to make him think about it rationally, that they had ultimately decided the twins would have moved in the room at the end of the hallway. He got to stay where he was. As close to them as he possibly could without sleeping in their very same bed.)

The night sky is very clear, tonight, a slightly lighter shade of dark blue than it usually is. It’s because there’s a full moon. Big and wide and incredibly close. It’s so huge Timmy can’t even see it all outside the window. There’s just a piece of it, and it seems so near he closes his eyes and dreams about crossing out the window, reaching out with his hand and grab it. Then jump on it. Lie down and sleep there, bathing in the whitest, warmest light, while the moon travels all around the world, surfing the night sky like the bluest ocean.

He almost smiles.

Then he twitches in his sleep. And as he falls without really falling, he opens his eyes, his heart in his throat, his teeth cutting into his bottom lip, and there’s the boy.

He looks exactly like he looked last time, hasn’t changed one bit. If anything, he looks clearer, even more real than he was before. He’s surrounded by the light of the moon, that makes his skin look even whiter, glowing. And he’s closer, standing right next to the bed, looming over Timmy. And he’s smiling.

He instinctively pulls the covers up to his nose, leaving only his eyes uncovered, to keep looking at him. He’s shaking a little and he can’t understand if he’s scared or excited. Both options are bad enough to make him wanna scream and run away.

“You need to go,” he says, shaking his head, “I don’t want you here.”

The boy keeps smiling, tilting his head to the side. His long, dark hair brush against his cheekbones, framing his face into a perfect picture. He looks so beautiful. He scares him to death.

“Who are you?” Timmy says, unable to stop himself. He loosens the grip of his fingers around the covers and they slide off his face, while the smile on the boy’s face widens. “Why won’t you tell me your name?”

The boy lowers himself on him, pointing a hand and a knee on the bed. Timmy feels the wooden structure of the bed creak under his weight. He feels the mattress shift. And that’s not possible. But it’s got to be. “Because I don’t have one,” the boy answers, his voice far and distant and weightless like summer breeze, “Yet.”

Timmy’s heart starts beating faster. His stomach ties up in knots and his overtense muscles start to ache. He wants to turn around, reach out for the nightstand, grab his pills, swallow one, try ad just get to sleep before this turns into a two – what is it, now? Still a one? He can smell the boy’s scent as he gets closer and closer, he wants to look away but he can’t, his eyes are locked to the boy’s, there’s a pull that won’t let him go, and he keeps staring into those baby blue pools as they get closer and closer, and he only realizes much later than he should’ve that they move like that because the boy’s getting closer, he’s moving towards him, now he’s just an inch away and he smells like candy, and then their lips touch and Timmy tastes him, and he tastes like moonlight would taste if it had a taste, sweet and warm and soft and good, so good, too good, good enough?, he wants more, and Timmy parts his lips and feels his body rise from the bed, and he wants more, and the boy kisses him deeply, his tongue caressing Timmy’s, playing with it, and he wants more, and he clutches his fingers around the sheets and tugs, tugs as his entire body shakes, and he wants more, and the boy touches his chest through his pajamas, and he’s warm, warm and gentle and he wants more, he wants more, but can he take more?, can he?, can he?, the number, the equalizer, where are we, what is this, it’s a two, “It’s a two!” out loud, “A two!”, louder, “Two!”

He opens his eyes, nothing to see anymore. Despite the veil of tears clouding his eyes right now, Timmy can see the room is empty, his bed is empty, his lips are cold and his hands are shaking and he needs something. He needs something, ‘cause he can’t reach for the lever, he can’t pull it down, but he can reach for the nightstand and swallow some artificial calmness, to compensate for the one he can’t give himself, to get through the night, at least through the night, that’ll be enough.

*

“I freaked out,” he tells Doctor Williams, feeling guilty and ashamed of himself, “I slipped. I lost control. I had to take a pill. I know we discussed it, that I should be off ‘em for some time, and I swear I only kept Xanax there for comfort, I didn’t want to take it, but I needed it, and I’m so sorry, but don’t tell my dads, I don’t think I should be back on meds yet, I can make it, I just— was it okay that I took it, just one pill, since I needed it so bad? I swear I really needed it, I was better afterwards! I could sleep! I—”

“Timmy.” Doctor Williams’ voice is steady and warm, captures Timmy’s attention with the usual ease. He only realizes how heavily he’s breathing when the room falls back into complete silence. He shuts his mouth and tries to calm down. “Are we around a one?” she asks. Timmy nods quickly. “Do you want a cookie?” Timmy shakes his head. “Fine,” Doctor Williams nods. Then she smiles. “You did good, taking that pill,” she says, “If you were feeling so uncomfortable you couldn’t do without it, then you had to take it. I’m proud of you for making the right call.”

Timmy’s chest swells with pride, as always when she shows appreciation about something he’s done. He cracks a little smile, and nods again, calming down. “Thank you.”

“Now,” she says, “Was it the boy again?”

Of course she’d want to talk about it. Timmy sighs, lowering his eyes. “He came back,” he says. “He spoke.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That he hasn’t got a name, yet.”

“That’s interesting,” Doctor Williams says, “It means he could have one soon. Maybe, once he introduces himself, we’ll know more about him. About what he means to you.”

“Mhn…” Timmy tortures his fingers and moistens his lips, uncertain. “He kissed me.”

“Of course he did,” Doctor Williams smiles faintly, “I wasn’t expecting anything less. Was it the kiss that made everything worse?” Timmy nods, unable to look up at her. “But you liked it, didn’t you?” Timmy nods again, covering his face with his hands. She chuckles a little. “You don’t need to feel embarrassed about it, Timmy. That’s perfectly normal. I’d have been more worried about the contrary.”

“I don’t know how to deal with this,” he says honestly, looking back at her, “I’m afraid I can’t. I know you think I should let myself go to the feeling, enjoy it or whatever, but I can’t. I can’t enjoy it. He scares me.”

“Because you like him too much,” she infers, taking a couple lines of notes.

Timmy nods, sighing softly. “It’s just…” he tries to explain, “He’s overwhelming. Too beautiful, too close, too touchy, too real. If I could just keep him at a distance and look at him from afar, I’m sure I’d—”

“You’d be able to deal better with him?” Doctor Williams interrupts him, her voice inquisitive and a little daring, “Like you do with your siblings?”

That’s a low blow, she knows it. She’s expecting his resentful eyes, when he looks up at her. She answers with a soft, reassuring smile, though, that drains all of Timmy’s outrage away, changing it with simple embarrassment.

“You know, Timmy, maybe that’s the key,” she says patiently, “You keep needing distance to deal with things. May them be people or situations or anything else, really. Distance is the key. As long as you can keep putting space in between yourself and the thing you’ve got to deal with, you’re alright, because you do not let yourself be touched by it, whatever it may be. That’s fine, and it works, as long as it’s working. But there may come times, there will be times in which distance isn’t a viable option. And if you keep relying only on distance for safety, when those times come you’ll be unprepared. So…” she smiles again, “What if that’s all the boy came here to do? What if it’s got nothing to do with being off your meds and in need of sexual activity? What if this is just about dealing with things up close?”

Timmy would like to tell her that if it is, then he’s screwed, because he’s got no intention of starting to deal with things up close with that boy. No chance in hell he’s gonna do something like that.

“I don’t know,” he says, holding it in. He can feel this is one of those topics on which Doctor Williams tends to insist and never simply give up on. He knows if he tells her that’s just not gonna happen she’ll want to talk it out right now. He doesn’t feel like it, so he shuts down the channel and backs off. He knows she knows he’s doing it on purpose. That he’s saying he doesn’t know just because he doesn’t wanna say no. She respects his choice, though.

“Just think about it,” she says, physically backing away a little not to make him feel any more pressured for a different answer, “We’ll talk about it next time.”

It’ll be the first time in months he’s gonna wish for next time to never come.

*

When he comes back home, Leo and Blaine are discussing something in the kitchen. He can hear Blaine let out a little laughter every now and then, that soft, sweet sound he always makes whenever Leo does something stupid he was expecting anyway. He remembers hating that sound so much, when he was a child, because up until that moment it had only been his own. He’d do something stupid, Blaine would expect it – he could always anticipate it – and he’d laugh that way, and then hold him in his arms and scold him tenderly, and that’d be enough, Timmy would learn, and he’d never make that stupid thing again.

Then Leo broke in and suddenly it was him doing all the stupid shit his father would tenderly laugh about. And Timmy would spend hours trying to come up with something stupid to do, to make his father laugh that way for him again, but Blaine didn’t have enough strength put aside to put up with his whims, so he’d still laugh about Leo’s stupid shit – ‘cause Leo needed to be treated carefully, handled like he was made of glass, couldn’t be scolded, only barely reprimanded – but not about Timmy’s. He’d just look at him, sadly, and say “baby, please, don’t”. And at the age of six Timmy was forced to understand and get over it.

Any other day, he’d walk straight up to his room. He wouldn’t want to stay around, he wouldn’t want to listen, he wouldn’t even want to be noticed. But the conversation he just had with Doctor Williams left him sadder, and more upset, than it ever happened, and he doesn’t want to be alone. So he walks into the kitchen, slowly, looking down, as always when he has no idea what to do with himself or if it’d be proper to impose his presence on them.

“Ah, Timmy!” Leo says when he sees him, turning to look at him with the brightest smile over his lips, “How did it go?”

Timmy shrugs. “Fine,” he answers, looking away, “Did something happen?”

“Nothing, baby,” Blaine answers with a soothing smile, “But something will. Nothing big, though. A couple of friends are just going to stay here for a few days, in a couple weeks.”

People. Timmy shivers. He refuses to look up. “Do I know them?”

“You must’ve heard of them over the years,” Blaine says.

“Cody!” Leo chirps, clearly unable to contain his excitement anymore, “He’s moving back here with his family, but from what I’ve got they haven’t yet acquired the farm they’re gonna own. Or something.” He gestures vaguely. He clearly doesn’t give a damn where Cody’s going to stay once he moves, the mere fact that he’s moving gives him joy enough. “Anyway! They’re just gonna be around for a week or so, you don’t have to worry. Besides, they’re not noisy people. And they’re just three, Cody, his husband and their boy.”

“Speaking of which,” Blaine says, turning to look at his husband, “Last time we saw them it was like, what, ten years ago? By now, baby Alex will be more or less Timmy’s same age. They could share the room, keep each other company.”

Silence falls heavily upon the kitchen like a curtain descending suddenly over a stage while the actors are still playing. Leo’s horrified look is so blatant Timmy almost wants to put himself aside, just for a moment, to tell him ‘Leo, don’t worry, I’ll be fine’.

Not that he will, though.

Tell him. Or be fine.

“I don’t wanna share my room,” he instantly says, recoiling as if he had just been threatened with a fiery stick.

“No, of course!” Leo says, before Blaine can add anything to make things worse, “Your father wasn’t thinking. We’ve got plenty of room. Alex will have a room by himself. Don’t worry.”

Timmy doesn’t even answer. He keeps looking down, his fists clutched down his sides, a little shaky. It’s not even that for a moment he really feared he’d have to share his personal space with another person, let alone a complete stranger. It’s that how long have they been at this, already? Five years? More? His father still doesn’t get it. Or better, of course he gets it, but he always tries the wrong way. He just can’t, for his life, do the right thing with him. Leo always has to butt in, having been in Timmy’s place before, to correct Blaine when he goes overboard.

And Timmy can’t fucking stand it.

He asks if he can be excused, and when he’s granted permission he walks out of the kitchen and battles against himself not to just run upstairs. He walks, instead, one step after the other, rating his feelings as Doctor Williams taught him.

Is it a one?, he asks himself as Leo’s distant voice reaches his ear, scolding, almost angry, “When will you ever learn?”

Is it a two? “I was just trying to help,” his father answers in a low voice, and he can picture him looking at the floor, on his face the usual guilt-ridden expression.

Is it a three?, while Leo raises his voice, “You don’t fucking try to help with kids like Timmy, Blaine, you help or you don’t!”

It doesn’t matter anymore. There’s no need to rate this kind of pain. When it’s caused by his father, willingly or not, there’s no lever Timmy could possibly pull to make it go away.

*

That’s always been a problem, with his father. He loves him, Timmy knows he loves him, and he’d never voluntarily hurt him, but that’s never been enough to prevent that from happening, because Blaine doesn’t get it. He just doesn’t.

On one hand, Timmy’s glad about it. He loves his father more than it’d be healthy to (as proven by the fact that he ultimately sacrificed his own mental stability to keep loving him that way, even though it hurt), and he’s happy to know Blaine will never be able to fully understand the depth of his illness, because he’s never been personally touched by it.

On the other hand, though, the very same thing is frustrating to the point of making him want to cry. And that Leo, of all people, should be the one understanding him better in that house, that’s simply unacceptable. Not even because he hates the thought, or because he hates Leo himself, he’s way past that. Just because he wants his father to be the person who understands him better, who’s closest to him in the entire world. And he’ll never have that. Instead, he has the very person who snatched his father away from him. Such a thought he has to ignore it not to break every time he thinks about it.

And yet that was something he had to accept, one way or another. That his father just could never connect with him. That no matter how hard he could try, he would always be too far, his fingertips only barely brushing against Timmy’s, unable to just hold his hand and keep him from falling every time he happened to step off the cliff.

Whenever Timmy thinks about it, he always ends up growing nervous. Which usually makes him feel hungry.

So, as he lies down on the bed trying so, so, so hard not to grab the blister pack and swallow a 2mg, he thinks about the milk incident. He started using it as a cautionary tale after talking about it with Doctor Williams. He refused to acknowledge what had really happened that night for at least two years, if not even more. Then, one day, he was ready to talk about it, and he told her everything.

That was the first night after the twins had finally come home after the birth. Timmy had stayed home with his grandparents while Leo and Blaine had gone to get them. He remembers that afternoon so clearly, even now, after all these years. He was so nervous. And so scared about the silliest things. He was practically sure his parents would’ve never come home. Despite knowing it was impossible, he was sure they’d have stopped halfway through, looked at the twins and told one another ‘you know what? These two will suffice, we don’t need the other anymore. He wasn’t really ours to begin with anyway”.

(How violently his heart had broken when Leo and Blaine had sat him down on the couch to explain him the incoming babies were two because both of their seed had taken roots. Two babies. Their babies. Not adopted ones. Like he was.)

To be completely honest, Leo and Blaine had tried to get him involved with the event. The twins were going to be part of the family no matter what, and since Timmy was already showing signs of emotional distress – what with the panic attacks, the crying, to exhausting, both on him and them, search for attention of any kind – and they thought it best to try and drag him into it, instead of sheltering him from it. They were scared if they kept him away from the thought of his future siblings coming to be a part of his life, he’d have never accepted them.

Too bad that was bound to happen in any case.

(Timmy never recognized his siblings as an actual part of his life. He’s aware of their presence. He copes with it. He learned how to spend time with them without considering them an unnecessary nuisance. But there’s something disconnected in his mind. He has to think about it, to remember they’re family. Much like with Leo.

The very moment Doctor Williams decided it was time for him to start taking meds was when he told her, during a session, “I’ve got three strangers walking around the house, pretending to be my kin, pretending they love me, but I don’t love them, I don’t wanna see them, I wish they just disappeared, I wish there was something I could do to just make them disappear”.

Even now, though she tries more and more often to keep him off his meds whenever she can, she’s instructed Timmy to always call her instantly when he starts not recognizing them as family again. That’s sign something very wrong’s going on with his mind. Something that needs more than a lever to pull to be fixed.)

Anyway. Timmy can’t really blame his parents for how they handled the whole twins thing. They did what they could. Trying to get him to choose the names, to make him feel responsible as an older brother. The shit parents usually resort to, to try and avoid any jealousy between siblings.

It never worked on Timmy. He was just scared, scared shitless he’d be forgotten, or come second best if he was lucky. He wasn’t looking forward to have a baby brother and a baby sister to take care of. He wanted to be the baby boy everybody still had to take care of. He didn’t wanna feel grown up. He wasn’t. He never wanted to be grown up.

He couldn’t be in charge. He needed to be protected. He needed to be cared for. He needed his father and Leo to revolve around him like satellites, anything less wasn’t love, wasn’t love enough, and he hated the thought. Of not having enough love to feed on.

That was probably why. The food.

He had woken up in the middle of the night, grumpy and lonely. He knew his parents were just in the other room, the one next to his own. He could’ve just slipped in there, climbed in the bed with them, slept in between them, searched for an hug, some warmth. But the thought that the twins would’ve been there too destroyed him, made him feel nauseous.

He had gone to the kitchen, instead. Walked straight to the fridge. He had opened it and looked inside, searching for something to swallow. Not to eat. Not to taste. Not to savor. To swallow, to bolt down, to stuff himself up with.

There were three bottles of milk. Two were still full, one had barely been opened. The moment Timmy saw them, he knew he wanted them. Whenever he was hungry outside the meal hours, his granny always told him to drink some water, ‘cause water stuffs the tummy and it’s healthier than random junk food as snacks. Milk, he thought, couldn’t be that much different from water.

He remembers the feeling of swallowing all three bottles down in but a few gulps. The milk was sweet and it felt thick and rich on his tongue. He kept wanting more, more, more.

And then suddenly he couldn’t fit a single drop in his stomach anymore. Even worse: he couldn’t keep a single drop he had swallowed up to that moment.

He started to puke. It felt nothing like puking when he was sick with the flu or with some stomach virus. Milk came out of his mouth in long, clean gushes, perfectly white as it was when he first ingested it. His body hadn’t even had the time to start digesting it.

And it wouldn’t stop coming. He kept puking and puking and it seemed like there was no end to the quantity of milk coming out of his body, like he was entirely made of milk and he was actually throwing himself up. He had fallen on his knees, his hands in the white, disgusting, smelly puddle that kept getting larger and larger with what came out of his mouth, and his stomach hurt, and his throat was sore, and he felt like crying and screaming and fainting all at the same time. So he had screamed, so loud his scream had pierced the night. And then he had cried, cried and cried, scared to death and hurting all over, until suddenly his parents were by his side, and they were both horrified, and Leo’s words, Leo’s words in his shaky voice “oh, God, Timmy, what have you done…?”.

They had to bring him to the hospital. One of the worst nights of his life. His stomach had kept hurting for days.

Now, when he feels so nervous and distressed the only thing he wants is to get up, go to the kitchen and empty out the fridge into his stomach just to numb the feeling down, he always lies down and think about the milk. The smell. The pain. The thought is strangely soothing. It tricks him into thinking that if he keeps away from the food he won’t feel pain anymore. That usually helps.

It works this time too. He keeps his eyes half closed, focusing on the tiny slice of waning moon he can see past his window. It looks like a white, glowing puddle of milk too. E cleaner one, though. It’s soothing, and he likes it.

He closes his eyes. Tilts his head to the side as his limbs grow heavier and his attention weaker.

Then he twitches in his sleep, and the nightmare begins.

The boy is there when he opens his eyes, his heart racing, his chest heaving. He’s suddenly covered in cold sweat and all his muscles are so tense they ache. The boy looks at him and chuckles lightly, as if he was amused by what he’s seeing.

“Please, go away,” Timmy begs, his voice weak and shamefully high-pitched, “I can’t. I can’t. Please. Go away.”

“But you don’t want me gone,” the boy says, climbing on the bed, towering over him. He looks even more concrete than he did the other times. Timmy can feel the featherlike touch of the silky fabric of his dress on the back of his hand. It tickles a bit. “You keep calling on me.”

“I’m not,” Timmy says, desperately shaking his head, “I’m not. I need you to go. Or I’ll scream.”

“You won’t scream,” the boy smiles, his voice sweet and soothing, and the more soothing it sounds the more terrified Timmy grows. “Have you ever noticed? You can’t scream in your dreams. The most you can get out is a wheeze.”

Timmy tries to back off, tries not to concentrate on the whiteness of the boy’s skin, how strong his scent is, how close his warmth.

He’s so close. So freaking close. Too close. And if he only could come just a little bit closer. Then it’d be perfect.

The boy smiles, as if reading into his thoughts. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I won’t bite.”

And then he comes closer, and he leans on Timmy, and he kisses him. And it’s different than all the other times. How real it feels, how terrifyingly concrete. His tongue moving in Timmy’s mouth, caressing his own. His hands touching him everywhere, moving underneath his clothes. They’re soft and they radiate warmth that sticks to Timmy’s skin, making his body come alive. He’s hard, so hard it hurts, and he moans into the boy’s mouth, his hips jerking upwards as he tries to rub himself against something, anything, really, to get some relief. And the boy provides it, pressing his hand against his crotch, palming him through his clothes and then sliding underneath, touching him skin against skin, wrapping his fingers around Timmy’s hardness, stroking it fast.

“Was it so hard?” he asks, his voice sugar-coated, like candy, like cake, as he jerks him off like the world’s gonna end, “Was it really so hard you couldn’t do it on your own?”, and then he rubs his thumb in circles all over the tip of his cock, and every muscle in Timmy’s body tenses and feels right about to break, except it doesn’t, the only thing that breaks is his self-control as he comes, comes hard, his whole body shaking as he clutches his fingers around the sheets, screaming.

“It’s a three!” God, God, “It’s a three, let me go, let me go!”, and he reaches out, grabs the lever, pulls it down, down, down, and when he opens his eyes the boy is gone, leaving behind only wetness and mess, and the rumbling sound of his own heart knocking hard against his ribcage, trying to escape.

*

The last couple weeks have been pretty rough on him. Of course he told Doctor Williams everything, and she did her best to reassure him, to tell him that was perfectly normal, nothing but a natural reaction, that what had happened had indeed confirmed their first theory, that it was just his body reacting to the lack of meds to dumb down his urges and needs, that it was actually very good that he had managed to get release without having a complete breakdown, that it was a step in the right direction and that she was extremely proud of him and so he should’ve been too, but Timmy couldn’t listen to her. He heard her voice, but her words had no weight for him. He believed their honesty, but it wasn’t enough, not compared to how terrifying the whole ordeal had been.

He hasn’t slept much, lately. He knows it’s not healthy and he’s trying to figure out a way to prevent the boy from coming back if he relaxes too much, but he hasn’t had any luck, yet, and all he could do was setting up a couple dozens alarms throughout the night. If he wakes up every half hour, the boy doesn’t come. Sleeping like that isn’t restful, if it can be considered sleeping at all, but it’s the only way. He doesn’t wanna be back on meds yet. Not just yet. It hasn’t even been a month yet. He can’t surrender so soon. He needs to try harder. At least for a little longer.

He hasn’t told Doctor Williams anything about the alarms because he knows she’d be concerned about it. The kind of concerned that would send him back on meds. And of course he hasn’t told Leo and Blaine. To what purpose? Leo’s so excited at the thought of seeing Cody again he wouldn’t have any attention left to spare on Timmy anyway. It’s better to just keep to himself, hope these people come quickly, and then go as quickly as they came, and possibly, if they’re fast enough, they won’t happen to be around next time Timmy has a crisis.

But they’ll have to be very, very fast, because it’s gonna happen soon. Timmy can feel it crackle under his skin. It’s been waiting for a while, now, mounting and mounting like the waves, preparing for a seaquake. Ever since the boy first showed up.

He doesn’t wanna meet with these people. He honestly thinks he’d be way better off spending all the time in his room, just wait for them to be gone before coming out again. If they had come sooner, possibly a couple of weeks before or so, Timmy would’ve been able to deal with their presence better. Right now, he just can’t. Sometimes it really all comes down to timing. This isn’t the right time to have people around at all.

But when his parents tell him to come to the door because the guests have arrived, they do it in such a natural way, expecting him to simply come down and say hi (because that’s what normal people do, what non-damaged people do, they simply get out of their fucking holes and say hi to whom comes visit), he feels so compelled to just comply he doesn’t even try to put up a fight.

He walks out of his room. Climbs down the stairs. Stops next to Blaine as he waits for the guest to approach the entrance door.

And then he sees him.

Coming together with Cody and his husband. Their son. Alex. The one he remembers as the chubby toddler trotting behind him whenever Timmy went anywhere.

He’s all grown up.

Turned into the boy from his dreams.

Timmy barely manages to hold back a scream. He backs off, shaking, his eyes growing wide as both his parents and the guests look at him puzzled, a little worried, completely at a loss of what to do.

There’s no way this can be possible. No way. And yet it is. ‘Cause there the boy is. Short and lean and pale and as stunningly beautiful, as terrifyingly flawless as he was in his dreams. His clothes may have changed, his hair may not be just as long, his eyes may be a little less supernaturally huge and his skin may not glow like the moon, but he’s the same, he’s the same boy, and Timmy can’t deal with it. He simply can’t.

There must be some sort of explanation, he thinks as he runs upstairs, heading to his room. There must be, there must be, because he can’t have willed the boy into existence by simply dreaming of him, and he can’t have seen him in his dreams without ever having seen him in real life before, but whatever logical explanation his brain could find, let alone the fact that right now it seems unable to do so, wouldn’t suffice to calm him down. Because who fucking cares about logic – not him, certainly not him.

However this happened, the boy is here. There’s no safe enough place to hide from that.

He runs into his room, slams the door closed and curls in a corner, sitting on the floor, holding himself into a trembling hug, praying he doesn’t come undone the moment he lets himself go. He shakes and shakes and his teeth hurt because of how hard he’s gritting them, and his fingers ache because of how strongly he keeps them clutched around his own shoulders.

And he looks up, at the window, searching for the moon, but it’s a new moon night and he can’t see a thing, he can’t see any fucking thing, just the solid black sheet of the darkest starless night he’s ever seen in his life, and it’s only when he notices it – the darkness, the complete darkness, the closed door, no light in his room, not even artificial light, no light coming from the outside, not enough to even see his own hands an inch from his nose – that he instantly starts to cry.

The softest whimper. Turning into a prolonged whining. Something like the howling of a wolf cub. His shaky voice cutting through the silence as he tries to keep it down, because it’d be shameful for anybody to hear him, for anybody to fucking hear how weak and stupid and broken and alone he is. But he’s back in that closet and there’s no light anywhere and the doors are locked and nobody’s coming, nobody misses him, nobody needs him back, because he’s nothing but a nuisance, nothing but a problem, nothing but a shaky bag of bone, crying and whimpering like the four years old boy he never really ceased to be, and his daddy doesn’t miss him, his daddy doesn’t want him, and Leo simply does not care, and he can’t even call for help because if he does that and no one answers, if he does that and no one answers he’s fucking gonna die, his heart will just stop beating, he will simply stop breathing, and he’s gonna die in here, alone and forgotten, and nobody’s even gonna ask about him, remember that little blonde kid?, whatever happened to that little blonde kid?, and nobody will be there to answer that he’s been swallowed by a four, he’s been killed by a four, a four came and snatched him away, kidnapped him before he could reach for the lever, try and pull it down, a four came, a four got him, a four finally destroyed him.

And then somebody opens the door.

Somebody opens the door and turns the lights on.

“Ah!” Alex says, stopping by the doorframe, looking at him and then smiling the softest smile that’s ever been smiled. His lips are peachy pink and his eyes are such a clear blue. Nothing like the night starless sky. The clear blue sky of a summer day. “There you are,” he goes on, “You got me worried. Your dad says you feel sick. I thought I should come check on you.” He walks into the room without asking for permission, leaving the door open. Timmy can see the hallway, outside. He’s not in the closet. It’s night and the sky is ink black, but there’s some light. There is some light. “My daddy says people should never be alone when they’re sick,” Alex smiles again, kneeling next to him, “What is it? Your tummy? I always drink some hot tea, when my tummy aches. Works like a charm. I could make you some. Do you want me to go make you some?”

He’s about to stand up and run downstairs to prepare some tea for him without even waiting for an answer, but Timmy relaxes his fingers, lets go of his own shoulders and quickly grabs Alex’s hand, squeezing it.

“Can you stay a while?” he says with a shaky voice, trying to clear his throat and ultimately failing.

Despite the croaking sound of his voice, Alex smiles and stops, sitting on the floor next to him. “Sure,” he says, “There will be time for some tea, later on.”

As they sit there together, and Alex goes back to fill the silence with words Timmy quickly stops listening to, relying only to the soothing sound of his voice and his warm presence to calm down, Timmy tries to think about the right way to tell Doctor Williams about all of this. It’s so unreal he doesn’t even know where to start. But it feels strangely good.
Fandom:
Personaggi:
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Seguito di Roots.
Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico.
Pairing: Blaine/OC(s), OC/OC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Angst, Lemon, Underage, What If?, OC.
- Timmy thought that accepting the feelings he had for his almost-step-brother would be the hardest thing he'd ever have to do in his life, but he was clearly delusional, because after you acknowledge something comes the time you've gotta let the others acknowledge it too. Simplifying: Alex needs to tell their parents about their relationship. Timmy isn't so sure, tho.
Note: E' di nuovo quel periodo dell'anno che Liz scrive sul divorzio e poi se ne pente. Per l'occasione ho anche ricicciato fuori il 'verse di Roots, che è una cosa che volevo fare da un po' ma poi non c'era stato modo, e ho ripreso in sostanza da dove mi ero fermata. Quindi daddy issues a manetta, giusto perché soffrire non è mai abbastanza, no, bisogna rotolarcisi, nel dolore, come i porcelli nel fango, sennò non ne vale la pena.
E quindi niente, ho scritto questa bestiola massiccia e già che ci sono la rovescio intera sul counter per sconfiggere il mostro malvagio della terza settimana del WRPG. Beat that, lame teams that aren't me and my baby girl.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
GROWING INTO TREES

“If you don’t stop touching me, in a few minutes there will be nothing left of me.”

Timmy hides his face against the curve of Alex’s neck, rubbing his nose against his skin, inhaling his scent. He smells like soap and dirty sex. There’s some trace of Timmy’s own stronger bath foam on him. He sticks out his tongue and licks him right under his ear, forcing a little moan out of his throat. He tastes salty, like sweat, and there’s something else in the background, something like come. How the hell does he taste like come under his ear? How long have they been at it exactly since they started, and how many times have Timmy come all over him already?

“I can’t stop,” he says apologetically, his hand moving up and down on Alex’s crotch as he feels him get hard again for the, what, like, fifth time in two hours? “Today, I just can’t. I wanna make you come.”

“I already came,” Alex smiles a vague, distracted smile, turning his face slightly to look at him and ask for a kiss, which Timmy promptly gives him. “Thrice.”

“I wanna make you come again, then,” he answers, his fingers reaching down between Alex’s buttocks, teasing his already pretty loose opening. Did he fuck him already, today? Timmy can’t even remember. Maybe he just fingered him a lot.

“Haven’t I come enough already?” Alex asks, but he parts his legs and rocks his hips, moving slowly towards Timmy’s hand. His fingers slip in, diving into his body up to the knuckles, and Timmy holds his breath. This feels heavenly.

“Is there such a thing?” he asks, licking his way down Alex’s jaw. His fingers move in and out of Alex’s body, tearing little moans out of him with every thrust. “Come on,” he whispers, “Just once more. You want it.”

Alex doesn’t answer that, turning his head to hide his face against Timmy’s throat, nibbling at it. Timmy looks down at him and he just wants to have him so much, right now. It’s overwhelming. Alex is overwhelming, too beautiful for words.

“Wanna bet I can stop you using less than ten words?” Alex asks, his breath caressing Timmy’s skin.

“No,” Timmy whines, slipping a third finger inside, hoping to shut him up, “I don’t wanna be stopped.”

Alex throws his head back, clutching at the covers, tensing all over. “Jesus Christ, I love it,” he says in a whisper, pulling his hips up from the mattress and swinging them in circles as he moans helplessly. Then he bites at his bottom lip and opens his eyes, searching for Timmy’s.

Timmy’s heart beats faster. He can almost see the words lingering on Alex’s lips. “N—” he tries to say.

“Timmy, we need to tell our parents.”

Not fast enough.

He deflates like an hot air balloon after somebody turned the burner off.

“You couldn’t help yourself, could you?” he asks, disappointed, pulling his fingers out of him.

Alex grimaces, upset by his haste in doing so. “Careful…” he whines, “You almost hurt me.”

“You’re so loose you could easily accommodate my whole arm on arrival and departure without even flinching, shut up.”

Alex turns to stone by his side, and Timmy feels his own heart miss a beat.

“…I’m sorry,” he tries, passing a hand over his face, “Jeez… I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I do,” Alex sighs, turning on his side to look at him, “You’re angry. I get it. I’d be flattered if I believed you’re so angry just because you really really wanted to fuck me and couldn’t.”

“Are you kidding me?” Timmy turns to look at him, his eyes completely lost, “I really really wanted to fuck you.”

“I know,” Alex manages a little chuckle, and then sighs, “That’s not why you’re angry, tho. You’re angry because of what I said.”

Timmy sighs, groans and rolls around, getting out of the bed. He must leave too abruptly, because Alex curls into a ball, trying to cover himself from the sudden blow of cold air surrounding him.

“Timmy,” he calls him.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Yeah, I got it,” Alex sighs, “I got it three hours ago, when I came in and you started kissing me the moment I tried to talk about it. And the only reason why we’ve been at it for hours, the only reason why you haven’t been able to keep your hands off me up to now, is that you didn’t want to let me speak.”

“I’m going to my room,” Timmy says, finding his pants on the floor and wearing them again.

“Timmy, you can’t fucking keep shutting this out!” Alex suddenly sits up, rage making his voice sharper.

Timmy doesn’t want to listen to him. He can’t deal with Alex speaking about it, especially when Alex starts getting angry at him.

“Watch me,” he says, defiantly and stupidly, as he walks out the room.

*

“Are you still moping about Tana?”

The question takes him by surprise, as if he had just been asked if he felt hot on a snowy day. There’s no correlation between reality and what Leo just said, no correlation at all. In fact, the question is as far from the problem as it can possibly be before turning into something silly, amusing, in a tragic way.

It gives away perfectly how little his parents know about what he’s going through.

“I’m fine,” he says, standing up from the couch and quitting the game he was playing, turning the console off. His siblings instantly start to whine loudly about it, jumping on the couch and pleading for him to come back and start playing again. They’re not allowed to play videogames yet, but they’re allowed to watch Timmy as he does it, and they’re so invested in it that whenever Timmy happens to skip a day, for whatever reason, they always ask him to make up for it playing a little longer on the next session.

The funny thing is, they’re not even interested in bright colors and pretty characters, they’re heavily invested in the plot and character development. Despite their young age, they’re so good at following plotlines and dialogues they sometimes get the story more than Timmy himself does, being him way more interested in shooting big bad guys dead and leveling up. Timmy supposes that’s a sign of changing times, one like the others. He used to fall asleep by hearing Leo or his father retelling stories taken from movies and musicals, then for the longest time he fell asleep only after reading pages and pages of Leo’s books. His siblings fall asleep telling videogames fanfictions one another. That’s evolution too.

“You’re not fine at all,” Leo insists, standing next to the couch, his arms folded over his chest, watching him sternly. “I talked with your father, and—”

“I don’t need to know what you and dad said while discussing about me,” he interrupts him, “I’m fine.”

“He says you’ve been awfully silent, lately,” Leo insists. Then he sighs, sitting down on the couch. “Sit with me, T. T.,” he says, patting on the couch next to him, “Let’s talk about it.”

Timmy shivers wildly, looking away. “You have no idea what you’re even asking me to do!” he complains.

“You mustn’t be embarrassed,” Leo says reassuringly, “I know Tana’s my sister, but if you need to talk about what happened, I can—”

“I said I’m fine!” Timmy turns to face him, yelling in his face. The twins were bouncing around him, tugging at his clothes, begging him to play just a few more minutes, and when he hears him raise his voice they stop instantly, letting him go and moving a couple steps away from him.

“Timmy,” Leo says in a very low voice, while Timmy watches Harper and Logan back off, scared of himself for screaming like that at least as much as they are of him right now, “You’re scaring your siblings. And me,” he adds with a soft sigh. Then he turns towards the twins, his lips curling into a sweet smile as he reaches out to stroke Logan’s hair, “Why don’t you two go to your room?” he suggests, “I’m gonna be there in a minute.”

Harper and Logan were clearly just waiting for an excuse to run away, and so they turn around and run up the stairs, hiding out in their room in but a few seconds. When he sees them disappear on the first floor, Timmy relaxes his shoulders and looks down, sighing. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t wanna scream.”

“You clearly did,” Leo smiles kindly, inviting him to sit down again. This time, Timmy complies. “What’s bothering you, Timmy? You haven’t been yourself, lately.”

What’s bothering him. What’s bothering him is he’s completely crazy. He fell in love with his father’s partner’s son, the kind of totalizing, desperate love that happens to you only once in your lifetime, the kind of totalizing, desperate love that makes you act stupid, the kind of totalizing, desperate love that makes you break a years-long relationship – his, with Tana – to throw yourself blindly and as stupidly as you possibly can into a romance that’s not only forbidden, not only impossible, but also ridiculously hard to bear, because Alex isn’t hard to handle just because he’s his somewhat brother, he’s hard to handle because he’s a fucking nightmare on legs.

What’s bothering him. What’s bothering him is he ought to tell his father and Cody. But he’s scared as hell. He can’t see anything good coming out of this. He doesn’t think it can possibly end well. They’ll tell those two and the best thing that can happen is Blaine suffering a heart failure and ending up in a hospital. The worst case scenario being Cody and Blaine talk it out and just decide to keep them apart.

What’s bothering him is he has no clue what to do. If he talks, there’s a big chance this will simply be over soon. If he doesn’t, Alex will just keep insisting until he insists too much, and something in their delicate balance gets broken for good. They’re already tiptoeing on a tightrope, they’re still trying to heal their fucked up relationship after all those years of messing with each other’s brains. They don’t need this too.

What’s bothering him is he’d like to be able to say all this to Alex, to explain why he’s so afraid, why he never wants to talk about it, why he keeps running off every time they even start walking around the topic. Instead, every time they’re about to talk it out, he chickens out, ups and leaves, following a stupid compulsion born out of the childish belief that if he keeps ignoring this long enough it’ll somehow fix by itself.

How, he does not know. It’s not as if they can un-brother themselves. Not as long as Cody and Blaine are still a thing, anyway.

“I’m just nervous,” he says, sighing deeply and leaning back against the couch, “Or tired, maybe.”

“Of doing what?” Leo chuckles, amused, “You still haven’t decided for college. You don’t go to school anymore. You’re certainly not working. We’re spoiling you as much as we possibly can, what’s wearing you out?”

He doesn’t even know where to start answering that question. So he just shuts up.

*

”Timmy!” Leo yells from downstairs, “Alex is here to see you!”

Timmy tenses all over, clutching his fingers around the book he was reading hard enough to bend the cover. He stops quickly when he remembers he got it from the library two weeks ago and is supposed to return it in five days, and he can’t really afford to return a damaged copy of Pigs: Keeping a Small-Scale Herd for Pleasure and Profit. In the whole of glorious Lima, Ohio, he’s basically the only one taking farming books on loan from the library. They’d know it was him.

He pulls himself up on the bed and sits still for a moment, staring at the void. Having Alex over is always a messy, complicated thing. Not only because he doesn’t trust himself (nor Alex, for that matter) when they’re together, but because it always feels like some sort of intrusion.

For the longest time, Alex has been the thing that only happened at Blaine and Cody’s. He was trapped there, held into some kind of invisible bubble that made Timmy think of him as if he was something that didn’t exist outside those walls. Of course he knew he had a life out of the house, that he went to school, talked to other people, had hobbies, lived a life that didn’t involve Timmy a hundred percent of the time, but it was an obvious knowledge that had no effect of Timmy’s life itself because, as soon as he left Blaine’s house and went back to his own, with Leo, Alex disappeared, he wasn’t a physical thing anymore, just a haunting thought, a persistent memory, a vague obsession he took with him without having to fully deal with it.

Home was a safe space in which Alex and all the scary, overwhelming feelings connected to him weren’t allowed.

That stopped being a thing with last Christmas’ party, when Leo decided he wanted to reunite the countless branches of his broken and battered family tree into one single place, his house, allowing Alex to come be a part of real life out of Blaine’s home and into Timmy’s own too.

Timmy isn’t sad that happened. Last Christmas was the moment he finally understood what he wanted, the moment he accepted he couldn’t keep running to Alex and then hide between Tana’s caramel thighs and into her warm embraces every time Alex became too much to bear. It was an important moment for him and, if Leo hadn’t stubbornly decided to go on with the party despite basically everyone else’s contrary opinion, he’d have never gone through it, and he’d have probably lost Alex altogether as a consequence. So he’s thankful to Leo for making that happen, but at the same time he resents him for unknowingly putting him through it, for unknowingly making Alex a thing of reality he had to deal with whether he wanted or not, whether he was prepared or not.

Basically, for turning home into yet another hunting ground for Alex to chase him.

He walks out of his bedroom and starts climbing down the stairs, but he ends up stopping halfway through, because he can already see the entrance door from there, and seeing Leo and Alex chatting together always gets him.

Leo lives his relationship with Alex in the same troubled way he lives it with Cody. Timmy supposes that’s pretty much inevitable: despite not being able to forgive him for willingly or unwillingly stealing Blaine away from him in the most traumatic possible way, he is completely unable to forget that for almost a year, when he was 22, he barely lived and breathed for the guy.

Of course Timmy wasn’t there to see it. And of course nor Leo nor Cody ever talk about that. Dad told him something about it, let some random detail slip into some conversation every now and then, but of course his accounts on the matter are bound to be partial considering he wasn’t there to witness anything either. The most precise stories come from Adam, really.

Not that he likes to talk about it either. Back then, when everything seemed easier and people didn’t have to walk around Leo wearing gloves, trying not to break the already cracked shell of thin glass he had become over the years, Adam had put so much hope in Leo’s relationship with Cody. He had never liked Blaine that much, which is a way to say he hated him with a fire, and when he saw Leo falling in love with Cody he dared to hope Cody would’ve been enough to tear Leo away from the unhealthy relationship he had been clinging to for years, now. He had really believed, if one could do the miracle, that could be Cody. And it would have probably been proved true, if Blaine hadn’t come back right when Leo was really starting to let go of him.

Timmy has always been interested in the fucked up story of his family. Being a fucked up part of it too, he has always tried to look in the past for all the tiny, messed up details that ultimately ended up shaping the chaos he lives in as of now. And whenever Adam tells him about back then, about college and how Leo used to deal with Cody and the thought of Blaine, he’s always reminded that there was no way he could come out any less fucked in the head than he is, having been raised for the most part by his father and by a person like Leo.

He had kept the thought of Blaine hidden in a trunk inside his head for almost a year, but Cody hadn’t just been a distraction. He had loved him, deeply, for real, he had cared for him in ways he had never cared for anybody else before. Blaine was a part of him he couldn’t get rid of, didn’t want to get rid of, but Cody wasn’t something random he had clung to just because he could.

Much like what happened with him, Tana and Alex, Timmy knows that.

Sharing history makes everything harder for Leo. He hates Cody for what he took from him, and at the same time he simply can’t forget he loved him once, he loves him still, ‘cause love’s a tricky thing with Leo, once he falls for you he doesn’t simply let you go, he never simply lets you go. Whenever they’re together in the same room, which happens very rarely but happens nonetheless, you can see that in his eyes, in the way they linger on Cody, study him from a distance, telling him things despite almost never really speaking to him. The fire in his eyes talks about wanting to be able to erase him from existence, and at the same time being unable to conceive a life in which he isn’t there anymore.

It’s messy and conflictual and a hell of a lot more painful than any human being is supposed to be able to bear. Leo manages, though. Possibly because he went through so much already pain is not even a factor anymore.

Now, the emotional charge surrounding Alex isn’t nearly as intense as the one surrounding Cody, but Alex resembles his father so much that Leo can’t help seeing a little of Cody in him every time he looks at him. So their interaction is always a little bit heavier than it’s supposed to be for two people who basically don’t even know one another. Leo looks at Alex probably remembering very clearly how Cody was when he was more or less his age, and that twists the smile he forces up on his lips into some sort of sad, barely curved line, that makes his expression almost painful.

Despite that, he’s always overly polite around him, and the same can be said for Alex, who rarely smiles if not under compelling circumstances, but always have a very pretty, very sweet smile on his lips whenever he and Leo meet.

It’s like he sensed how hard it was for Leo to look at him, and tried to make it easier by just looking the closest he can possibly look to how his father looked like before Leo lost him.

“Ah, Timmy, you’re there.” Timmy loses the trail of his thoughts as he focuses back on Leo and Alex. “What are you doing there, lurking in the darkness? You’re creepy.”

“Sorry,” he says, clearing his throat, “I got distracted. Hi, Alex.”

“Hi,” Alex waves at him, still standing in front of the door, “Can we talk? It’s about Lissy’s birthday, I thought maybe we could buy her a present together.”

“That’s so sweet,” Leo comments, smiling brightly, “Timmy has no idea how to buy presents for people. He always ends up buying random, impersonal things because he doesn’t know how to choose something personal for everybody.”

“How personal can you possibly get with a twelve months old baby girl?” Timmy groans. Then he gestures towards Alex. “’Kay, come up,” he says.

Alex nods and follows him upstairs.

“Will you want some hot cocoa and cookies? I was about to make it anyway,” Leo says.

“We’ll be fine,” Timmy answers for both of them. Having Leo knocking on the door or even worse barging in bringing cocoa while he’s alone in his room with Alex is exactly the last thing he wants or needs right now.

“I’d have liked some cocoa,” Alex comments upon entering his room and looking around as he always does when he comes in here, as if expecting something to have changed since his last visit and always ending up disappointed that it hasn’t.

“Please,” Timmy groans, closing the door and then locking it discretely, trying not to make any suspicious sounds Leo could – improbably – hear from downstairs, “You barely ever eat anything that’s worth more than fifteen calories.”

“You really don’t know me as well as you think you do, Timmy,” Alex says with a sigh, jumping to sit up on his desk. “Where are your siblings?”

“School.”

“Then why are you even locking the door? It’s not like Leo’s gonna co—”

“So, what about Lissy’s present?” he interrupts him, walking towards the bed and retrieving the book he was reading, to put some bookmark into it and move it on the nightstand.

“Please,” Alex laughs, amused, “You think I’m gonna waste an opportunity to get the perfect gift for my baby sister in order to find something that meets your ugly taste too? I’ll pass, thanks. That was just an excuse.”

Timmy stops halfway through a movement, turning to look at him. Alex seems so perfectly calm, even amused by the whole situation. He doesn’t get it. He has no idea how hard this is for Timmy, or he simply doesn’t care.

“You could’ve spared yourself the lie,” he answers grumpily, folding his arms over his chest.

“Sure,” Alex nods, “I could’ve said the truth. ‘Leo, I’m sorry for intruding, I just wanted to speak to my brother, whom I’ve also been banging for the last few years, and I thought I needed to come seek him out here, since he’s ignoring me.’ How does that sound?”

“Awful,” Timmy grimaces, “And this isn’t a laughing matter.”

“I’m pretty sure it is, because this is ridiculous,” Alex answers, snorting, “What else was I supposed to say?”

“Nothing!” Timmy answers, annoyed, “You were supposed to say nothing! You were supposed to stay home and respect my decision not to talk with you for a fucking while, or do I have to always be by your side, constantly following you everywhere like a dog and listening to your every word like you were spitting out Bible verses every time you opened your fucking mouth?!”

Alex looks at him in silence for the longest time, his endless, thick, curved and pitch black eyelashes casting long shadows over his pale cheeks. “I like it when you’re angry at me,” he says then, his voice lower than it usually is as he reaches out for one of Timmy’s hands and guides it to his own crotch, “Makes me hard.”

“Fuck you, Alex!” Timmy answers.

He knows he’d be more convincing if he managed to pull his hand away. He can’t ask that much from his own willpower, though. There’s a limit to what he can do. Withdraw from physical contact whenever Alex is involved is exactly where he draws the line.

Alex answers with a tiny smirk, opening his hand against Timmy’s to push it harder against himself. “Haven’t you missed me?” he asks, his voice sweet as the nightshade’s fruits, and just as deadly.

“I’m still angry,” Timmy answers, frowning and looking away.

“I missed you,” Alex says.

“You’re not listening to me!” Timmy complains, his eyes back on him.

“Yeah? And how does that feel?” Alex answers, his voice suddenly stern and scolding. Timmy bites at his own tongue, because he knows he doesn’t have any weapon to fight him on this. It’s true. He hasn’t been listening to anything Alex might have had to tell him, lately. “Timmy… listen to me,” Alex says, bringing his other hand on Timmy’s face and making him turn around again, to look at him in his eyes. “We need to talk about this. I like talking even less than you do, believe me, but this, we need to talk it out. We need to. It’s not just something we have to do because it’s only fair, it’s something we have to do because not doing it is… it’s messing us up,” he leans in, brushing his lips against Timmy’s, “And I don’t want that. So, please… let’s talk about it.”

Won over by his lips, as usual, Timmy gives in, leaning into the kiss, touching him better, feeling him hard against his palm, as he runs over his length with his thumb through the thick fabric of his trousers. “…right now?” he asks, resting his forehead against Alex’s.

“No,” Alex hastens to answer, covering his lips in tiny, barely wet kisses, “Not right now. Right now, you need to fuck me, ‘cause we haven’t done shit in two days and I’m losing it.”

Timmy surrenders to his touches with complete abandon, unbuttoning Alex’s pants and slipping a hand inside, palming him skin against skin. He loves to feel him, he loves how sensitive Alex is, and he loves how demanding he gets when he’s teasing him, how sure he is of how he wants to be touched, and where, and for how long, and how strong. “Do you like it?” he asks, wrapping his fingers around his shaft and squeezing it, his thumb passing over the already wet tip, smearing pre-come all over it, making it glisten in the light coming from outside the window.

“Yes,” Alex whispers, parting his legs, inviting him to get closer, nibbling at his lips to ask for kisses, “Suck it?”

“Yes!” Timmy answers, melting in a moan that comes out muffled against Alex’s lips, just as the small chuckle that follows it. Timmy chuckles too, pushing Alex backwards to make him sit better on the desk and only then lowering himself on him, finishing to open up his pants to bare his hard-on. “Don’t mock me,” he says, his tongue already traveling in circles over the head of Alex’s cock.

“Sorry,” Alex says. He’s clearly not sorry at all. “It’s just, you sounded so enthusiastic.”

“Can’t I be happy to blow my boyfriend?”

“That’s what I am, now?” Alex smirks, one of his hands resting on Timmy’s head, his fingertips massaging his scalp.

“Shut up…” Timmy answers, before closing his mouth around Alex’s cock and suck, “And keep it down!” he demands, when this tears a louder moan out of Alex’s throat.

“You’re asking for something impossible…” Alex mutters, his voice completely void of any playful undertone, at this point. Timmy looks up at him, still playing with his tongue around his cock, and finds him sitting there, his limbs shaking lightly, his eyes closed. He’s biting at his bottom lip and all Timmy can think looking at him is he’d like to have more hands, more mouths, more cocks, he’d like to be more than just one, so Alex could be fucked properly, like he deserves, touched and kisses and stroked everywhere at the same time. “Take it deeper…” he whispers softly, pressing his hand on top of Timmy’s head. Timmy complies, because that’s the kind of life he wants to lead, lame as it is. A life in which Alex can push him and order him around as he likes, and he’d always say yes, because he loves him so much, Christ, he loves him so much he sometimes wishes he could melt all over him, wrap him up in himself, to be glued to him for eternity, to be part of him like a limb, so nothing could ever happen that’d sever them apart. “Yes…” Alex moans, his hips rocking slowly back and forth, “Yes, suck it… God… Timmy…” he swallows, throwing his head back as his eyebrows come together in an intense frown, his lips parting a little more, showing the vague flickering of his tongue piercing, “Make me come… I wanna come in your mouth.”

Timmy complies without saying a word, his hands closing around Alex’s hips as he blows him, until he feels him stiffen under his touch, and then release himself on his tongue. He keeps his lips locked around Alex’s cock, sucking and teasing while Alex shivers and moans, and then swallows, waiting for the last drop and only straightening his back after he tasted it well.

Alex is already waiting for him, his lips parted, his cheeks flushed, his chest heaving. Timmy kisses him wetly, making him taste his own taste on his tongue, playing with his piercing and pressing himself against him, to make him feel how hard he is under his pants.

“Fuck me,” Alex whispers on his lips, rubbing his nose against his first, then pressing them together, his legs already wrapped around Timmy’s waist.

“Yes,” Timmy nods, kissing him again as he hooks his thumbs around the waistband of Alex’s pants, to push them all the way down. He can’t take them off him if Alex doesn’t straighten his legs, but he doesn’t seem to be planning on doing that anytime soon, and Timmy’s content enough with baring only his ass. He doesn’t need much more to fuck him, anyway.

He pushes his own pants down to his ankles because they’re easier to get rid of, and he pushes against Alex’s opening. It’s tight and dry and closed shut, and he rubs his cock insistently against it to make it wet, feeling it start to crave his intrusion, opening and closing slightly whenever the tip of his hard-on threatens to break inside and never really does it, causing a symphony of needy, disappointed moans to come out of Alex’s lips in a low, deep song that vibrates against Timmy’s neck as Alex kisses it.

“Please,” Alex says, “Just put it in.”

He’s not even hard, but it doesn’t matter to him. Sex has never been just a mean to satisfy a craving, for Alex. It’s always been a connection. One Timmy couldn’t run away from. Alex gets off on tying him to himself more than he gets off on his own orgasms. That’s sick, and Timmy knows it. He also knows he doesn’t care for it, though, because whenever he thinks Alex owns him that way, he feels complete, and there’s nothing else he wants.

He thrusts his hips forward, burying himself inside Alex’s body. He can’t help the deep throaty moan that comes out of his mouth as he does, but Alex puts a hand on his nape and brings him closer, making him muffle the sound, and all the sounds that follow, right against his skin. Timmy parts his lips and glues them to Alex’s neck, sucking and nibbling at his skin, his tongue pressing hard on Alex’s Adam’s apple. Alex moans loudly, parting his legs as much as his pants let him, to welcome him deeper.

“God, I missed you,” Timmy almost whines, pushing hard in and out of him, “It’s starting to get too hard.”

“What?” Alex asks, his voice faint as he meets his thrusts with his own.

“Being away from you,” Timmy confesses, clinging to him. Alex’s arms close instantly around him, holding him in a reassuring hug. He keeps him bound to him, their bodies melting into one, as Timmy thrusts and thrusts inside his body, making the desk shake under their weight.

Timmy comes inside him with a desperate moan that he tries and fails to suffocate, and Alex keeps holding him, waiting for him to stop shaking, for him to regain control over himself. And when he does, it’s Timmy that keeps holding onto him, wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist, resting his forehead against his shoulder. There’s an hickey already surfacing on Alex’s skin, right where he sucked and bit at it. He touches the light bruise with the tip of his nose, making Alex smile faintly.

“I was thinking about Lissy’s birthday,” Alex says after a while, “That’s why I came up with that excuse. I was thinking that might be a good time to tell everybody. Since everybody’s gonna be there, anyway.”

Timmy whines, hiding his face against the curve of Alex’s neck. He doesn’t wanna talk about it. But he knows he’s got no escape from it, this time. He couldn’t move, not even if he wanted, and he doesn’t want to, anyway.

“Alex, I don’t think you’ve thought this through,” he says.

“Why?” Alex asks, “’Cause I still wanna do it?”

“Exactly,” Timmy nods, “If you had thought this through, you’d know—”

“Telling everybody could mean it’s over.” Alex’s voice sounds deep, controlled, calm. Not as if he didn’t give a shit about it. As if he had counted all his options and understood he’s got but one. “I know. But if they find out on their own, it could be over all the same. And what if we don’t tell anybody? What do we do? We keep doing what we’ve done up to now? Hiding in dark corners? Locking doors and shit? And then what, in a few years, hoping we last that long? Will we get to the point of needing fucking beards to cover up for our lack of relationships? Will we go on our entire life sneaking out for a quickie in a car, hidden in the park, with peeping toms spying on us?” He bites at his bottom lip, taking a few breaths, trying to calm himself down. “Is that the kind of life you want for us? ‘Cause that’s fucking sad, Timmy. It’s not supposed to be so fucking sad, and honestly, I don’t know if I could stand it.”

Timmy wraps his arms more tightly around Alex’s waist, shaking his head, his forehead rubbing against Alex’s shoulder with each movement. “I never think things like this, Alex. I never… I never get that far.”

“Well, I do,” Alex answers, “’Cause I think this through. And thinking it through doesn’t mean thinking about the immediate consequences it’ll have, how our parents are gonna lose their shit about it and so on. It means try and… God,” he sighs, lifting his arms and wrapping them around Timmy’s neck, finally reciprocating his hug, clinging to him, “I want this to be something, Timmy. I want this to be important. As it is, it’s just a dirty secret.”

“But isn’t it enough that we can love each other?” Timmy asks desperately, pressing his whole face against Alex’s skin, inhaling his scent, “No one needs to know.”

“Everybody needs to know,” Alex replies, passing his fingers through Timmy’s hair, “This is running, and it’s not fair. It’s dangerous and sad, and it needs to be over soon.” He backs off a little, holding Timmy’s face in his hands. Timmy’s got to hand it to him, he’s doing great. How much has Alex grown, during these past few months. It’s amazing. He only wishes he was good enough to keep up with him. “Let’s tell everybody. The day of Lissy’s birthday. After the party. When only close family remains. Let’s tell them.”

But he’s not.

He’s not good enough.

He cannot keep up.

He prefers to lie.

“Okay,” he says, “But before we do that, let’s run away. Only for a few days.”

“Run away?” Alex chuckles a little, tilting his head, “Where?”

“The Hamptons’ house,” he says, “I can get the keys.”

“Timmy,” Alex sighs, a small smile still lingering on his lips, “It’s a little too cold for the sea, don’t you think?”

“I don’t care,” Timmy shakes his head. He’s already thinking: if I get you there, if I get you there for a few days, you’ll see what we’d be losing if we spoke, and you’ll change your mind. “I just want one good memory to go by, just in case. Please. Come with me. Only for a few days.”

Alex must think it’s a really small price to pay for honesty, so he easily says yes. Too bad he’s paying up front for a lie he won’t be able to cash in.

*

When he arrives to Blaine’s home, next day, he finds Alex lying down on the couch, singing softly to his sister who’s slowly falling asleep, lying on her stomach on his stomach.

The sight stops him, as always when he happens to catch Alex and Lissy together. He never sees Alex as completely relaxed, as utterly peaceful as he is when he’s spending time with his baby sister. And they’re so beautiful when they’re together, they look like a painting. They’re both Cody’s children, as far as basic genetics go, and they look extremely alike. Lissy’s enormous baby blue eyes match Alex’s perfectly, as well as her straight, dark, long hair and pale skin. Sometimes, when he sees them together, hugging like they are now, for example, Timmy can’t help but think that if Alex had a baby it’d look exactly like that too. The thought never fails to wake something up inside him, feelings he never thought he could have.

He’s never been one for long time planning, but sometimes Alex makes him want to. He makes him want to be the kind of person who plans ahead, who knows when he’s gonna get married, and how, and how many children he’s gonna have. He wishes he was that kind of person so he could have something to offer Alex when he turns to look at him with those eyes, asking for nothing but implicitly expecting everything from him. He could tell him “let’s run away together, let’s just go, forget everything, leave everyone behind, and if we do that, this is what I’m gonna give you”. But he can’t, because he has no idea what he’s gonna give Alex in time. He has no idea if he’s ever gonna be able to give him anything at all.

“Hey,” he says softly, not wanting to wake the baby, “Everything okay?”

Alex looks up to him. He was starting to doze off too, comforted by the sound of his own lullaby and wrapped up in his and his sister’s shared warmth, and that makes him a little unfocused and a lot more mellow than he usually is.

Alex isn’t a soft person. He’s full of spikes and sharp corners, full of that kind of anger that swarms through your body pushed by hormones and hot blood when you’re fourteen.

Christ.

Fourteen.

Almost fifteen at this point, sure, but he’s still so young. And he already knows himself and what he wants way better than Timmy thinks he ever will. And it’s just that, knowing himself so well, that makes him so much harder than all the other kids Timmy ever met in his life, including himself. And that hardness is what makes his smile thrice as precious, every time it shows, curling those cherry lips upwards at the corners.

“Yes,” he says, lifting a hand and nonchalantly brushing the back of it against Timmy’s thumb in a discreet but ridiculously intimate and affectionate greeting, “Lissy was a little colicky, today. Dad asked me to work my magic and help her sleep, before I left.”

Nobody suspected anything, when they announced they were gonna go to the Hamptons’ house for a few days before Lisbeth’s birthday. They’ve always been close and they’ve always spent so much time together, since they first met, at this point nobody is really impressed anymore to find them together at the most absurd times of the day.

Blaine is very proud of them for that. Sure, he wouldn’t if he knew the truth, but what he doesn’t know doesn’t kill him, and all Blaine knows is that, exactly how he had hoped right from the start, Alex loves the twins and gets along very well with them, Timmy has fallen hopelessly in love with baby Lissy and Alex and him are so close they almost look like real brothers, despite being so different from one another. That’s all Blaine ever wanted – something that would somehow keep his family together despite the fact that he himself had torn it to pieces by acting like an idiot. There’s no better glue than kids growing together, loving each other. Seeing all his sons and daughters get along like that gives him hope that someday, when all is said and done, and sadness is something everybody dealt with already, leaving it behind like the distant trace of a bad dream, all there’s gonna be is gonna be love. That’s the legacy he wants to leave after he’s gone. A bunch of kids who call the lot of them family.

“Are you ready?” Timmy asks sweetly, “We’ve got a flight to catch. We don’t wanna be late.”

“We won’t, don’t worry,” Alex answers with a soft smile as he holds his sister gently and carefully between his arms, to keep her safe as he stands up. Timmy follows him upstairs, and into Lissy’s room. He watches him put the baby girl down in her crib and then, for a couple of minutes, they just look at her, sleeping peacefully with her lips slightly parted and her hair spread around her like the petals of a flower. Timmy moves closer, feeling Alex’s body against himself, and puts a hand on his, entwining their fingers. Alex smiles, amused, turning to look at him. He’s about to say something, but Timmy doesn’t let him.

He leans in, pressing their lips together in a soft, dry, rather innocent kiss, especially considering their standards. “I love you,” he says then, looking straight into his eyes.

Alex blushes, biting at his bottom lip. “You didn’t need to tell me,” he says.

Timmy kisses him again. “I wanted nonetheless.”

*

Timmy loves the Hamptons’ house.

It’s not just because of all the good memories linked to it, memories from back when their parents were still together, the twins weren’t a thing yet and all that took to happiness was him, Leo and Blaine alone somewhere, visiting places, seeing things, having fun, playing the happy family despite the kind of history they had just left behind. No, it’s something simpler than that, the Hamptons’ house makes him happy because it’s untainted.

Nothing bad ever happened here. No fights. He’s never been here with Leo alone or with Blaine alone. Cody’s been here with Blaine, Alex and the twins before Lissy was born, actually, but it was back when Timmy still refused to ever leave Leo’s side for more than just a few hours to go to school, and so Timmy wasn’t there to see it, he wasn’t there to witness the temple of their parents’ love being desecrated by the presence of a different man alongside his father.

This is still the same place, to him. The only place in the world in which, at least in his mind, his parents are still together.

And he can pretend Alex isn’t his brother.

“I keep forgetting how cool this place is,” Alex comments, walking in and dropping his bag on the floor, “And how huge.” He chuckles, turning around in a graceful, almost harmonious movement to look at him, “What are we ever gonna do with all this space, just us?”

“I’ve got a few ideas,” Timmy jokes, closing the door and taking off his jacket.

Alex laughs out loud, amused. “Right!” he says, “This is the first time we come here together, and on our own, to boot! We need to christen all the rooms.”

“All of them?” Timmy smirks, “Be careful what you wish for. We’re talking no less than ten rooms and two bathrooms, and I’m not counting the pool as an actual room, but that’d need christening too, if we were to do things methodically.”

“What,” Alex chuckles, walking closer and grinning, “You don’t think you can handle this?” he asks, playfully slapping his own ass.

“Oh, I can handle this,” Timmy answers, suddenly wrapping an arm around his waist and bringing him closer, just to hear him squeal in surprise and then try and wriggle out of his hold when he feels his hand close around one of his buttocks and squeeze, “I was just worrying about you. Ten to thirteen fucks are a lot to take for just one ass.”

“Maybe it won’t be my ass alone taking them,” Alex grins again.

“Ah, sure, I can fuck your mouth too, that’s no biggie,” Timmy smirks.

“I was talking about your ass, idiot!” Alex laughs, hitting his chest with his closed fist, “Maybe I’ll fuck you, that’s what I meant!”

Timmy freezes on the spot, swallowing. “Alex…” he says, but Alex cuts him off, laughing victoriously in his face.

“Look at him getting stiffer than a stick!” he comments, still laughing, “Seriously, you’re the straightest guy to ever have fucked a boy. Ever!”

Timmy frowns and grunts, majorly disappointed in Alex’s mockery. “Are you having fun?” he asks rhetorically, his lips pursing into a childish pout.

“As a matter of fact,” Alex’s smile softens up, as he leans into Timmy’s hug, resting his hand over his chest and lifting himself on his tiptoes to place a small kiss on his lips, “Yes. We never play like this at home. We can never be loud and we can never be dirty, and that’s annoying, ‘cause I’m fifteen and all I want in life is to be loud and dirty.”

“You’re not fifteen,” Timmy smiles against his lips, kissing him back, “Yet.”

“Which makes it even more absurd that we aren’t constantly walking around telling each other bad jokes on the size of our dicks,” Alex insists, tracing the inner line of Timmy’s lips with the tip of his tongue, “I mean, for Christ’s sake, Timmy, I am a kid. Let me be a kid.”

“God…” Timmy chuckles, hiding his face against the curve of Alex’s shoulder, “Don’t remind me. I’m gonna end up in jail.”

“Don’t act like you don’t like me being so young,” Alex smirks, gently biting Timmy’s neck, “You’re a perv.”

“I am,” Timmy admits, looking back up at him from less than an inch distance, “I so am. I’m glad you were so young I was the first to put my hands on you, so whatever happens to us I will always be the first who ever fucked you.”

“That’s fucked up,” Alex says, but the genuine amusement ringing in his laughter makes it sound like he doesn’t think it fucked up at all. Or, if he does, he doesn’t care.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Timmy says, wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist and hugging him close, squeezing gently. He’s so soft, and he smells so good. Timmy rubs his nose along Alex’s neck and enjoys the feeling, because Alex rarely lets him stay this close for so long. He is, indeed, a kid, and that makes him restless, needy, always looking for something more, so whenever Timmy manages to break the barrier of his moodiness to get a hug as a prize at the end of the forest of thorns, that never lasts long. Soon enough Alex starts kissing him and rubbing against him, begging him to take him, and Timmy knows that even if he insisted on just hugging for a while that would only make Alex frustrated and angry, prompting him to pull away.

Timmy supposes that’s only natural, truly. When you’re used to keep your romantic relationship a secret, you also grow used to steal bits and pieces of intimacy whenever nobody’s looking, which doesn’t happen often, considering they’re mostly surrounded with children for the majority of the day and when the kids aren’t there it’s usually their parents dancing around them like extremely annoying spinning tops.

That’s why now it’s so different. ‘Cause they’re not hiding, and there’s no one around who could suddenly come out from behind a corner and see them do something they’re not supposed to do. Alex doesn’t feel like he has to grab him and keep him desperately close for as long as he can, since it usually isn’t long at all, and as a consequence of that he’s relaxing, he’s growing less pushy, he’s enjoying himself more.

That’s exactly what Timmy wanted. That’s all he wants Alex to understand: if they tell their parents, they’re gonna lose this chance at something normal. They’re gonna lose their chance at anything at all, really. They will never allow them to stay together. Timmy’s almost an adult, now, while Alex is gonna stay just a kid for at least three more years. If their parents could accept their relationship despite their family tie, which is unthinkable already, they’d still never be able to accept their relationship as it is now. They’d quickly do the math, they’d guess how old they were when this all started, they’d blame Timmy, of course they would, as they should, and it’d all be over.

While it’d be so much easier if they just dealt with it on their own. If Alex just understood that he doesn’t have to keep clutching at him baring his claws and driving them through his flash to try and hold him close. Life could always be like this. They could always run out here, every now and then. No one would know. And the dark corners don’t have to be hiding places. They can just be their own little pocket universe, where rules are different, where they can be together.

They don’t need to tell the truth, they just need to grow stronger into the lie. So they can keep repeating it. And never start to believe it.

But he can’t say this out loud to Alex right now. No, of course not. That’d be stupid. He doesn’t see this truth yet. He firmly believes he’s right, because like all kids he’s completely unprepared to accept a vision of the world that isn’t his own. It’s okay, Timmy doesn’t resent him for that. If anything, this only makes him like him even more.

He’ll come ‘round it, he thinks to himself as he kisses him and slips a hand into his pants, making him melt in a deep, wet moan, he just needs time. Timmy can wait.

*

They have planned to spend three days out here, and they have easily been the happiest of Timmy’s life since his parents got divorced and he understood pain had been, up to that moment, a word he had seriously and gravely misused to indicate a kind of suffering that wasn’t indeed suffering at all.

It sounds overdramatic, and nobody would probably believe him if he said it out loud, but he’s never been happy again, after his parents split. Sure, he felt some happiness, every now and then. With Tana, with Alex, with his siblings, during some sport competition, at school, reading some of his farming books and entertaining himself with the thought of having his own farm someday, but feeling happiness is different than really being happy, and Timmy has never been happy again, after the divorce.

He wonders, does it feel like this for all the broken kids coming out of broken families, no matter how hard their families try to mend themselves not to make the children suffer too much? He doesn’t know. The only child of divorced parents he knows is Alex, and he has never talked about his feelings about the divorce with him. First, because Alex doesn’t really like talking about feelings. And second, because the two divorces that preceded Blaine and Cody going to live together ultimately led to them meeting, and falling in love. He doesn’t want to make Alex think he regrets that, and since he’s almost a hundred percent sure he wouldn’t be able to explain himself, as if often happens, if he tried and talk about this, he prefers not to, and avoid the problem altogether. (Something he’s getting quite used to do. And pretty good at, too.)

Fact is, when his parents split, something got taken away from him. Possibly the certainty that, no matter what you do in your life, where you go, how far you travel, a safe nest will always be home, waiting for you when you return. His nest had stopped being safe the moment both papa birds had decided it wasn’t worth keeping it so anymore. Suddenly, one nest had split into two, and – Timmy had found out with horror – none of them was really safe, ‘cause there was pain in both places, pain waiting around the corner, just waiting for him to relax, to get used to it, to strike him as hard as it possibly could.

Leo’s empty smile, his father’s broken one, they weren’t things Timmy could forget, or avoid, or stop thinking about, because they were there. All the time. And suddenly, the two people who were supposed to shelter him from pain until he grew able to face it on his own were the ones pouring pain all over him, like motherfucking waterfalls of heartache and suffering.

Is it really possible that there are children of divorced parents who can know and experience what happiness is anymore? Timmy doesn’t know, but he doesn’t think so. Parents steal something away from you, when they break up. They take away something you love. Something you cared for.

Losing his family was the first, great loss of his life. He mourned for it as if it had been a dead relative. And that mourning had left a scar inside him. As overly theatrical as it may possibly sound, that scar makes him simply unable to be a happy person anymore. There’s always something lingering in the background, a darker shade in his eyes, in his smile, that’s never going away.

But being far from everything else and in the sole company of Alex in the last three days got him closer to that. Got him closer to happiness. As close as being really happy as he can possibly hope to be, he’d guess if he had to.

They’ve been playing the happy couple, mostly. No one really knows them out here, no one has ever seen them together with their family and the neighborhood is pretty discreet anyway, so no one notices them, and those who do still don’t know they’re brothers. That gives them the chance to do things they’d never be allowed to do back in Lima, from kissing publicly to walk around hand in hand, from going on dates without worrying about looking too romantic for two brothers to joke about what they do and what they don’t and so on.

It’s different in the house too. Since they know nobody except them is walking around, they don’t lock doors. They oversleep. They don’t care if they end up tangled in a messy knot of bodies and sheets when they sleep together. Alex walks around half naked to tease him and Timmy touches him without fear, enjoying it, the playing around, the being together, the sharing, the closeness.

It feels good to be able to act naturally around Alex, as if he was just his boyfriend and not his brother too. It’s one of those too good to last deals, Timmy knows it, but he clings to it, and sometimes, when they’re alone in bed and it’s already dark outside, and Alex’s body searches for his own to share warmth and a few cuddles before sleeping, he has the impression Alex is clinging to it too, and that gives him hope that maybe, just maybe, maybe he’s convincing himself, and they won’t really have to tell.

*

The weather hasn’t been really kind with them on any of those three days. It’s been cold and rather cloudy, making it impossible for them to even think about going for a stroll on the beach, for example, but at least it hasn’t rained yet – yet being the keyword, of course, as it painfully shows when, on their last night in the house, just when they’re about to finish getting ready to go out for dinner, it finally happens.

“Shit,” Alex whines, looking out the window, his nose pressed against the glass as his lips purse in a disappointed pout, “It’s raining so hard.”

“Are you that devastated at the prospect of spending the evening at home with me?” Timmy asks, chuckling softly as he takes off his shirt and puts something more comfortable on.

Alex turns around, one hand on his hip, an amused grin curling his lips at the corners. “Maybe I am, I can’t stand you anymore,” he says, and then laughs. “I don’t know, it’s just… it’s our last night out here, I wanted to go out, have dinner, maybe go dancing.”

“We can dance in here, can’t we?”

“No way,” Alex laughs, amused, “You’re ridiculously bad at dancing, if we have to dance together it must be in a place dark enough that I can’t see how stupid you look, or I will never want to fuck you again.”

“I’m not that bad at it…” Timmy mutters, pouting a little. Alex chuckles, and moves closer to him, standing on his tiptoes to kiss him.

“I’m okay with staying in,” he whispers on his lips, “If you make it worth the while.”

“Don’t I always?” Timmy asks, leaning in and kissing him again, more deeply. Alex parts his lips, giving in to it instantly, his tongue searching for Timmy’s as he lifts his arms and wraps them around Timmy’s neck, clinging to him.

“Seriously…” he exhales in a little moan, as he presses his body against Timmy’s and feels him hard against his thigh, “What is it? Are you always hard or are you just very quick to get there when I touch you?”

“A mix of both,” Timmy answers against his lips, trying to slip a hand inside Alex’s scandalously tight checkered pants and failing, “Can’t you take this shit off?”

Alex laughs, rubbing his nose against Timmy’s. “You wanna fuck?” he asks, moving his leg over Timmy’s crotch.

“Among other things,” he says, letting out an half-annoyed, half-excited groan.

Alex smiles, backing off a little. “Well,” he says, “Since we can’t go out… maybe I can put up a little show, at least.”

Timmy opens his eyes, looking at him. His heart’s already beating faster. He watches Alex as he turns the lights off, and he sits on the bed when Alex comes closer again, keeping himself at a distance only to show off as he undresses. The only lights now are the ones coming from the outside. The distant streetlamps, casting their yellow, warm light over Alex’s white skin, making it glisten golden, and then, every now and then, the sudden blaze of a lightning, washing over him in white flashes that cast his shadow on the opposite wall, making him look like something out of some weird, fucked up wet nightmare.

He bites at his inner cheek while Alex takes off his pants, pulling them down so slowly he almost wants to stomp his feet on the floor in annoyance. Alex sees that, reads it on his face, and smirks lightly as he kicks his pants away and then wraps his fingers around the hem of his black t-shirt, pulling it up.

His navel piercing is of course the first thing Timmy sees, the tiny metal ball shining and casting a long, curved shadow over Alex’s tummy when another lightning sets the night alight for a few seconds. His insides twist into a painful knot, and as always all he wants to do is get on his knees and crawl to him, hold his hips between his hands and just press his face against the gentle curve of his belly, to kiss his navel and play with his piercing.

Everything about Alex is mesmerizing, Timmy is unable to have controlled reactions in front of him. It’s not just that he wants him, it’s that he needs to have him. He needs to surrender to him, to let go of everything else, to just close his eyes and turn the world into a place where only Alex is important, and the rest means nothing.

He was so scared to do so, up to just a few months ago. Alex was something to run away from, because his presence made Timmy want to relinquish control, and he was sure, so damn sure, so stupidly sure that the moment he would do that, lose control, let go, he’d have lost everything.

What everything was, back then, he didn’t know. He knows now, though. It was pain. He was holding onto pain because pain defined him. Pain reminded him who he was, where and what and who was he coming from. Pain. In Leo’s silent house. In Blaine’s evanescent family of people he had loved and loved still. In walking around his parents on his tiptoes all the time, terrified to say and do the wrong thing without even noticing. In holding it together. In wanting to be strong for them, since they couldn’t. In protecting Leo from his own apathy, in sheltering Blaine from that deep, corrosive sadness that was eating him up from the inside.

All that was hard, and painful, and too much for a kid his age, even if he had been doing it for years already. And Alex made him want to let go of all this. Just let go and be alright. Let go and let somebody else take care of the pain, soothe it out.

And now he has that. He has tried what it means to close his eyes and give in, he knows the kind of joy you feel when you’re not just yourself anymore, but yourself in the hands of someone else, and that’s what Alex is asking him to say goodbye to. That’s what he wants to risk losing.

And Timmy just can’t. He can’t. He can’t go back to what life was before, to the pain and the holding himself together by a thread and the pushing everything away, the trying to smile his way through things hoping they’d pass on their own at some point.

He can’t. He knows pain wouldn’t pass. If he lost Alex, pain just wouldn’t be over. Ever.

He closes his arms around Alex’s body, hugging him close, hiding his face in his chest. He kisses him all over, his hands following the slightly curved line of his spine up and down his back, and then he lowers himself, slipping off the bed, falling on his knees on the carpeted floor, locking his lips around Alex’s navel piercing, sucking at it.

Alex moans, passing his fingers through his hair, shivering every time Timmy’s mouth opens and close against his skin, and for a moment or two he gets to feel the edge of his teeth pressing on his tummy in wet half-bites.

“We’re hungry, tonight…” he whispers, his hand moving away from Timmy’s hair and down his face, stroking his jaw, “Aren’t we?”

“Yes,” Timmy groans against Alex’s skin, sticking his tongue in his navel, “I wanna eat you out.”

“I like that,” Alex blushes just lightly, out of pure arousal, not an ounce of embarrassment in his glistening eyes, or in the rough sound of his voice, “Do it,” he whispers, moving forward against Timmy, his hard-on, hidden by his underpants, bumping against Timmy’s chin.

Timmy nods, hooking his fingers around the waistband of Alex’s underpants and pulling them down, baring his erection.

He’s on him the second after, parting his lips to welcome him in his mouth and sucking hard, feeling his taste on his own tongue. God, there’s nothing he likes more than Alex’s taste. It’s just as enticing as the rest of him is, just as addictive. The mere idea of losing that, losing the chance to taste him every day, makes him feel hopeless and so beyond simple sadness he doesn’t even know the right word to describe that.

Alex moans, his hands both on Timmy’s head, stroking his scalp, pulling him closer when Timmy backs off, then guiding him to take him deeper, or pushing him away to take a breath when he knows he’s about to choke. They feel each other so perfectly, they’re so ridiculously synchronized, now, everything comes up naturally between them, especially during sex. They never hurt each other. They never do something wrong. It’s all pleasure. All pleasure, all the time.

He won’t be caught dead risking to lose that.

He moves away from him, and when Alex whines in a vague complaint, pushing his hand on top of his head to bring him back to where he was and what he was doing, he reaches back, holding that hand in his own and bringing it closer to his mouth, to leave a small kiss on his palm, to calm him down and make him focus on him. Alex does it, looking down at him, his eyes a little watery, his cheeks flushed.

“You got bored?” he asks him, passing his thumb over Timmy’s swollen lips.

Timmy shakes his head. “Turn around,” he says.

Alex bites at his bottom lip, unable to contain a little smile. “You’re really hungry, aren’t you?”

“I told you,” Timmy answers, sticking out his tongue just enough to lick the tip of Alex’s thumb with it, “I wanna eat you out.”

Alex chuckles, moving away from him to turn around and bend over the bed. He’s about to get on all fours on it, but Timmy stops him, because he can’t wait. He grabs his hips, holding them still between his hands, and dives between his buttocks, his tongue pressing insistently against Alex’s opening, pushing through it, inside his body. Alex lets out a soft whimper, closing his fingers around the sheets, holding onto them. Timmy can already feel him shiver all over, and it feels so good, so good to know for certain what works for him works for Alex too, that it’s not just him getting lost in all this, that it’s them, together, that Alex is putting himself in his hands just as much as he himself is doing with him.

That they’re one and the same, in this. That there’s a bond that cannot be broken, and it’s theirs.

“Timmy…” Alex whispers, his voice weak and needy, one of his hands letting go of the sheets only to reach back for Timmy, to try and get a hold of him, “Enough teasing… come on.”

Timmy nods, climbing on the bed too, right behind him, and lowering himself on him, to leave a trail of soft, wet kisses all over his nape and shoulders. “You taste so good…” he whispers, leaving another kiss right behind his ear, “I’d lick you all day.”

“Put it in,” Alex whines, triggered by the dirty talking even more than he has already been by Timmy’s ministrations.

“I like you so much…” Timmy goes on, his fingers finding their way to Alex’s opening and past it, pushing in, “You’re perfect.”

Alex whines again, so loud it almost sounds like a proper sob. His hips swing and push back, but he’s disappointed Timmy’s just fingering him instead of properly fucking him. “Timmy, please,” he begs, the tight ring of muscles contracting around Timmy’s fingers, squeezing them at their base, “Please, put it in.”

“I love you,” Timmy whispers, his fingers still moving inside Alex’s body as he brings his other hand between his thighs, palming him up and down, “I love you.”

“God…” Alex shivers desperately, stretching his back, resting his elbows on the mattress and crossing his arms only to hide his face between them, “Is this one of those times…?” he asks with a shaky voice, his hips moving twice as fast, now, relentlessly trying to follow the movements of both his hands, trying to set a pace he can go by despite Timmy’s firm refusal to give him one, to bring him to his knees.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Timmy breathes straight into Alex’s ear, nibbling at his earlobe. He says that, but he’s lying. He knows.

“One of those times,” Alex breathes out, his voice weary and whiny, his body being pushed to its limits, “When you can’t just fuck me, you need to break me.”

“I don’t wanna break you,” he answers, licking his way down Alex’s jaw and searching for a kiss.

“You do,” Alex insists, resisting the urge to kiss him back at first, but ultimately turning around, giving in, locking their lips together, “You need to see me broken and desperate and out of my mind, every now and then.” He moans louder when, as an answer to that, Timmy thrusts his fingers deeper inside him, “You need to… ah… to win me over completely, and…” he holds his breath, biting at his bottom lip, “God, I love it… I love it, Timmy, I love you, just, please, fuck me, please, I can’t take it anymore.”

“I’m sure you can,” Timmy says softly, his whole body on fire. Alex has no idea, he simply has no idea how much Timmy wants to just pull his fingers out of him and slam his cock inside him, but he can’t, not now, it’s too soon, if he did it now then everything would be over already, and what would be left for them except the rest of this rainy night, knowing tomorrow they will have to go back home, that there’s nothing but a handful of hours in between them and Lissy’s birthday, in between them and the end of their story?

“Timmy,” Alex’s voice weakens and he holds his breath again when Timmy closes his hand more firmly around his cock, now jerking him off while he keeps thrusting his fingers inside of him up to their knuckles, “Timmy, please.”

“It’s gonna happen,” Timmy says, rubbing his nose against Alex’s cheek, leaving soft kisses over his hot skin, “I’m gonna put it in when the time is right and you can’t take it anymore, and I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’re gonna scream.” He licks his way down Alex’s neck and then briefly closes his lips around his shoulder to suck at it for a second, before speaking on him again, “Don’t you want me to make you scream, sweets? Like you can never do back home.”

“Yes!” Alex shouts, his whole body tensing as he comes suddenly, “Oh, God!” he lets out a half-sob, his hips jerking forward, again and again, Timmy’s hand still wrapped around his cock, which refuses to soften even after his orgasm, “Oh, God, Timmy, stop,” he whines. He’s got tears at the corners of his eyes, like it always happens when they push it a little too far and it starts becoming too overwhelming and hard to bear, “Timmy, I can’t,” he sobs again, his hips still moving as if guided by a will of their own.

“You’re still hard,” Timmy whispers, passing his fingers all over the wet, sticky tip of Alex’s cock. Alex shouts again, his body jerking upwards as if it had been just passed through by an electric jolt. He’s panting and whimpering and his legs are shaking, and his arms are shaking too, and he’s so tense he looks as if he was just about to come undone, and that’s when Timmy moves, when he pulls his fingers out in exchange for his own cock, that he buries deep into Alex’s body in one hard, firm thrust that makes Alex move up on his knees and arch his back in a curve as rounded and perfectly white as the side of the moon.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Timmy!” he yells, reaching behind to put a hand on Timmy’s nape, keeping him close as he feels him pounding inside his body, “God… you’re impossible.”

“Do you like it?” Timmy asks eagerly, his lips glued to Alex’s neck, his hands firmly wrapped around his hips.

“I do…” he says, trying to relax, trying to breathe normally again, despite how hard it is at this point, “Christ, you’re so fucking big.”

“Am I?” Timmy feels a deep shiver run down his spine, pool in his loins, explode through all his body like fire, making his hips move faster, “Does it feel good?”

“Feels great,” Alex moans, reaching back and clutching both hands around the curve of Timmy’s ass, demanding him to thrust harder, “Fuck me,” he moves restlessly, “Fuck me harder, Timmy, please.”

Timmy parts his lips and then closes them again around Alex’s neck, biting and licking and sucking at it as he complies, pounding hard inside him, making the bed shake with every thrust, the headboard banging against the wall, the wooden slats under the mattress creaking under their constantly moving weight. He fucks him as hard and fast and deep as Alex demands, following his every order, making sure he’s always doing the best he possibly can to make him feel good, more than good, great, and when Alex comes again, with an exhausted, hoarse groan that leaves him spent and weak, there Timmy decides he can let go, he had enough, and he comes too, releasing his orgasm inside him up to the last drop, filling him up to the point that when he finally pulls out some of his sperm squirts out of Alex’s still stretched and contracting opening, causing him to shiver again as he curls in a ball on the bed, unable to move, to speak, to even open his eyes.

Timmy looks at him and can’t help but smile a little, lying down next to him, wrapping his arms around him. Alex leans back on him, his back against Timmy’s chest. He’s not overly cuddly, he just needs to touch, so Timmy doesn’t move, he just hugs him, waiting for it to be over.

When he hears him start breathing normally again, he dares to lean in and kiss him on his cheek. “Was it too much?” he asks.

“Nah, it was okay,” Alex answers, his lips curling in a relaxed smile, his eyes still closed, “I wasn’t expecting it, though.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know,” he chuckles, “I was kind of expecting you to be all grumpy and full of resentment, but you’ve been okay. Maybe I misjudged you and you’re not entirely an idiot.”

“Wow,” Timmy smiles, “That’s so kind of you. I’m moved.”

“As you should,” Alex nods. Then he stretches out, and Timmy instantly removes his arm, to let him free to move. Alex doesn’t thank him, but he appreciates, Timmy knows, and stands up from the bed with a pretty smile curling his lips.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m thirsty as hell,” he says, “Screamed too much,” he adds with a smirk. “Water?”

“Sure,” Timmy nods. Then he lies down on the bed, pleasantly naked in the warmth of the bedroom, basking in the smell of them, and when Alex comes back, smirking mischievously and holding two bottles in his hands, he chuckles. “What’s that?”

“Something better than water,” Alex grins, climbing back on the bed and sitting cross-legged next to him. “Here, I already opened yours,” he adds, handing him one of the bottles.

“Ah, so it’s one each?” Timmy laughs, amused. He looks at the bottle and he’s pretty sure he recognizes the label on the front. His father got this wine – a Tuscan Cabernet Sauvignon bottled in 2035 that is, at this point, probably more of an object to proudly display in a glass case than something to drink – a few years before. Timmy remembers he had bought it especially in case something particularly worth celebrating happened. It’s no surprise it survived until now, really. He takes a sip right from the bottle, letting the warm, bitter taste of the red wine flow through him. “God!” he laughs, “It’s strong.”

“Yeah,” Alex chuckles. He’s drinking too, small, little sips that never fail to force a little grimace out of him.

“You’re not used to drink wine, are you?” Timmy chuckles too, amused.

“Nope,” Alex admits with another soft laughter, “But I wanna get drunk.”

“Why?”

Alex shrugs lightly, his long black hair bouncing above his shoulders. “Just because,” he says.

That’s gotta be enough.

They drink together, naked on the bed for hours. Takes them a while to finish both bottles. Timmy finishes his own faster than Alex, and when he realizes it he pouts, disappointed, and Alex laughs and tells him they can share his. They drink from the same bottle, then kiss, then drink from each other’s lips. The bed is warm and they keep cuddling, and it feels amazing.

After a while, they start talking more honestly than they ever did. Alex tells him about school, about friends, about missing Italy, missing his father, who stayed there after the divorce. They barely see each other except on Skype, and going over there two weeks every year for the summer isn’t enough.

Timmy holds him, kisses him on his forehead and tells him he’s sorry, but Alex laughs and pinches him. “Nothing to be sorry about,” he says, “Life isn’t shitty for me alone. We’re all just hanging in there hoping it’s gonna get better, but I’m starting to get it, y’know? It doesn’t get better. You just grow fonder of how shitty it is.”

“Gosh, you’re grim, for a kid.”

“All kids are grim,” Alex chuckles, “Why else do you think Tim Burton is still such a huge deal among teenagers?”

Timmy tells him he’s right, and mocks him for being a cynical drunk, and then asks him to tell him more about his father, about what they used to do together. Alex has to admit they didn’t do much, they weren’t exactly compatible in that sense. “He’s got a farm, you know?” he says.

Timmy’s eyes widen in disbelief. “Seriously?” he says, shocked, “That’s so cool!”

“It wasn’t bad,” Alex chuckles, his eyes shimmering in the lightning still illuminating the night every now and then, “But it certainly wasn’t cool.”

“Are you kidding me?” Timmy insists, “I want a farm too.”

Alex turns to look at him, raising both eyebrows and then bursting into laughing. “Really?” he asks, “How can a spoiled child like you want a farm?”

“I don’t know!” Timmy answers, as if he really was just as surprised as Alex was, “I just do. It’s relatively new, I mean, I haven’t always wanted to have a farm, but recently I ended up reading some good books on the topic. You know. I was searching for something to do with my life.”

“And you happened to find out your way was in the fields, or raising pigs and cows,” Alex laughs.

“Well, yes!” Timmy insists, “Don’t mock me, I’m serious. Leo told me: you need to find your way, and I told him: but I only like sports, and he was like well, then choose one, and I said I didn’t want to, because I want sports to be hobbies, you know, I wouldn’t want to make a profession out of them. So we talked it out and he suggested me to just go read something at the library. And there I stumbled upon ‘You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise’—”

“And it impressed you so much you still remember the entire title!” Alex laughs out loud, twice as amused as he would already normally be because of the wine.

“Sort of, yeah,” Timmy chuckles, “It was interesting. But most of all it was the pictures, you know?”

“I was sure it would come down to the pictures,” Alex giggles, resting his head against Timmy’s shoulder and drinking some more, “I bet you didn’t even read a word.”

“I did,” Timmy pouts, offended, “I read the whole thing. And it was interesting, as I said. But the pictures, those weren’t interesting, those were simply beautiful. All those animals, all that land. Can you imagine it? All that land, all to yourself. All those animals, all yours to tend to. Fruits and vegetables to grow, cheeses to make, cows to milk, and chickens…” he smiles a little, when Alex turns to kiss him on his cheek, “I don’t know. The thought gives me peace. So much peace. So, yeah…” he chuckles, “You’re the first person I talk with about this. The first ever. Feels good.”

Alex smiles again, and nods. “I know, right?” he says, “Feels good to let it out. Can’t wait to do the same, tomorrow.”

There’s a lightning and a thunder right after that, and they wouldn’t even notice if they were still talking. But Timmy has frozen over like blown away by a winter breeze, and in the utter, cold silence that suddenly fills the room the noise is so heavy it’s almost scary.

“About that…” he says. Next to him, Alex stiffens instantly.

“What?” he asks. His voice is firm, stern, but there’s a little bit of anxiety under the surface, telling Timmy he’s got to tread carefully.

“I mean…” he tries, swallowing hard, “We had fun out here, didn’t we?”

“Sure,” Alex says. Timmy doesn’t turn to look at him. Besides, he’s pretty sure Alex wouldn’t look back anyway. “But we can’t stay any longer. Lissy’s birthday—”

“I was just thinking,” Timmy interrupts him, his voice shaking a little, “That maybe we don’t really have to tell everybody.”

It’s silence again for the longest time, after that. Timmy’s scared to call for Alex, scared to break the stillness and set everything in motion. Scared that that’ll push Alex away.

But Alex pushes himself away on his own.

“I can’t fucking believe it,” he says, getting off the bed and quickly retrieving his clothes from the ground, to wear them again, “I can’t fucking— I just can’t.”

“Alex.”

“I need to get out of here.”

“Alex!” Timmy calls out for him, jumping off the bed too, tidying up his clothes, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?! Me?!” Alex screams, turning to look at him with real fire in his light blue eyes, “You dragged me here promising me it was only gonna be for three days, and then we’d be back and we’d tell our parents! And now, after three days, you just come out and say ‘you know what, let’s not’, and I’m ridiculous?!”

“You know I didn’t mean it in that way.”

“I don’t fucking know how you mean anything anymore!” Alex lifts both his arms, and then turns around, “Fuck it. Fuck you!”

“Alex, please,” Timmy insists, running after him and putting his hands on his shoulders, keeping him inside the bedroom before he had a chance to really walk out, “At least hear me out! Let’s talk about this! If I just could be able to make you understand—”

What?!” Alex interrupts him, freeing himself from his hold, “Make me understand what, Timmy? That you’re a coward? That you don’t even care for me?”

“That’s not even true!”

“It is!” Alex yells, tears of rage in his eyes, “I told you I don’t like things as they are now! I don’t like hiding! I don’t like feeling dirty for wanting to be with you! I don’t want to be your dirty little secret, Timmy! But I guess that’s all I am to you, aren’t I? The dirty slut you like to fuck, but only if no one knows! So, next time you turn back straight again, you can run back to your auntie whore and—”

Timmy slaps him so hard that, for a second, the sound echoes louder than the sound of the rain. Then he stops and looks at Alex, his head turned to the side, his cheek quickly turning red.

He should apologize. He doesn’t.

“You pathetic piece of shit!” Alex yells at him, turning around and launching himself towards him, slapping him first, then trying to scratch him.

“Alex—”

“How dare you touch me?!” Alex isn’t even listening to him, he doesn’t care. Right now he just hates him so much if hate alone could kill Timmy would be already dead.

“Alex, please.”

“No!” he screams, “I don’t wanna listen to you!” he comes closer, grabbing Timmy by the collar of his hoodie, “I don’t wanna fucking hear a single word coming from your mouth ever again in my life!”, and he slaps him again, only this time he does it by making sure his nails are bare like claws, and when he takes his hand away there are three scratches cutting Timmy’s face in three parts, and there’s blood coming out of them, and it’s a lot.

“Shit,” Timmy mutters when the blood starts dripping on the floor.

Alex stops, looking at him. There’s blood on his fingers, and some of Timmy’s skin under his nails. He grimaces and presses a hand over his stomach, as if the sight made him want to puke.

“…fuck,” he says. He’s crying.

“Alex,” Timmy whispers, walking closer but scared to touch him, “Alex, don’t worry, I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” Alex sobs, looking away, “You are? Good for you. We’re not.”

*

When Alex walks into the room again, Timmy straightens himself up, throwing his legs off the bed, tensing all over. For a moment, through the open doors, all the sounds of the ER flood the room, and it’s like being thrown back in time, to half an hour before, when they were still waiting for somebody to take care of Timmy’s wounds, and Timmy had to press a towel hard against his face not to make a pool of his own blood on the floor, and they couldn’t speak to one another, not a single word, while all around them people cried and whined and nurses called numbers and everything seemed to move in slow motion, and both of them clearly thought if there was such a thing as purgatory, in the afterlife, it had to look a lot like that.

Then Alex closes the door and silence falls upon them again, and they’re out of purgatory, and probably hellbound.

“They say—”

“Can I have a hug?” Timmy hastens to say, already opening his arms and reaching out to Alex, despite being as far from him as he possibly can in such a small room. He didn’t mean for it to sound so needy, but after all that’s exactly how he feels right now. He’s desperate and needy and he wants his boyfriend back, stat. He can’t even think if they can’t be back together.

Alex, leaning against the closed door, looks up to him, his eyes unfocused and still red-stained from tears. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Please,” Timmy wheezes, stretching his arms even more, as if he could reach him if he only stretched them long enough, “Please, don’t do that. You’re killing me.”

Alex’s bottom lip trembles, and in a few second they’re close together, and Timmy can wrap his arms around Alex’s body, and he can inhale his scent, and feel his warmth, and stroke his hair, and everything’s alright again, he can function, he can breathe, nothing hurts anymore.

“Timmy, I—”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts him, hiding his face against his neck, “I didn’t wanna hurt you. I’m serious. I’m an idiot, but I’m not cruel, and I love you. I didn’t wanna hurt you. I’m just fucking scared. You have no idea. I’m so fucking scared.”

Alex passes his fingers through Timmy’s hair slowly. Timmy can’t see his expression, but he can picture it perfectly in his mind. Those sad, red eyes, those beautiful lips curled downwards, maybe he’s crying without making a sound, maybe he’s crying without tears, like sometimes Alex does, crying inside, so nobody can see it. “You think I’m not?” he asks softly, his warm breath caressing Timmy’s skin.

“I don’t know,” Timmy answers, “I don’t know anything anymore. Except that I don’t wanna lose you.”

“You won’t,” Alex hugs him tighter, pressing himself against him for comfort, “Timmy, no matter what happens, I’m yours forever.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Timmy’s arms close strongly around Alex’s waist, squeezing him, “That’s not enough. It’s not enough to know that even if they break us up, you’ll keep loving me, and we’ll belong to one another in our hearts or whatever lame bullshit people are ready to believe in when they’re about to lose somebody they love and they don’t wanna face the pain. There is no such thing as being somebody else’s in one’s own heart. That’s worth nothing. It’s not real. When people break up, they break up. They’re alone. They’re not together anymore. And I can’t stand the thought— I need to be with you, not just to know we belong to one another. I can’t lose you.”

Alex shivers a little against him, holding onto his shoulders for a little while, before pulling back. He stays close, passing his fingers over Timmy’s face, over the bandage that covers half of it, leaving bare only his mouth, his eyes and his forehead. “I fucked you up pretty good,” he says, leaving a small kiss on Timmy’s nose, “They say it’s unlikely there’s gonna be any scar. But the wounds will take a little time to heal.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Timmy shakes his head and then presses his lips against Alex’s, “I’m alright. It doesn’t even hurt.”

“It will,” Alex sighs, resting his forehead against Timmy’s. “We have another problem, though. They don’t wanna let us go.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

Alex lets out another sigh, hugging Timmy again and resting his head above his shoulder. “When we arrived we were drunk, you were bleeding and I’ve got a bruise on my cheek that’s starting to show. I talked with the nurse at the reception ‘cause she wanted our info, and when she saw I’m a minor she told me that, given the situation, they won’t release us if not with a parent.”

“…fuck,” Timmy groans, closing his eyes, “Shit.”

“Yeah…” Alex smiles faintly, “My thoughts exactly.” Then he pulls away, resting his hands on Timmy’s shoulders and looking straight into his eyes. “What do we do?” he asks.

Timmy knows he’s not asking because he doesn’t know. Of course he knows. He’s asking because he wants to be on the same page again. Because he’s tired of fighting, and he’s tired of everything else too.

Honestly, Timmy’s just as tired as he is.

He sighs, closing his eyes and pressing a small kiss on Alex’s forehead. “Tell my dad,” he says.

Alex nods and retrieves his phone to text Blaine. Timmy looks at the screen as he does that, reading the text. “Could you come over?” it says, “We’re at Southampton Hospital. They won’t let us leave. Please, come ASAP.”

He sighs heavily, lying back down on the bed as he covers his eyes with his forearm. “My poor old dad,” he whispers softly. Alex chuckles sweetly, holding his hand.

*

Blaine called them on his way to the airport, but he didn’t ask many questions. He was clearly worried, that much was obvious in his voice, but he didn’t sound like he was freaking out, which was cool. He only asked if they were fine, if something serious had happened, and when Timmy answered “just a few scratches” in his own voice he grew a lot calmer, and told them he was about to jump on the first flight to New York, and he’d be there in a matter of hours.

He doesn’t ask many questions when he arrives either. He joins them in the room and the first thing he does is hug Timmy. He hasn’t been hugged by his father in years, and not because Blaine didn’t want to, of course. Somehow, for just too many reasons to count them, asking for a hug in the last couple years seemed ridiculous, and Timmy never did it. He learned to live without, he learned so well at some point he was convinced he just didn’t need them anymore, that he had grown out of the hugging phase.

But now that Blaine’s holding him, he melts between his arms. He closes his eyes and clings to his daddy and inhales the strong, masculine scent of his aftershave, sticking to his skin, sticking to his clothes, and his memory brings him back to when Leo wasn’t even in the picture, to when everything Timmy knew was Blaine, Blaine and love, love, love, all the love in the world.

He feels like crying, and he does. He cries like an idiot, sobbing lightly, and Blaine gets worried. “Are you sure you’re alright?” he asks, cupping Timmy’s face in his hands and looking at him closely, and Timmy needs to assure him that he is a thousand times, before Blaine finally accepts it.

He hugs Alex, too. He hugs him and kisses him on top of his head, and then tells him to call Cody the moment they let them go, ‘cause he was worried sick. “I’m sorry for making you worry,” Alex says, “And for scratching Timmy.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Blaine tells him, gently stroking his cheekbone, “I’m sure he deserved it.”

“Hey,” Timmy growls. Blaine silences him with another hug, that pacifies him completely.

Soon enough, one of the nurses comes knocking at the door. Blaine asks why they wouldn’t release the kids, and the nurse tells him they were worried, since one of them was a minor and they both were in pretty bad shape, not to mention drunk, when they checked in. “They kept saying they were brothers, but we couldn’t find any evidence,” she says, “Their surnames are different. The whole story sounded a little fishy. So it was either they called for a parent, or we would’ve called the police and let them take care of it.”

Blaine apologizes for the situation and explains things as they are. He confirms he’s the father, that one of the kids isn’t his own but he’s got custody anyway. He shows the nurse a couple of papers signed by both him and Cody. She seems satisfied, and invites him to follow her to the reception to straighten everything out and proceed to release the boys.

They all move. Timmy’s sick of this place, anyway. He just wants to be home.

He was sure they’d have gone straight for the airport, once out of the hospital, but Blaine rented a car and he’s driving back to the Hamptons’ house, now. “We’re going to stay the night,” he explains tiredly, “I couldn’t find three seats on any flight for today’s flight back on such a short notice. Besides, you still have all your things to collect. And maybe we should talk.”

The mere thought makes Timmy shiver.

At least it’s not raining anymore.

*

The first thing Blaine asks upon entering the house is if Timmy bled. They’re both surprised by it – probably because they weren’t expecting him to be so practical about it. They were kinda picturing him enter the house, turn the lights on and order them to sit on the couch for a little heart to heart.

Instead, Blaine doesn’t seem interested in sitting them anywhere. In fact, he seems quite pleased when they start following him around suspiciously. Or maybe he’s not pleased, maybe he’s just not bothered by it, used as he is to being chased around by children at all times of the day already.

Through the surprise and the confusion, Alex gathers enough straightness of mind to come up with an answer to his question. “Yes,” he says. And, when Blaine asks where, “In the bedroom.”

None of them is thinking about the conditions they left said bedroom in when they fled for the hospital in the only taxi that would take them with such bad weather. They don’t even realize how that could be a problem until Blaine walks in and obviously stops on the doorstep.

Their hearts miss a beat.

The bed is messed up. Messed up and dirty. They didn’t even open the window, and the room smells of sex and sweat. Sex and sweat and them. The two wine bottles are lying empty on the floor. Blaine isn’t pleased to see them. “My wine…” he says. He’s more sad than he’s upset, though. Timmy doesn’t know what to think of that.

He locates the bloodstains pretty quickly, once he turns the bedroom lights on. They’re just a few drops, luckily, but the light gray carpet covering the floor will hardly recover completely anyway. Nonetheless, he drops on his knees and starts cleaning it out, hot water and soap, hoping that’ll be enough.

“Either of you want to tell me what happened?”

He doesn’t seem angry. Not even annoyed. Just… ready, Timmy reckons. Ready. For whatever they might throw his way.

“We fought,” Alex answers for both of them.

“About what?”

“We had a disagreement.”

Blaine doesn’t answer. He keeps quiet, rubbing the carpet with the wet cloth. Rubbing and rubbing. Timmy’s blood’s starting to fade, already, nothing but a weirdly shaped orange-y shadow left behind.

He’s about to ask what about. He will in but a few seconds. Timmy can read it in his eyes with the same clarity he used to read a scolding when he was a child and he did something wrong. The question’s gonna come and Alex is terrified about it, because he’s not sure he can tell the truth after how things were left with Timmy, but he doesn’t wanna lie either.

Timmy can’t see him like that. With such fear in his eyes, such tension collecting in his beautiful features.

He holds Alex’s hand in his own and squeezes it.

“We fought about whether we should tell you or not that we’re together,” Timmy says, “As boyfriends.”

Blaine doesn’t even stop rubbing the carpet. In fact, he goes on without saying a word until he’s satisfied with the final result. The stain can barely even be seen, at this point, and only if you know where to look. He smiles, happy with himself, and then stands up, drying his hands on his pants.

“When were you planning on telling me?” he asks, looking at Timmy with indulgent eyes.

Timmy widens his own, parting his lips in disbelief. “You knew…?”

“No,” Blaine answers in a short chuckle, “Or, well, I didn’t know before today. I knew when I walked in here. The bed was a huge giveaway.”

They both blush wildly, looking down.

“I’m sorry,” Timmy says, “We should’ve tidied up. We shouldn’t have drank your wine either.”

“I suppose there was something worth celebrating?” he asks.

Alex shrugs. “Sort of,” he says, “I thought so. Then I changed my mind.” He casts a little look at Timmy, his eyes so shiny he almost looks like he’s gonna cry. “Now I changed my mind back.”

“So there was,” Blaine smiles, “That’s what matters.” Then he turns to Timmy again. “Do I want to know when this whole thing started?”

“I started it,” Alex answers before he can.

“Baby boy,” Blaine smiles kindly, “I’ve bedded an underage kid. I know what underage kids say when an adult questions them about who started it, especially if they wanted it. And who started it is completely irrelevant. Believe me,” he smiles again, “You don’t have to defend Timmy. Nobody’s accusing him.”

Alex lowers his eyes again, blushing some more. He’s a little restless, but he calms down when Timmy squeezes his hand.

“Let’s say I don’t care about when it started,” Blaine turns to Timmy again, “I guess what I really want to know is— Was it this?” Timmy looks up to his father, frowning a little. “Was this the reason?” Blaine goes on. His voice breaks in the most delicate way. “Why you wouldn’t be with me?”

And it’s like being filled to the brim with water. For a moment, Timmy’s scared he’s gonna choke on it. It feels like spitting and spitting and there’s always more water bubbling in his throat, threatening to cut the air out of his organism entirely, making him drown.

He can’t even breathe. His eyes fills with tears, he parts his lips to say something but he can’t, he just can’t.

“Dad—” he whimpers, but then Alex lets his hand go and he realizes that’s what he was waiting for, because when he’s left free to move he moves, and he throws himself at his father, hugging him, clinging to him like a child despite being taller than him now, and the water swells one last time inside him and then it overflows, and Timmy pours it all over Blaine, thinking dad, dad, please, hold the banks, hold them, ‘cause if you don’t I’ll be coming apart, I’ll disperse, and that’s what you’re here to do, dad, daddy, please, hold me together, hold me together like the river banks.

And Blaine wraps his arms around him and squeezes him, and his embrace is warm, warm and pleasant, and his voice is soft and soothing as he whispers, “It’s alright, powder puff, it’s alright. You couldn’t talk about it, could you? No, you couldn’t. My baby boy. Daddy’s here. It’s going to be alright, love, it’s going to be just fine.”

Timmy doesn’t realize it right away, but Alex is crying too. Crying like a baby, loud and messy, with his lips parted, his eyes squeezed shut and his fists clutched down his sides. Blaine welcomes him in his arms too and for the longest moment he just hugs them both, and nothing could possibly go wrong. Nothing.

“I never wanted to be away from you,” Timmy says, once he calms down, “Dad, I love you. I know it didn’t always feel like that. I know it hurt you when I stayed with Leo. But I had to, do you understand? One of us had to.”

Blaine strokes his cheek with his thumb, and Timmy notices he’s crying too. Very discreetly, as if he didn’t want to disturb Timmy and Alex’s personal tragedy with his own, but he is nonetheless. But he’s pushing through with a brave smile, his daddy. His brave, old daddy. Timmy hugs him again. He just loves him so much. He loves him so much for a moment there’s only love. In this room, in this city, all over this planet. As long as daddy’s by his side, there’s nothing he can’t face. Just like when he was a child. It never really changed. He just forgot for a brief moment.

“What are we gonna do?” Alex asks, drying his eyes and backing off a little. Timmy looks at him and can’t help but smile. He knows he’s feeling awkward, now, as he always does when he lets his guard down unexpectedly. He holds his hand again. Alex offers him a small smile as a thank you, and it’s a thanks enough.

Blaine sighs deeply, keeping quiet for a while as he thinks about it. “Well, technically this isn’t as bad as you probably think it is,” he says, trying to look at things with impartial eyes, “I mean, it feels weird. I’m not going to lie about it. To me, especially, because I consider you both my sons. But the fact is, though I got custody, I never properly adopted Alex, just like Cody never properly adopted you, Timmy. Speaking from a solely legal point of view, I’d say you managed to finally date somebody in your family that you wouldn’t be legally prosecuted for. I’d say, from your father’s sister, this is a good step in the right direction. Now, if you could possibly move on to cousins, I think we’d have better chances there.”

“Dad!” Timmy groans loudly, annoyed and shocked, “Shut up!”

But Blaine’s laughing and, surprisingly, Alex is laughing too, so Timmy decides this is not worth getting angry over.

“I’m just saying,” Blaine goes on, “You’re not legally brothers. And Cody and I aren’t planning on getting married anytime soon – or at all, to be totally frank. So, I’m not saying this isn’t going to be messy, and a hell of a lot to explain to your siblings,” he adds with a heavy sigh, “But we can find a way out. It doesn’t have to be the end of the world. And it certainly isn’t reason enough to scratch your faces off,” he finishes with a soft chuckle, “Or to hide out here. So, let’s go back home. The three of us, together. And then we’ll tell the others. And I promise it’s going to be alright.”

Timmy honestly couldn’t ask for a safety net any stronger than those words.

*

Alex’s present for Lisbeth is a doll. She’s more or less the size of Lisbeth herself, and wearing a huge golden gown that looks like Belle’s dress in Beauty and the Beast. Apparently, it’s a doll Lissy freaked out about months before, while she was watching cartoons on tv with her brother. She had seen her in a commercial and she had kept babbling about it for hours, alternating a thousand “beautiful!” with a million thousand gargled, meaningless words. She still speaks a language only a few people can understand, Timmy obviously not being part of the club yet. But it doesn’t matter, ‘cause she knows how to make him understand things with those huge baby blue eyes and her hand pressed over his nose, when she wants.

Anyway, of course Lissy had completely forgotten about the doll altogether the next day, as children often do, but that was clearly only temporary, because when she sees the doll emerge from the box the long lost memory suddenly comes back at her, and first she stares at her in awe, completely dumbstruck, then she touches her and starts screaming and jumping all around her, then she dances with her and finally she has a complete meltdown and starts crying while still hugging the doll so tight everybody start worrying she may fear somebody’s gonna take her away.

Only Alex understands, as always. He laughs and picks his sisters up from the floor, together with the doll, holding them against his chest. “You liked the present a lot, didn’t you, Lissy?” he asks, both amused and proud of himself.

She just nods, sobbing loudly. And then hugs him tight.

That’s clearly the peak of the night. As he watches Cody melt into a soundless cry, Blaine squeezing one of his hands, Leo discretely rubbing his back quickly, while no one notices, Timmy thinks that there’s nothing Alex and him could say to this crowd that could erase the memory of this moment. So it’s okay. They can talk.

They wait for everybody to go away first, though. As they planned right from the start. It was a huge party and even though it was being held at Blaine and Cody’s Leo demanded to take the whole thing into his hands. He cooked for an army, then brought everything over in two trips, then helped out decorating the whole room, supervising the whole thing like a professional party planner, and of course took care of the invitations as well, so basically all his friends came over. Luckily enough, having common history makes his friends more or less the same as Blaine’s friends, or Cody’s friends. So, in the end, everybody was happy, everybody had fun, everybody brought a little, thoughtful gift for little Lissy and the party was, as expected, a complete success.

All three – how fucked up is that? How amazing, too – of their parents are completely spent when the last of the guests show themselves out. They fall on the first sitting spots they can find – Blaine on the couch, Leo on the table still crowded by colorful wrapping, Cody straight on the floor – and exhale a weary sigh, closing their eyes, taking a deep breath.

“I’m too old for this shit,” Blaine comments, whining a little.

“You’ve been literally repeating that sentence since you were 35,” Leo points out, arching an eyebrow, “It’s time you stop, already. It’s getting boring.”

“Why, kid, thank you very much,” Blaine groans, only playfully annoyed.

Cody chuckles lightly, and doesn’t say a word. Alex and Timmy cast a quick look to one another and decide nothing they could say could ever make this any weirder.

Baby Lissy’s sleeping peacefully in her crib, upstairs. The twins are with her, probably staring at her in awe as they often do when somebody tells them they have to keep an eye on their baby sister, making them feel responsible.

It’s time.

Timmy stands up, holding Alex’s hand. Blaine, Leo and Cody instantly turn to look at them both.

“We’ve got something to tell you,” he says, with a smile on his face.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Angst.
- Cody and Blaine have found themselves in New York, and it's been easy to slip into a routine of secretly stolen glances and endless nights spent hiding in Blaine's bedroom. But sometimes the game isn't that fun to play.
Note: Questa ero io che volevo scrivere Blody tenero perché ogni tanto mi prende così, e poi decido che invece voglio scrivere una roba che può incastrarsi perfettamente nel capitolo relativo di BHS (quando ci arriveremo), e per cui osservo la storia trasformarsi ne La Depressione senza poter fare niente per fermarla.
Tant'è X'D Scritta per i Pirati di FDP, su prompt [QUALSIASI] Serata importante.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
LOVE IS A GAME THAT TWO CAN PLAY AND BOTH LOSE

They know the drill. It’s amazing how little time it actually took them to slip into this routine. Blaine honestly wasn’t expecting it to be this easy – he doesn’t really know how he was expecting it to be, or if he was expecting it to be in any way at all, but if he was this wasn’t it, that’s for sure. He’s been off the whole “dating” thing for so long he’s not even sure this, what they’re doing, qualifies at all. And he feels too old for dating, anyway.

Cody, on the other hand, he isn’t. Oh, he’s a lot of things, this marvelous kid, this boy out of a Gaiman novel, this pretty thing, this tiny thing all skin and bones, so short and yet all legs, those endless legs he keeps bare most of the time. He’s a lot of things but he certainly isn’t too old for the dating game, which is why, Blaine supposes, he’s having such fun playing it.

Blaine’s having fun too, obviously. If he wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t even bother. But it’s a different kind of fun. Cody’s careless, lighthearted, enjoying it every step of the way. He’s more considered – he has to be, there’s no way out of this. Regardless of the fact that Cody’s tied up with his past in dangerous ways, ways Blaine tries not to even think about most of the time, lest he spoils the little fun he’s permitted to have, Cody’s still very young, and Blaine needs to keep that in mind. Besides, he’s got a son and a career, and those can’t, in any way, come in second place right now, or ever, actually.

He managed to turn all this into some game Cody can enjoy too, though. He put their relationship under a cloak, he made it something thrilling, something secret, and Cody likes that. He finds it amusing. Like with Timmy, for example. To sneak in and out of the house without the kid seeing him has become something of a quest, for Cody. Granted, it’s an easy one – Cody mostly hangs around at Blaine’s place at night, and by that time the kid’s already sleeping – but it’s still something to cling to, to make something sad (Blaine’s discreet and silent but firm refusal to let him meet the boy, despite Cody never even asking for it) a little funnier. A little more bearable.

Parties are more or less the same. The fact that Blaine’s been working non-stop for the last two years or so finally turned his career from the one of a famous enough actor praised by critics but not really known to the mainstream audience into the one of an outright celebrity.

Parties and social gatherings have become more than a simple hobby, they’re a requirement now. Blaine never really liked to attend such events – mostly because he doesn’t entirely like people; which is why he’s always gone with one night stands, except for a few, meaningful exceptions: he finds people most unbearable when he knows he’s going to have to deal with them for an undetermined amount of time; it’s way easier to deal with them when knowing they’re going to be gone the next day, possibly never to be seen again – but Dotty was unmovable, and there was no way out of it. “Either you stop playing the hermit, or you find somebody else to look after your interests. I can’t be the agent of a sociopath. Sociopaths don’t need agents, they need therapists.”

That made Blaine laugh, but despite the blatantly incorrect diagnosis he had to admit Dotty had a point. He always refused invitations (staying home playing peekaboo with Timmy beat showing up to some upper class snobby Broadway junkie any time) and, those few times he actually said yes, he wasn’t exactly the life of the party. It was playing against his career, he was making a name of a gloomy, mysterious person for himself and Dotty wasn’t pleased with it. He wasn’t pleased with it either, to be honest: he might not be the most cheerful and lighthearted person who ever walked the earth, but he’s not gloomy either.

So, when Dotty told him he had to do better, he unwillingly but resignedly complied. And it was easy, until Cody came along. Now, they’ve only been together a few days and, as far are together goes, they’re not together much, but since they mainly get to hang out at night the mere idea of having to ditch him to hand out fake plastic smiles to people he cares exactly nothing about doesn’t exactly make him spring up in joy and excitement.

Solution: bring Cody along.

Problem: they can’t be seen together.

Dotty was pretty adamant about it. “Who’s this kid?” she asked.

“A kid,” Blaine answered.

“Are you two together?” she inquired, frowning suspiciously.

Blaine shrugged. “Sort of,” he said.

“The answer’s no,” she replied sternly. And then she sighed, deeply, sadly, before speaking with the voice of a mother, something she’s been forced to do a lot since they started working together. “I’m not trying to be mean, dear,” she said, “It’s just that you need to understand you can’t have everything. A career, a son, now a twenty years younger than you sort-of-boyfriend. That’s not how life works. Do you understand?”

He did.

Still, accepting the fact isn’t as easy as understanding it. A different solution needed to be found because, as irrelevant and inconsequential as his relationship with Cody might be, he simply wasn’t ready to do without him. So he pulled some strings, he talked with the right people, and in but a few days the golden doors of New York’s upper class were all wide open, seemingly waiting for Cody with arms wide open.

He plays the part of the young descendant of some old Broadway legend, a part that fits him perfectly because he showed in various occasion how his knowledge of that world easily beat anybody else’s at those parties. Also, he’s so ridiculously beautiful people ultimately don’t even care if he really is who he said he is. They enjoy his company and that’s more than enough to grant him safe passage over those waters.

The only catch is that he can’t approach Blaine publicly. He can’t talk to him, lest somebody catches a glimpse of what their relationship might be, and to be perfectly safe he can’t even come close. When somebody introduces them to one another, they smile politely and answer with a vague “oh, yes, I believe we met already some other time, am I right…?” and that’s it, they don’t talk at all for the rest of the night.

It isn’t ideal, and the first time it happened it honestly was so sad and cheap Blaine decided to try and turn it into yet another game, to try and see if it could get better.

It did.

The rules are simple: they keep not talking to one another except when they have to, forced by the circumstances, but to make up for it they’re constantly looking at each other. They’re mastering the skills that let them effortlessly pretend they’re looking at the person they’re talking with, showing interest in what they’re saying too, while really all they’re doing is searching for one another’s eyes in the crowd and discretely smiling at each other whenever they know they aren’t being watched.

It’s fun, and it’s even more fun when, using some lame excuse or another, they manage to get away from whoever’s keeping them busy to meet in the toilet. They don’t touch there either, obviously. It’d be awesome to just lock themselves in one of the bathrooms and make out until the party was over, but it’d be too dangerous, and they don’t want to risk it. Instead, they play a different kind of game. Washing their hands or combing their hair and rearranging their clothes, they look at each other’s reflections in the mirror and exchange some random set phrases – “marvelous party”, “magnificent”, “and have you tried those delicious hors d'oeuvre?”, “absolutely, they are to die for!” – but it’s the smile, the knowing smile, the warm, intimate smile they trade during those short, meaningless conversations that gives them the real thrill. It’s like playing cat and mouse, but nobody’s hunting and nobody’s being hunted. It’s a very safe way to chase after one another, and they both enjoy it a lot.

Sure, there are other rules to follow, and those are harder to turn into something fun. They must always leave the party at different times, for example. Usually Blaine goes first, and Cody’s forced to hang around a minimum of thirty minutes more before he too can leave. And Blaine can’t just wait for him downstairs, of course. He needs to go home and dismiss the babysitter, while Cody slowly drives towards his house in his own car carefully choosing all the smallest, most indirect roads he knows of, not to make his destination too obvious, always parking a few blocks away from Blaine’s actual address and making sure to walk into the building from the access in the parking lot, less known to the paparazzi and less visible from the place they usually hang out to in the front of the building.

Blaine supposes this could be seen as some sort of undercover game too, but at some point in the night, when they’ve been playing for hours already, they just want to be together, and playing more isn’t a treat anymore, only a tease.

This isn’t just another party, though. This was actually organized for Blaine himself by none other than Mrs. June Dolloway, one hundred and three years old and counting, one of his oldest supporters and friends. It was her who first believed in his talent when nobody else seemed to, it was her who picked him up from the mess of underwear modeling and club dancing he had thrown himself into after his tumultuous break up with Kurt and all that had followed it, it was her who polished him, taught him all he knew about acting and singing professionally and finally presented him to Broadway, always treating him as if he was The Thing New York had always been waiting for since it was founded in 1664, admonishing him never to forget it, never to forget that this is how you have to act if you want people to know you’re worth a thing: you have to believe you’re worth a thing yourself.

Blaine would have never refused an invitation from Mrs. Dalloway, and the occasion – being nominated for yet another Tony, after his last nomination the previous year – made it even more impossible to answer no to. “This is gonna be one of the long ones, isn’t it?” Cody asked yesterday night, lying on his bed, naked and barely covered by the sheets, his pale, soft body mildly sweaty and moving just slightly with each and every breath he took.

“The longest,” Blaine answered. Cody just smiled sadly, and Blaine kissed him to make that sad smile disappear.

The problem is, they want to be together. Really, they need to. It’s an urge more than a simple pleasure, and Blaine knows it’s wrong – oh, he knows he’s projecting; just as much as Cody is, actually – but he isn’t ready to give up on it. He isn’t ready to follow the path to the end either, though. He isn’t ready, or perhaps he just doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t think it’s worth it. What does he know about this kid, after all? That he’s ridiculously beautiful and kind. That he’s got a cute sense of humor. That he’s extremely talented at drawing. That he dreams of moving to Italy, some day. And despite how much he likes all these qualities, none of them are the real reason why they’re together now, because the real reason is just that, that Cody is Leonard’s ex-boyfriend. That Blaine’s clinging to him because he can’t cling to Leo anymore. And that’s it. All the rest is accessory. It’s not necessary. It’s a plus that makes time spent with Cody even more pleasant, but it’s not the reason, it’s not the core of it.

No matter how sad it is, he knows it’s exactly the same for Cody. So it’s alright to be in this relationship as long as it’s evanescent, as long as it’s something that will ultimately have no consequence in their real life, much like a dream. But the thought of actually following the path, see where it leads, see if there’s a concrete future for them, that’s not even being taken into consideration.

And that’s alright, generally speaking. But it isn’t in night like this. When Blaine and Cody haven’t spent a second together, when they haven’t seen each other all day and are forced to play the part of the strangers in front of everybody.

It’s easy to say “I’m alright with just this, I don’t need anything more” when he’s already holding Cody in his arms, when there doesn’t seem to even be anything more than being close. It’s not as easy to say the same when he’s got nothing, and even a stolen glance is more than he can afford. If a stolen glance is more, and he’s allowed to want that more, then he’s allowed to want all the different mores his mind can possibly think of. Like a real relationship. Like something stronger than just a waking dream. Like something Blaine really doesn’t want to think about, because knowing he can’t possibly have it would only make it more painful.

They won’t be spending the night together, today, that much Blaine already knows. It’s already midnight, and there’s no way he’s going to be home before 1 AM. Maybe even 2 AM, if June is in the mood for one of her highly alcoholic after-parties. Which means he’s going to have to call the babysitter, and ask her to spend the night at his place, to look after Timothy while he’s out. Of course, having the babysitter over rules out entirely the possibility of having Cody even step a foot in his house. Too dangerous, and though he’d trust young Missy Bellblock with Timmy’s life if it was needed – the girl loves children, he sees that she’s well-paid for her job and she’s been taking care of Timmy for over a year, now –, he’s not so sure her lips would remain sealed if he came to know about their relationship. It’s the kind of secret that earns you a lifetime’s worth money, if well sold. He can’t risk it.

So, no Cody tonight. No soft kisses and no warm embraces. No wet lips running up and down that glorious white body, no milky thighs spreading for him, no straight black hair being held in his closed fist while he goes down on him, no going down on him of his own, savoring him as if he was his last meal. No pretty, blissful smile after his orgasm. No sharing the bed until it’s time to go, until it’s time to leave.

No Cody— Nothing— Nothing except loneliness to deal with.

For a moment, the thought is simply unbearable. He feels it weight over his own shoulders, and he’d like for it to be something physical like a rock or something, so he could cast it away, break it somehow. But it’s not. It’s only heavy because it’s weighing inside him, making him slower and older with each passing day. Ageing doesn’t kill people, he’s sure of it now, it’s just the weight of the years, that’s what brings you to your end.

He smiles politely to Mrs. Dalloway, sitting on her wheeled chair by his side, and pats her gently on the back of her hand to catch her attention, interrupting a conversation he wasn’t even listening to anyway. “I’m going to go catch some fresh hair,” he tells her, “Can you do without me for a few minutes?”

“Of course, dear,” she answers, squeezing his hand with her own fragile, pale fingers, “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with? I wouldn’t mind.”

“No, June, please,” he chuckles, standing up, “It’s already enough that your guest of honor is about to disappear for five full minutes, don’t deprive your other guests of the shiny presence of their gracious host.”

June laughs, amused, but in the quick nod she gives him Blaine sees that she understood. She knows him well, better than anybody else in this room, and she knows how hard it is for him to withstand an entire party without a few moments of blessed solitude every now and then. So she lets him go and covers for him with her brilliant, clever conversation, as he walks down the hall handing out polite nods and smiles to whoever he meets, until he’s finally out on the terrace, alone and shrouded in silence under the pale light of the moon.

He walks up to the banister, leaning on it and casting a longing glance to the luscious English garden in front of the house. The lake barely visible on the distance, behind the shady grove on the left, the nearby marble fountain surrounded with flowered bushes and the few spots of trees scattered here and there. It seems so peaceful.

“I was about to walk back in,” Cody says, all of a sudden. Blaine doesn’t even turn to look at him. The sound of his voice, instead of startling him, gives him instant peace of mind, and he smiles, exhaling freely as he closes his eyes.

“I didn’t know you were here,” he says. He feels Cody approach and his whole body gets ready for him, even if right now, right here, they can’t even get close.

“I know,” Cody smiles too, stopping right beside him, “If you did, you wouldn’t have come out.”

“Accurate,” Blaine answers in a short laughter, “But we’re breaking a couple of rules, right now,” he adds, “We’re not talking like strangers.”

Cody breathes in the cold air of the night, leaning in to the banister. “I’m not in the mood for games, now,” he says. Blaine can relate. He says nothing, though, he just waits for what’s coming next. And it comes in a couple of minutes because Cody doesn’t really want to say the words, and he decides he can take his sweet time to do that. “I’ll be on my way in ten minutes or so,” he says, “I’m tired and I can see already tonight is not gonna work.”

“You’re perceptive,” Blaine answers with a soft smile, conceding himself to brush the back of Cody’s hand with his fingertips, “And right, unfortunately. I’m sorry about it. But I knew it was going to be a long one. I told you.”

“Which is why I was prepared,” Cody smiles. The sadness in his eyes has blended with his natural expression so completely that it’s mostly undetectable. It seems like there’s none, and at times it seems like it’s all there is.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Blaine says, as if trying to patch up a cut, “I’m free, tomorrow night. We could meet.”

“We certainly will,” Cody chuckles, amused at his attempts at making up for something that ultimately isn’t even his fault. “But tomorrow night is not tonight,” he adds with a small, playful smile.

Blaine’s body awakens like flowers in spring. He can feel his skin getting hotter, his senses heightening, some mysterious tickling sensation making his limbs itch. “No, it’s not,” he answers, moistening his lips. “What are we going to do about it?”

Cody chuckles, excited like a kid. Yet another game. A different set of rules. “I explored our host’s house for a while, right after dinner,” he said, “There’s a bathroom upstairs.”

“That’s June’s personal bathroom, you wicked child,” Blaine answers with a laughter, “We’re not allowed in there. How many other rules do you want to break tonight?”

“Honestly?” Cody smiles, and it’s a different smile than the usual ones. It’s somehow melancholic, twice as beautiful because it’s honest to the core. Blaine finds himself wanting to taste it, anticipating the moment when he will be able to. “All the rules there are,” Cody says, “Just for tonight. I wanna break them all.”

Blaine chuckles, nodding and telling him to precede him upstairs. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” he says. He says it as if he wanted to spend a few minutes more admiring the landscape. He doesn’t, and he’s just sending Cody up first because it would be suspect if they went back in and then up together, but he doesn’t feel like saying it, right now. He feels like saying a little white lie, as if it was true that he’s staying out there just to breathe in the night air.

It’s not just a game, he tells himself, breathing fully in and out, it’s not just a waking dream. It’s mostly that, but there are crumbs of truth they keep scraping out the thick wall of reality, and they matter more than what they’ll never be able to get.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: PG.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, AU, Angst, Fluff.
- The Air-Breath Driven Android Model Adam gets shipped to Anderson Manor on the 23rd of July of the year 2566, and there he meets his new owner, young lord Blaine Anderson. And starts falling in love with him. (To the very end.)
Note: Si era in chat con la Tab, che apparve dicendomi "qualcuno ha postato (per la Notte Bianca #15, ndliz) il prompt più lacrime-induttivo DI SEMPRE". Ho verificato coi miei occhi che, in effetti, lo era (leggere per credere), ed a quel punto scrivere è diventato obbligatorio.
Inizialmente pensavo sarebbe stata una roba molto Burtoniana ambientata tipo alla fine dell'Ottocento-inizi del Novecento, ma poi la storia non era d'accordo, e quindi: FUTURO. Peraltro io non sono capace mai nel mondo di ambientare cose nel futuro, perché mi dimentico puntualmente che fra 500 anni sarà possibile fare cose che al momento nemmeno sogniamo di poter fare. Se trovate incongruenze randomiche sarà per la mia incapacità.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
DEATH IS A FORCE

But death is a force, not a man on a horse:
I’ll keep you safe while you sleep.

He’s shipped to Anderson Manor on the 23rd of July of the year 2566. The weather’s hot – a 100 degrees, actually hotter than it’s been in a while, more than 60 years say his records – but dry, and it’s pleasant under the shadows of the tall trees decorating the long driveway that, coasting the river – a silver strip glistening in the burning sun of high noon –, runs from the majestic iron doors of the gate guarding the property, to the three-step stairs that leads to the finely decorated wooden door of the house.

It’s an impressive two-story building, all made out in pale gray, cold stone. There’s an air of eternity about it, the same Adam could almost breathe exhaling from the tall oaks on each side of the driveway, despite still being locked up in his plastic box.

The car carrying him stops on the courtyard, and the driver gets off it, extracting his tablet and reaching the door. Despite how ancient the house is, it seems provided with all the new technologies, so when the man rings the bell the holographic butler instantly appears in front of him, bowing and greeting him, asking about what kind of business brought him here and, after verifying he was expected, assuring him that a member of the house personnel will be there shortly to receive the package.

Two bulky men appear on the doorframe soon after that, and the driver leads them back to the car. Awake and quivering with excitement in his box, Adam stares at them as they unload him from the huge truck and put him on an air cart, on which they carry him inside.

On the inside, the house looks even bigger than it seemed on the outside. The men put him down on the marble floor, still inside his box, and then leave him there. Adam looks on his left and on his right, not sure if he understands what he’s supposed to do all alone in there, unable to come out of the box on his own, but there are no questions left when he looks in front of him and he sees the young lord run down the stairs, towards him.

He’s around fifteen years old, more or less the same age Adam’s been designed and built to show. He’s not particularly tall, but he’s got a lean, pleasant figure that’s perfectly shown off by his fitted, tailor-made, rich and colorful clothes. The black leather trousers disappear inside the knee-high boots of the same color, and the blindingly white shirt with tight, small pearl buttons seems to blaze under the soft black wool cardigan tied around his waist with a belt of the same material. He looks dashing, and so extremely happy that, watching him smile so openly and joyfully, Adam can’t help but let his own lips bend in a similar smile.

He can’t wait to be out of his box. With him.

“My name’s Blaine,” his new lord says, pressing both hands and his nose on the plastic box for a moment, before quickly back away to open it, and let him out, “What’s your name?”

Adam looks at him, memorizing his features, the little changes in his expressions when his lips move whenever he says something, the different inflections of his voice. “They call me Air-breath Driven Android Model. Adam.”

The smile on Blaine’s face softens, as he reaches out with his right hand, squeezing Adam’s. “Adam,” he repeats, spelling his name as if he was savoring its taste as the letters composing it slip on his tongue, “Nice to meet you.”

The texture of the skin of his fingertips is soft and smooth, extremely pleasant to the touch. Adam’s enhanced senses can detect the pattern of his fingerprints, and he memorizes that too, as his operating system reprograms itself to respond to Blaine’s touch, and his touch alone.

*

Blaine is alone, most of the time. He has no mother – she’s dead; he doesn’t like to talk about it, and Adam isn’t programmed to inquire insistently about topics that stress his owner out – and his father doesn’t really spend much time with him, except for supper – granted, when he’s home – and a couple of hours to hear about his progresses on Sunday afternoon.

He’s homeschooled, as most of the young lords in aristocratic families are these days, and his tutor is the person who spends most time with him during the day – except Adam, of course. He’s obviously got a computer with internet access, but online chat services are blocked on it, and even though Adam could easily hack the system to unlock them for him he’s been specifically ordered not to do so from Lord Anderson himself, under penalty of deactivation and restitution.

Blaine had hoped he could helped with that, and he had made no mystery of it. He was sad when Adam told him about what Lord Anderson had threatened to do if he ever came to know about any transgression to his specific orders. Moved by his expression, Adam asked him if he wanted him to hack the system anyway. “I’d be glad to help you,” he said, holding Blaine’s hands in his own, “I wouldn’t mind risking deactivation for you.”

Blaine squeezed his hands back, looking straight into his eyes. “I would,” he said, “Don’t do that. I can live without that. I couldn’t live without you. You’re my only friend.”

Was it love, that warmth that had washed over him like a wave upon hearing those words? Adam doesn’t know. He’s not supposed to ask that question. He’s programmed to understand love of only one kind, the one that binds him forever to his owner. He doesn’t know if this is the love poet and writers talk about in their books. If it’s that absolute, preternatural force painters try to convey in their pictures. If this is what the songs are all about, and the movies, and the shows. If it’s the same kind of affection that brings boys and girls, and girls and girls, and boys and boys to look at each other for hours in silence, if it’s what makes blood rush faster through people’s veins, if it’s that thing that makes cheeks turn red and eyes turn lucid and smiles turn wider.

He doesn’t know, and he shouldn’t care, but he does. “I love you,” Blaine says, more often than he conceals it, because he doesn’t believe in silence, his young lord, he only believes in the spoken word. “I’m left alone and in silence for so long every day,” he explains with that little smile that curls his lips when he’s talking about things that make him sad and he feels as if he owes and apology to the world for being sad despite all the things his rich and easy life provide for him, “I want to say what I think out loud. I want to express what I feel to the people I feel it for.” He looks down, closing his hands in shaking fists, “One day I’ll tell my father… that day, he’ll know. What I think of him, what I want from him. But I can’t, right now, not yet,” he shakes his head, smiling apologetically again, “Up to now, though, I promise I’ll always tell you how I feel. Because I know you understand. Don’t you, Adam?”

And yes, he does. He’s programmed to understand very few things, when it comes to life. But Blaine’s one of them. And the only one he cares for.

*

He’s only eighteen, and he’s too young to go through something like this and emerge on the other end unscathed. Of that much, Adam’s sure. He watches Blaine stand right next the rich, elegant glass coffin his father’s corpse is laid in, and the only thing he wants to do is rush by his side, take his hand, try and comfort him.

But he can’t. That wouldn’t be proper, the protocol clearly states what Adam can and cannot do, and right now Blaine’s surrounded by all the town lords, come to pay their last respects to Lord Anderson – or better, to the former Lord Anderson; now Blaine’s Lord Anderson, and Adam’s supposed to learn to call him that way, whether they’re alone or not – and he can’t walk near him. He can’t touch him. He can’t even speak to him.

He wasn’t prepared to find out how painful that would be. To watch him suffer from a distance, trying to put a brave face on. To know exactly what’s behind his hazel eyes, all the pain and confusion, and not being able to help him deal with it.

Adam stands on his corner on the opposite sides of the room, watching all those men Blaine only ever met briefly before approach him, shake his hand, offer him their condolences while saying a few kind words on his father. Blaine thanks everybody, nods, answers with short-lived smiles and conceal the tears, swallowing them down together with the words he always wanted to tell his father and never managed to actually say, and Adam knows, he just knows he’s praying for this to end quickly, because he can’t stand it anymore. He knew he couldn’t stand it even before everybody came. He couldn’t stand it since the moment he came out of his father’s bedroom, after he had just finished to speak with his doctor, and Adam asked if Lord Anderson was broken, and he answered “beyond repair”.

It takes a few more hours for the house to finally be empty again. The servants retire in their rooms for the night, while Blaine stands next to his father’s coffin, staring down at his relaxed expression.

“He’s never looked this gentle,” Blaine says in a whisper, when Adam finally approaches him.

“He was a stern man,” he nods.

“He was an asshole,” Blaine corrects him. Then he takes a deep breath. “But I loved him so much. I loved him so much. I wanted him to be happy with me, with the way I turned out. I wanted him to be proud of me. I just wished—” his voice grows sharper, as he clutches his fists down his sides, “I wished it didn’t take so fucking much for him to be happy with me. I only wanted it to be a little easier. But it never got easier. And I could never tell him. And he died without knowing.”

Adam lifts a hand, placing it on Blaine’s shoulder and squeezing. Blaine quickly covers it with his own, squeezing back. “Your father knew you loved him, Blaine,” he says, choosing to use only his first name for one last time.

“No,” Blaine shakes his head, “He didn’t. Because I never told him.” He sighs, closing his eyes and breathing silently in and out for a moment. Then he turns his head, looking at Adam from over his shoulder. “I love you,” he says.

Adam blushes lightly, looking back at him. “I know,” he answers, “I love you too, Lord Anderson.”

The flash of profound pain that passes over his eyes as he hears Adam call him like that makes them darker for a while. “It’s still Blaine, for you,” he pleads, “At least when we’re alone. Please.”

It’s not an order, just a request. Adam nods and complies nonetheless.

*

A lot of proposals come by Blaine’s personal mail by the time he’s 21. He’s supposed to get married before his 22nd birthday. Adam doesn’t really know how he feels about it. Actually, he’s pretty sure he isn’t supposed to feel anything about it. All he’s required to do is scan the applications, file them, and then help Lord Anderson out with choosing just the best candidate by accessing their records on his database.

Except there’s no Lord Anderson involved in this process. Only Blaine. And it isn’t as easy to help Blaine choose his life companion as it’d be helping a Lord Anderson at the same task.

“What’s all this?” Blaine asks upon entering his personal studio and finding Adam right in front of his enormous computer’s screen, picking out emails to divide them in groups. Gender, wealth, importance of the family in the town… it’s quite a mechanical process. Quite an easy one too. Adam’s surprised to hate it with such fire.

“I’m sorting out emails from fathers and mothers of basically every available boy and girl in town,” Adam explains, “I’ve been doing this for the past six months, as you know.”

“Yes, I’ve seen you hanging around here,” Blaine answers, his eyes darkening as he looks away.

Adam turns to look at him, puzzled. “Weird,” he says, “You haven’t shown any interest in it. You haven’t asked me once what was it that I was doing.”

“That’s because I knew what you were doing already,” Blaine shrugs carelessly, “And if I haven’t shown any interest in it, it’s because I have none.”

Adam frowns, tilting his head. “But you’ll have to,” he says, “You’re supposed to find somebody to marry before—”

“I know what I’m supposed to do,” Blaine interrupts him, still refusing to look at him.

Adam nods. “You don’t have much time left,” he reminds him. It’s just eleven months or so, at this point. Most people are engaged by the time they’re 18 already. They don’t wait for being actually allowed to marry to know who’s the one they’re going to be wed with.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” Blaine answers, finally looking back at him, “I’ve already taken my decision.”

His eyes wide, Adam looks at him, surprised. He hasn’t seen him go through the applications, not even once. How can he have chosen already? And why does it sting so much?

“May I ask…” he says in a low voice, “Who is it?”

Blaine looks at him, saying nothing, for almost a full minute, his eyes, as well as his expression, completely unreadable. Then his features soften in a sweet smile, as he finally speaks. “Nobody,” he says, “I’m not going to get married. I think it’s going to be me and you for the time being.”

He leaves the room before Adam can protest, or remind him that, despite not being an obligation, a wedding is exactly what he’s expected to do, and the lack of it would certainly put him in a bad light under the eyes of every single lord and lady in town.

It’s alright, though. Adam didn’t want to say any of those things, though he knows he should have. He’s grateful to Blaine for sparing him the pain. And for making that painful sting disappear, too.

*

Adam sees Blaine change in front of his eyes day after day, and it’s the most wonderful spectacle he could’ve hoped to be an audience for. He gets taller, his shoulders and chest broaden out, his hair grow long, then he cuts them, but they keep growing. Nothing about him ever stays the same, ever. Adam looks at himself in the mirror every day and nothing about himself ever changes. He’s still the same fifteen-years old looking boy he was when he first arrived at Anderson Manor. Blaine is now 28, and he looks nothing like that skinny, fragile boy he was when they first met.

Things have been changing between them, just as much as they’ve been changing for Blaine. He’s been taking on his father’s activity, which requires him to travel often out of town. At first, Adam thought that would put space in between them. He’s not allowed to follow him when he’s out of town, and Blaine could be away for weeks at a time, but the only thing that never changed was how eager Blaine was to come back home every time, and how happy to see Adam again after missing him so much for every day he couldn’t lay eyes upon him in person.

Adam started to understand what that was. Why it was so hard to see him go away, and why did he feel so full whenever he came back. He doesn’t know if that’s what the old Lord Anderson wanted for them when he bought him as a present for Blaine, but right now they don’t have two different but intertwined lives, they have just one life, one common thing they share. If that’s not love, it’s still the closest Adam’s ever going to get to it.

He’s alone in the garden on that lazy late-August afternoon, and Blaine’s been away for three weeks already. There’s a pain in his chest that nothing seems able to soothe. He took the habit to draw when he’s alone. He doesn’t have a talent for it, he’s just programmed to be good at it. But the feeling of the pen between his fingers, sliding in circles and shapes on the tablet and creating a picture out of thin air right in front of him is good, and Adam uses it to distract himself from the loneliness, and how much he misses Blaine.

And then Blaine’s car appears on the driveway. And Adam feels it before he can even see him.

He jumps on his feet, the tablet forgotten on the ground, and runs towards it. Blaine usually parks his car closer and waits for one of the servants to arrive to give him the keys to move it to the garage, but not this time. He jams on the brakes way sooner than he’s used to, slams the door open and throws himself out of the car, running towards him. They meet halfway, tangling themselves in the tightest hug they’ve ever given one another. Adam hides his face against Blaine’s neck, inhaling his scent. Blaine wraps his arms around Adam’s shoulders, losing one hand in his hair and pulling him closer.

“I’ve missed you,” Blaine whispers in his ears, “I’ve missed you more than I usually do. I’m tired of this. That’s not the kind of life I want, away from you 90 percent of the time as my father was with me.” He backs off, looking at him in his eyes. “I love you way more than my father used to love me. I won’t settle for anything less than you all the time.”

Adam bites at his tongue because the first thing he wants to say is not what he’s supposed to say. The other servants are slowly coming out from the door, standing on top of the stairs and looking at them in disbelief and curiosity. Adam feels their gazes upon them, and he feels uncomfortable about it, but not enough to let go. “You’re talking nonsense,” he says, shaking his head, “You can’t quit your job.”

“What do I care for it, Adam?” Blaine insists, “I don’t like it! I’m not a merchant, I’m a reader, I’m a singer, I’m a dancer, I’m a party-goer. I don’t care for my job. I don’t need money, what I have will suffice. I won’t have any children to leave any inheritance to. Let’s just live our life together, Adam. That’s what I want.”

As he looks into Blaine’s eyes and sees how hard he believes in everything he’s saying, Adam searches through his records to try and find some other story similar to their own, but as much as he searches he can find none. There’s no road already walked by somebody else to follow, there are no signs at any crossroad, no indication whatsoever on the right path to take to come out of the maze alive and unharmed. This could work. Or it could be a disaster. But the thing is, he wants to choose to try.

*

It’s early December, but they’ve already decorated the whole manor. Took them an entire week, and everybody helped. Blaine’s always so happy, comes Christmas time. “It reminds me of family,” he says, “When my mother was still alive. She loved Christmas. We stopped celebrating it when she passed. It makes me so happy to be able to share this with you, now, that every time I want it to be grander than the last.”

“There will have to be a limit,” Adam used to say at first, “There’s some point after which you can’t do anything bigger.”

Blaine took it as a challenge, and started bringing home a bigger tree every here, louder decorations, brighter lights. He’s 45, right now, and he’s been hording bigger and bigger decorations for more than ten years. Adam’s pretty sure Anderson Manor can be easily spotted from Mars, around Christmas. Somehow the thought makes him feel warm inside. That there can be people all over the universe who can witness such thing, and acknowledge it. Since the world here won’t.

They couldn’t marry, of course. Not that Blaine didn’t try. Oh, those were a few funny years, when he dared to take him out for dinner and propose in front of half the town. He battled in every relevant townhall for that, and he often expressed his desire to just go on until he was granted the right to marry whatever he wanted, even one of his kind, that wasn’t even granted citizenship.

Only the cease and desist coming straight from the council managed to stop him, and only because, faced with the possibility a prison sentence, Adam started insisting with him on dropping it so much that at some point he just had to. Oh, but he was younger, then. He had such fire in his veins. He could’ve gone any length to obtain what he wanted, could’ve laughed in the face of God himself if he had come down on Earth to tell him what he could and couldn’t do. Adam still remembers him, a man in his 30s, beautiful like a demigod, strong like the thunder and just as loud. How people turned to look at them as they walked the streets of the town center together, and how their snarky comments only managed to fire them up even more. The nights they spent laughing about them, mocking them for their inability to understand the value of what they were witnessing with their own eyes.

Everything’s different, now, everything’s calmer, so to speak, sweeter. Possibly easier.

Adam sits on the couch, his eyes half closed, working in energy saving mode as his batteries recharge, and looks at Blaine, sinking in his favorite armchair, reading a book next to the fireplace, and can’t help but smile. “Don’t you ever think about what you could’ve had and gave up because of me?” he asks softly, “A real family, children, possibly grandsons and granddaughters. Wouldn’t it have been nicer?”

Blaine laughs, amused by the question. “Please,” he says, shaking his head, “I’ve got all the family I need.”

Adam thinks back to the day he arrived to Anderson Manor, how excited he was just at the prospect of walking out of his box and touch a human being, feeling the warmth of their skin under his silicon fingertips. He couldn’t imagine how much more there was to life. To think he could’ve never found out, hadn’t it been for Blaine.

He opens his eyes wide the moment he touches him on his neck. His body still recognizes the pattern of his fingerprints. It still awakens to his only touch. “Come,” Blaine says, “Let’s go upstairs. It’s late.”

Adam looks at the clock hanging over the fireplace, puzzled. “It really isn’t,” he says, tilting his head.

Blaine grins. “It is,” he insists. Takes him quite a while for Adam to understand what he’s hinting at. He’ll never get used to that. Nor to the way his cheeks manage to blush to the thought, despite there being no blood in his veins.

“Oh,” he says, “Okay.” And then he just follows Blaine’s laughter upstairs.

*

He wakes up one day, and Blaine’s still sleeping. It’s weird, because in forty-seven years he’s been knowing him, Blaine’s always woke up before him. He’s got his jogging to do, and his other exercises, and then he’s got to throw himself on the couch to play videogames for at least an hour before the day kicks off. He’s an early waker, and when Adam turns around to look at the clock on his nightstand and sees it’s half past ten he can’t help but look back at Blaine, a little concerned.

“Blaine?” he calls out, “It’s so late. Are you tired?”

Blaine doesn’t answer. He must be sleeping very deeply. It’s almost cute, and Adam smiles, reaching out for him to stroke his cheek.

There’s something wrong with it, though. He’s colder than he should be. And it doesn’t seem like he’s breathing.

“Oh,” he says, placing his hand on Blaine’s shoulder and shaking it a little, “Blaine? You forgot to breathe. You should wake up, now.”

He doesn’t, though.

Slowly, Adam rises up, kneeling next to him. “Blaine?” he calls again, “Did you break?”

Blaine keeps not answering, which is, in itself, answer enough.

“I knew that would happen, sooner or later,” Adam sighs. He’s been broken four times, since he arrived at Anderson Manor. Each and every time, Blaine had him fixed, and each and every time, when he came back, he always looked so concerned. He kept saying he was scared he’d lose him. But that was silly. It’s not as if Adam’s body had ever been destroyed. He just needed some fixing.

He climbs down the bed and grabs Blaine’s phone from his nightstand. The number of Blaine’s doctor’s there, and he calls him right away. “Doctor?” he said. The man’s happy to hear from him. He greets him and asks him how is he, if everything’s alright and so on. “Everything’s fine, doctor, thank you,” Adam answers, nodding, “Blaine just got broken.”

The doctor says nothing for a few seconds. Worried that the line might have cut off, Adam speaks again. “Doctor?” he says, “I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but if you could come fix him up, I’d appreciate it, and I’m sure Blaine would to.”

The doctor’s still there, Adam can hear his troubled breathing. He doesn’t seem alright. “Adam,” he says, “I need you to check something for me. I need you to check his breathing.”

“Oh,” Adam says, “But there’s none. He must’ve forgot.”

The doctor stays silent for another long half minute. “Is he cold?” he asks, “Adam, this is very important. Is his body cold?”

“Yes,” Adam nods, “I think maybe it’s the opposite of a fever.”

The doctor cuts the phone call short. He tells him to stay exactly where he is and not touch anything. “I’m on my way, Adam,” he says, way more worried than Adam thinks it’s the case to be, “Just don’t panic.”

And he doesn’t. Why would he?

*

The doctor’s saying things that make no sense. He’s talking about death, heart failure, Blaine being old and not as strong as he seemed. But that’s not true. Blaine woke up every days and run around the mansion for 48 minutes. He did his exercises daily. He was strong. His heart was strong. He wasn’t old at all.

“I can’t understand,” he says, shaking his head. Around him, some of the servants cry. The others are silent and their expressions are very dark. “He was fine, yesterday.”

“He’s not anymore, today,” the doctor tries to explain, putting both hands on his shoulders, “He’s gone, Adam.”

“Gone where?” Adam asks. The doctor doesn’t know how to answer to that.

“He’s just gone,” he says, “He was sick. His heart was sick.”

“His heart was fine up until yesterday.”

“No, it wasn’t,” the doctor answers, “It’s just, nobody knew. Nobody noticed. And it stopped working. But you mustn’t be sad: it wasn’t painful. He didn’t feel a thing. He slipped away peacefully.”

Adam doesn’t know what slipping away means, given the context. Away where? That makes no sense. Blaine’s very much there. Adam can see him, sleeping peacefully on the bed.

“Is he badly broken, doctor?” he just asks.

The doctor clearly gives up on trying to help him understand. “Beyond repair, Adam,” he says in a short sigh. And that’s when Adam remembers. The old Lord Anderson. When the doctor came to visit him because he, too, had fallen asleep and didn’t wake up. Adam had asked the same question to Blaine, and Blaine had answered the same way the doctor’s answering now.

“No,” he just says, shaking his head, “No, that can’t be.”

That can’t be. Because he’s not ready for that.

“Adam—”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that,” he insists, “He hasn’t slipped away. He hasn’t gone anywhere,” he points at Blaine’s body on the bed, “He’s right there. And I’d like to try and fix him.”

The doctor opens his eyes wide, shocked. “Adam, no,” he says, trying to talk him out of it, “There’s nothing you can do for him, right now. You have to let him go.”

“That I cannot do, doctor,” Adam answers, shaking his head once more, “I’m not programmed for that.”

Besides, did Blaine just let him go when Adam broke? No, he didn’t. He had him fixed. Every single time. There’s no reason why Adam shouldn’t do the same for him now.

*

It’s raining, outside, and it’s pretty cold. Must be around Christmas, but Adam wouldn’t know. All the clocks stopped working years ago, long after everybody left, and nobody’s left to take care of Christmas decorations, though he’s sure Blaine would love to see some new ones.

The house is not as warm and comfortable as it used to be. There are leaks in the roof, and drafts everywhere. Especially since one of the walls fell in the right wing. That was probably 50 years ago or so. Adam had always meant to get that repaired, but working on Blaine takes so much effort, and so much time, and moving around isn’t easy as it was anymore, for him. He suspects his batteries are coming to the end of their life cycle. It’s a miracle he hasn’t got broken once, in the last 78 years. He wouldn’t have known what to do with himself, if that happened. None of the phone numbers still in Blaine’s phone worked anymore already 20 years after he got broken, and now the phone isn’t working anymore, so even if they were still working he wouldn’t know how to call them.

The mechanical heart he’s been working on for the past five years is almost ready, at this point. It’s the ninth version of his first original project. None of the previous versions ever worked, but he’s got high hopes for this one. Sure, he had high hopes for all the other ones too, but he doesn’t want to think about that, right now. Those failures meant nothing. The only failure that matters is the one Blaine’s heart suffered. The one he’s trying to fix now. The one he’s been trying to fix ever since it occurred.

“I think we’re close, Blaine,” he says. His voice comes out rough and messed up. Some part of his voice simulator must’ve gotten damaged. The sound is not pleasant at all. He’s lucky Blaine can’t hear him, right now. Oh, but he will. Soon enough. And at that point it won’t matter at all how Adam’s voice sounded. All that will matter will be together again, at last.

He reaches out to screw up the front cover of the mechanical heart with its back cover, so to keep all the gears safely held inside. Weirdly, his arm won’t move. “Come on,” he whines, trying to reach out again. His arm’s still blocked. He tries the other too, but there’s no response coming from there either.

Annoyed, he snorts, and then sighs in frustration. He’s so tired. He’s sure that, if he could rest a little while, just a little while, he’d be up and running again in no time. And then his brain would be sharper, and his hands would move faster – or move at all, well, he’d settle for moving right now. He’d have Blaine’s new heart ready in but a few minutes.

“I think I’m going to take a nap, Blaine,” he tells him, despite knowing he can’t hear him right now, “I’m going to just rest my eyes for a while. I’m going to try and recharge my battery. I’ll be back soon. So you just hang in there for me, alright? Just hang in there.”

There’s no answer coming from Blaine’s stiff body. Or what’s left of it anyway. Adam doesn’t worry about it, though, why should he? It’s just a few minutes of sleep. It’s not like he’s giving up on anything. It’s not like he’s saying goodbye. Just a quick goodnight.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Erotico.
Pairing: OMC/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Self, Missing Moment, Angst.
- Being Cody's boyfriend is basically awesome, cos Cody's literally perfect -- beautiful, talented, smart, sweet and kind -- but sometimes Cody's just too perfect for his own good, and sometimes, just sometimes, all that perfection makes Leo just want to pin him down and screw him on the floor, fuck decency and reason. And not being able to do just that drives him mad.
Note: Scritta per il MMOM, ispirata a Billy Liar dei The Decembrist (o meglio, al verso che poi la titola), ed anche al prompt Maglione troppo largo e jeans troppo stretti della Notte Bianca #15.
Il mese di maggio 2014 verrà per sempre ricordato dai posteri come il mese in cui Leo se l'è menato tantissimo. Letteralmente, di questi tempi non faccio altro che scrivere di Leo che si tocchiccia perché la gente bellissima attorno a lui lo eccita X'D E' esilarante.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
DRIFTING TO SLEEP WITH A MOAN AND A WEEP

Leo closes the door behind himself and leans on it, closing his eyes and breathing out for what seems like the first time in hours. He’s tired as if he had run a marathon, and the truth is he hasn’t left the couch for the last three hours. It’s frightening, if he thinks about it, that he could be so spent after three hours of just sitting down with his boyfriend watching a movie, but that’s exactly how he feels. He wonders if this is good for him, but it’s just a passing thought. It’s there, and then it isn’t anymore, and it’s easy to pretend it never was there to begin with.

The problem is simple – Cody is too beautiful, and Leo’s supposed to be able to handle this, but he can’t. He’s trying. He’s trying so very hard. But he’s so horny.

He’s always been an easily excited guy, that’s true. He’s almost twenty, now, and he can keep himself in some sort of control when it comes to sex, but the same things that made him hard when he was a sex-starved fifteen years old boy who’d have given anything for a snog make him hard now. It’s not as frequent as before, granted that, but it still is just as easy.

Now, if sometimes he gets an hard-on while thinking about underboobs or just a pair of hipbones peeking out the waistband of some denim jeans, he really has no idea how is it possible that the world – and the laws of decency – demand from him that he sternly orders his body to keep itself calm and cool upon seeing something like Cody.

Cody would fucking give an hard-on to the dead. Cody would made it impossible for a zombie apocalypse to happen by just flashing his baby blue eyes to the undead, making them instantly fall in love and want to have babies from him. Cody would make eunuchs hard. He would give boners to a lady, he would make a lesbian want to grow a penis just to use it on him. And his complete lack of awareness of the effect he has on people just makes him even sexier.

How is Leo supposed not to react to that?

He moves away from the door, sighing deeply and passing a hand through his hair. It shouldn’t be this hard to be around your boyfriend. But then again it wouldn’t be this hard to be around Cody if he could fuck him. God, that’s all he can think about. It literally is everything Leo can think of when they’re together. He loves Cody, he appreciates everything about him, not just his looks, but his kindness, his smartness, how talented he is, his cute sense of humor, being with him is not all about the sex (they don’t have), but not having it makes it all so damn hard.

He gets him, it’s not that he doesn’t. When Cody first told him his story, Leo was the first to back off. To give him space. “When you’re ready,” he told him, and he meant it. When he repeats it now, he still means it. He would never want sex to be something Cody feels compelled to do just to make him happy or keep him satisfied, that would be wrong and disgusting and he’d never do something like that to anybody, let alone somebody like Cody, somebody so precious and sweet, who’s been through so much.

But it’s been four months since then. Four months of being around Cody, kissing him, hugging him, sticking his hands underneath his clothes, touching him everywhere, everything but proper sex, and it’s starting to feel like torture. He’s physically affected by frustration, it makes him sore all over. Not to mention the fact that sometimes, when he’s with Cody, he kisses him or touches him in just the right way and he gets hard so quickly and so much, and it just doesn’t go away. And he spends hours sitting on a couch or walking down the streets or lying down in the stupid bed with a revolution in his pants and no way to quell it, and it’s fucking painful. Like, literally painful.

Like right now, for example.

Today, Cody was wearing just a simple sweater and denim jeans, when he came over, late in the afternoon. Cody rarely dresses so casually. He’s pretty shy, generally speaking, but when it comes to clothing he’s frighteningly shameless. Ridiculously tight leggings, shirts and sweaters that leave him bare more than they cover him up, boots with high heels up to his thighs, naked shoulders, naked tummy, tons of bracelets dangling around his thin wrists, necklaces wrapped twice or thrice around his pale, slender neck. He doesn’t do it to be looked at, he does it because he likes the way he looks when he’s dressed like that, but sometimes he prefers not to put any of his loud clothes on, and he keeps it down.

One would expect him to be a little less sexy, when he doesn’t doll himself up.

One would be very wrong to believe that.

Maybe it’s because it’s unusual to see him dressed so carelessly, but the moment Leo saw him appear on the threshold he instantly thought he wanted to strip that clothes off him and fuck him right there, in the hall, on the floor, screw the rest, and the laws of decency too. He was just so damn gorgeous, those ridiculously tight but simple denim jeans wrapped around his soft, girly-shaped legs, defining them perfectly, while the upper part of his body drowned in that sweater at least three sizes bigger than his own. It was so baggy the collar kept falling off his shoulder while they were snuggling on the couch, watching that movie.

Leo hasn’t seen a second of it. While the movie played on the TV screen, a whole different movie was playing in his head, a movie starring Cody undressing for him, stripping off those clothes he was wearing to show himself naked to him, bending over for him, exposing himself for his hungry eyes, pliant to the intrusion of his prying fingers.

It’s been incredibly hard to get through the night without throwing a fit or kicking Cody out after picking the lamest excuse to fight with him. It hasn’t happened only because it’s even harder to fight with Cody than it is to survive his presence without being able to fuck him senseless. But now that he’s gone, and that Leo’s alone in the house – Adam out somewhere, Leo doesn’t know and right now he doesn’t even care – it’s all coming back to him, the weight of the effort it took to pull the normal, not sex-crazed at all person act for the evening, and he feels drained.

Exhausted, he lets himself go face first on his bed, hiding against his pillow. The moment he closes his eyelids, Cody comes back. “God…” Leo whines, rubbing his face against the pillow, trying to make him disappear by squeezing his eyes so hard he starts seeing white spots everywhere, “Can’t you leave me alone? Haven’t I suffered enough?”

Apparently not, since those pictures keep coming at him. He just can’t stop seeing Cody on that couch, wrapped in that huge sweater and those skinny jeans. He’s unable to stop himself from picturing his own fingers tug at those clothes, rip them off Cody’s body. He closes his eyes again and, in his imagination, he’s already sliding down Cody’s body with his lips parted, leaving a wet trace behind each and every kiss as he travels south, taking a bite of his rounded tummy before moving even lower, reaching for his soft, perfectly bubble-shaped buttocks.

He slips his right hand in between his body and the mattress, sticking it underneath his own pants, reaching for his cock. God, he’s so hard. He needs to jerk off now, or he’s going to explode, and that wouldn’t be pretty. His room’s already enough of a mess.

He quickly turns on his back, his eyes still closed, his hand firmly wrapped around his raging hard-on. His skin’s never been hotter, it’s almost worrying. He feels feverish and he wonders if that’s normal. Maybe he developed a condition, some sort of illness. Like those men that don’t jerk off for years and keep storing sperm until their testicles swell and then fall off. If those men even exist. Leo isn’t sure about that. He’s not sure about anything, right now. He only knows he wants Cody, that jerking off is necessary but it’s not enough. It’s pleasant alright, but it’s not him. It’s not like feeling him close, naked and sweaty and shivering under his touch. It’s not like inhaling his sweet scent, it’s not like tasting his salty skin on the tip of his tongue as he steals bites and kisses from him. It’s not like feeling the smooth texture of his skin under his fingertips as he caresses him everywhere.

It’s not like making love. This is not like making love at all, and he needs that so bad sometimes he thinks about it and the strength of his need almost makes him want to weep.

Holding his breath, clutching his jaw, he bites at his cheek coming so suddenly and unexpectedly that, at first, he doesn’t even realize he hasn’t taken his pants off first. For a few minutes he just basks in the post-orgasmic bliss that surrounds him, together with the warmth of his bed and the newly found calmness his whole body can experience now that he let out all that frustration, but when the feeling’s gone he can’t help to make a face as he takes his dirty hand out of his pants and realizes he’s gonna have to wash all this shit out right this instant if he doesn’t want his clothes to be stained forever.

Sighing deeply, he stares at the dark ceiling of his room and contemplates the prospect of standing up, taking his clothes off, maybe having a shower, slip into his pajamas and then crawl back to bed. He even tries to pick himself up from the bed to do something, but his body falls back, heavy and forceless.

Fuck the stains, he thinks with a snort, closing his eyes. Cody’s thought is coming back at him already, and he feels himself hardening once again. And, well, there’s no reason to clean himself up if he already knows he’s gonna be dirty again in but a few minutes.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Erotico.
Pairing: OFC/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Angst, Het, Self.
- Annie spends half an hour over the phone with Adam, hearing him bitching and moaning about Leo's relationship with Blaine. When the conversation's over, she lies down on the bed, dwelling in rage and frustration. A fire she decides to put out her own way.
Note: Scritta per il secondo giorno del MMOM, ispirata ad America di Gianna Nannini *O*/ Non avevo idea di cosa scrivere finché non ne ho parlato con la Tab e lei non mi ha aiutato a vedere la luce. E poi ho scritto angst su Annie e ora mi sento sporca perché mai nessuno dovrebbe far soffrire Annie. Tantomeno io che la amo di amore vero.
Però sono stata felice, scrivendo, perché in genere scrivo molto slash, per cui la presenza di vagine nelle mie storie è piuttosto ridotta. E invece a me le vagine piacciono tanto e sono felice di averne potuta descrivere una. Aaah~
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
BETTER OR WORSE I AM TETHERED TO YOU

She just got off the phone with Adam, and she feels drained. There’s nothing in the world that manages to accomplish the task of wearing her out quite like Adam does. It must be some sort of superpower, some special ability only he possesses. It’s probably part of what makes him so irresistible to her eyes, which is very unnerving.

Sighing deeply, Annie turns on her side, resting her head on her fluffy pillow. She just can’t understand the guy. She can’t understand if he’s really stupid or just pretending not to see the obvious, or even if he sees and understands everything, and just doesn’t care. He confuses her so much. She can’t make sense of nothing about him, and he’s the first and hopefully only of his kind to have such an effect on her.

Yet another reason why she just can’t stop thinking about him, apparently.

He was upset about Blaine and Leo, obviously. He always is. Annie hasn’t known Adam for long – a little less than a couple years, now – but she got that, already: Adam’s head is divided in boxes, the biggest of which contains only Leo, and eats up a lot of space in there, to the point that there’s isn’t much left for the rest of the world. So whenever he’s really happy, or really sad, or really angry, or any other strong feeling, powerful enough to move him, there’s always Leo involved.

Which makes Annie so fucking angry, to be honest.

She breathes in and out, closing her eyes and pressing her face down against the pillow, inhaling the soft, delicate scent of freshly washed linen. She’s got to calm down. She shouldn’t be angry about this. She shouldn’t let Adam unwillingly and unconsciously tie rage to the thought of Leo. That’s just unfair – Leo has no fault in this. He doesn’t even know what he’s part of. He’s happy, together with his boyfriend or whatever he considers Blaine to be these days, and he has no idea what Adam feels about him.

Much like Adam himself, actually.

The fact that he’s so oblivious to what he really feels about Leo never ceases to amaze and enrage her. It’s funny, on one hand, ‘cause the whole thing is so clear it’s just ridiculous that Adam can’t see that the only reason why he can’t cope with Leo being with somebody else is that he wants him for himself. On the other hand, though, it’s just frustrating. Annie wishes he’d come to terms with it, once and for all, and said it out loud. So she could… she doesn’t even know. Surrender?, maybe. Or just make peace with the thought. The thought that most of the time, despite how hard she tries, not only he doesn’t consider her as girlfriend material, but he doesn’t even see her.

She shakes her head quickly and growls out of frustration, turning on her stomach and hiding her face against the pillow. This is so annoying. And so embarrassing. And not being able to accept the thought makes her so angry with herself. She shouldn’t rely that much on his attention. She doesn’t, with anybody else! She doesn’t care about anybody else’s eyes on her, but Adam… he’s something else. And the fact that he is, that no matter how hard she tries to kick him out of her head she keeps thinking about it, she keeps wanting him to see her, and want her, and touch her, that just makes it even worse.

It’s one thing not to have him. She can survive that.

It’s so much worse that he just doesn’t care.

Feeling the familiar sting of rage tears behind her eyelids, she turns on her back and opens her eyes, staring at the ceiling. She hates to feel like this. It makes her feel so stupid, so disappointed in herself. It frustrates her, and frustration never fails to bring a sudden urgency of blowing some steam off in the easiest, quickest way possible.

She loathes to be horny for all the wrong reasons. It’s an excitement that doesn’t bring her any satisfaction, not even when she ultimately manages to get off. It just brings more sadness.

But rage is worse, and she knows that, if she doesn’t take care of this right now, rage is just gonna rise and rise, until she has to break something. And she doesn’t want that.

Closing her eyes, she tries to concentrate on something good. Fantasies always help her. It can be anything. They’re people without faces, and they all want her. They want only her in the world, and their voices without sounds speak to her, make her feel adored, make her feel desired. As she touches herself through her skirt, pressing her fingers against the fabric between her legs, she undoes the first couple buttons of her shirt and slips her fingers underneath, rubbing one of her breasts slowly.

She’s not really in the mood for this. Her nipples are soft and oversensitive, and she frowns when she rubs them with her fingertips, ‘cause the feeling isn’t pleasant. “Come on…” she tells herself, annoyed, “You just gotta get through this. Just get into it, and then it’s gonna be fine.”

Back to the people without faces, the voices without sounds. The hand on her breast isn’t her own, it’s one of those people’s, and the thought sends a pleasant shiver down her back. She closes her fingers and squeezes, she feels the sweet softness of her flesh give in to the pressure of her fingers, and she licks her lips, resting back against the pillow with a faint sigh.

She keeps stroking her breast, her fingertips moving in circles around her now hard nipple, as she slips her other hand past the waistband of her skirt, through layers and layers of fleecy fabric, until she feels the soft cotton of her panties. She moves past that too, reaching down, stroking herself with the tip of her index finger.

She’s wet. She wasn’t expecting it, and the feeling forces a lost moan out of her lips. She parts her legs slowly, arching her back to push her hips up, meeting the movement of her finger over her clit. It’s hard, sticking out like a little button, and she presses it down and then moves in circles all around it, her hips thrusting forward, pleasure pooling up in her underbelly.

People without faces. Voices without sounds. People wanting her. Voices. You’re so beautiful, Annie, you’re so sexy. I keep thinking about you, Annie, I don’t know how to stop. I want you so much. I wanna fuck you so bad. Can I fuck you, Annie? Can I fuck you?

And there’s Adam’s face. There’s his voice.

Her whole body jerks forwards as she shakes like a leaf in the fit of sudden pleasure that comes with her orgasm. She parts her lips and lets go of a strangled moan, her eyes wide open on the white ceiling of her bedroom.

She can still see Adam face. She can still hear his voice. It’s like a nightmare that doesn’t want to end, that keeps toying you around, making you believe it’s over and then striking you again with double the strength.

It’s exhausting.

She falls back on the bed, one of her hands still between her thighs, the other still wrapped around her breast. She lets go of it, and closes her eyes again, swallowing hard.

This isn’t just going to end, she knows that. This isn’t just going to go away, to wear itself off and then fade out like a distant memory.

As she takes her hand out of her panties and wipes what’s left of her climax away with a tissue, she wishes she could wipe away what’s left of Adam inside of her mind with the same easy simplicity, but she knows she can’t. And she tries to find some comfort in the inevitability of this, but she finds none.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC/OMC.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, AU, Underage, Angst, Threesome.
- Blaine, Cody and Leo are in a relationship together, and they're completely unperturbed by the fact that they're frowned upon by the whole society for that, being Blaine and Cody officially married and being Leo, well, the sex slave Blaine accepted from his best friend as a wedding gift and that, according to the law, he should've refused with no second thought.
Their peace gets shattered the moment Lord Anderson, Blaine's father, comes pay a surprise visit to his disappointing son.
Note: Scritta per il compleanno della Tab, perché se c'è una cosa che può aiutarla a superare indenne l'ingrato compito di compiere gli anni, quello è lo Slavesverse u.u Slaveverse: questo 'verse AU meraviglioso in cui Blaine è un ex generale dell'esercito che ora si occupa della formazione delle reclute, e ha sposato questo ragazzino, Cody, contro il parere di suo padre. E poi ha anche ricevuto in dono questo sex slave, Leo, che s'è tenuto e che ha poi incluso in una relazione a tre con suo marito. LOOK AT YOUR LIFE, BLAINE, LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES. YOUR FATHER IS VERY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU.
Anyway, anche per questa storia vale quanto già detto in precedenza per un altro trilione di storie: non è che uno snippet, un pezzettino (facciamo un pezzettone, viste le dimensioni) di un 'verse e di una storia più ampi, possibilmente a più capitoli, che prima o poi io e la Tab scriveremo e posteremo in maniera più organica. Nel frattempo, questo è un assaggino. (-one?)
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
WALK THROUGH THE FIRE

When Cody opens his eyes, all he can see are Blaine's broad, tan shoulders, and the messy mass of his curly long hair falling upon them and on the pillow. He's pressing himself so close to him some of those rebel locks tickle his nose, and despite not feeling the reassuring pressure of Leo's body against his own he can't help but smile in pleasure. Blaine hasn’t kept his hair so long for such a long time. When he was in the Army full time he was required to keep them very short. He decided to let them grow when he retired, and he hasn't trimmed them since. They're gorgeous, and one of the things Cody loves more about him. Perhaps because he shares that trait with Leo.

Thinking about him makes his lips curl downwards in a disappointed pout. Leo hasn't been himself, lately. Granted, he's never been the merriest of kids. He's always been a bit of a grumpy thing. But Cody understands him - Cody even agrees with him. When you get captured and then sold as a sex slave, there are no many reasons left for you to actually be happy about your life. Cody likes to think living with him and Blaine is slowly solving that problem, he comforts himself thinking that, at some point, Leo will realize that despite all the sadness he's experienced in his life, he still has something to be happy about, but he knows it'll take time.

For now, he just puts up with Leo's sudden mood swings, trying to understand them. It's usually very easy to grasp the reason behind Leo's anger or disappointment, mainly because he doesn't really do a thing to try and conceal his discontent, or his motivations. Right now, for example, he knows Leo refused to sleep together with them because he's angry and disappointed. And the reason why he's so angry and disappointed is, of course, Lord Anderson.

Blaine's father's always been a bit of a problem for their relationship. Not that Cody doesn't get where his utter refuse to acknowledge and accept said relationship comes from. Despite how little he knows of the world outside his books, he knows very well that theirs isn't really considered a proper or decent relationship by society. He knows they're frowned upon by the largest part of the city's upper class, and while Blaine's general opposition to attending social meetings and parties sheltered them both against people's direct criticism, he still knows all the lords and ladies in town talk bad about them behind their backs.

He knows Lord Anderson's majorly disappointed in his son. He had such great expectations for him. After watching him rise to the head of the Army and fight proudly for years, like he himself had done before, for the glory of the Nation, he thought that, after retirement, he'd have taken the same road his father had taken under the same circumstances, the road the Anderson family expected him to take. He would've married a classy, rich lady of proper heritage, who'd have given him an heir, and he'd have started the political career, headed for the Ministry of War.

Blaine has done nothing of the likes. He wasn't interested in a political career. He had to leave the battlefields because he had grown sick of fighting, but he was unwilling to leave the Army itself. It had been his job all his life and he couldn't think of the day in which he wouldn’t have been able to be of service anymore. So, instead of leaving, he had merely changed his job: he wasn't Supreme General anymore, a task he had passed to a more befitting, still prime and not already nauseated by his own thirst for blood youngling of his choice, and he had taken upon himself the training of the new recruits.

To Lord Anderson's eyes, now, his son position is just barely less mortifying that it would be the one of a common teacher. And the fact that he decided to marry Cody, a clearly too young boy who's never going to be able to give him children - for obvious reasons - does nothing but worsen his situation.

Cody expected Lord Anderson to be even more disappointed in his son because of his unheard before decision to not only keep a common sex slave around despite being married, but also to promote him to some sort of unofficial second husband who could do everything he wanted around the house, ordering other servants around, walking out of his room free of shackles and sharing the bed with him and Cody. It was an outrageous situation, and despite Lord Anderson's decision to not disown Blaine of his inheritance, it has always been clear, right from the start, he was never going to act kindly with Leo.

Cody never expected it to be any different, but he had hoped for it to be a little less discomforting. He wishes Lord Anderson didn't have to be so pushy with Leo, and he also wishes Leo wouldn't take each remark so personally. Sure, most of what Lord Anderson says is a personal offense aimed at Leo, but really, what else could Leo possibly be expecting? That the head of one of the most ancient aristocratic families of the city would just accept his position in his son's house? A situation younger and more open-minded people would have struggled to accept too? There was no chance.

Which is why Blaine suggested him to try and not catch too much attention during his father's visit. Cody thought it was a wise suggestion, and if he had been Leo he would've accepted it, and he probably wouldn't have stuck his nose out of his room until the visit was over and done with, but Leo isn't Cody, and obviously he couldn't take this.

"So you wanna hide me, now," he said frowning, his eyes shining with rage, "You're ashamed of me. Well, I'll give you something to really be ashamed of, then."

These had been his words and Leo has lived by them since Lord Anderson arrived a few days ago. Blaine hasn't even tried to argue with him, he knew it'd have only made things worse. So, when Lord Anderson had arrived and Leo had greeted him on the doorstep as Blaine should've done himself, the mood of the visit had been set, and it wasn't the brightest one.

Cody turns around on his back and stares at the ceiling, sighing deeply.

"You'll cover that pretty face of yours in wrinkles, if you keep worrying so much," Blaine says, and Cody suddenly turns to look at him, surprised by hearing his voice.

"I thought you were still asleep," he says with a soft smile, waiting for Blaine to turn around on his side to face him, and then curling against his naked chest, feeling the warmth of his skin under his fingertips.

"I haven't slept much," Blaine confesses, placing a soft kiss on Cody's forehead.

"Me neither," Cody sighs, "It's hard without Leo. The bed seems so empty."

"Does it, now?" Blaine asks with a little smirk, playing offended though he isn't.

"I didn't mean it in a bad way!" Cody hastens to say, looking up at him, "It's not that I don't like sleeping with you, it's just—"

"I know," Blaine laughs wholeheartedly, kissing him on his forehead again, and then on his lips, "I know, pet. It's the same for me too. I miss that pest."

"Leo's not a pest," Cody protests with a small pout, "Don't be mean."

"You know I love him," Blaine says with a smile, "But I wish he wouldn't cause these many problems whenever my father's around. Doesn't he get that it's already hard as it is?"

"I think he does," Cody sighs, looking down, "It's just that it's even harder for him, and I think he feels like we don't understand it. Like we don't care that he suffers for being treated like a sex slave when he isn't one anymore."

"He still is, officially," Blaine says.

"Yes, but he's not for us anymore," Cody insists, "We don't treat him like that. Let's be honest, we never really treated him like that. And it's unfair of us to treat him like family every day, and then expect him to just go back and play the slave when your father's here."

"It's a matter of survival, honey," Blaine tries to explain in a resigned sigh, "I can handle my father, if we don't make him angry. But if we push him past the point of his tolerance, there's no telling of what he could do. He's still one of the most influential men in this city. He could cut us off. He could have me lose my job. He could still disown me and strip me of my name, this house, our life, everything. That's the only reason why I asked Leo to do as I said. I'm not just trying to avoid a fight. I'm trying to protect us. Him included."

Cody sighs again, hiding his face against Blaine's chest and leaving a small kiss on his collarbone. "If you could maybe explain this to him in these terms..."

"It'd serve nothing, you know that," Blaine smiles a little sadly, passing his fingers through Cody's straight black locks, "Leo doesn't want to hear any of that. He hates the mere thought."

Cody doesn't insist. He knows it's not his place to do it, and even if it was, he's painfully aware of the fact that Blaine's right. Leo just loses it when they remind him in any way that he's not a real husband and never will be.

"Come on, pet," Blaine reassures him with a warm, hug, "We just have to survive the week. How hard can that be?"

Cody doesn't have an answer to this question, so he doesn't speak. Losing himself into Blaine's hug, though, he can't help but fear that surviving the week could be harder than Blaine thinks.

*

Leo knows patience isn’t exactly his strongest trait. He doesn’t know how to be patient. If something makes him mad, he has to show it. He doesn’t believe in hiding his emotions, never has. Despite his shackled wrists and the months he spent living in a cage after he was captured and before he was sold as a slave, he has always insisted on acting like a free man, even when he wasn’t. And free men laugh when they’re happy, cry when they’re sad, and break things when they’re angry.

He’d never break anything inside Blaine’s home, if anything because he knows that each and every item displayed on the furniture, no matter how ugly, costs a fortune. But he doesn’t hold back his remarks, and he refuses to play the part with a shy smile to conceal his disappointment.

Blaine wants him to hide. He wants him to deny what he is. What they are. Or, if not denying it, at least not to admit it. Not to be so loud about it. Well, Leo can’t have that. Being loud about it is the only thing he has. He can’t marry Blaine and Cody, he can’t be an official, rightful part of their family. Their relationship can only be a true one in the shadows of their bedroom, at night, when they’re locked away from the world. He will never be able to say out loud “yes, I’m their husband”, he will never be able to have people, everybody in the world, recognize him as such. So it’s his right, he believes, to be as loud about it as he possibly can at least around the house.

Blaine and Cody say it’s his home too. That he should believe it is. Well, then, he will. He will do as he pleases, ‘cause that’s what you do in your own home.

He hasn’t slept with them, tonight; therefore, he hasn’t slept well. He never manages, when they’re apart for whatever reason.

He remembers that time Cody caught that horrible illness that had his perfect, pale skin covered in annoying, itching red spots. The medic, alarmed and worried, ordered Blaine and him to stay as far as him as they could, and not to share the bed with him until the illness wasn’t completely gone. For almost ten days, Leo and Blaine had shared the bed in Leo’s room, and despite how much Leo loved to be so close to Blaine, to feel his warmth against his skin, to call him his own forgetting for a moment he had to share him, the longing he felt for Cody for the entire time had been so heart-wrenching he hadn’t been able to sleep for four days straight. He had finally collapsed between Blaine’s arms only on the fifth day, when his body had given up entirely, sending him into such a deep slumber he had slept for two days straight. When he had awakened, he had found Blaine in tears, and he had rushed to ask if Cody was alright, fearing those tears could mean something had happened to him, that he had worsened or something, but Blaine had held him in his arms and, squeezing him tightly, had told him he was the one he had been worrying about.

Leo had never felt so loved as he had felt during those few moments, held between Blaine’s strong arms.

Ha hates to be apart from him. He hates to be apart from Cody. He hates to be angry at them, but he can’t bring himself to stop. He realizes this situation isn’t entirely their fault, that they weren’t aware of Lord Anderson’s visit and that, even if they had been, there’s nothing they could’ve done to make it easier on him, but at the same time he can’t help to hold them accountable for it. He knows the only solution to this would be to drop everything, renounce to Lord Anderson’s inheritance, refuse the Anderson’s name entirely and just move into a different region, somewhere on the sea, far from here, where nobody would know them and they’d be able to be together for real.

He knows this isn’t the easiest decision to make. He knows it’s hard to accept a thought like this. To give up on everything and just flee. He’s not sure he’d be able to take such a decision, if he was in Blaine’s shoes, actually he thinks he probably wouldn’t, he’d be too scared, but at the same time he resents Blaine for not being brave enough to do it. He fought wars, he escaped unscathed from battlefields, and still the mere idea of wander the world poor and nameless with two kids terrifies him beyond reason. Leo can’t understand that. There’s nothing more terrifying than death and captivity, to him. Blaine survived death already, and he’d survive captivity if he escaped the golden bars he’s kept behind now. Poverty is nothing, compared to that. It’s nothing compared to all the happiness they could have.

He walks out of his bedroom, yawning a little and heading downstairs. He’d rather be free of this house and family, for they’re more of a burden than they’re a gift, right now, but as long as Blaine doesn’t take that decision he intends to keep acting as he wants. Which means roam around with no fear of being scolded for that, and attend breakfast with every other proper member of the family.

When he enters the living room, he understands how early it still is, because nobody’s here yet, except for servants setting the table for breakfast, of course. He takes great pleasure in ordering them around as if he was the master of the house. They’ve all hated him since he arrived. At first, they hated him because, strict and stuck up as all house servants always are, they found unacceptable that Blaine had decided to keep him despite how improper was for married men to still keep sex slaves in the house. Then, when they understood that not only he wasn’t going to go away soon, but Blaine and Cody were giving him more freedom than any of them had ever seen in their entire life, they got jealous of him, and the reasons to hate him just kept piling up until they were so many they didn’t even bother to hide it anymore. They were straight up disrespectful and mean to him, and Leo had decided that, if they didn’t care for being decent and kind anymore, then he wouldn’t have either.

He counts the porcelain plates set on the rounded wooden table, and notices they’re only three. “Where’s mine?” he asks, frowning at the maid who’s taking care of arranging the cutlery all around them.

She looks up at him, and he can see the hatred in her eyes, her scorn for being addressed with such boldness by a lowly sex slave, somebody who she thinks to be beneath her on the servants’ social ladder. “I didn’t think you were having breakfast with His Lordship,” she answers bitterly.

“Well, you thought wrong,” he answers roughly, “Set the table for me too.”

“Did you talk about it with His Lordship, first?” she asks, standing straight, her arms crossed behind her back, “Do you have his permission?”

“I don’t need his permission,” Leo answers, shrugging. He detects the flash of outrage that makes her eyes shine with anger the moment she hears him speak in such manner, and he grins at the sight. He’s satisfied.

“I see you haven’t lost this bad habit of yours,” a dark, deep voice says, as the maid freezes on the spot and rushes to bow and leave the room, “To think yourself greater than you are, and overstep the borders as if you didn’t care for them.”

Leo turns around, facing Lord Anderson’s and scowling at him. “That’s because I don’t,” he answers coldly, “Good morning, sir.”

“It’s Your Lordship, for you,” the man answers, anger vibrating in his voice.

“No, I don’t think so,” Leo says, shaking his head.

“Then I don’t think it’s a good morning, either,” Lord Anderson says. Leo watches him walk across the room and sit at the head of the table, on the biggest and richest chair around it. It’s Blaine’s seat, obviously. He doesn’t even have to give it up for his father while he visits, there are no rules forcing him to, not even common courtesy’s ones, because this is, in fact, his house, and not his father’s, but still the man does whatever he pleases here, and Blaine lets him. That’s just another reason to be angry at him.

“Well,” Lord Anderson says, spreading a white satin napkin on his knees, “Since you’re here, you might as well serve me breakfast. I’ll have scrambled eggs, bacon and a cup of dark coffee. Stat.”

Leo’s fists clutch down his sides, as he grits his teeth, glaring at the man. “I’m not a servant,” he says, trying to keep his voice down.

“I beg to differ,” Lord Anderson answers, raising his eyebrows in bewilderment, “A servant is exactly what you are.”

“I swear!” Leo suddenly screams, slamming his hand on the table, “If you don’t shut your mouth right this moment—”

“What is happening here?!”

Leo turns around, focusing on Blaine and Cody, staring at him from the doorstep. They look completely astonished by what they’re seeing, and he can’t even understand why until he realizes that, after he slammed his hand on the table, his fingers closed around one of the knives, and he’s holding it in quite a threatening way, right now. He wants to drop it – instead, he tightens his grip around its hilt.

“Leo,” Blaine says in a low, scolding voice, “What are you doing?”

“It’s not my fault!” he hastens to say, agitated, “He pushed me! He can’t—”

“You better drop that knife, Leo,” Blaine goes on, interrupting him carelessly, as if he wasn’t even interested in what he has to say.

“I wasn’t going to do anything with it!” Leo says, throwing it on the table.

“It didn’t seem like it,” Blaine points out, his voice still firm and cold.

“Yeah, whatever,” Leo growls, starting for the door.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Blaine stops him, closing his fingers in a tight hold around his wrist, “Apologize to my father.”

“What?” Leo turns to look at him, holding his breath.

“I said apologize to my father,” Blaine repeats, staring right into his eyes.

Leo begs him silently. Don’t make me do this. Just don’t.

“Blaine…” Cody tries, squeezing his forearm affectionately, but Blaine shrugs him off.

“Do it, Leo,” he insists.

Leo grits his teeth again, his limbs shaking in fiery rage. “I’m sorry, sir,” he says.

“It’s still Lord Anderson, for you, servant,” Lord Anderson points out.

Leo looks at Blaine again, praying he won’t have him say it, but Blaine’s grip around his wrist just tightens, and his eyes are empty dark mirrors that hold no pity. “Go on,” he says.

Leo pushes him away, freeing him from his grasp. “I’m sorry, Lord Anderson,” he says between his teeth. He doesn’t wait to see a victorious smile bloom on the old man’s lips, before running away. And he runs so fast he’s pretty sure he’s gonna be out the house soon enough, and that’s good, because he doesn’t wanna stop, he wants to keep running, to leave this house behind, not to ever think of Blaine or Cody or anything related to them ever again in his life. But when he stops he’s still inside the mansion, so big it makes him feel trapped as in a maze, and Blaine’s behind him. He followed him. Leo turns around and faces him, anger in his eyes, in the tears running down his cheeks now. “What the hell do you want?!”

“Why do you have to push me like that?” Blaine asks. There’s still anger in his eyes, he’s still looking at him as if Leo was a child and it was his duty to scold him, to rectify his behavior, but there’s also sadness in them, and Leo can’t stand it.

“Push you?” he screams, “How have I pushed you?!”

“You push me when you disrespect my father into my home,” Blaine answers sternly, staring at him, “You know you can’t afford that. We can’t afford that.”

“Haven’t you told me this is my house, that I should do as I please?”

“Being an idiot doesn’t fit into any of that, Leo!” Blaine answers, raising his voice, “Don’t you get it? If my father decides this is war, none of us will survive his fury! Everything we have will be lost!”

“Yeah, and what do we have, Blaine?!” Leo yells at him, his hands shaking, “We have nothing! You, on the other hand, you’ve got everything! You’ve got your father keeping you on the line, pushing you away but keeping you on a leash, and you enjoy that because it means you still have a place in the world! You’ve got your rightful husband you can be proud of, treat like a precious jewel to protect and shelter from every bad thing of life, and then you’ve got me to run to when you wanna do things dirty enough you can’t possibly think to taint Cody with!” he smiles bitterly, tears still streaming down his face, “I was such a fool to believe you could want anything different from that! Why would you? You’ve got everything you could possibly want and you just don’t care that I’ve got nothing in return!”

Blaine parts his lips in disappointment. He’s hurt by Leo’s words, and Leo can see it written all over his face. He can’t even feel any regret about making him feel like this. Right now, all he thinks is that Blaine deserves it.

“How can you say that?” Blaine asks, his voice faint and a little shaky, “After everything—”

“Do not say that!” Leo interrupts him, his eyes open wide in outrage, “Don’t you dare! I won’t be lectured on gratefulness and ungratefulness, not right now, not from you, not after what just happened!” he turns around, giving him his back, “Just leave me alone,” he whispers, before running away.

This time, Blaine doesn’t follow him.

*

Cody finds him sitting on his bed, alone in his bedroom, a few hours later. He knocks, and Leo doesn’t answer. He calls him, and Leo keeps not answering, and at that point Cody just walks in, looking scared and worried and lost like a child who doesn’t really know if he’s supposed to do what he’s doing, but that already feels it’s gonna cause him trouble.

“Leo…?” he whispers, sneaking into the room and closing the door behind himself. He turns to look at Leo, only a dark outline in the shadow of the room, and a desperate whimper escapes his lips as he approaches him. “Leo… I came as soon as I could.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Leo answers coldly. He’s got his knees drawn to his chest, his arms clasped around them. He’s holding himself together because he’s not sure his body alone will be able to pull it off. He’s sad enough he wishes he could let it go. And it’s more than just that, actually. It’s not just sadness. It’s the pointlessness of it all that breaks him. The absolute absence of prospects.

“Don’t say it,” Cody climbs on the bed, kneeling close to him, one of his small hands pressed on Leo’s back, between his shoulder blades, the other one trying to sneak between his knees and his chin, to caress his cheek, “I wanted to see how you were. That scene at breakfast, it was terrifying.”

Sweet little Cody. Leo remembers an old time, right after he arrived, in which the mere thought of him sent him on such a rage. So sweet, so little, so unaware of the world, so easily crushable, and Leo wanted to crush him. To keep Blaine all to himself.

In hindsight, he’s grateful Cody’s still around. He wouldn’t have survived Blaine without him. Blaine’s just not the kind of man one kid alone can survive against. Too hard and demanding and made adamant by his age and upbringing. Cody softens him up just enough so Leo doesn’t have to get bruised whenever Blaine lays a finger on him.

They work so good, the three of them together. It’s such a pity they’re headed nowhere.

“I’m sure Blaine doesn’t want you here,” Leo insists, trying to get away from Cody’s touch. But it’s so soft and tender, so warm and loving. How is he supposed to let go of it? Of any of this? “You better go.”

“I don’t want to go!” Cody snaps, “I’m tired of this, Leo! Look at me.”

“Don’t order me around!” Leo raises his voice. He raises his eyes too, meeting Cody’s. They’re warm and understanding, and Leo instantly realizes looking at him was a big, big mistake. If he ever wants to be ready to do without him, looking at him is exactly the last thing he’s supposed to do. Now he can’t look away.

Cody’s just so beautiful. His tiny frame, his girly features, the natural elegance of each and every move he makes. He looks just like a doll, and he doesn’t even make an effort to. Leo has no idea how he can even be real. When it’s a good day, he thinks about Cody and Blaine and he can’t believe that, despite everything, he got so lucky that two people like them fell in love with him.

Today’s not a good day, though.

“What do you want?” he just asks, looking away from him again.

For a long moment, Cody doesn’t say anything. Leo can still feel his baby blue eyes on himself, trying to make some sense out of him. Truth is, even if he wanted, he could never really make Cody understand how it feels like for him. Cody’s always been loved, he’s always been pampered and protected. He found his one perfect thing in his life, and he doesn’t understand what does it mean to fear it’s gonna be over before he could actually call it his own.

When the silence grows so long it starts to feel awkward, Leo opens his lips to speak and ask Cody to leave again, but Cody doesn’t let him. He wraps his arms around his shoulders, pulling him in for a warm, tender embrace. “I want to be with you,” he whispers softly, speaking to Leo’s ear, “Just let me be with you a while.”

Leo shuts his lips quickly, clenching his teeth. Sweetness hurts more than meanness, that’s for sure. He lets out a broken sigh and wraps his arms around Cody too, hiding his face against his chest. He smells so good. Peach and roses and sugar and milk. Leo closes his eyes and inhales that hypnotic scent, rubbing his nose against Cody’s collarbone through the impalpable silky dress he’s wearing. “Is he angry with me?” he asks in a low voice, his fingers moving slowly up and down Cody’s smooth, naked arms.

“I don’t think that’s the point,” Cody smiles sadly, brushing Leo’s wild curls off his forehead to press a kiss there, “Are you angry with him?”

“Yes, I am,” Leo answers, honestly, “He shouldn’t have had me apologize.”

“He’s his father, Leo,” Cody reminds him, his fingers passing soothingly through Leo’s messy locks.

“And I’m his lover,” Leo insists, “He says he loves me. But he puts him first.”

“He puts him first because he loves you,” Cody explains, tightening the grip of his arms around Leo’s neck. He’s so close, now, Leo can feel the warmth of his skin through his clothes, the urgency of his body as it searches for his own, and he gives in to it, ‘cause he’s unable to resist him, his softness and sweetness, the promise of his taste on his tongue, “He’s trying to protect what we have. That includes you.”

“He’s trying to protect himself,” Leo says, his lips already pressed against Cody’s neck, parting lightly to take a small bite, “It’s the only thing he really cares about.”

“You don’t even believe it,” Cody whimpers lightly, tilting his head to the side, exposing more of his neck to the wet trail of Leo’s kisses, “If you could just talk to him. Try and see it from his point of view.”

“Enough talking about Blaine,” Leo cuts it short, raising his head and cupping Cody’s face in his hands, “You said you wanted to be with me. Is that true? Or are you just trying to talk me out of my rage?”

Cody looks at him through heavy-lidded eyes, his lips parted and wet as he breathes out slowly and deeply. Silently, without releasing the hold of his arms around Leo’s neck, he sits down on the mattress and parts his legs for him.

That’s answer enough.

*

“I will never be able to understand your choices, Blaine,” Lord Anderson says, walking nervously up and down the garden shrouded in darkness, barely lit by the whiteness of the moonlight.

“Father, please,” Blaine sighs deeply, passing a hand over his face. He’s sitting on a white marble bench, and he realizes he shouldn’t be sitting like a boy in front of his father. He’s a man, now, he should be proudly standing in front of him. And yet, here he is, sitting and keeping his eyes locked on the ground, trying to take comfort in the sweet smell of the roses coming from the bushes surrounding them.

“Do not please me, Blaine,” Lord Anderson insists, stopping abruptly in front of him, his arms crossed behind his back, “Why do you insist on acting like a whimsical child?”

“I’m trying not to, father,” Blaine answers, “I’m really trying to keep it together.”

“Keep what together, boy?” Lord Anderson asks, and Blaine shivers as he hears him call him as he used to when he was nothing but a child, “This charade of a marriage?”

“My marriage with Cody is not a charade, father,” Blaine says weakly, “We love each other.”

“Really?” Lord Anderson laughs out loud, mockingly, “You love him! And is this the reason why you kept that horrible thing inside your house?”

“Leo is not a thing, father.”

“He’s a servant,” Lord Anderson replies, “Same difference. I just can’t understand it! If you wanted a lover, you could’ve easily gotten one! Most people keep them in houses bought specifically for that reason! Why would you want to keep your lover in your own house, you dumb boy?!”

“He is not my lover!” Blaine answers, raising his eyes and then lowering them instantly once again, “Cody loves him too! He’s a precious gift life gave us, he’s—”

“Oh, enough with this nonsense!” Lord Anderson dismisses him quickly, “I demand you stop babbling about things you clearly have no knowledge of at once. You speak about love, but you don’t understand what love means. To love somebody is to sacrifice ourselves for their sake. And yet, you dragged your husband in a highly improper situation, just because you couldn’t do without your precious slave boy.”

“I’m telling you, Cody loves Leo as much as I do,” Blaine insists, but his voice is so weak, now, it’s barely audible.

“Shut up, Blaine, your husband knows exactly nothing of love, as he knows nothing of life in general!” Lord Anderson yells, losing his patience altogether, “You took him with you when he was nothing but a boy, you molded him into a tiny, helpless thing that’d say yes to everything you told him, of course he says he loves the slave, why would he say otherwise, knowing it’d disappoint you?!”

Blaine’s fingers close in a twitch around his knees, squeezing nervously. He doesn’t say anything.

“Speak!” Lord Anderson says ruthlessly, “Say something!”

But he doesn’t. After a while, Lord Anderson just ups and leaves, snorting in disappointment.

“You’re having the time of your life, aren’t you?” Leo says, joining Blaine in the garden. He’s been watching for the past few minutes, not enough to hear the conversation right from the start, but still enough to get the point of it.

“Leo…” Blaine sighs, covering his face with both his hands and trying as hard as he can not to just tell him to fuck off, “Now’s not really a good time.”

“Yeah? Go figure,” Leo sits down on the bench next to him, swinging his feet back and forth, “You know, that was pathetic.”

“Leo.”

“No, it really was,” Leo insists with a mean smirk, “I think I’ve never seen anything sadder in my entire life. You enjoy being the big man so much, don’t you?, and yet you’re a child when your father scolds you. I swear, it would’ve been hilarious if it hadn’t been so sad.”

“What the fuck is your point, Leo?!” Blaine yells, turning to look at him, “Why are you saying these things?”

Leo looks back at him, keeping quiet for a few moments. “I was with Cody up to five minutes ago,” he says then, “He was very upset. He’s tired of all this. He thinks I should talk to you and see things from your perspective. You know what, I think I already do. Your perspective is the one of a weak boy. You’re frightened to death. When your father isn’t around you feel like you own the world, and suddenly when he is you’re back to when you owned nothing. How much does that burn?”

“Leo, stop.”

“I had sex with Cody, before I came here,” he goes on in a calm, low voice, “He came to me and he was so sad, he was missing me. We kissed and then I fucked him, and we were all alone in my bed, and you were as far from our thoughts as you could possibly be. Are you jealous?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Please, stop.”

“You’re a boy, just like your father said,” Leo closes his fists, looking angrily at him, “You couldn’t stand your ground if your life depended on it. You’re fragile and scared and you understand nothing. What do you know of love? What have you given up on, for love? I’ll tell you what: nothing. I could’ve run away. I could’ve killed you both in your sleep. Nobody would’ve ever found me, I’d have been free. But I didn’t want to. ‘Cause I love you. I decided to stay, I gave up on my freedom for you.”

“Leo, I’m begging you.”

“And what about Cody?” he simply goes on, ignoring his plea, “He was your only love, the king of this mansion, the only human being you could have given your life for, he was your life itself, and he didn’t even flinch when he had to accept me. Why? Out of love. He gave up on exclusivity, for you. For me.”

Blaine says nothing to answer that. He’s tired of asking Leo to stop, especially when it’s so clear he won’t.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Would it make a difference?”

“No,” Leo admits with a sigh, “No, it wouldn’t. I pretty much hate you, right now. I don’t think you appreciate the situation as it really is. I think you’re not able to give up on anything for the people you say you love. I don’t really believe yours is love at all.”

“Then why are you still here?” Blaine asks bitterly. He doesn’t even look at Leo. He feels that, if he does, he’s going to end up crying like the child everybody’s telling him he is. He can’t have it right now. “You said it yourself. You could be free. Then, if you don’t think I love you, go on. Be free. Get lost.”

Leo lowers his eyes, breathing deeply in and out. “I can’t,” he says in a low voice, “I love you too much. You’re the only thing I can’t give up on.”

Blaine turns to look at him, his eyes are full of tears and he feels ashamed for being so weak, for showing himself so naked and breakable. That’s not what he wants to be, but perhaps that’s exactly what he is. “I’m sorry I can’t love you the way you want me to love you,” he says, “I’m sorry I can’t give you all you want and all you deserve. I’m trying, Leo. I’m really trying. I’m struggling.”

“I can see that,” Leo stands up and closes the distance between them, standing in front of him. He holds Blaine’s face in his hands, looking at him, speaking softly to him. “I can’t understand why you do this to yourself. It would be so easy to just run off.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Blaine sighs, placing both hands on Leo’s, squeezing them between his fingers, “You think it would, because you’re filled with fantasies and idealizations of romantic love, Leo, but it wouldn’t. I’ve got a responsibility. I’ve got tons. You’re one of those, but running away with you and Cody, leaving all the rest behind, it wouldn’t be a solution, just an easy way out. I’m not used to easy way outs. I’m not used to retreats. I don’t want to back off. You’re right— I don’t want to give up on anything. I want to have it all.”

Leo looks at him silently for a few seconds, weighing his words, letting them sink in. Then he leans in, pressing a soft kiss on Blaine’s lips. “Be careful,” he says, “You’re trying to hold too much in your hands. You could end up with nothing.”

He leaves without another word. Alone in the garden, Blaine finally presses both hands against his eyes and cries in silence until he’s got no more tears to shed.

*

When the maid walks in to announce Lord Anderson won’t be joining them for lunch, Blaine can’t help but sigh with relief.

It’s not that he hates his father. In fact, it’s quite the contrary. He wasn’t a very present father, when Blaine was a kid, just like he hadn’t been a very present father for Cooper – his older brother – either. He also wasn’t a very present husband for their mother— but he was a hero. Blaine had been raised to look up to him since he could walk and talk. There hasn’t been a single day of his entire life in which he hasn’t felt like he should follow his steps, do what he expected him to do, think how he expected him to think, even want what he expected him to want.

He doesn’t do this out of cruelty, his father. He doesn’t scold him because he wants him to be miserable. He doesn’t reproach him to diminish him. He just wants him to be happy, Blaine thinks. To have all he deserves, all his birthright promised him for just being born into the Anderson family. It’s understandable, and Blaine knows parents just have to be stern. They don’t enjoy being it, but they have to. You’ve got to be cruel to be kind and kids have to toughen up and all that.

Except he’s not a kid, not anymore, and he’d expect his father to recognize that. But Leo’s right, his father’s right, he can’t expect to be treated like an adult if he himself isn’t acting like one.

He’s not acting like an adult now that he feels relieved and instantly better just because he was just told he won’t have to dine with his father for today. He’s acting just like a kid who broke something would. Scared by the fact that his father might find out what he did and scold him, he’s relieved because he can postpone the moment, if only for a little while.

That’s pathetic. But it is what it is.

“Can we call Leo?” Cody asks.

Blaine turns to look at him and blinks. He wasn’t paying attention. Cody’s question seemingly comes out of nowhere and makes no sense in his head. “Come again?” he asks, surprised.

Cody blushes and curls his heart-shaped mouth in a pretty smile. “Since your father won’t share lunch with us, it should be safe to ask Leo to come down and eat here. He’d be happy. I’d be happy too. Wouldn’t you?”

He would. He definitely would. He’s dying for some normality, for some sort of comeback of all the things they used to do before his father came to visit. He’s been here just a couple weeks, and it feels like years already. He wants his kids back.

He stands up, smiling gently at Cody. “I’ll go get him,” he says. Cody literally beams, half-jumping up from the chair and then remembering he’s supposed to control himself, especially in front of the other servants. They already hate Leo enough as it is, they don’t need to fuel their discontent even more.

Blaine smiles, though, all the way up to Leo’s bedroom, and he’s still smiling as he knocks on the door, waiting for an answer.

“Go away,” Leo says, “I don’t wanna see you.”

Blaine chuckles, leaning against the door. “How did you know it was me?”

“It’s always you when I don’t wanna see you, and it’s never you when I want to.”

“That’s unfair.”

“That’s the truth.”

“Still unfair.”

From inside the room, Leo sighs deeply, and then Blaine hears him stand up from the bed and get closer. The lock of the door opens soon after that, and in a little while he can already see Leo’s face as it appears in the doorframe when Leo finally opens the door.

“You’re still angry at me, aren’t you?” Blaine asks, smiling softly at him.

“I perfectly recall using a very different word. I told you I hated you.”

“You don’t hate me.”

Leo sighs, shaking his head. “No, I don’t. But yes, I’m still angry.”

“I come bearing a peace offering, though,” Blaine tries, curling his lips in an apologetic smile, “My father doesn’t wish to join us for lunch. So Cody and I thought it’d be safe to ask you to come downstairs to dine together.”

Leo raises an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your pity moves me,” he says, pursing his lips into an offended pout.

Blaine can’t help but chuckle at his expression, because he looks just like the kid he is. Leo’s very mature, for his age, so every now and then Blaine needs to be reminded about how much of a child he actually still is. “Now, don’t make it harder than it already is,” he tries, moving closer and cupping Leo’s face in his hands, brushing his thumbs on his cheeks.

“You deserve it,” Leo insists. His pout is so kissable. Blaine decides he doesn’t want to deprive himself, so he leans in and kisses him.

Leo gives in so easily it almost moves him to tears. He lifts his hands and wraps his fingers around the fabric of his shirt, pulling him in and kissing him deeply, melting against him. Blaine holds him close and lets himself believe everything’s fine, even if just for a couple of minutes.

When they join with Cody in the sitting room, he’s obviously overjoyed. They walk in hand in hand and, seeing them, Cody jumps on his feet again and throws himself at Leo, wrapping his arms around his neck and kissing him on his lips, oblivious to the horrified looks the servants cast him from the four corners of the room.

“I was hoping you weren’t angry anymore,” he chirps, hiding his pretty face against Leo’s chest and swinging a little back and forth while Leo chuckles, amused by his childish behavior.

“Actually, he wanted to make sure we knew that not only he’s still angry, but that he also hates me,” Blaine points out, nodding to himself.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Leo snorts, slapping him on his back.

Blaine laughs, and Cody looks up at Leo. “So it’s all forgiven?” he asks, his voice filled with hope.

“I don’t know,” Leo sighs, “I can’t pretend I’m alright with everything that’s happening, I’m annoyed and I hate Lord Anderson. I can’t just stop wishing him gone. He’s ruining my life, I can’t stand the thought. But for the time being, I guess we’re alright.”

“I’m glad you didn’t need my counsel to decide that. Much less glad about the fact that I can’t turn my head a single moment, that this house falls back into sheer chaos.”

They all turn suddenly towards the door, in front of which Lord Anderson stands now. He’s like a ghost that just appeared out of thin air, his old-fashioned clothes and his austere expression making him look more like one of those portraits of the old Lords of the Anderson family hanging on the wall in the trophy room than a real person.

“Father—” Blaine tries, swallowing hard, but Lord Anderson shuts him up with a single hard, cold look, and Blaine withdraws, rigid and tense.

“Don’t speak, Blaine,” he says, advancing further into the room, “Do not say a single word. I tried to understand what was going on inside your head, inside this house, I tried to understand your reasons, but I—”

“Father, you didn’t try,” Blaine stops him, taking a step forward, “You never tried!”

“I said shut up, Blaine!” the man yells, lifting his hand clutched up in a fist and shaking it a little. “You know nothing! If I say I tried, rest assured, I tried. And it was my mistake. Because there’s clearly nothing to understand, here. This is a perversion and as such it’s got to be stopped.”

“Father, don’t speak like this,” Blaine tries to placate him, speaking in a low, soft voice, “There’s nothing wrong in what we do.”

“I have never witnessed anything else that was even remotely close to be as wrong as this is, Blaine! This is a farce, a slap in the face of the sanctity of marriage, you’re spitting on the base itself of our society, you let your husband shamelessly kiss a sex slave you shouldn’t even possess and you don’t bat an eyelid at it! You should at least have them both flogged for such an insult!”

“Father!”

“Now, you old bag, I suggest you to shut that hole immediately,” Leo growls, taking a step towards the man, “Or else—”

“Leo, back off,” Blaine tries to stop him, gently pushing him towards Cody and waiting for his husband to wrap his arms around him, to contain him, before letting him go.

“If he dares speak another word—” Leo adds.

“If I dare?!” Lord Anderson yells, moving threateningly towards the kid, “This is my house, you dirty, filthy whore! I will say whatever I want, and do as I please! And if my son’s weak enough not to understand what kind of a deathly threat you are, then I’ll deal with you personally!”

“You will do no such thing!” Blaine finally spits out, placing himself in between his father and Leo, “Now I’ve had enough of this! I’ve had enough of you!”

Lord Anderson freezes on the spot, looking up at his son with his eyes wide open in bewilderment. “Blaine!” he cries out, outraged.

“Shut up!” Blaine goes on, putting both hands on his father’s shoulders and pushing him away from his kids, “I’m done taking orders from you! I’m done even listening to you, if you don’t understand you need to tone yourself down right now if you don’t want me to kick you out! Because this, father, this is my house, not yours, and you better start behaving accordingly!”

“How dare you?!” Lord Anderson yells, slapping his son’s hands away from himself, “Stand back, child! You need to let me handle this, for your sake!”

“It’s you who needs to stand back, father, for your safety,” Blaine replies, glaring at him, “For I won’t be held accountable for the way I’ll deal with you if you keep disrespecting me in my own house.”

“Disrespecting you!”

“Yes. Me, or my lovers.”

“Your lovers!” his father answers, laughing out loud, concealing disgust behind mockery, “How am I disrespecting this pitiful excuse of a family, if it doesn’t deserve any respect to begin with? This is wrong, it’s outrageous and I won’t stand for it.”

“You don’t need to,” Blaine answers coldly, crossing his arms over his chest, “I’m not asking for your permission, father. I never asked for your permission. I’d have been glad to have your blessing, and not having it breaks my heart, but I don’t need it. In fact, as of now, I don’t think I even want it anymore.”

Lord Anderson stares at him, at a loss words. “I could disown you,” he says weakly, “I could make your life impossible. You don’t want to do this, Blaine.”

Blaine could have never imagined that, in hearing such words coming from his father, his first reaction would’ve been a smile. And yet he smiles, tilting his head to the side a bit. “Don’t I, now?” he asks rhetorically, “Really?”

Lord Anderson’s eyes are dark, now, full of rage. He straightens himself up, clutching his fists down his side. “You’ll regret this, son,” he says coldly.

Blaine shrugs. “Perhaps,” he says. “You’re welcome to come back if you ever change your mind. Until then, though, I suggest you stay away from here, father, for you wouldn’t be welcomed warmly.”

Furious as he is, Lord Anderson not only leaves the room, but the mansion too, at once. He doesn’t even stop by his room to collect his things, he just walks out, slamming the door behind himself and jumping on his carriage, ordering his coachman to take him back to the city as fast as he can.

“Man,” Leo says in a whiny voice, resting his elbow on Blaine’s shoulder and sighing, “We’re gonna have to ship all his shit back to his address, now. Guess who’s gonna have to do all the heavy lifting.”

“Well, not me, for sure!” Cody answers, horrified at the mere thought of having to lift Lord Anderson’s outrageously heavy trunks.

“Yeah,” Leo sighs, “My point exactly.” He looks up at Blaine, “Blaine, let’s ask the stable boy or something, I don’t wanna…” but he doesn’t finish his sentence, because he can see Blaine’s not even listening to him. He’s still staring at the now empty spot previously occupied by his father’s body, right in front of him, and he’s so still he doesn’t even seem to be breathing. “Blaine?” he asks, “Are you alright?”

Blaine doesn’t answer. Growing worried, Cody moves a step closer and puts his hand on his husband’s forearm. Only then, Blaine seems to reanimate. He finally takes a deep breath, in and out, and then swallows. He still doesn’t speak.

“I guess he’ll need a bit more time,” Cody considers, “It might be better to skip lunch, for today.”

Leo actually agrees.

*

They both help him getting into bed, because Blaine doesn’t seem in any way ready to do anything on his own.

“I’m worried,” Leo says, pushing Blaine to sit down on the edge of the bed and then kneeling on the ground to take off his boots, “Has he ever acted like this?”

“No,” Cody shakes his head, kneeling on the mattress right behind Blaine and wrapping his arms around his chest to unbutton his shirt before letting it slide down his shoulders and arms, “But then he had never kicked his own father out of here, before, so it’s not like I have any previous similar situations to compare this to.”

“Makes sense,” Leo sighs and stands up again, pressing his hands on Blaine’s now naked shoulder to have him lie down. “Blaine? You still with us?” he asks, as he unbuttons the man’s pants and tugs at them to take them off him.

“I’m here…” Blaine says in a soft sigh, with a pretty annoyed voice, “I’m fine. I wasn’t in any mood to talk, I thought that keeping quite could be a pretty clear indication about that.”

“It wasn’t,” Leo shakes his head, kneeling on his left.

“We’re sorry,” Cody adds, kneeling on his right.

Blaine looks at them both, and then covers his face with both hands. “This is going to be a disaster, isn’t it?” he asks weakly, “My father’s going to strip us off of everything, and we’ll be left homeless, penniless and nameless, forced to wander the outskirts, living off trash and leftovers.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Leo clicks his tongue, sitting down with his legs and arms crossed, “Even if that happened, would it really be so bad? You know, we wouldn’t have to stay around here. We could just move someplace else, we could all find ourselves a real job and earn our living instead of living off your father’s money.”

“We don’t live off my father’s money,” Blaine corrects him, frowning, “I have a real job that pays for all this.”

“Yeah, together with your father’s money,” Leo nods. It is true that Blaine’s job guarantees him a certain amount of money every month, but they’re all perfectly aware of the fact that his salary alone couldn’t pay for this house and its maintenance in a thousand years. “Would it be so bad to just go and start again from scratch?”

Blaine sighs, and Cody notices his eyes getting darker all of a sudden. He knows Leo would kill for a fresh start, something that could put him at the same level with Cody and Blaine, but he also knows it’d kill Blaine to lose everything he’s built in his life, this house, his job that he loves so much, because of his father.

“Why don’t we put this whole thing on hold?” he asks, smiling tenderly at Leo as he places a hand on Blaine’s, to cut the argument out, “We’re all tired. And honestly, we haven’t shared the bed in such a long time I’m surprised you two want to talk at all.”

His words work like a charm on both of them. There’s probably no solution to what they’re going through, to what they’re bound to go through in the next few months. They’ll just have to deal with it, whatever it is, whenever it comes.

Until then, though, their shared bed seems like a very good place to start.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Erotico, Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lemon, AU, Underage.
- Blaine, a young wolf that only recently started on his path to become a packmaster, kills his own estranged brother, Cooper, and takes his wretched pack in his own hand. He never had an omega of his own, and the pack appears not to have one. That is, obviously, until Angela -- the pack's Lupa -- takes him to meet the pack's cubs. And there Blaine meets Adam for the first time -- and somehow ends up forcing puberty on him.
Note: Ciao! Sono una fic surreale che in realtà è (al solito) parte di un 'verse più ampio. In ogni caso racconto dei fatti che poi saranno ripresi marginalmente anche il quella storia, quando finalmente la Tab e la Liz la scriveranno, ma allora non saranno raccontati da questo punto di vista, che però, ammettiamolo, è il punto di vista migliore, perché tutti noi abbiamo bisogno di più omega che annegano nei propri stessi fluidi e si lasciano alle spalle la bava della lumaca quando camminano quando sono eccitati. E... insomma. *cough* Enjoy?
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
NATURE DOESN’T HEED THE CALL
(nature just commands, that’s all)

Adam still remembers his awakening very clearly. He never asked any other omega – for all he cares, they could all forget the whole thing three seconds after it’s over – but for him it’s like having those images carved into his brain, together with the feelings that went with them.

He remembers every detail of that day. The day Blaine first arrived at the camp. He remembers feeling his smell approaching through the woods, even before actually seeing him appear, seemingly out of nowhere. It was a hot, dry day, and smells traveled fast. Holed up in the broken trailer together with all the other cubs, he could smell the flowers on the trees growing alongside the river, thirty minutes away from the camp. He could smell the wet grass and the dry one, he could tell one from the other and he could understand where they were with extreme precision. He could smell the wild rabbits, hiding away into empty trunks in the deep of the woods. And he could almost taste the sweetness of the honey from the wild bees on his own tongue.

And then there was Blaine’s smell. A strong, wild, masculine smell coming from far away, approaching quickly. It was something raw, something rough and something new. It smelled of rebel youth and stubbornness, it smelled of blood and power, it smelled of strength. If Cooper’s orders for the cubs hadn’t been that they were never to leave the broken trailer without a supervisor and his permission, he’d have sneaked out and he’d have run towards it, following the trace of that smell, just to see what went with it.

When Blaine had arrived, Adam was waiting for him. He had felt his smell get closer and closer by the minute, and at some point it was just there, so close and strong Adam could smell nothing else. The other cubs had seemed pretty scared by it, they all went to curl up in a corner of the trailer and they held each other, trembling a little, big eyes fixed on the door.

Adam didn’t feel scared. Not at all. He had stood up from the seat he had been sitting on for the last few hours and he had walked to the door, but the moment he had touched the handle to open it he had felt his mother’s smell approach, and he had backed off.

Angela had appeared on the doorframe but a few seconds after that. Her eyes were worried and serious, and her lips were pursed in a nervous pout, her heart was beating faster than Adam had ever heard before.

“You stay in here,” she had said to them all, “Don’t come out unless I come calling for you.”

“Why?” Adam had said, taking a step towards her and trying to take a peek behind her shoulders, “What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” she had answered, putting both her hands on his shoulders and gently, but firmly, pushing him back, “Don’t worry. Do I have to lock you in? Is that gonna be necessary?”

Adam had looked back to all the other cubs, still shaking in fear, clearly sensing some sort of danger, coming from that smell, that new presence, that he didn’t share. He would have learned only later, that their fear was the perfectly reasonable and justified fear cubs of the former packmaster always have when a new one comes in. The fear of getting killed to free the mothers of the burden of their presence. To make them instantly available for mating again.

Adam couldn’t feel that. Not that he wasn’t at risk of getting killed too, but the curiosity, that weird connection he felt, drawing him to this man he didn’t even know the face of yet, was so strong it made fear seem like an overlookable detail. He didn’t know why, yet, but that much was already clear.

He had had no idea what was happening outside the trailer. He had listened to the adults argue and speak loud, then he had heard Cooper growl and then the unfamiliar but unmistakable noise of wolves fighting. Then it had been just silence for hours. He could feel the other wolves of the pack were scared, uncertain, somehow confused, worried for their future both on the short and long run. It had been instantly obvious the new wolf had won, that he had either killed or chased Cooper away during the fight and that the pack was now his own, but what would he make of it, that nobody knew. Maybe he’d have killed all the elders and the cubs to keep only the strongest adult wolves, maybe he’d have killed everybody except the cubs, to raise them himself and make them his army, or maybe he’d have killed everybody except the elders, to keep experienced but substantially harmless wolves by his side as he started to form his own pack with wolves of his own choosing.

The other cubs had spent those long, still hours crying silently, shaking in fear. They hadn’t dared speaking a word, and Adam had been the only one brave enough to wait for whatever was going to happen sitting by the door. It wasn’t really bravery, nor even curiosity, at that point, but an overwhelming, straight out impossibility to move away. Not with that smell so close, not knowing the man that carried it was right there, that he owned them all now – that he owned him, and that soon he’d finally get to meet him.

He had only backed off when he had felt his mother approach once again. He had moved a few steps away, climbing on one of the broken seats and crouching down there, ready for everything – ready for nothing.

Angela had walked in, introducing them to a young man. He was pretty tall, he had long, curly black hair and dark brown eyes that shined with a golden light every now and then. He had broad, strong shoulders, and his muscled arms, coming out of his sleeveless, ruined t-shirt, were covered in still lightly bleeding scratches. He had some on his face, too, one under his right eye, the other cutting his lips in half.

The moment he had seen him, Adam had felt something tremble so violently inside of him he had had to cling to the back of the seat not to falter and fall. He had not only been overwhelmed by a physical sensation, a deep, unnamed urgency to run towards him and touch him, but he had heard something too, some sort of strong, ancient inner voice that hadn’t seemed his own at all, something that had sounded like the howl of all the ancient wolves, compelling him to move.

He had stood up the moment Angela had started talking. “These are the cubs,” she had said, “They aren’t Cooper’s children. He was unable to get any female pregnant. They’re from a previous packmaster. They’re about to reach adulthood, and they’re…” she had stopped talking the moment she had understood the new packmaster wasn’t even listening to her anymore. He had stopped a few steps from the door, and his eyes, after lazily skipping through the other cubs, had stopped on Adam, and hadn’t moved away ever since.

Adam had clutched his fists down his sides, waiting for him to move. Angela had smelled the air and had frowned, worried, but she had said nothing.

“Him,” the packmaster had said, nodding towards Adam, “What’s his name?”

“This is Adam,” Angela had said, looking at him too and exhaling a deep sigh as she watched him jump on his feet as if called for a long awaited war, “My son.”

Under Cooper’s reign, Angela had spent much of Adam’s childhood telling him affectionately to grow up strong, and grow up soon, for he would have surely become an alpha wolf, and she had always hoped he’d be the one who’d have had courage and skills enough to challenge Cooper and defeat him. She had always wanted her son to be packmaster, not out of hunger for power – she was the lupa of this pack, she couldn’t aspire to be in any higher position, as a female –, but because she knew, she just knew Adam would have been perfect for the role. He was fearless, righteous, he had a clear mind and a clear vision and never hesitated speaking out about it.

He’d have been perfect and she had had such high hopes for him, but now that she was seeing him in front of a true adult packmaster she instantly knew that could have never been, and would have never been. She could smell her son’s excitement from where she stood. And that was a call there was no escaping from.

“Adam…” the man had said. He had let the name slide on his tongue and slip through his lips, savoring it as if it had a taste. It probably had it, for him. Adam was feeling something very similar to that, after all. Air had a taste for him, now. Had a smell. The new packmaster’s smell. His taste, that Adam could only imagine, but that he felt on his tongue already. “I’m Blaine,” the man had said, “Your new packmaster.”

Adam had swallowed hard. “Nice to meet you,” he had said. He had tilted his head, showing his neck in a sign of submission. The gesture, together with the smell of his arousal, had made Blaine clutch his fists down his sides in a nervous movement.

“Everybody out,” he had said, swallowing.

For a moment, Angela had looked like she wanted to stay and try and talk the new packmaster out of it. He’s still too young, she would have said, He just hit puberty. But what would have that meant? Her son was shivering, standing still in front of Blaine, desperate to give in. The air was heavy with his desire. Everything smelled of it. He wanted to be taken. He wanted to be taken that very moment, he needed it. That was nature. Angela knew there was nothing she could possibly do to change that, and so she had just moved aside.

“Come on, guys, out. Everybody,” she had simply said, leading the other confused, upset cubs out of the trailer. She had made sure to close the door behind herself as she walked away.

Once left alone with him, Blaine had walked quickly towards him, stopping just a few inches away from his body. He had inhaled his scent deeply and had looked at him as if he had never seen such a creature, as if he had had no idea what to do with him. “What are you…?” he had asked, bending over him to press his nose against his neck, rubbing it up and down the curve of his throat.

“What…?” Adam had asked back, trying to keep his eyes open, trying to keep himself focused, and miserably failing at it.

“You…” Blaine had said, lifting a hand to grab at Adam’s hair, pulling a little, “You don’t smell right.”

Entranced by his smell, by the strength of his fingers, by the sound of his voice, Adam had gotten closer, pressing his nose against Blaine’s exposed skin too. “Neither do you,” he had said, honestly. There was something different in Blaine’s smell. Adam had smelled different packmasters, before. He had smelled his father, and he had smelled Cooper. Nothing in their smell had ever felt so threatening and yet so enticing as that something in Blaine’s smell did. That wasn’t the right smell for a packmaster. It was the right smell for a lover.

Blaine had growled to the sound of his voice, a deep, throaty sound Adam had felt vibrating all over his skin. He had stuck out his tongue and he had licked up Adam’s neck shamelessly, with his mouth wide open, tasting him. “You taste too young,” he had said, pensively.

Adam had moaned, clinging to Blaine’s half torn apart shirt with both his hands. “Too young for what?” he had asked confusedly, “I’m fifteen.”

“Yeah,” Blaine had answered, “Exactly.”

Adam had said nothing in response to that. He had kept staring at him, not knowing what to do with his own body, feeling it revolt under his own skin. Every single inch of his body was itching, every single inch screamed to be touched. He wanted Blaine’s hands on him, he wanted to feel his tongue lick him in places he had never wanted anybody else to lick. He wanted to be kissed and held, and he wanted to be fucked. Hard. As hard as he possibly could.

They had stood still for a few seconds, Adam just pressing his body against Blaine’s, Blaine keeping Adam as close as being two different people let him. Then Blaine had moved. He had shoved his hand down the back of Adam’s pants, taking advantage of how loose and big they were. Those clothes didn’t fit him. No clothes ever fit them. They had never been able to afford new clothes of the right size, they lived on stolen goods and handovers. And Adam was so young. So young and small and so skinny Blaine’s hand had found very easily to just move past the waistband of his jeans, reaching his opening.

It had found it to be so wet his fingers had produced the most obscene sound by just rubbing it lightly.

“What…” Adam had whined desperately, clinging to him as his back arched with the shiver of pleasure that Blaine’s fingers’ touch had given him , “What is this? Why is it happening?”

Before even answering the question, Blaine had let his own middle finger slide up inside Adam’s wet opening. It had went in so easily they both had barely felt it. But the idea, even without it being associated with any particularly overwhelming physical sensation, had sent them both over the edge. The simple fact that Blaine’s finger could have disappeared into Adam’s body so easily, as if they had been born just for this, was almost too much to stand without instantly wanting to give in to it. “You’re an omega,” Blaine had finally answered, letting out a deeper growl as he curled his finger inside Adam’s body, “You don’t smell ready, but you are.” He had opened his eyes and moved back a few inches, only to look at Adam right in his eyes. He hadn’t spoken for just a few seconds, and then he had said it. “I’m gonna fuck you, now.”

An order. A threat. An open war. A revolution.

The words had exploded into Adam’s head, making him blind and deaf, able to react only to the feelings that were coming directly from the things Blaine was doing to his body.

“Yes!” he had said. The yell had slipped out of his mouth without him being able to even try and control it. He had been so embarrassed by that squealing sound that he had wanted to cover his mouth with both his hands, but he had found himself not minding about it at all when he had understood he couldn’t. His body had stubbornly decided not to answer any command that wasn’t directly related to Blaine, and so the moment he had tried to lift his hands to cover himself he had just ended up leaning in, searching for Blaine’s lips to start lapping at them, both in sign of submission and in a silent, desperate request to be kissed.

Blaine had stuck his tongue out, licking at Adam’s. The moment they had touched, a violent shock of pleasure had overwhelmed them both, and Blaine had let out a deep, loud moan, just a second before throwing himself at Adam, kissing him hard, noises of every kind escaping their wet lips as they opened and closed them.

Adam had backed off, overwhelmed by the feeling and by Blaine’s strength, and he had soon found himself laid down against the broken seats in the back of the trailer. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to do such a thing, but none of them had cared much, at the time. He had just responded to Blaine’s kiss hungrily, vaguely aware of the mess he had made of himself. He had kept wanting to lick and kiss him at the same time, he had kept wanting to do everything he could possibly imagine to do to him, all at the same time, and that desperate need, impossible to satisfy, had quickly made him restless and whiny. Everything was Blaine, and that everything wasn’t enough, not just yet.

Blaine knew that, and soon enough he had pulled away, parting from Adam’s body to strip himself off his clothes. His torn t-shirt and pants had ended up in a shapeless little mount at their feet, and when Adam had seen him standing naked in front of him he had had to muster all his strength not to crawl on his knees to get his mouth on him. Uncertain on what to do, Adam had stood there on the broken seats, motionless, shaking uncontrollably as wetness started to make him feel uncomfortable.

Blaine had bent over him, kissing him hungrily and then whispering on his lips. “Turn around, now,” he had said, and Adam had followed the order dutifully, scrambling confusedly and slipping a couple times on the ruined leather lining the seats, on which he had kneeled, pushing is ass out in a clear invite, his fingers diving nervously into the stuffed seatback.

Blaine had growled, clashing against him. His teeth had instantly found their way around Adam’s neck, and he had bitten down at his nape hard, while at the same time he kept holding the kid’s hips between his hands, not wasting time at all before thrusting quickly inside him, opening him up altogether with one deep thrust.

The pain had been intense, but Adam had not cared for it at all. He was getting exactly what he wanted, and the pain was part of it. Feeling him so clearly, feeling the outline of his cock so precisely as it made room for itself inside his body, came with that kind of pain. It was the right kind of pain, a pain Adam wanted to feel. He had growled in pleasure and relief, letting out frustration as Blaine’s teeth dove into his neck just as violently and deeply as his cock was doing inside his body.

He remembers so well the feelings washing over his body as Blaine thrust inside him, that day. He remembers feeling owned and needed, he remembers the wetness and the pain, he remembers the smell of blood and how good Blaine’s tongue felt as it licked it off the small wounds his teeth had opened on his nape.

That first time had been about more than just sex. It had been about finding purpose, finding a place, somebody he belonged to. Blaine had been that something, that somebody. He had awakened him.

Adam can’t forget that. Maybe other omegas do. They just forget and move on. Packmasters change, after all. Wolves are mortal, wolves can be beaten and killed. Just like his father’s been killed by Cooper, and Cooper’s been killed by Blaine, Adam’s pretty sure that somehow, someday, Blaine’s gonna be killed by somebody else striving for his throne. He’s not sure he wants to be there when it happens, but it’s possible, it’s probable it will happen. But he wouldn’t be able to move on past Blaine, he wouldn’t be able to get on with his life after him, that much he’s sure about. Even not counting all the things Blaine has done for him beside being his alpha, even wanting to ignore that he defied pack rules to make him his Hand despite a centuries-old tradition imposing no omega could ever be chosen to cover such role, even for just that late afternoon in that trailer Adam could never move on and forget.

That’s why Adam has spent all his life, since Blaine imposed maturity on him, to try and prevent to even ever have to prepare for the idea. As Hand of the Packmaster he keeps the pack in line, he keeps everything in order and tries to tone down Blaine’s natural push towards everything that’s outside the tradition and the rules to make sure he’ll never fall.

Which is why, when Blaine comes to him and simply announces he found himself a Lupa – and that Lupa is, in fact, a fifteen years old boy that’s not even half a wolf – he loses his shit. This time, he thinks, Blaine went too far. This will be his undoing, he’s sure of it.

And as much as he’s sure of it, he’s also sure that, if Blaine has to fall, then he will fall by his side. And despite disagreeing with him – and pretty much hating the kid, too – he decides to stand by him.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Romantico, Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: PG.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Fluff.
- "They needed war as much as they needed peace. They needed peace to remind themselves how good it felt to just be together, in each other’s company, and then they needed war, somebody else trying to break them, to put them down, to shoot their love like a deer in the pasture, to remind themselves there was something worth fighting for. And they needed the reminder because of time, of course. Time, their first enemy. The few days or even hours they could spend together, and the endless weeks they spent away from one another."
Note: Fic di San Valentino scritta per la Tab u.u
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
HANGING ON A TIGHTROPE

Every day, Blaine wakes up and says thanks. He’s never been much of a believer, not in God, at least, so when he says thanks it’s never addressed to a particular deity or anything like that. He is thankful, though. To something. Some entity. The thing he calls “us”, that’s Leo and him together.

He’s never been much of a believer and, if he has to be honest – and recently he took an oath to always be –, for a very long time he didn’t believe in them either. What he had with Leo, after all, always seemed so fragile, to his eyes, so feeble. Like a little ice statuette, it always seemed so easy to destroy, to melt, to break. In the end, what was it that they really had? Some shared time when they were both together in the same place. Some vague dreams of what could be, what might be when they finally got together for good. Some blind trust that everything would be alright in the end on Leo’s side. And love, yes. Love. God, was their real love. The love of the poets, Shakespeare’s love, Dickinson’s love, Wordsworth’s love. Strange fits of passion had they known. Their love, that they had, that tiny, fragile, precious thing they could curl around and protect with their bodies every time they felt under attack, clinging to it like from a rope down the side of a mountain, hoping it would keep them from falling.

They needed war as much as they needed peace. They needed peace to remind themselves how good it felt to just be together, in each other’s company, and then they needed war, somebody else trying to break them, to put them down, to shoot their love like a deer in the pasture, to remind themselves there was something worth fighting for. And they needed the reminder because of time, of course. Time, their first enemy. The few days or even hours they could spend together, and the endless weeks they spent away from one another.

How could Blaine believe in such a thing? Really believe it would survive anything? When the gaps between one moment spent together and the other swelled like a bruise after a fistfight, when they started growing apart, when coming to find one another always meant having to steal time from something else, how could such a tiny, fragile thing survive?

It just couldn’t. In fact, it broke.

Blaine knows it was mostly his fault. That’s what hiding away will do to relationships, and he knew. He knew already, because he had lived it. And yet, he could do the same to Leo. And he could because he didn’t feel like he had any other choice. If I tell him the truth, he thought, I lose him. He knew he’d have ended up losing him anyway by keep lying, but somehow it seemed like a more bearable thought. I’ll lose him, eventually, he thought, but it won’t be now. Yes, it had to never be now. It had to never be that very moment, because he couldn’t stand the thought. “Eventually” was a time that never really had a meaning. Some day was a vague day. It might as well be never.

He’d be lying if he told he wasn’t expecting it, when everything ultimately fell apart. It was in the air, making it thick and hard to breathe, and it had been for a very long time. The things unsaid, his undying fears, how sure he was Leo’d have moved on and forgot about him at some point, all those things weighted on their love, the tiny, fragile, precious, transparent thing their love had become, and it was a constant attack, one they couldn’t defend it from.

When Leo had walked out that door, in Dublin, Blaine had known. I lost him, that day finally came. It’s today.

The thought had been unbearable exactly as he had thought it would.

So, since they went back together – something Blaine honestly thought would never happen, at some point in his life –, Blaine says thanks. Every day. That tiny little thing survived, in the end, that tiny, little, fragile thing held on. That rope, keeping them from crushing downstream, got worn out, pulled and ruined and scratched and reduced to the smallest, weakest of threads, but it didn’t break. It never broke. Stubborn as they were, it kept itself together, so that when they met again they just had to tie more threads around the one that was still there, to make it stronger. They didn’t have to start from scratch.

That’s the marvelous thing about love, he thinks as he opens his eyes and focuses on Leo’s body, calm and motionless next to his own in the bed, it just refuses to die out. It’s the most obstinate of feelings, it just won’t go unless you kick it away.

Leo opens his eyes, whimpering like a child, his arms already reaching out for him. It’s the first thing he does, every time he wakes up. He makes sure Blaine’s still there. He doesn’t make a fuss, when he happens not to find him, not anymore, at least, but he still keeps doing it, and finding him or not is the difference between starting the day with a smile or with a sad frown.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Blaine smiles too, welcoming him between his arms and letting him settle on his chest.

“I thought we agreed not to celebrate it,” he murmurs, hiding his face against him and holding onto him.

“We did,” Blaine chuckles, “Then I changed my mind. I got you a present.”

Leo lifts his head and frowns, glaring at him for a moment. His hard, stern gaze quickly melts into a sweeter one, when his lips curl in a small, tender smile. “What is it?” he asks.

“The thing you want most in the world,” Blaine smiles, and he reaches out for the first drawer of his nightstand.

“New dildo?” Leo jokes, “Bad idea.”

“No, you idiot,” Blaine laughs, retrieving a couple of tickets from the drawer, “Weekend away without the children. I know you need it, at this point, it’s been more or less three months since the last one.”

“God bless you,” Leo exhales, relieved, resting his forehead on Blaine’s chest. Then he laughs. “I got you a present too,” he admits.

“What?” Blaine laughs too, searching for his eyes, “What is it? What is it?” he asks curiously.

“The thing you want most in the world,” Leo mimics him. He too reaches out for his nightstand, getting a bunch of papers out of the book he’s reading and showing them to him, “All paid trip to Disneyworld for us and the kids,” he explains, “It’s been almost a year since the last family holiday. I imagined you’d be dying for it, at this point.”

“You are perfection,” Blaine instantly says, wrapping his arms around Leo’s shoulders and squeezing him tight.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Leo smiles, leaving a small kiss on Blaine’s collarbone. “I just hope we didn’t book for the same days.”

“Mmh, our weekend is the next,” Blaine says, “I thought it had better be sooner rather than later.”

“You thought right,” Leo nods, and then smiles, “I booked the trip for this summer, I know you prefer to travel when it’s warm and sunny.”

“God, how I hate snow, and you for forcing me to live where it’s always snowing,” Blaine sighs theatrically, the hold of his arms strong and sweet enough to make obvious he’s lying, at least about the hating Leo part.

Leo just smiles, settling against him and caressing Blaine’s sides, feeling his warm skin underneath his fingertips.

“This is how it is, then,” he says in a faint, tiny, almost childlike voice.

“How it is when?” Blaine asks, passing his fingers through Leo’s black, wild curls.

“When it works,” Leo answers in a chuckle.

“Oh, yes,” Blaine nods, “It’s sappy and cheesy and generally ridiculous like this.” Then he smiles sweetly, “But I wouldn’t know, this is the first time for me too. Maybe we’re just that lucky and it isn’t always like this for everybody.”

“I like the thought,” Leo nods, closing his eyes and relaxing against Blaine’s body, “Us being the only ones this happy in the whole world.”

“Selfish,” Blaine scolds him in a little laughter.

“You know me,” Leo answers unapologetically, laughing too, “You know me,” he repeats then, more softly, closing his eyes and clinging to him.

Blaine smiles too, deciding that for today and today only they can steal time from everybody else to keep it for themselves. Tie that rope tighter for a few hours. “Yes, I do,” he answers in a low voice, “You want to sleep some more?” he asks.

But really, he doesn’t need an answer. In fact, Leo’s already sleeping.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Erotico, Romantico, Commedia.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lemon, AU, Wing!fic, Threesome, Mpreg, H/C.
- Blaine's a vampire, Adam's an angel, Leo's a demon (and Blaine's boyfriend). What happens when the first two meet by chance and what comes out of it is a pregnancy that ultimately Adam feels free to impose on the three of them?
Note: COSE NASCONO A CASO. Per tutto il tempo della sua stesura, il documento word di questa storia si è chiamato "WTF STUPID STORY WHAT ARE YOU EVEN", e questo sarebbe probabilmente rimasto il titolo definitivo se non ne avessi trovato uno ancora più ridicolo in una canzone degli U2 (Staring at the sun, fyi). Insomma. AngeloIncinto!Adam, Vampiro!Blaine e dimonio!Leo chiedono la vostra pazienza e la vostra attenzione per una threesome randomica che potrebbe o non potrebbe essere l'inizio di un 'verse più complesso e articolato (come tutti). Nel frattempo, con questa robina partecipo alla conquista dei Territori delle Tribù di Sabbia per la quarta settimana del COW-T #4. Yay me.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
STUCK TOGETHER WITH GOD’S GLUE

No matter how hard Blaine tries to fool himself into not seeing it, the roundness is there, and there’s nothing he can do to make it disappear. Adam sits straight on the couch, an unreadable, serious expression hardening his fair features, blonde locks swirling down his cheeks, framing his face in a golden haze, and the tunic tight and tense around his belly, showing his bulging tummy with shameless simplicity, as the simple fact it is. An inescapable truth Blaine’s got to deal with now.

“I didn’t think my kind could even have children,” he says, turning to look at Leo and speaking in an apologetic tone, opening his arms wide at his sides.

“Is this supposed to make me forgive and forget?” Leo answers, frowning sternly as he crosses his arms over his chest. His dark, bat-like wings flap nervously behind his back, making him look ready to take off at any time.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Blaine sighs, passing a hand through his hair. He bites at the inside of his cheek, trying not to let frustration get to him, and his canines pierce lightly through his skin, spilling some blood that he hastens to suck. “I wasn’t making up excuses. I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t important.”

He realizes he phrased the sentence wrongly only a second too late, when Leo opens his cat-like golden eyes wide and bares his fangs, yelling at him. “It wasn’t important?!” he barks, “Wasn’t it, Blaine? Really? Am I the only one seeing the pregnant angel sitting on our couch right now?!” he asks, pointing at said couch – and said angel – with his clawed index finger.

Blaine can’t say he doesn’t see him, but admitting Adam was, in fact, there, sporting his rounded belly as if it was the latest fashion, would be like admitting to be wrong. Blaine doesn’t want to do that. Mainly because he doesn’t feel at fault. He’s convinced he’s got some mitigating circumstances working for him. He’s sure Leo would agree with him, if only he’d let him explain.

So, while he waits for Leo to let all his steam out – and he knows it’s going to be a lot of steam; demons from the lowest circles of hell tend to be very, very prickly – he finds nothing better to do then try and answer in the most evasive way he can think of. “It’s not our couch,” he says, “It’s mine. Technically, you don’t live here.”

“Oh no, you didn’t,” Leo instantly answers, backing off as if Blaine just tried to burn him with a fiery stick or something, “Are you seriously gonna use this of all the arguments you could use now? That I don’t live here? Well, I’m sorry I’m a demon and I kind of have to live in Hell, Blaine! I’m so very sorry if that gets in the way of a living together project you obviously never mentioned before and that is conveniently popping out now just because you accidentally need it as an excuse to deviate my attention from the mess you made!”

“…I never mentioned living together,” Blaine answers, tilting his head to the side.

“Exactly, you didn’t, Blaine!” Leo agrees, his voice getting louder and high-pitched, “You didn’t! And don’t you think you possibly should, after five years? Don’t you think the time is right, by now, to start thinking about it?”

“You just said you couldn’t come live here anyway,” Blaine sighs, “You’ve got to live in Hell, where you belong.”

“Oh my Lord, that’s so totally not relevant, Blaine!” Leo screams louder, his clawed hands by the side of his face in a mocking real life representation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, “You’re missing the point so spectacularly, Blaine, so splendidly, I’m almost in awe! Do you see me?” he hysterically jokes, “I’m so very impressed by your astonishingly good skills in missing points I’m thinking I’m gonna make an Olympic discipline out of it just to give you the fucking gold medal! And why only that, the silver and the bronze ones too! All to you! In celebration of your talent!”

Blaine sighs again, resting his shoulders against the back of the chair and elegantly crossing his legs. “Aren’t you being a little overdramatic, now?” he asks.

“I don’t know, am I?” Leo growls, “Are you an expert in overdramatizing too? Should I make a fucking Olympic discipline out of that too?”

“Leo, come on!” Blaine finally snorts, annoyed, rolling his eyes, “Would you please calm down? I get it, you’re angry, and – as always! – it’s all my fault for not being the perfect being you thought I was when you fell for me. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no way!” Leo points a finger towards him and then shakes it nervously right and left, “You’re not going to make this fall on me! You’re not gonna make me look like the hysteric, whimsical child that gets angry for stupid things because you’re not perfect enough for his high standards! You won’t play this game, Blaine, you know very damn well this has nothing to do with my standards! That angel is pregnant!”

“And you don’t think I know that already?!” Blaine screams too, jumping on his feet and slapping away Leo’s finger, “Don’t you think I have eyes too?! And a brain, to make logical connections?! I know he’s pregnant! I can see he is, and I know I’m the one who made him like that! But if you just let me explain—”

“What in all Heavens and Hells united makes you think I wanna hear any of your cheap, crappy explanations?!”

“No, of course you don’t want to!” Blaine answers, trying to top the noise of Leo’s voice with his own, “You’re not interested in hearing my version of the story! God forbid you could actually understand my reasons and stop being angry at me! ‘Cause that’s all you want to do, isn’t it? You just want to keep being angry at me no matter what!”

“You bet I wanna keep being angry at you, you fucking knocked up a freaking angel!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“Ah! Of course! I guess this settles it! You didn’t do it on purpose! You what, tripped and accidentally fell with your penis up his butthole?!”

“Now that’s just you being ridiculous, I won’t take any of this shit anymore, get out of here!”

“Yes! Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do, I’m going to get out of here this very moment! Not because you told me, but because I want to! And you’re never gonna see my face again!”

“Well, good riddance, then! I’ll get over it!”

“Could I say something?” a low, somehow pretty hard and very stern voice says all of a sudden.

Blaine and Leo simultaneously turn around, facing the angel and shouting a synchronized “no!” even before they can both realize it was actually the angel speaking. When they do, they instantly shut up. Those were the first words the angel had said since he had flown into the house through the open window together with his golden locks and his unreal blue eyes and his frighteningly rounded belly, and the sound of his voice, now that they have time to think about it in the silence that suddenly fills the room, is pretty unsettling. He sounds unearthly, way more than Leo does. Maybe because demons are just human souls turned bad, while angels are made of the same matter God himself is made of.

“Maybe we should just… stop,” Blaine suggests tentatively, backing off a step or two, “And let him speak.”

Leo frowns, annoyed at him for suggesting it, but when he turns around to look at Adam and shuts him up again words seem to die in his throat, and he can do nothing but swallow them, hoping they don’t choke him as he nods. “So be it,” he concedes, leaning with his back against the wall, “Talk.”

The angel nods graciously towards him, his fingers elegantly crossed over his bulging tummy, and then he stands up. It’s the first time Leo sees him standing straight on his feet, and he swallows again because not only is the damn winged thing beautiful, but he’s also incredibly tall, and there’s some sort of broadness when it comes to his body – the large shoulders, the equally large chest, the robust arms – that makes him sort of threatening. It’s really true what the legends say, that the Devil created demons small to sneak into human minds, and God created angels big to better crush them all.

“Thank you for letting me explain,” the angel says, his voice deep and subtly loud, echoing inside Leo’s brain as if it was amplified, “Your vampire lover isn’t to blame for what happened between us. Inescapable circumstances brought us together.”

“Inescapable,” Leo frowns again, nervously tapping his clawed fingertips over his forearms, “As in, fate?”

“As in, coincidence,” Adam explains, “I was following the traces of a rogue fallen one, you might have heard of him. Does the name Casey ring a bell?”

It does, of course. The Thief, they have started to call him up and down all circles of Hell, with some kind of honest admiration. The fallen one who took Michael’s sword and brought it out of Heaven. Lucifer’s been searching for him all over the upside and downside world, but it looks like he’s vanished into thin air.

Leo turns towards Blaine, arching his eyebrows. “Angel Police, Blaine, really?” he asks, pointing at Adam with his thumb, “You had to go, have sex and knock up a police officer?”

“I don’t know what police is,” Adam frowns, annoyed at the interruption, “I was just doing my job, trying to retrieve the object that the fallen angel stole.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what being Angel Police means,” Leo answers, waving his hand mid-air.

“More to the point,” Adam frowns again, casting him a stern, hard gaze that makes his eyes turn into fiery ice stones, “The reason why I was where I was is of no interest to you. Just know that I had received information that the fallen angel I was searching for had been recently spotted in the crowd usually spending time in an infamously renowned club in the 35th Street, the Fangs. Which is—”

“Where I usually eat, as you know,” Blaine finishes for him, nodding.

“…mh,” Leo nods, still looking pretty unimpressed by the revelation.

“I didn’t know your lover would be there,” Adam reprises, “Nor did he know I would. As a matter of fact, none of us knew the other would be in that place, and that’s because we didn’t know each other before we actually met.”

“Wow,” Leo comments bitterly, tilting his head to the side, “So you went with someone you didn’t even know, did you, Blaine? The story keeps getting better and better. Please, go on, I’m interested.”

Adam frowns sternly, his full, perfectly shaped lips closing and tensing in an almost angry pale line. For a moment, some sort of vague golden aura seems to emanate from his fair, tan skin, but the weird luminescence disappears as quickly as it came after giving Leo the creeps for a brief but very intense moment. “Do you, or do you not want to know what happened between your lover and me?” he asks kind of roughly.

Leo tightens the knot of his arms over his chest, a low growl coming out his throat, as his eyes shine golden too. “Entertain me,” he answers, hissing through his fangs.

Blaine covers his face with both his hands and sighs.

The angel moves a step towards Leo. “As you wish,” he says. And suddenly Leo feels warmer. It’s like the air suddenly changed consistency all around him. It feels soft to the touch, hot on his skin, and it even changed smell. Leo needs a couple of seconds to understand it’s Adam’s proximity making it so. That light that briefly changed the color of his skin and then disappeared is coming back, now, and it doesn’t just wrap his whole figure into a luminous halo, it radiates from him. Leo feels it moving, passing from Adam’s body to his own, and it’s nothing like anything he ever felt before.

“Here it goes,” Blaine sighs, as he stands up. “Adam, I think he got it now.”

“You’re wrong,” Adam simply answers, moving forward, closing the distance parting him from Leo, “He didn’t.”

He’s obviously right. Being a demon, Leo obviously never visited Heaven, and since it’s pretty rare to find angels on Earth, despite the circumstances that ended up bringing one on Blaine’s couch – after bringing him into Blaine’s pants –, he had never seen an angel from such a close distance, let alone feeling him so close to his body. He had no idea the presence of an angel could be so overwhelming, to the point he doesn’t even seem able to think straight anymore. His ability to see the world in details seems to have disappeared completely, and the world itself doesn’t look as interesting as it looked before. He’s vaguely aware of where he is right now, he’s vaguely aware of Blaine’s presence next to him, but the only thing he knows for sure, the only thing his eyes are able to see, is Adam. He can see everything of him, every single straight and perfect line of his face, every dark blue spot in his irises, the perfection of his poreless tan skin, the waves of his bright blonde hair, and how soft they look.

His mouth dries up and his breathing gets labored, he opens his lips to try and inhale better but it’s no use. His chest keeps moving frantically up and down, and his hands shake, not in fear, nor in rage, but in strain, because he’s trying to keep them still down along his sides against his own will. All his brain seems able to process is how close Adam is, how beautiful he looks, how good he smells and how much he wants to have wild, hungry, raw, shameless sex with him.

“Okay, I think he really got it now,” Blaine arches an eyebrow, spotting Leo’s crotch bulge as the effect Adam had on him that night at the Fangs clearly repeats itself on his demon boyfriend right now.

“You might want to back off, if you don’t want to be involved,” Adam just says, ignoring his protests as he lifts his arms and presses his hands on the wall on the sides of Leo’s head, trapping him in there – as if he needed that to make sure Leo won’t move. There’s not a chance in the world Leo could even think about it, right now.

“Shall I remind you that you’re pregnant, Adam?” Blaine frowns, unreasonably worried as he takes a peek at the angel’s rounded tummy underneath his tunic.

“I can’t get any more pregnant than I already am, can I?” Adam answers. It would be a funny answer, wasn’t it for the extreme seriousness it has been spoken with. “Besides, I won’t let you take the blame for this. You didn’t come to me. We just met. What happened after that was nobody’s fault. Your demon lover must understand this, in order for us to raise our baby.”

“In order to what?!” Blaine almost screams, backing away a few inches. Leo notices exactly nothing of this, all caught up as he is studying every single detail of Adam’s face and then lifting himself up on his tiptoes to reach his lips with his own, determined to take a bite of him and see how he tastes. Adam doesn’t move away, welcoming Leo’s lips on his own, but despite getting pretty distracted by the kiss soon he manages to understand what he said confused Blaine, for reasons he can’t really fathom and is not interested in investigate right now.

To cut the argument off before it can even have a proper chance to get started, he grabs Blaine by the collar of his shirt and pulls him closer. That’s enough for Blaine to instantly lose his ability to think with his brain instead that with his cock, exactly like it already happened to Leo, who’s now wrapping his arms around Adam’s neck and kissing him voraciously, his tiny, pointy fangs scraping at Adam’s puffed up lips, drawing infinitely small drops of blood that fill the air with the familiar smell that makes Blaine’s stomach twitch in hunger.

Blaine presses his whole body against Adam, locking his lips around his pale neck and grazing his soft, smooth skin with the pointy tips of his canines. The moment he dives in, tasting Adam’s sweet, juicy blood on his tongue, his body reacts violently, awakening his desire, making him hard. He rubs himself against Adam’s buttocks through the soft, thin fabric of his tunic, feeling him naked underneath. His movements force Adam’s body forward, right against Leo’s tiny one, and Blaine can hear his boyfriend whimper and moan to the touch. He takes a peek up Adam’s shoulder and he sees them rubbing quickly one against the other, Leo keeping himself up on his tiptoes and holding Adam’s tunic between his closed fists to hold onto something as he moves up and down and back and forth against the angel’s body.

None of them speaks, none of them says a single word. It’s unnecessary, especially considering the fact that whatever needed to be said is being told by their bodies in the clearest way possible. At some point, Leo just takes a hold of the heavy black leather belt keeping his pants tight around his narrow hips and takes it off himself, freeing his erection from its cage with obvious relief. He’s tired of playing games, he’s tired of rubbing and he’s not that crazy about the weight of Adam’s rounded belly against his own, so he just turns around, hands on the wall, and exposes himself to the angel.

He screams when Adam’s cock dives into him. It’s hot and big and so different from Blaine’s. It’s a whole new thing to get used to, but his body doesn’t waste time closing around it, welcoming it inside.

For a moment, he gets confused because Adam seems to move exactly as Blaine does, following the same pace, thrusting in the same way. Then he understands it’s only because Blaine’s thrusting into Adam too, and so Adam’s movements are nothing but an echo of Blaine’s own.

The detail, instead of making him angry, makes him even hornier.

He’s nothing but a shaky mess of tiny little whimpering sounds when he comes, a few moments later, Adam’s cock buried deep inside of him, the smell of his sweet blood changing the way the air tastes, and Blaine’s strong, barely warm fingers closed tight around his own hard-on. His orgasm stains the wall and then trickles down it in slow, translucent, heavy drops. Leo takes a quick look at it and can’t help but blush as he slowly comes back to his senses.

“This is unbelievable…” he mutters, moving away from them and pulling his pants up, “Really unbelievable! What is this supposed to mean?!”

“You know what it’s supposed to mean,” Blaine sighs, coming out of Adam’s body as the angel closes the wings he unexpectedly flapped open during his climax. “Are you alright?”

Adam looks down at his belly and touches it carefully, frowning lightly. “It kind of vaguely hurts,” he confesses.

“Oh Lord,” Blaine instantly panics, leading the angel back to the couch and helping him sit, “I knew it! I knew it was dangerous! Did I hurt it? Did I kill it? Did my penis killed an unborn angel of God? I’ll end up in Hell.”

“First of all,” Adam sighs, both his hands on his rounded belly, “He’s alive. I can feel him. And you’ll end up in Hell anyway, when you die: you’re a vampire, there’s no redemption and no Heaven for your kind. Last but not least, your penis didn’t even touch him. It wouldn’t be possible: he’s inside an egg.”

“An egg?!” Leo screams, backing off towards the wall, “What kind of witchery is that even? What are you, a chicken?”

“I’m an angel,” Adam frowns, “As you know. We always give birth through eggs. It is known.”

“It wasn’t known by me!” Leo insists.

“Nor by me,” Blaine sighs, “But I’m relieved that I didn’t touch him. Then why does it hurt?”

“I think I just wore myself out,” Adam answers, shrugging carelessly, “I only need to rest.”

“You can stay as long as you want!” Blaine hastens to offer, “You know what? I’m gonna make you some tea. Right now,” he nods, as he heads towards the kitchen.

“It’d be of no use,” Adam answers, arching an eyebrow, “I don’t drink. And I can’t stay. Much like your demon lover, I have to go back to my real home at the end of the day.”

“Great,” Blaine sighs, dropping next to him on the couch, “Isn’t it just grand? Two boyfriends and nobody who’ll actually ever be able to spend the night.”

“He’s not your boyfriend!” Leo instantly clarifies, pointing his finger at Adam, “He’s the homewrecker!”

“You’re still thinking of going away?” Blaine frowns, “Even after we showed you how it works and how clearly inevitable it is?”

“Spare me!” Leo answers, enraged, “Do you think I should believe a single word, or even a single thing that happened, just because that pigeon said it, or made it happen?”

“I am not a pigeon,” Adam answers, frowning deeply, his skin glowing golden as it did when he was starting to get really angry, “I’m an angel of God, and a lowlife like you should show some respect.”

“Whoa, whoa!” Blaine jumps on his feet, putting himself between them, “Now! Let’s try and not start an interracial multi-dimensional war in my sitting room, shall we? Isn’t it enough that we’re going to have an half-angel, half-vampire baby son?”

“Yeah, speaking of which!” Leo moves to the side, to be able to look at Adam straight again, “I heard you, before! Don’t think I didn’t just because we were rubbing crotches together at the time! You’re not raising this kid with my man!”

“Children need to be surrounded by love and live in a complete, united family, to grow up strong and happy,” Adam answers, “I’m not raising him with your man. I’m raising it with you both.”

Whatever word Leo was ready to say in response to the million things he was expecting to hear from Adam, dies in his throat when Adam manages to say the only thing he couldn’t have expected him to say in a million years.

“…what,” he only manages to babble, his arms dropping down his sides.

“Yeah, what?” Blaine echoes him.

Adam doesn’t answer them. He pulls himself up on his feet and straightens his tunic down his legs and around his belly, before spreading his wings as he approaches the window. “We will be talking about that,” he says, climbing on the windowsill, “At length.”

He disappears the moment after, nothing but a few white feathers on the floor to testify he was indeed there up to just a few seconds before. Blaine turns to look at Leo, and Leo looks back at him, so baffled by what he just heard he can’t come up with a single thing to say, which is a first.

“…I can’t,” he manages in the end, shaking his head, “This is ridiculous and I can’t.”

Blaine watches him walk to the window and jump on the windowsill too, spreading his bat-like wings and flapping them in the air a couple of times just to stretch them.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Blaine asks, just to be sure.

“Of course not, you idiot!” Leo barks at him, showing his fangs, “I need to get back home, it’s already late. I’ll be coming back. No way I’m gonna leave you in the hands of that stupid chicken all alone,” he mutters, disappearing from view after a little while.

Left behind and alone in his house, Blaine briefly considers about getting out of there and walk to the Fangs for a quick brunch, but he ultimately decides not to. There must be other angels out there searching for the Thief. The last thing he wants is knock another one up.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Erotico, Romantico.
Pairing: OMC/OMC, Blaine/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lemon, Underage.
- Timmy just came back from a month and a half spent in Italy as a guest and occasional underpaid coworker of both his fathers' ex boyfriend's husband. He spent those few weeks falling hopelessly in love with their kid, Alex, even though he doesn't realize that yet. What he does realize, though, is that he can't help a massive body reaction every time he sees the kid. Or hears his voice. Or thinks about him, really. Luckily enough, technology is advanced enough to permit two people who live so far away from one another to connect anyway. But how will this work for Alex and Timmy?
Note: Persisto nella mia pessima abitudine di scrivere storie su figli che non conoscete di personaggi che già non conoscete da prima XD Il Leoverse ormai mi avvince nelle sue spire. Comunque, questo climax irrefrenabile di pornografia virtuale è stato scritto per la Maritombola #5 sull'appropriato prompt #12 (pc portatile).
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
YOU’RE PUSHING ON, I’M PUSHING PLAY

He can still detect the pungent smell of the hay underneath Alex’s soapy perfume. It sticks to his body, and to his own, it’s almost impossible to wash it away. He can still feel the warmth of the summer on his barely sun-kissed skin, still so pale despite the long hours spent outside, and then the mellow, sweet smell of Alex’s suntan cream – he never walks out of the house without putting it on first. Timmy closes his eyes and smells and kisses and tastes all that, and remembers Alex’s small figure in the morning, before they even opened the window, as he sat in front of his dressing table, looking at himself in the mirror, smearing his face in moisturizer and whining for all the little imperfections he had started to notice. “I’m spotted everywhere, Timmy,” he complained, “It’s because you keep me out too long.” And Timmy used to answer to that by standing up from the bed and approaching him from behind, kneeling and pressing kisses up along Alex’s spine until he stopped complaining and started moaning.

He touches Alex’s skin, and it’s soft under his fingertips, warm and tender, makes him want to take a bite, and he does. He leans in and bites the full curve of his pale shoulder, and Alex throws his head back and lets out one of his peculiar breathless sounds, the ones he likes to whisper on Timmy’s skin, the ones with which he tells him he’s ready. They still haven’t gone past heavy petting, but Alex never fails to breathe that way, to make sure Timmy knows they could try, if they wanted to.

They want to, and sometimes they try. It never works, though, ‘cause Alex is so damn tiny and so damn tight, and Timmy is so damn young and so damn stupid he never knows how to do things right. Alex always tended to trust him more than he deserved, just because he’s a few years older and has already been with girls – well, one, at least – he seems to think Timmy should hold the key to all the secrets, like some sort of know-how sacred manual had descended on him the very moment he lost his virginity.

It’s not like that, of course, but Timmy doesn’t like to admit it because he loves the way Alex looks at him when he gets something right, that special gaze and that special smile meaning “see? I knew I could trust you, I knew you could do it”. Timmy cherishes that more than everything else, he doesn’t wanna spoil it by forcibly stripping that childish, sweet faith from Alex’s big blue eyes.

They’re not even trying this time, though, they’re both too horny to stand the long and torturous process of trying to fuck like proper adults and having to stop because it’s too painful or doesn’t feel right. They just want to enjoy themselves, now. That, they definitely know how to do.

Timmy pulls himself up on his hands and knees, towering over Alex. Where are they? Timmy can’t see it. The surroundings blur and fade away at the edges of his eyesight. Only Alex seems on focus, like a perfect picture. His skin is red and covered in marks and wet traces wherever Timmy kissed him, and he’s breathing heavily, his tummy going up and down with every shaky breath. His lips are parted, glossy and red as cherries, make Timmy wanna take a bite, and he does. Then he moves down Alex’s body, descending on him with his lips in a long trail of kisses that make Alex arch his back and moan louder. There are no other sounds except the ones Alex is making, Timmy can’t even hear himself. It’s like he doesn’t even exist except for the parts of his body that come in contact with Alex’s, that pleasure him. And it feels good, ‘cause if Timmy could he’d happily spend his whole life stuck on Alex’s body, glued on him, covering him like a second skin.

Alex’s hands dive into Timmy’s blonde hair, too long – somewhere inside his head he hears both his fathers’ voices, “what have you done with your hair, Timothy, don’t they have salons in Italy?” – and messed up by the fact that he stubbornly refuses to comb them, except for when they walk out of the country and into the city. Timmy feels his fingertips on his scalp, his nails barely scraping his skin, and he wants more. He wants to feel those nails dive into his shoulders, he wants to see Alex lose control, he wants to hear him scream and beg and he wants to see him move wildly under him, as if he was possessed, so he closes his hands tightly around his hips and takes him in his mouth, sucking hard at his hard-on, moving his tongue in swirls over its head.

Alex breathes heavily, lets out an half-yell and then moans something that Timmy doesn’t get. “What…?” he asks, parting from him, his breath heavy too and his hands somehow inexplicably losing their hold on Alex’s milky skin.

“You have to wake up, Timothy,” Alex’s peachy lips say, parting in an apologetic smile.

“I’m awake,” Timmy answers, weirded out at Alex’s using of his first name in full.

“Yeah,” Alex says, this time – disconcertingly enough – in Leo’s voice, “In your dreams, maybe.”

Timmy opens his eyes wide on the ceiling of his room. Leo’s standing next to the bed, his hands on his hips and the most annoyed expression ever twisting his childish features into a very stern daddy-ish mask. “Finally,” he says, “I’ve been calling you for the last ten minutes.”

“What…?” Timmy whispers, turning his head to cast a confused look around. He’s in his room, it’s cold, the clock says it’s almost half past seven but you could never tell by just looking out the window, ‘cause the sky is dark, covered in big, angry clouds, and it’s raining, that heavy, icy, muddy rain that will inevitably turn into snow during the day. It’s winter in Lima, Ohio, basically as far as he could possibly be from Alex and summer.

“You’re late,” Leo snorts, grabbing the sheets and taking them off him to force him to wake up, “And your father’s already waiting in his car. You better move your ass, or you’ll have to walk.”

Timmy curls on his side, both because it’s cold and he doesn’t want Leo to spot the luckily already softening hard-on that his underpants only barely manage to hide. Winter sucks. Lima sucks. School sucks too. Once he graduates, he’ll move to Italy and go live in Alex’s parents farm. He’ll help them out, saving money to buy his own, and once he can afford it he’ll start his own business, and it’ll be glorious.

“Timmy!” Leo scolds him, “Come on!”

“Okay! Okay!” he groans, getting off the bed and running out of his room and to the bathroom, “I’m going!”

When he comes back to put some clothes on, Leo’s luckily gone and his phone’s screen’s going all Christmas lights on him to let him know he’s got a new text.

The day instantly changes mood when he sees it’s from Alex. “Hey,” it says, “I was wondering, you free in the afternoon? Think we could chat a bit? Let me know!”

He answers quickly, his fingers almost shaking in excitement. “Sure!” he says, and then adds: “How come you’re writing so early? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

Alex answers just a few moments later. It’s not only a text, there’s a picture of himself attached to it. He’s all buried in a fluffy purple wool hat and a coordinated scarf. Timmy can only see his huge baby blue eyes, and blood rushes south as always. “Yes, but it’s snowing,” says the text, “They’re sending us home early. So? What time?”

Timmy licks his lips and then bites the bottom one. If he had the time, he’d jerk himself off right now, just looking at that picture. The dream left him all hot and bothered, and Alex isn’t helping. “I’ll be home by three,” he says.

“That’ll be nine for me,” Alex answers, “Talk to you later, then!”

Timmy smiles and puts down the phone. He turns around to grab a shirt but at the last moment he picks the phone up once again and texts him. “You look fucking amazing,” he says.

Alex answers almost instantly. “I know,” he says, adding a winking smiley.

Timmy’s about to reply with something too when Leo calls for him again, anticipating of just a couple of seconds the sound of his father honking for him in his car, and he lets go. “I said I’m coming!” he yells, annoyed. But suddenly winter doesn’t seem so awful anymore.

*

It’s snowing when he leaves the school. The bus is twenty minutes late, and Timmy spends the entirety of that time fidgeting while Alex teases him over the phone. “You’re not here yet,” he texts him, and Timmy growls.

“I’ll be there soon.”

“But you’re not here now,” Alex insists. Timmy can see him so clearly. Flashes of last summer crowd his head, flashes of him coming back late in the room he shared with Alex, finding him lying down on the bed wearing only a pair of shorts, a loose tank top and a mischievous smile. He was such a jailbait. He still is. One never figures teens to be like this. Alex is, with his bare legs, his narrow hips, that scandalous piercing on his navel. Teasing is Alex’s favorite pastime.

“Just wait for me,” he answers, texting as quickly as he possibly can.

“Don’t know…” Alex writes, “I’m starting to get pretty sleepy and I have to wake up early tomorrow. Maybe I should go to sleep.”

Timmy’s heart sinks into his stomach, and as if called from his desperation the bus finally appears behind the corner at the end of the street. “Don’t,” he rushes to text, “I’m coming.”

The drive home takes half an hour, and when he arrives he throws himself in and then up the stairs, slamming the front door behind himself. Startled by the noise, his parents drop the cutlery, that falls on the plate with a tinkling sound. “Timmy?” Leo asks, his head popping out of the kitchen door, quickly followed by Blaine’s. But Timmy’s already gone and disappeared up the stairs. “Is that you?”

“Yes!” he answers from the corridor, as he runs to his room, “Busy! Later!”

“But don’t you want to have lunch, first?” Blaine asks, puzzled.

“Not hungry!” Timmy answers, moments before locking himself into his room. He turns around, leaning against the door with his shoulders for a moment to catch his breath before throwing his backpack on the floor and launching himself to sit in front of his desk. He turns his computer on and fidgets nervously as Windows starts. “God, why are you so damn slow?” he asks, lightly hitting the side of the monitor – as if that could ever make it work any faster.

Once everything seems to work as it should, he starts Skype, and waits for Alex’s name to appear on it in green. “Hey,” he says, starting the conversation, “Glad I found you.”

“You really thought I’d go to sleep and leave you hanging after asking to talk this morning?” Alex answers with a laughing smiley, “You’re so stupid.”

“Am not,” Timmy says, disappointed.

“A little,” Alex says, “But I like that. You’re so blonde.”

“Why do I think there’s an insult in that?”

“But there isn’t!” Alex laughs again, “So? How was your day?”

Timmy relaxes against the back of his chair, breathing out. He can’t hide it from himself: he’s disappointed. He’s been thinking about the moment when he’d finally be back home and chatting with Alex all day, and though he doesn’t really know what exactly he was expecting to happen, this definitely isn’t it.

“Boring,” he says, “Went to school, had classes, came back home. The usual.”

“That all?” Alex says with a smile, “Man, you could talk for hours about growing perfectly shaped and colored tomatoes, and all you say about your school day is ‘boring’?”

“You know I’m not interested in school,” Timmy answers, frowning.

“Not even mine, huh?” Alex asks.

Timmy frowns again. “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t asked about my day,” Alex answers, and laughs again. Timmy feels mocked, and he doesn’t really like it. And Alex keeps talking about things he has no interest whatsoever in. But he grunts, sighs and sucks it up.

“’Kay,” he says then, “How was your day?”

“Mmmh,” Alex answers, “Busy. Clara was completely out of her mind, today. You remember Clara, don’t you? The blonde one with countless OCDs, I told you about her. Well, she brought in this dress for the assignment due today – you remember the one I told you about? The main outfit for an hypothetical ‘50s icons inspired fashion show? Anyway, I swear, the thing was in pieces. She told us she couldn’t sew anything because once she put the pieces on her bed to look at the ensemble she understood it was ugly and a mess, and she had a nervous breakdown. So we had to basically sit the whole break in first to convince her the outfit was pretty good and she needn’t worry, and then to help her out sewing everything together. Then Mrs. Torti walks in, asks us to show our creations… and of course Clara got the best mark in the whole class. So disappointing. I’m never gonna help anybody, ever again. I only got an A, she got an A++. A++, can you believe it?”

The only thing I can’t believe is that it’s almost four, I gave up a lunch and I’m postponing my math homework to listen to this, Timmy thinks. He doesn’t say it, though.

“Disappointing,” he says. He adds nothing else, and after waiting a couple of minutes Alex writes some more.

“Really, Timmy, you couldn’t carry out a conversation for your life,” he says. The animated smiley in the end of the text sighs dramatically.

“Apparently,” ha answers. He leans back against the chair and sighs too, though not as dramatically as the smiley does. He passes both his hands over his face, disappointed in himself. What is he even doing? Why is he being such a jerk? Alex and him don’t get to talk often, shouldn’t he be enjoying these rare and precious moments, shouldn’t he cherish them?

This whole talking through Skype thing is new, they aren’t used to it yet. It’s just that it seemed a little silly not to talk at all for the rest of the year after spending the whole summer basically glued together.

It’s not as if Timmy was only interested in Alex for what his body can offer. It’s not as if he doesn’t wanna hear him talk about everything else, about all the things he’s interested in and so on. It’s just that it doesn’t seem as natural, online. He used to lie down and listen to him talk for hours at night, back in Italy, but doing the same over Skype doesn’t sound as good. Maybe ‘cause he can’t actually hear his voice at all.

“Is something off?” Alex asks. He’s concerned, it’s easy to guess it by the fact that he’s not using smileys.

“No,” Timmy answers instantly, “It’s nothing.” He wishes he wasn’t a complete idiot, so he could manage to tell Alex he’s not really angry at him or anything, he’s just maybe a little disappointed and feeling awkward because, weirdly enough, this thing that’s supposed to bring closer people who live far away only manages to make the distance between them heavier.

“Mmh,” Alex says, “Listen, I’ve got something for you.”

“What is it?”

“Well, you seemed to like the picture I sent you earlier, so when I met with Neri to go home I asked him to take another one with his phone, it does better pictures. Here.”

A small picture appears on the chat window and Skype asks him “should I save this?”. Timmy says yes, and a few seconds later the same picture appears on his monitor, just five times bigger. In it, Alex is making a cute childish face, half buried between the same purple wool scarf and hat he was wearing that morning. His cheeks are all puffed up and his baby blue giant eyes are staring right into the camera.

Silently, Timmy swallows.

“You like it?” Alex asks. No smiley whatsoever. Timmy can almost hear his voice. A little deeper, a little lower. He thinks back to Italy, the perfect darkness and perfect silence of the countryside. Alex’s body all pressed against him in the bed, his small hand moving slowly down his body, wrapping around his hard-on. ‘You like it?’ whispered softly against his ear in the shadow of that corner of the room.

He shakes his head lightly, clearing his throat. He’s hard again. And he just had to look at a bigger picture of his damn face.

“You’re beautiful,” he answers.

“Thanks,” Alex says, adding a small blushing smiley. Timmy’s starting to hate those fake faces. They can’t compare with Alex’s real one. Nothing compares, obviously, but those small rounded yellow bouncing things can’t even begin to compensate for not having him there, for not being able to see him. “Listen, I’ve gotta go,” Alex adds after a little while, “It’s late and I really have to wake up early tomorrow. Maybe we can talk again in a few days? Try and get used to this. Or something.”

Timmy can’t help a small smile to curl his lips upwards. “Sure,” he answers, “’Night.”

“’Night,” Alex says with a small smile. He’s off the moment after. The picture is still open on Timmy’s monitor, and he stares at it, perfectly motionless, for more than a minute. Then he swallows, he sits back and he slowly lets his right hand slip past the waistband of his pants to touch himself.

Alex’s blue eyes stare at him for the whole time.

*
It’s past midnight when the phone rings. Timmy’s been sleeping for a couple of hours already, and the ringing wakes him up. Still half buried under the blanket, he reaches out for the damn thing and brings it closer to his face. Narrowing his eyes, stinging painfully because of the light coming from the screen, he opens the text alert popping out on the screen and sees it’s from Alex.

At first, he thinks he’s dreaming.

“I’m touching myself,” says the text.

Timmy swallows hard. He doesn’t even know how to answer that, so he decides not to. The text client shows Alex he read it, and that’ll have to be answer enough.

It proves to be when Alex writes again. “Sorry to wake you up so late. But I dreamt about you. I had to tell you.”

Timmy lifts himself up on his elbows and holds the phone with both his hands, typing with his thumbs. “What did I do?”

“In the dream?” Alex asks back, “You came out of the shadows in my room. At first I couldn’t see you, but I could feel you. I could smell you. Almost taste you.”

“What did I taste of?”

Alex writes something, then erases it before sending the text. Takes him a couple of moments to come up with the right word. “Sex,” he says. Timmy shivers badly.

“Did I touch you?”

“You did more than that,” Alex answers instantly, “You bent over me and kissed me, and you touched me all over, and then you climbed on top of me. It was so dark, but I still could see you so well. Your eyes, your mouth… and then I felt your fingers wrapping up around my cock, and I woke up, and I was moaning. And I had to touch myself.”

“And are you still doing it now?” Timmy asks, feeling his stomach tie up in a knot.

It takes Alex a couple of moments more to answer. “…yes,” he says. Timmy’s hips react to that as if following an unconscious command. They jerk forward and upwards, and as he rubs himself against the mattress Timmy realizes he’s hard, and almost painfully so.

“I’m gonna touch myself too…” he answers, turning on his back and holding the phone with one hand as he lets the other slide down his own body and underneath his clothes.

“Are you hard?” Alex asks.

“Yeah,” Timmy answers, moaning as he types, as his fingertips rub teasingly all over his length, “I want you so much.”

“I could feel it in the dream too,” Alex says, following the trail of his own thoughts, “You were so hard, and I thought I wanted you inside.”

A moan escapes Timmy’s lips and he instantly bites at his bottom lip to try and muffle it, hoping he’ll be able to contain the next as he starts jerking himself off. The thought of being inside Alex, feeling the warmth of his body, feeling him as he tightens the hold of his muscles around his cock, the mere thought of finally be able to fuck him properly, fuck him hard, fuck him deep and fast and long enough to make them both sore, is almost enough, on its own, to push him over the edge. His teeth sink into his lip and draw blood from it, as he struggles to keep his focus on the phone to text back.

“I wanna be inside you,” he says, “I wanna fuck you so much.”

“Please, do it,” Alex answers, “Please, next time you see me, don’t wait. Push me against the wall and lift me up and then fuck me, come inside me, I wanna feel you.”

Timmy closes his eyes and can’t help another moan to slip out of his mouth as he comes between his fingers. His body tenses for a moment, and then relaxes after the orgasm’s over, and he falls back on the mattress, breathing heavily. “I just came…” he texts Alex, almost embarrassedly.

“Me too,” Alex texts back, and then adds: “Thanks.”

“What for?” Timmy asks.

“Being here,” Alex answers, “Despite the distance. You felt close. For once. It felt good.”

His words have a weight, and an heavy one too. Timmy swallows, feeling that weight fall on him and covering him up like a thick blanket. Then Alex adds a little smile in the next text, and Timmy breathes out, relieved.

He doesn’t want to overcomplicate this. Isn’t it already complicated enough?

“Felt good to me too,” he answers. Now he’d like to talk a while. Now he’s ready to read Alex’s ramblings about his classmates and his hypothetical fashion shows until dawn, if Alex wants.

But “Go back to sleep, now,” Alex says, and Timmy sighs.

“Can we talk again tomorrow?” he asks.

“Not very likely,” Alex answers with a little sad face, “I’ll do my best, though.”

Timmy decides to cling to that and hope it works.

*
It serves him little in the next few days. Alex seems to disappear completely from his radar. He answers to his texts, every now and then, but he’s always busy and they can’t chat long. He’s not sure if Alex is teasing or if he honestly can’t find any time for him, but he has no choice but to try and forget how awesome it felt what happened between them that night, focusing on other things. School, sports, the usual. He tries not to think about Tana. Surprisingly enough, most of the time he manages.

He’s surfing randomly through 9GAG when Alex contacts him again. The Skype window chat pops up by surprise on his desktop and Timmy instantly frowns because he wasn’t expecting it. He checks on Skype to see if Alex is online but the small rounded icon next to his name is grey and covered with a huge white cross. Yet, he’s there.

“Hey,” says the text, “You there?”

It’s seven o’ clock, so it must be at least 1 AM there. “Hey,” he anwers, “Can’t sleep?”

“Mh,” Alex answers. The little smiley he adds to the text nods quickly.

“How come?” he asks, smiling a little. He can picture him so perfectly, lying down on his bed with his laptop open on his chest, the white light coming from the screen making his skin look even paler, his eyes big and a little tired.

“Dunno…” he writes, “I was thinking.”

“What about?”

“You.”

This makes his heart beat faster, and it’s both embarrassing and sweet. Most of all, though, it’s scary.

“I’m not that great of a topic, am I?”

“You are,” Alex says with a little smile.

“Didn’t you tell me last time that I couldn’t carry out a conversation for my life?”

“Yeah,” Alex answers with a laughter, “…wasn’t exactly thinking about your intellectual abilities, tho.”

“Hey!” he can’t help but laugh, “That’s offensive.”

“Sorry,” Alex says. Timmy answers with a little smile and they stop talking for a couple of minutes. Then, Alex speaks again. “I wanna see you…” he says. Timmy imagines the tone he’d use to say it out loud if he was there, and he shivers badly.

“You’re starting to get a little needy, aren’t you?” he answers. He’s already touching himself through his pants.

“It’s your fault,” Alex answers, “You made me so. Don’t you wanna see me?”

Right now, he mostly wants to hear him. Sure, he wants to see him too, but reading his words without being able to hear his voice is proving to be worse than hell.

“I do…” he says then, “I wanna come there soon. During spring break, maybe…”

“You could see me now, tho,” Alex writes quickly, “The webcam…”

…the webcam. Timmy opens his eyes wide, staring at the lens of the small, rounded camera on top of his monitor. How could he not think earlier about this?

“Yes,” he hastens to say, “Yes, I’m calling you now.”

“Don’t make it a phone call, I can’t talk now,” Alex says, “It’s too late.”

“Yes, yes, don’t worry,” he says.

In a few seconds, the small window of the video call opens up, and Alex appears in it. He really is lying down on the bed, Timmy can see his pillow behind his head. His hair are ruffled, his eyes a little watery, he looks incredibly sleepy and yet it doesn’t surprise Timmy he can’t sleep. If Alex is frustrated half of how frustrated he himself is, it makes perfect sense.

“Hey,” he writes, smiling at the camera.

“You look good,” Alex says, “Better than I remembered.”

“Don’t flatter me…”

“Why not?”

“’Cause it’s embarrassing,” he cuts out, but he’s smiling, and Alex smiles at him from the screen. He stretches out, and the sheets slide off his body a little, showing some of it. He’s wearing a loose white t-shirt with a neck so wide it leaves one of his shoulders bare. He looks so beautiful. Timmy stopped long ago demanding rationality to himself when Alex is concerned. He confuses him, whenever Timmy sees him he just can’t understand anything anymore.

“Hey…” he starts, “Listen, I know it may sound weird, but… do you wanna do something?”

Alex’s eyes lighten up, a sudden spark of malice making them brighter. “Something like?”

“I don’t know…” he says, but after he sends the text he rests his shoulders against the back of the chair and palms himself through his pants.

Alex bites at his bottom lip, looking at him. “Seems like you do…” he says.

“Yeah…” Timmy types with his other hand, as he swallows. “So?”

Alex doesn’t type anything in response, but he balances his laptop on his knees and gets rid of the blankets covering him. Then he sits up, crosses his arms over his chest and grabs the hem of his t-shirt. Timmy watches him as he takes it off, and he holds his breath. The navel piercing sparkles lightly at the white light coming from the screen.

“Fuck…” he types, swallowing heavily.

Alex’s lips curl in a little smile. “You like it?” he asks.

“Like doesn’t even begin to cover it…” he answers.

“Do it too,” Alex demands, sitting more comfortably against the pillow.

Timmy nods at the camera and swiftly takes off his hoodie, and the long-sleeved tee he’s wearing underneath. He sees Alex bite at his lips at the sight, and he suddenly looks so distressed that Timmy finds himself worrying. “What?” he hurries to ask.

“I wanna lick you,” Alex answers, typing quickly, “I wanna lick you all over. I wanna suck you.”

“God…” Timmy whispers, and then hastens to write, “I’m gonna fuck your mouth so hard,” he says, “I’m gonna choke you.”

“Yes,” Alex writes, “Yes, please, shove it down my throat.”

Timmy can’t shove anything down Alex’s throat right now, but he can damn well shove his own hand inside his pants and jerk himself off, and he does it. And the moment Alex sees him doing it, he’s quick to do the same. Timmy watches his hand move inside his pajama trousers and he finds that sight almost hotter than the one of Alex’s bare chest. He tries to keep his voice low as he touches himself, but it’s hard to keep it down while looking at him. Alex sinks into the bed, arching his back as he rides the wave of his orgasm, and Timmy follows him, focusing on every detail because if there’s one thing this screen can do is give him the chance to look at him from a little less up close than he’s able to do while they mess around together. He can see him bite down hard at his lips, then flick his tongue out and lick his already puffed up and red lips. He can see the quick movements of Alex’s wrists, the erratic way his hips jerk forward. He can see his shoulders shake and his neck bend as his climax quickly approaches, and when Alex comes he can’t hear the little moan that helplessly escapes his lips, but he can feel it, and it’s so pleasant he can’t help but coming too, squeezing his eyes and almost jumping on his chair, before falling back down on it, exhausted.

He opens his eyes and tries to focus on Alex again. It takes him an effort, but he manages. Alex is lying down, now, visibly more relaxed than he was before, and there’s a wide, serene smile curling the corners of his mouth upwards. He looks adorable.

“Everything alright?” Timmy asks.

Alex must hear the bleeping sound of the new message notification, because he barely opens his eyes and manages to look at the screen. Instead of writing an answer, he nods. Timmy smiles.

“You wanna sleep, now?” he types, and Alex nods again. “’Night,” he says.

Alex mimics a kiss, curling up his lips, and then interrupts the video call. He’s offline right after.

Timmy relaxes against the back of the chair, closes his eyes and breathes out. He keeps smiling for the rest of the day.

*
In his dreams, in the next few days, it keeps happening again and again, and every time some details change, making it more intimate, hotter, more pleasant every time. Timmy goes to sleep thinking about Alex’s expression as he came – his closed eyes, his parted lips, the sight of his tongue piercing barely flicking into view – and Alex comes visiting while he sleeps. He’s always there, he’s never gone.

Ten days pass, and when Timmy realizes how long it’s been since they chatted last he’s surprised, because it felt way less. He can still remember every detail so perfectly he could swear the whole thing has happened not more than a few hours ago.

But it has been ten days anyway, and so he’s not surprised when Alex texts him a picture of himself pouting, that afternoon. He laughs and answers. “What’s up?”

“You tell me,” Alex answers, “You haven’t texted me in days.”

“Did I have to?” he asks, knowing perfectly this will make Alex mad.

“…no, of course you didn’t have to,” he obviously answers a few minutes later, “Why should you, after all, we just jerked off together, that totally doesn’t count as sex and that totally didn’t deserve a call the next day even if just to ask me if I was okay. Fuck you, Timmy.”

He laughs out loud, shaking his head as he answers. “I knew you’d say that,” he says, “You’re cute when you’re angry.”

“…really, fuck you.”

“Oh, come on,” he answers with a little smile, “I was just teasing. I’m sorry I didn’t call, but honestly, I didn’t even realize how many days have passed. I’ve thought about it so much and so often it literally feels like yesterday we last spoke.”

“…yeah,” Alex answers, and Timmy can picture him sigh in resignation, “It’s flattering you thought a lot about it. And it’s nice, ‘cause I thought a lot about it too. But that’s still not enough to make me forgive you for all those days of silence.”

Timmy chuckles, lifts his t-shirt up and takes a picture of his bare tummy. The picture shows his abs, his navel, one of his hipbones and the incredibly light trail of thin, blond hair that leads the eyes on their path to his crotch, a path that stops abruptly when it reaches the waistband of his trousers, but that it’s still there, like a promise of good things to come.

He sends it to Alex, and he receives no answer for five minutes. Then his cellphone vibrates, and notifies him of a new text. “You’re a dickhead and I hate you,” it says.

Timmy laughs. “I’m happy you liked it.”

“You’re such a tease!”

“I won’t accept it from you, you’re queen regent of Teasingland.”

“Shut up…” the next text says, “When can I see you again?”

Timmy casts a look at the clock – it’s a quarter to five – and at his homework – knowing he won’t touch them again this afternoon – and then texts back. “You busy now?”

“No,” Alex answers. Then another text comes, quickly following the first. “And my dads aren’t home…”

Timmy’s teeth close automatically around his bottom lip, as his hands shake a little. “Coming online now,” he answers, as he logs in. He’s not sure if Leo and Blaine are home, but if they are, at this hour, they’re probably busy watching some Disney movie with the twins. He’ll keep his voice down, anyway, just to be sure. What’s important is that Alex can scream, and it’s important ‘cause Timmy wants to hear him do it.

Alex’s face appears on his desktop a few seconds after. He’s moving the cam to fit all in the frame, and when he’s done he sits down and puts on his headphones and sets his mic against his lips.

“Can you hear me?” Timmy asks.

Alex smiles and whispers “Yes,” and Timmy feels his heart swell to the sound of his voice.

“Hey,” Timmy smiles too, “How are you? Everything okay?”

“Mmhn,” Alex nods, leaning back against the chair, “Good to see you. And hear you,” he chuckles, “Finally.”

“I know, I know,” Timmy chuckles, embarrassedly, “I’ve been a jerk. You wanna punish me?”

Alex seems to take a couple of seconds to seriously consider the possibility, and then his lips open up in another pretty smile. “Nah,” he says, shaking his head, “I’m just happy to see you. I missed you.”

“You know, our conversations are starting to look dangerously like boyfriends conversations,” Timmy chuckles again, passing a hand through his hair, “Should I worry?”

“I don’t know, it depends,” Alex answers with a feline smirk, “Would you worry if we became boyfriends?”

Timmy blushes a little and looks away, biting at his bottom lip. “It’s… complicated,” he says, “You know that.”

Alex sighs, a different smile curling up his lips now, a sweeter but also sadder one. “Yeah, I know,” he says, “Let’s not talk about this. You have nothing to worry about. If you need to define this relationship to feel better, let’s say we’re friends with benefits. It’s what we are, in the end, isn’t it? We’re friends,” he grins, lifting the hem of the tank top he’s wearing and showing a little piece of his tummy and the glint of his piercing, “And we benefit.”

Timmy laughs out loud, shaking his head. “You’re a minx.”

“Shut up!” Alex laughs too, “And stop calling me girl names. You know I’m not a girl.”

“I’ve seen it first-hand, yeah, that much is true,” Timmy answers with a short chuckle, and then his smile widens a little. “But maybe I need reminder.”

Alex can’t help but blush a little, but he doesn’t lose his smile and doesn’t make a fuss. “Oh, yeah?” he says, leaning back and keeping his tank top lifted up, “You wanna see it, big boy?”

The sound of his voice, the way he’s speaking now, that ridiculous nickname, all resonates with Timmy in a way that his body recognizes automatically, and he feels his cock harden and get bigger without even needing to be touched. “Yes,” he says, moistening his lips and unconsciously straightening his back on the chair, his muscles all tense and ready to move as if he could jump into the screen and on him on the other side, “Show me.”

As always when they decide to try something, even when they don’t discuss it first but they just find themselves ready when the right moment comes, Alex shows no embarrassment whatsoever in complying to Timmy’s requests. He’s comfortable in his own skin, they both are, and that always made things very easy between them. They never had problem undressing in front of one another or touching each other, since they were nothing but kids. Well, they still are. Alex, at least, still is. And Timmy still feels like one too.

Alex stands up and starts taking off his tank top first. It’s too loose and long and it keeps falling over, but when Timmy realizes what the sight will be if he keeps it on he stops him. “Wait,” he says, “Don’t take it off yet. Your pants first.”

Alex seems puzzled by the request, at first, but then his lips curl into a mischievous smile and he nods. He unbuttons his pants and pushes them down his legs, and Timmy can see he’s pushing down his underpants together with them. This means he’s naked, now, under the top that covers him down almost to half his thighs.

The whole thing looks so sexy Timmy bites down at his own lips hard, almost hurting himself. If he was there, he’d drop on his knees right in front of him and he’d slip both his hands underneath that tank top as if it was a skirt, grabbing Alex’s hips and then squeezing his buttocks. And then he’d dive underneath it with his head, taking him in his mouth and sucking him dry.

He’s not there, though, so all he can do is asks Alex exactly what he wants, and hope it’ll be okay for him.

“Lift it up,” he says, “Slowly…”

Alex nods and holds the hem of the top between his thumbs and his index fingers, lifting it up. Inch after inch, he uncovers the white, soft skin of his thighs, then his cock, already getting hard too, then his flat stomach and his piercing, and then he stops. “Like this?” he asks. His voice sounds dirty and alluring, and Timmy starts feeling arousal pool in his belly.

“Yes,” he says, swallowing hard.

“You like it?” Alex asks.

“Yes,” Timmy answers again, his voice almost whiny.

“What d’you wanna do to it?” Alex asks, and the question is enough to make Timmy’s hand run to his crotch, to stroke himself through his pants and try to get at least friction enough not to go crazy over the whole thing.

“I wanna suck it,” he answers, palming himself strongly, “I wanna take it into my mouth and lick it all from base to top.”

“Yes…” Alex whispers, touching himself loosely, almost teasingly, “Go on…”

“I wanna swallow it whole and suck hard at it,” Timmy answers, mesmerized by the movement of his hand, “I wanna pass my tongue all over it. I wanna do that thing you love so much, when I pass my tongue on top of it and I lick the little hole on the head and you shiver so much.”

“Yes!” Alex raises his voice, wrapping his fingers tightly around himself, “Yes, I want you to do that.”

“Then I wanna make you turn around, and I wanna lick your ass too,” Timmy says, quickly getting rid of his own pants and pushing them down his thighs, to jerk himself off more freely, “I wanna lick it until I make you come, like I did that day, when your parents weren’t home, d’you remember it?”

“Yes…” Alex whines, closing his eyes, “You said you were hungry…”

“Yes,” Timmy grins, stroking himself faster, “I said I was hungry and I wanted to eat you. Then I made you bend over and I kneeled behind you, I held your hips in my hands and I licked you, and you remember what I did?”

“Your tongue…” Alex says breathlessly, forcing himself to at least open one eye to be able to look at Timmy as he jerks off, “You put it in me…”

“Yes…”

“You wanna do that?” Alex asks, moaning loudly, “You wanna do that to me again?”

“Yeah,” Timmy nods, getting closer to the screen, “Yes, baby, turn around, let me see your little hole.”

“Timmy…” Alex moans again, moistening his lips, “That’s so fucking hot.”

“Please, let me see it, babe,” Timmy insists.

“I like it when you call me that…” Alex says in a soft breath, turning around – his hand still firmly wrapped around his cock – and using the chair to balance himself as he parts his legs to show Timmy what he wants to see, “Do it again.”

“God, babe, you look so good,” Timmy says, desperately tightening his grip around his hard, twitching cock, his arousal growing even more at the sight of Alex’s tight, pink opening, “I wanna finger you so badly.”

“I can do it for you,” Alex whispers, turning around to look at the camera and at the screen, “Do you want me to do it? Do you wanna watch me? I always do that thinking about you anyway.”

“You do that, sweets?” Timmy almost hisses, already feeling his climax approaching but trying to hold it back as much as he can, “You finger yourself all alone in your bed, thinking about me? Thinking about my cock?”

“Yes!” Alex yells, the fingers of his free hand finding their way between his buttocks, rubbing against his opening, “Yes, I do it all the time. I wanna see you better, come closer.”

Timmy stands up from the chair too, moving the cam so it shows his cock better. “You see how hard it is?”

“Yes…”

“You want it inside, sweets?”

“Yes!” Alex yells again, and when Timmy looks at the screen he sees he’s fingering himself with his middle finger already, “Yes, please, fuck me!”

“Yes, baby,” Timmy moans, jerking himself off faster, his thumb passing over the red, hot head of his cock, “Yes, you’re so fucking tight, you feel so good…”

“You’re so big,” Alex moans louder, Timmy looks down and sees his using two fingers, now, “Ah, you’re so fucking big, you’re tearing me apart!”

“Yes, baby, do you feel me?” Timmy asks, speaking hardly, now, unsteady on his shaky legs, “Do you feel me deep?”

“Yes,” Alex whines, his legs are shaking too, “I’m coming.”

“Me too, sweets,” Timmy nods, and as he keeps jerking himself off he hears Alex’s voice break into a loud gasp and an almost childish hiccup, and he knows he came, and he’s surprised at how quickly his own body follows Alex’s pace. Surprised, but not really. Because in that perfect moment when, despite the distance, they share the same labored breath and the same warm, fuzzy feeling making their limbs tremble and their eyes unfocused, everything’s good, and everything makes sense.

Timmy falls back on his chair, exhausted. Alex is breathing heavily right into his mic, and hearing him through the headphones makes it seem as if he was right there beside him, sharing the bed after they had sex. Timmy keep his eyes closed for as long as he possibly can without seeming unconscious or asleep, because he wants to cling to the feeling. It’s pleasant.

“You still alive?” Alex asks with a little chuckle.

Timmy opens his eyes and smiles drowsily. “I’m devastated,” he says in a weary laughter.

“And you only jerked off,” Alex laughs too, “You’re gonna die the moment I get my hands on you.”

“Probably,” Timmy nods, and stretches out. “It was good, tho. I wanna do it again.”

“What, right now?” Alex laughs, amused.

“No, that’d kill me,” Timmy laughs too, “But soon,” he nods.

Alex nods too, pulling up his pants and sitting back on his chair. “Now I’ve gotta go,” he says, “My dads are gonna be home soon, I wanna be in bed by then.” He stands up and moves closer to the screen, pressing a kiss on the camera. “Talk to you soon?”

Timmy nods, passing his fingers over the screen where Alex’s lips just were. “Soon.”

Alex disappears and logs off right after, and Timmy’s left watching the screen with a stupid smile on his face. When he realizes how dumb he must look, he chuckles, shaking his head, and stands up. He pulls up his pants and stretches out, moaning in pleasure.

The warm, fuzzy feeling of his orgasm is still lingering. The one Alex’s smile gave him is still there too. Christmas is coming soon, and the end of the year will follow right after.

If December is to be of any indication, the next is gonna be a pretty good year.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lemon, Angst.
- "There are clearly not enough minutes in one night to give Blaine all the minutes he’d like to have, and nights are always a minute shorter than they’d wish them to be."
Note: Scritta per la Notte Bianca #11 di maridichallenge (♥) su prompt Rughe d'espressione.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
PAPER CUP

And the night's in a paper cup
When you want it to last

There are clearly not enough minutes in one night to give Blaine all the minutes he’d like to have, and nights are always a minute shorter than they’d wish them to be.

Cody stretches out, lying down in the sand. It’s weirdly warm, considering how cold the night air is. And yet, the coldness of the air is somehow very pleasant too, after the warmth of the water. It’s an awkward caress, but sweet nonetheless, like some of those Blaine gives him in the morning, when he wakes up and finds him by his side and, not fully aware of who he is but not completely unaware that he’s Cody and not somebody else either, he lets his hands slide down his body just to touch him.

He wouldn’t believe Blaine, when he said the sea is warm at night. “That’s not possible,” he said, uneasily, always scared to contradict, always worried he might say the wrong thing. Old habits die hard, William’s voice says in his head, and most of the time Cody ignores it, but sometimes he just can’t.

Blaine just laughed, though, blowing away bad thoughts like the wind does with the clouds. “Don’t you know anything, pet?” he said. And then, without explaining, he added, “Come. Try it, if you don’t believe me.”

Trust has always been an issue, for Cody, but he trusted him. He walked into the water, wearing nothing but his underwear. And it was warm alright.

Blaine’s arms were warmer, though, as Cody felt them around his body. He relaxed against Blaine’s chest, resting his head on the curve of his shoulder. Blaine kissed him on his neck and then stood still, watching the dark horizon, following the white, shaky trace of the moon on the black surface of the see.

“It feels like a dream,” he said. Cody didn’t want to answer that it felt so good because, in the end, it was nothing but a dream. A few minutes of suspended reality in between a moment of pain and the other. Isn’t this what dreams are all about, in the end? Dreams can be real, if they’re short enough.

It still feels like a dream, now, lying in the sand, looking up at the sky. The night is dark, and the stars can be seen so well Cody could use them as outlines to paint. He stares at them intently, trying to fix that image in his mind, take a picture and remember it. He wants to draw this, later, when he’ll be alone in his room, when Blaine won’t be there anymore, when the warmth of his skin will be long gone. He’ll want to draw this sight to try and see if there’s a way to capture the feeling that went with it. If there’s a way to summon Blaine’s fingers when they’re not there anymore.

It hurts somewhere deep inside to know it won’t be of any use.

“You’re distant,” Blaine whispers. Cody looks up at him and finds him lying on his stomach, his elbows in the sand, looking down at him with an half-sad smile. “Something bad happened?”

No, something beautiful happened. He fell in love. And that’s heartbreaking.

Cody forces a smile on his lips and shakes his head. “It’s fine,” he says, “I’m just thinking.”

“About what?” Blaine asks gently.

Cody chuckles, turning on his stomach too and mirroring Blaine’s position, his shoulder brushing against his. “Guess,” he says.

“Ah!” Blaine smiles, “I like this game. Let’s see. You’re thinking about chocolate.”

“Not at all!” Cody laughs, hitting Blaine’s shoulder with his own, “I don’t always think about food.”

“But when you do, it’s chocolate,” Blaine says, nodding to himself, knowingly.

Cody’s smile softens as he nods. “That’s true,” he admits, “But it doesn’t change the fact that I wasn’t thinking about food right now.”

“Then about the fact that I was right,” Blaine tries, “The sea was warm. And you don’t want to admit it.”

“What do you think I am, twelve?” Cody chuckles again, “I admit it. It was warm.” His smile widens a bit, “It felt good.”

“So that’s what you were thinking about,” Blaine says, turning on his back and lying down, his hands searching for Cody’s and holding them gently as he guides him, silently asking him to lies down on his chest, “That it felt good. Was it weird?”

“Everything is, with you,” Cody answers in a chuckle, resting on him, his fingers tracing the outlines of his features, his fingertips lingering on the small imperfections, the things he likes the most about him, the little hump on his nose, the expression lines around his lips, the hard squareness of his jaw, “You can’t do things like normal people would.”

“Mmh,” Blaine tilts his head, pensively, “Why, what would ‘normal people’ have done in our situation?”

“I don’t know,” Cody smiles, “I’m not very normal myself.”

“That I know,” Blaine nods, “After all, you’re with me.”

“Exactly,” Cody laughs.

“But still,” Blaine insists, “Do you wish anything was different, between us?”

Cody doesn’t need time to picture all the things he’d love to be different. He can see himself and Blaine in a different reality, somewhere with a house of their own, a garden, maybe kids. He can see the sunlight, in his fantasy, he can almost feel it on his skin, and then the night wind that blows around them brings him back to reality with just a bit too much violence, and he curls up against Blaine’s chest, shivering.

“Are you cold?” Blaine asks, worried, wrapping his arms around his shaky shoulders, “Damn, of course you are. It’s late. Let’s go.”

“No,” Cody presses both his hands against Blaine’s chest and pulls away from him, just a bit, just enough to look at him. He tries a smile and he manages a very small one. It’ll have to be enough. “I wanna stay,” he says, nodding, “Just a little more.”

“You’ll freeze,” Blaine says, looking up at him with real concern in his eyes.

Cody swallows, leaning down on him. “Warm me up,” he answers.

As they kiss, and as Blaine’s hands run down his body, and as he overturns their positions and rests on him, and as he touches him and kisses him everywhere, and as they take off their soaked underwear, and as Blaine touches him, and then fingers him, and then moves inside him, Cody closes his eyes and feels the night around them. He feels the darkness, and the cold, and Blaine’s arms are the only warm thing in the world, right now. They’re the only thing in the world.

Their past means nothing, even the bits and pieces they share. There’s no Leo who broke Cody’s heart and whose heart got broken by Blaine. There’s no William who destroyed something inside Cody, and there’s no long streak of useless, empty one night stands that forged Blaine to be who he is now, this scared man, unable to form a stable, healthy relationship that goes on for more than a couple of weeks.

There’s nothing, just them. And the night. And the dark. And the cold, and Blaine’s warmth making it better.

“Why aren’t you with me, tonight?” Blaine whispers in Cody’s ear, his voice broken by sadness, as he moves slowly inside him.

“I am,” Cody answers, and he’s not lying. He is, just in a way Blaine couldn’t possibly understand. He’s already in that place where they’re over, and nothing but a memory. He’s with him, he’s just not with him where Blaine is, or when, for that matter. They’re having a relationship in the only place and time they both can afford, a place and a time that live only through memory. And dreams.

Blaine rests on him, wrapping his arms around his body. He seems unwilling to let go of him – tonight, or ever, for that matter. But Cody knows it’s not true. If not now, soon enough, Blaine will want this to end. Cody just doesn’t plan on being there when it happens. And he knows it’s cowardly and unfair, but he can’t afford his heart to break in pieces again. He wouldn’t know how to mend it on his own. This time, he wouldn’t survive it. He can’t let Blaine kill him – Blaine would never forgive himself for it, and he already doesn’t forgive himself for too many things to add that to the list.

“We should go,” Cody says after a while, his fingers running lazily through Blaine’s dripping hair, “It’s getting late.”

“Just one more minute,” Blaine answers, clinging to him.

But there are clearly not enough minutes in one night to give Blaine all the minutes he’d like to have, and nights are always a minute shorter than they’d wish them to be.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Commedia, Romantico, Erotico.
Pairing: Blaine/OC(s), OC/OC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, AU, Lemon, OC.
- Blaine's been a rockstar for fifteen years already, but he's never been quite as happy as he is now that he's dating Leo, guitarist and leader of the Dudes from the Candy Shop, a new alternative rock emerging band. The two have a very open, very unapologetic, very free relationship, which means they can basically go and have sex with whomever they want, as long as they're honest with each other about it. Because of their overwhelmingly busy schedules, they can rarely spend some time together, so whenever they're free they do what they can to be together. Which is why Blaine surprises Leo during rehearsals one afternoon, and while he's there he takes the chance of helping his boyfriend with a problem who's been bothering him for months, and - since he's already there - meet his best childhood friend Adam too. Then things escalate. Quickly.
Note: La mia pazzia! Niente, dunque, la terza settimana del #summerCOWT ci chiedeva di scrivere delle AU, per la M3. I Suthi, per la precisione, avevano band!AU e future!AU. Io ovviamente ho preso di peso il Leoverse e ho plottato su entrambe le cose, ed in entrambi i casi sono usciti dei mastodonti luciferini a quattro teste, come al solito, solo che nel caso della band!AU la cosa si prestava ad una serie di shot (di cui questa non è che la prima, le altre sono ancora da venire, e saranno tutte "archiviate" sotto il titolo Dudes from the Candy Shop series), mentre la future!AU era una roba enorme che andava scritta tutta insieme e che non avrebbe mai potuto vedere la luce in una settimana, neanche estesa. La scriverò in futuro - per quello che v'importa XD
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
HUSBAND MATERIAL

When Blaine arrives at the rehearsal studio, the Dudes are already playing. He hears them from the hallway – Cody’s melodious girly voice, Pete’s aggressive bass, Matt’s furious drums, Annie’s graceful but dynamic piano and, of course, Leo’s sexy guitar – and tries to keep as quite as he can as he walks in, not to disturb them. As always, though, his carefulness shows itself to be completely useless when Leo puts down his guitar and runs towards him, interrupting the song halfway, when he sees him appear on the doorframe.

“You came!” he yells, throwing his arms around Blaine’s neck and wrapping his legs around his hips, clinging to him like a monkey to its tree.

“I promised I would, didn’t I?” Blaine chuckles, pressing an affectionate kiss on Leo’s lips as he climbs off him.

“Yeah, I learnt not to trust your promises a long time ago,” Leo chuckles, slapping him on his ass, “But I’m glad you found the time to come see us.”

One of the perks of having a rock star boyfriend when you’re a rock star yourself is that, at least, you don’t have to explain when you miss an appointment, or arrive late, or can’t come back home at night even when you said you would have or similar mishaps happen. It’s even better when your rock star boyfriend’s in his twenties and just started getting famous, and is therefore way more interested in experiencing all the joys of being universally loved (and desired), than in giving you shit for the boyfriend-y things you can’t or forget to do despite your promises.

Since he started singing professionally fifteen years ago, Blaine has been with a lot of boys, but no one was quite as famous as Leo is right now, which is why, he believes, all his previous relationships failed, while this thing with Leo is surely destined to last. He can already see himself in forty years, old as dirt, sitting on the porch on his rocking chair, while Leo brings him tea and rubs his shoulders as their countless cats meow and purr, stretching and sleeping and playing with balls of thread all around them.

In the meanwhile, though, they’re taking it easy, accepting things as they are. They decided they wouldn’t play the game couples usually play when they start building an hypothesis of future. They decided to rule out jealousy, whining and obligations of any kind, at least until they both agree that something needs to change. It hasn’t happened yet, and Blaine’s not in any rush.

“So?” he asks, wrapping an arm around Leo’s waist to keep him close while he waves a the others with the other hand, smiling when he sees them scoff and whine about the interruption, “How’s it going?”

“Everything was perfectly fine, before you came,” Pete answers on Leo’s behalf, coming closer with a smile to kiss Blaine on his cheek, greeting him, “Then you appeared and I suppose we’re not gonna play a single note more for today.”

“No, I promise we’re gonna be good,” Leo chuckles, leaning against him, “Let’s take a ten minutes break and when it’s over we’re gonna start again.”

“You promise?” Annie asks, smirking. It’s obvious she doesn’t believe him. She has a point, Leo’s got a pretty long history of broken promises when Blaine is concerned.

“Don’t believe him,” Matt smiles too, standing up from his tools and stretching his legs and arms, “D’you wanna come grab some coffee for everybody?”

“Sure,” Annie nods, “Do you want something too, Blaine?”

“Same thing you’re taking, dear,” Blaine answers with a soft smile. Then he feels Leo tug at his hand, and he looks at him. “What?” he asks, as he follows Leo’s lead, “Make-out session in the cubby?”

“No, you idiot,” Leo laughs, “I want you to meet somebody.”

The somebody Leo wants him to meet is an incredibly good-looking guy in his twenties. Actually, he’s not just good-looking. He’s rather hot. The kind of hotness you’d see on the cover of a Men’s Health issue. He’s tall and blonde, with broad shoulders and perfectly chiseled and strong arms. His thighs can barely be contained into his tight blue jeans and his hands are dirty with dry painting. A sportsman and an artist, Blaine thinks with a wicked smile. Husband material. Hopefully, not for Leo.

“He’s Adam,” Leo says, “My best friend since I was a baby. Adam,” he smiles, turning to the blondie, “He’s Blaine, my boyfriend. You already know him, though,” he chuckles, as always so proud to be able to remark Blaine doesn’t need introductions, considering how famous he is worldwide. Sometimes Blaine thinks Leo will keep saying this to introduce him even when he’ll be retired from the scenes for so long already everybody will have forgotten about him.

“Nice to meet you, Adam,” Blaine says affably, holding out his hand. Adam casts him and his hand an indifferent and quite suspicious look and only after a couple of seconds of apparent careful consideration decides to shakes his hand.

“Hi,” he says. He doesn’t say nice to meet you, or even you too, and the detail doesn’t go unnoticed to Blaine nor Leo. After all, they both live in a world in which affected demonstrations of fake courtesy are way more frequent than honest shows of interest, so they both can tell one from the other even when who’s giving them tries their best to conceal their real feelings. It’s even easier when the person in question doesn’t even try.

“You could try and show a little more excitement,” Leo remarks, pouting and crossing his arms over his chest in disappointment.

“D’you want me to fake it?” Adam asks plainly, arching an eyebrow.

Leo lets out one of those small growls that are usually prelude for one of his worldwide famous epic rages - they’re the favorite subject of every paparazzi since he last threw a mattress out of an hotel window only because it wasn’t soft as he expected it to be; he fakes them for the sake of the show, for the most part, but it is undeniably true that Leo lives in a constant state of unreasonable anger that’s always threatening to explode for one reason or another - so, to prevent any instrument to be damaged, Blaine smiles and puts himself in between them, placing his hands on Leo’s shoulders and leaning in to kiss him gently.

“Come on, come on,” he chuckles, “I’m sure he has his good reasons. Maybe he doesn’t like my music.”

Blaine prays for Adam to say that this is exactly the problem, which would possibly silence Leo once and for all, but Adam says exactly nothing, which makes Leo snort in annoyance. “Whatever,” he growls, holding Blaine’s hand, “Stay there and be a caveman all you want, like I even care. Come, Blaine.”

Blaine follows him sheepishly, knowing better than to displease Leo any further when he’s already displeased enough, but as he walks away he doesn’t fail to notice the half-annoyed, half-disappointed glance Adam casts at them as they walk away. He takes a couple of seconds to think about it to try and understand what could it mean, but then Leo stops, presses him against the wall and kisses him hungrily, and Blaine decides trying to crack Adam’s secret is not worth his time.

“Mmh,” he smiles against Leo’s lips, letting his hands slide down his sides and then closing his fingers around his hips, “I could get used to this.”

“Haven’t you yet?” Leo mocks him, pressing himself up against his body, “You’re slower than I thought. Maybe because you’re old?”

“Shut up, smartass,” Blaine jokingly scolding him. Leo presses his lips against his one more time and all’s forgiven. “So,” Blaine asks, “How’s it going?”

“It sucks!” Leo says, whining, “I’m so angry.”

“Go figure!” Blaine chuckles, “About what? That Adam kid?”

“What?” Leo blinks, “No! It’s Cody!”

“Ah!” Blaine laughs and casts a playfully resigned look at the ceiling, “Of course it’s Cody, it’s always him. Go on, whine.”

“It’s just!” Leo pouts, leaning against him, trying to get some comfort from his warmth, “He’s like a fucking nun. I’ve tried everything, I swear, everything that couldn’t be labeled as sexual harrassment, at least, but he hasn’t given up yet. I’m starting to think he’s just frigid.”

“Frigid?” Blaine arches an eyebrow, “A sweet doll like him? Nah, Mother Nature never makes such unforgivable mistakes. If they look so good, they can’t be frigid. He’s probably just a tough nut to crack.”

“Oh, I’d crack him good,” Leo snorts, looking back at the rehearsing room where Cody’s sitting on an amplifier, his white legs - left bare by his criminally tiny black shorts - swinging a few inches from the ground as he chats and laughs with the others, sipping at his coffee, “I’d crack him so good if he just let me use my hammer on him.”

“My, my,” Blaine laughs, throwing his head backwards, “He must drive you crazy.”

“He does!” Leo yells, flailing his arms up above his head, “With everything he does! He does it deliberately.”

“I highly doubt it.”

“But it’s true!” Leo insists, pointing a finger in Cody’s general direction, “Look at him! His clothes! He’s barely dressed!”

Blaine casts a close look to Cody’s outfit and he has to agree with his boyfriend: the kid’s almost naked. Those pants are so short they could be easily mistaken for underwear, and the tight black top he’s wearing is made of such a thin fabric that it’s almost transparent.

Unfortunately, he’s been around the Dudes From The Candy Shop long enough to know that’s just how Cody likes to be dressed. It’s nothing sexual to him, it’s not an invite, it’s not a cry to be looked at. This is just the kind of clothes he likes to feel on his skin, he likes to look at himself in the mirror with. Cody rarely thinks about the effect he has on the others, which is part of his charm, obviously, but is also the main reason why it could be frustrating to be around him.

When Leo introduced them, he had already fallen head over heels for the kid. He spent days, prior to their meeting, telling him “you’ll see, once he’s in front of you, you won’t be able to think about anything else but how hard you wanna fuck him”. Leo was so sure about it, because that was how he felt about Cody himself, it was how he had always felt about him since their first meeting in college.

To be completely honest, Blaine had thought about fucking him until he begged to be left to die too, for the first couple of minutes after meeting Cody. Oh, Blaine can still remember how he was dressed that night. He had shiny, incredibly tight red leather pants, knee-high black leather boots and a black tank top so large it was more the amount of skin it left bare than the one it actually managed to cover. He was a sight and the desire to fuck him hard and long and soon was probably natural as saying hi to somebody you just met.

But Blaine had figured him out soon. He wasn’t hard to understand, Cody, it was clear he was completely clueless about his own beauty and sex appeal. Those like him are always hard to bed, because they just don’t get it until you tell them straight to their face that you want to have sex with them. They just don’t think people could want them that way. They’re frustrating, and Blaine was already too old for that shit, so he passed without even trying. Besides, he knew already Leo wanted to fuck him first, and he knew if there was something Leo would have never forgive him for was to have sex with somebody he hadn’t managed to have sex with despite all his efforts.

“He’s very pretty, today,” he ends up saying, “But then, you know he always is.”

“Yes!” Leo nods, “That’s exactly my point, I mean, he could at least not come to rehearsals every day dressed like a hooker, it’s disgusting.”

“You love it.”

“I do!” Leo growls in frustration, messing up his own hair with his hands, “You know what, you aren’t helping at all!”

“Calm down, now!” Blaine laughs, wrapping his arms around Leo’s shoulders and pulling him in for a hug, “Listen, I know you tried everything already--”

“Everything but rape, yeah.”

“Well, that might be pushing it a little too far,” Blaine says with a small chuckle, “But, really, I think you should be a little clearer with him.”

“Clearer?” Leo looks up at him, blinking, “Are you serious? I basically asked him to fuck him!”

“Yeah,” Blaine chuckles again, “What were your exact words?”

“Well, of course I didn’t say that, I’m not some fucking animal,” Leo answers, frowning, “I invited him out for coffee.”

Blaine laughs, shaking his head. “That won’t help you, babe,” he says, pressing a kiss on Leo’s forehead, “Listen to me: you’ve gotta be clearer.”

“Like, how?” Leo asks with a disheartened sigh, “Should I corner him and kiss him?”

Blaine tilts his head to the right, blinking a couple of times. “That’s a good idea, for example.”

Leo looks back at him, frowning. “You shitting me?”

“No, I’m rather serious, actually,” he answers with a smile, “Just try. It’s the only thing you haven’t tried yet. Maybe that’s just what he needs.”

Leo parts his lips as if to answer him something, but ultimately his voice doesn’t come out. “Uh,” he just says, “Okay.” Then he turns around and runs away.

Blaine chuckles and looks at him as he grabs Cody by his wrist, tells him something and then drags him away from the rest of the band, and only then he walks back where all the others are. Apparently, Leo told them to tune their instruments because they’re going to start rehearsing again soon. They’re all busy, and Blaine, knowing he’s been enough of a bother already with his mere presence, decides not to bug them anymore. He sees Adam sitting on his own away from everybody, and walks towards him, putting on a gentle smile and hoping it’s enough to soften him.

Obviously, it isn’t. “What are you smiling like that at me for?” he asks, grimacing uncomfortably, “Stop it right away.”

Blaine laughs, ignoring his request and sitting right next to him. “Aren’t you a piece of work,” he says, casting him a curious look, “You know, you’re too handsome to be so ill-mannered. Mother Nature didn’t give you those looks so you could spoil her pretty picture by opening your mouth and shooting out rude bullshit.”

“What?!” Adam almost yells, sitting more straightly on his chair and clutching the armrests as if trying to hold back himself by concentrating on them, “How dare you? You don’t even know me!”

“I don’t, that’s true,” Blaine smiles, nodding slowly, “But Leo just said you’re his best friend and I don’t need to know you to know the way you’re behaving towards him isn’t one of a best friend at all. Besides,” he adds, shrugging lightly, “I don’t need to know you to see you look pretty either. Nor do I need to know you to think that such a pretty face shouldn’t be spoiled by such a bad behavior.”

“Shut up, already!” Adam snorts, hitting the armrest with his open hand, “Stop calling me handsome, or pretty, or whatever! What, are you tryin’ to hit on me? Your boyfriend’s right there,” he says, blindly pointing his finger towards the stage.

Blaine doesn’t really need to look in that direction to know Leo hasn’t come back yet, but he still does it, taking his time to turn his head and cast a lazy look at the band, his lips curling in an amused smile. Adam looks at the scene too and his face goes all red with anger when he understands he just shot himself in his knee, metaphorically speaking.

“If you really need to know,” Blaine says, turning back to look at him as he settles more comfortably against the back of the chair and crosses his legs, “My boyfriend is probably making out with his lead singer somewhere in the back, right now, and I hope for him it’s being worth the while. Maybe you don’t know – it wouldn’t surprise me if Leo hadn’t told you, considering how you treat him – but we’ve got an open relationship, which means we can hit on whoever we want, if we want, as long as we’re honest about it with each other. But you don’t have to worry,” he finishes with a sly smile, internally rejoicing in front of Adam’s outraged expression, “I wouldn’t hit on you if you weren’t the last man on Earth, anyway.”

Then he turns his eyes from Adam’s, that smile still lingering on his lips. He hates to be randomly mean with people, it makes him feel as if he was spitting on somebody’s face and he always liked to think himself better than that, but some people seem to really ask for it, and Adam’s one of them.

He doesn’t look back at him for the rest of the afternoon. In a few minutes, Leo and Cody are back. The look on their faces are clear enough to let Blaine know he won’t be spending the night with his boyfriend, and so, when the rehearsals are over and Leo candidly tells everybody Cody and him got other plans for the night and they’re going together, leaving them with no ride home since they had come all on Leo’s car, Blaine is not really surprised, just mildly amused.

“Leo, come on, you can’t do that!” Pete whines, his hands on his hips, “You know we can’t just get out and walk back home! Everybody will be onto us in no time.”

“Aren’t you giving yourself too much credit?” Leo smirks, entwining his fingers with Cody’s as the singer stands next to him, his cheeks still flushed and his hair, usually always in place, all ruffled on his head, “We all know people only wanna ravish me and Cody. And Annie, occasionally.”

“You’re being unfair, now,” Pete frowns, crossing his arms over his chest, “People like me too.”

“He’s right,” Matt adds with a small chuckle, “I’ve been visiting my aunt Christina, last week, and I found Pete’s poster in my cousin Betta’s room.”

“See?” Pete nods, pointing his finger at Matt, “Tell him.”

“Betta’s six years old,” Matt adds, laughing.

Leo laughs too, throwing his head backwards and pressing a hand against his stomach. “Yeah, Pete, I’m sure you can’t take a step out of the building. Six years old girls are a mortal threat, after all.”

“Thank you, Matt,” Pete growls, glaring at the drummer, “Really, thanks.”

“Bullshit put aside,” Annie sighs, undoing her ponytail to let her gorgeous red wavy hair fall down her milky white shoulders, left bare by the sleeveless flower-printed sundress she’s wearing, “Pete’s got a point. We can’t just walk out of here and go, Mark would kill us if we did. You offered to drive us all here, it’s your responsibility to drive us back.”

“Annie… come on!” Leo whines, gesturing towards Cody as if he made in himself a perfectly valid argument to give up on any responsibility concerning them, “Mark will never know!”

“Now, now, you all,” Blaine says with a conciliatory smile, “Stop the whining, there’s no need to fret. I’ve got my car, I’ll drive you all home. Your agent doesn’t need to know, you will be safe and it’ll be our little secret,” he suggests, winking at Annie. She answers with a vague, lost smile as she always does whenever he takes some time to flirt with her. Not that she’s expecting anything to ever happen between them, but Blaine’s pretty sure she’s got a huge soft spot for compliments and courting, which makes sense considering she basically lives with four guys who never lose a chance to treat her like one of the dudes.

“Alright,” Annie says, and her word is, as always, final. Whenever Leo clearly isn’t able to think straight and decide for everybody – which happens awfully often, since Leo basically lives on pure instinct, and his instinct mainly swings the way his cock does –, it’s Annie the one in charge, and everybody accept it because ultimately they know she’s a girl, they know what she’s been through to make them accept her in the group and they silently and discretely respect and appreciate her for this.

“Good,” Blaine says with a smile. He turns to Leo and smiles at him too. “I’ll call you in the morning,” he says.

“Make it the afternoon,” Leo chuckles, and gets closer to kiss him on his cheek.

Blaine smiles and waits for him to take a few steps away, and then clears his throat. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Leo turns around and casts him a surprised look. His eyes say he’s completely clueless on what Blaine’s talking about, and Blaine has to actually point a thumb at Adam, standing still a few steps from them with an incredulous look on his face, to make Leo understand what’s going on.

“Ah,” he says, his eyes getting colder instantly when he notices his best friend. Of course he still hasn’t forgiven him for not being as excited as he wanted him to be about Blaine. “Yeah, well, he’s not famous, is he? He can walk home.”

“Ouch,” Blaine can’t help to say, surprised at Leo’s clear excess of bitter animosity. He turns to look at Adam and, finding him with both his arms rigid down his sides and a little shaky, his fists clutched and his gaze locked onto the floor, he takes advantage of the time the others are using to gather their things and dares to walk a little closer to him, swallowing, “Hey…” he says, “I don’t mind driving you home too.”

“Whatever,” Adam growls, stubbornly looking down, “I can walk.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt that, but—”

“Did I ask for you pity?!” Adam blurts out, finally looking up at him in a fit of rage. His eyes are lucid, but there are no tears in them, only anger and disappointment. “Shit,” he says, and then looks away again. His hands are shaking.

“…Adam, really,” he says, trying another kind smile, “Don’t do this. I mean, I know we didn’t exactly start off with the right foot—”

“To say the least!”

“But it wasn’t completely my fault, was it?” Blaine asks with an unshakeable smile.

Despite his own will, Adam’s forced to sigh and nods. “I’ve been rude,” he admits, looking down again, “I’m sorry.”

“Nevermind,” Blaine smiles once more, shaking his head, “Besides, I’m not the angry one. You should talk with Leo.”

“Yeah,” Adam sighs, “’Cause that happens so often, lately…”

Blaine’s about to say something, some mild encouragement or something like that, but then he realizes he’s been poking his nose into matters that didn’t concern him at all enough, for today, and so he just smiles. “Listen, why don’t you just let me get you back home, after I drive the guys to their apartment? I’ve been awful with you too, I want to make up.”

“Well,” Adam shrugs, “Okay, I guess. I deserved what you told me, anyway.”

“Maybe,” Blaine chuckles, “But I lied.”

“Mh?” Adam arches an eyebrow, looking up at him, and Blaine chuckles again.

“I would hit on you,” he says, “Even if you weren’t the last man on Earth.”

“Now,” Adam blushes wildly, frowning and looking away, “That’s too much.”

Blaine laughs again. “Ah, you’re even more stuck-up than I thought you were.”

“I’m not!” Adam pouts, crossing his arms over his chest.

Blaine just laughs and doesn’t answer to that.

*

Less than an hour later, Blaine stops his SUV in front of the gate of the condo where the Dudes share an apartment and smiles. “Here we are!” he says cheerfully, “I hope you enjoyed the drive.”

The guys and Annie all slip out of the car muttering a lot of very unenthusiastic “yeah, sure”s, “thanks, Blaine”s and “see ya, dude”s, and Blaine can’t help but chuckle, knowing that, when Leo and Cody will be back from their date or whatever it is they’re calling this thing they’re doing, they’ll surely have to pay for leaving them all in Blaine’s care as if they were stupid kids. They all care very much for their independence, which is why Mark doesn’t pester them too much and has allowed them a certain freedom in organizing their time and movements. Leaving them to the care of an adult is a major offense they won’t miss the chance to make Leo pay for.

As he starts the engine again, Blaine takes a peek at the rearview mirror and notices a wave of blonde hair. He needs a while to remember it’s Adam still sitting silently back there, he’s been so quiet through the whole time that Blaine had almost forgotten about him. “Oh, right!” he says, “You’re still here. I forgot.”

Adam looks at him through the mirror and then looks away. “Yeah,” he says in a low voice, “It’s happening a lot to me, recently.”

“Don’t say that,” Blaine smiles tenderly, driving swiftly following Adam’s directions, “You know, I’m sure Leo didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” Adam sighs, passing a hand through his hair, “He did. That’s how he deals with unpleasant things, he kills them. He didn’t like how I acted with you, so he punished me for that. That’s what he always does, believe me, I know, he’s been doing it to me for sixteen years already.”

“Wow,” Blaine keeps smiling, casting quick glances at him every now and then as he drives, “You sure have known him for a very long time.”

“Yeah,” Adam looks down again, his hands clutching around his knees, “Though I’m not sure the last couple of years count.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Blaine chuckles, shaking his head, “I’m sure you’ve seen each other in the last couple of years too.”

“Once, six months ago,” Adam answers coldly, “Is that enough for you? ‘Cause it sure ain’t for me.”

Blaine sighs, moistening his lips and looking at him again. Adam’s eyes are darker, now, and his expression is tense, hard. He once again feels as if he was sticking his nose into someone else’s business, and that makes him feel uncomfortable. “I’m sorry I asked,” he says, trying to smile, “I promise I’ll stop right now, if you don’t want me to.”

Adam lets out a frustrated noise, pressing both his hands on his eyes and resting against the back of the seat. “Nevermind,” he says, “I’m fine, I’m just…” he shrugs, “Whatever.”

“Yeah,” Blaine chuckles, “I know the feeling.”

Adam casts him a suspicious glance, as if he didn’t believe his words. Then he catches a glimpse of his house as they drive past it, and he lets out an agitated, high-pitched voice. “Stop!” he says, reaching out for Blaine’s shoulder and tugging at it a bit, like a kid, “It’s here. That’s my house,” he adds, pointing a finger to one of the small one-floor white houses all tidily lining up by the street side, “I live there.”

“Oh, thank God,” Blaine exhales, relieved, “I’m dying to take a piss. Can I use your bathroom?”

“Hey, I never said I wanted you into my house,” Adam instantly frowns, getting off the car as it stops on the driveway.

“Well, if you don’t let me in, I can very well piss on your— what are those? Camellias? Are those yours? I’m sure they won’t mind—”

“Okay, okay, I got it!” Adam snorts, grabbing him by the collar of his leather jacket and dragging him into the house, “Jeez, you’re annoying. Promise not to touch anything.”

“Relax, Lady of the Camellias,” Blaine chuckles, following him inside, “It’s not as if I need to steal anything from…” his words die in his mouth when, once he walks past the door, his eyes fall on the table, already set for two. A rather juicy smell impregnates the air, and Blaine just wanted to walk in, take a piss, then walk out and don’t bother himself with his boyfriend’s not-boyfriend’s emotional struggle, but as he looks at the food already on the table, at the plates neatly arranged on the white tablecloth and at the small vase filled with pink and white flowers decorating the whole thing he just knows that’s not going to happen.

“Remember, you promised not to touch anything,” Adam says. Blaine turns to look at him and he’s not surprised to see he’s looking down at his feet, and his cheeks are flushed in embarrassment and discomfort.

Blaine swallows, looking at him because he imagines it’s less rude than keep staring at the table. “Uhm… you had plans for tonight, didn’t you?”

“It’s not happening, anyway, so,” Adam shrugs and takes off his jacket, letting it fall on the couch and then walking to the table to start undoing it, “Didn’t you have to go to the bathroom? Go, then. I don’t want you to piss on the floor.”

“Hey, hey— wait,” Blaine forces a smile on his lips, walking closer to him and placing a hand on Adam’s shoulder to catch his attention, “Listen, I’m sorry. You wanted to spend some time with him, didn’t you?”

“What do you care anyway?!”

“No, listen, it’s just,” Blaine sighs, looking away in embarrassment, “It’s my fault he’s with Cody, now, I pushed him. He was whining about not getting any with him and I suggested him a way. But I didn’t know, I mean, if I did I would have never—”

“Can you stop with this?” Adam asks. His voice is different than before, there’s no anger in it, no rage. Just a soft, quiet disappointment. “It’s okay. It was stupid of me anyway. I should’ve asked him before. So it’s not anybody’s fault but mine.”

Again, that strange feeling of uneasiness makes Blaine feel uncomfortable. He moistens his lips and clears his throat, his hand sliding down Adam’s shoulder, his fingers closing around his elbow. “Listen, there’s no reason why you should throw all this away. I’m sure it took you a lot of effort to make it, so why don’t I just stay? I’ll keep you company.”

“I told you already,” Adam turns to look at him and frowns, but doesn’t move away, and Blaine supposes he could call it a progress. “I don’t need your pity.”

“Who said it’s pity?” Blaine smiles again, “It’s called hunger. Everything smells so good I couldn’t forgive myself if I walked out of here without tasting it.”

“Now, wait,” Adam hastens to say, his hard features melting into a worried expression, “I’m not much of a cook. In fact, I barely know how to— I mean, I don’t cook often, I only did it this time because it was meant to be a special occasion.” He stops and he appears to realize what he just said in a rush, because his eyes grow wide and he blushes. “I mean, don’t expect anything,” he adds, trying to change the subject, “And go take your damn piss, already!”

Blaine laughs out loud, throwing his head back, amused at Adam’s confusion. He goes, though, because he doesn’t want to upset him, nor to make him think having to go to the bathroom was just an excuse to sneak into his house.

When he’s back, he finds Adam walking quickly back from the kitchen, bringing a bowl filled with macaroni salad. Random appetizers, Caesar salad and a variety of ham, cheese and salami are also waiting for him, displayed on a wooden cutting board.

Blaine blinks a couple of times and then reaches the table, sitting down on a chair and looking at all the food Adam bothered to prepare. He knows he shouldn’t laugh, but the whole situation amuses him too much to restrain himself any longer, and so he bursts into an open, wholehearted laughter that makes Adam blush instantly.

“Hey!” the young man says, putting down the bowl and sitting down too, “Stop it!”

“I’m sorry!” Blaine says, trying to stop laughing and not really managing, “God, I’m sorry, it’s just, this is so funny.”

“No, it is not,” Adam grunts, crossing his arms over his chest, “And I can’t believe you’re laughing at me, right now. You should be ashamed.”

“I know, believe me!” Blaine says, but he keeps laughing uncontrollably, “I’m so very sorry. Really. It’s just, I mean. It’s almost silly. Since when have you been in love with him?”

“What?” Adam asks, blushing harder, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on, you do,” Blaine smirks, pouring himself some red wine, “Leo. It’s clear you’re in love with him. I’m guessing since forever. Have you ever told him?”

“Okay, first of all,” Adam says, counting on his fingers, “Ew. I’m not in love with Leo and if you think I am you got it all wrong. He’s my best friend and we’ve shared a lifetime, that’s the only reason why I went through all this trouble to make this dinner. Also, he’s got a dick. Ew again.”

“Hey, I’ve got a dick too.”

“And ew a third time,” Adam says, making a face. “Besides! Even if it was true, you shouldn’t ask something like that! He’s your boyfriend, it’d be awkward to talk about it.”

“How would it be awkward?” Blaine asks with a small chuckle, “At least you’d lift it off your chest.”

“Nothing needs to be lifted off my chest,” Adam frowns, standing up again to serve Blaine and himself some maccheroni, “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Really,” Blaine chuckles, arching an eyebrow, “Because you don’t really look like you’re fine.”

Adam lifts his eyes on him again, and they’re shining with annoyance. “I suggest you to let it go,” he says.

He’s acting threateningly, but Blaine can’t help but feel touched by his attitude. Whether the kid wants to admit it or not, there’s clearly something more than friendship going on in his mind when it comes to Leo. Blaine isn’t bothered by it, and Adam’s denial’s cute and harmless enough to make him decide he can stop teasing him, for the night. “Okay,” he says, “Let’s eat.”

*

The food isn’t good at all. It’s not bad either, but the taste of it is not quite right. Adam knows it, and he spends half an hour trying to say how sorry he is about that without really saying it. Blaine has to put all his effort into making him stop, first telling Adam it’s not that bad, all considering, and then admitting in a soft laughter that alright, maybe it is, but it also feels like it’s been done with care and affection.

This, somehow, seems to hit Adam in the right spot, and they don’t talk about it anymore.

They drink a lot, though, partly to help the food past their throat – a not so easy task, considering how dry it is – and partly just because they want to. The red wine is probably the only quality thing on that table, and it’s clear Adam chose it right because he thought it would have been somebody else drinking it with him. However, Adam’s polite enough not to make it weigh upon him, and Blaine’s grateful to him for that, because like this, he can enjoy it.

They don’t talk much, but they chat a bit about random, inconsequential things. It’s pretty reassuring, and they get caught in it rather soon. It doesn’t take them much to understand they’ve got more than they know in common, from supporting the Lakers to hating raisins with a passion.

Hours pass quickly than they thought they would, and when the wine finishes Adam just goes and fetch another bottle, and then another. Blaine laughs, thinking that he has no idea what the kid thought he was supposed to do with Leo and three bottles of wine, but he doesn’t complain when he understands the wine will just keep flowing, for the night.

Then suddenly he looks at his watch and it’s 3 AM, and he’s supposed to be up and ready to record at the studios tomorrow around 8. Dotty, his agent, left him something like a hundred messages on both his house phone and his cellphone, to make sure he remembered. “I think I should go…” he says then, standing up from the couch Adam and him have been sitting down babbling about all and nothing for the last three hours.

“Where?” Adam laughs, “To pee again? ‘Cause that’s the only place you can go right now, man, the bathroom.”

“Nah,” Blaine chuckles, stumbling away from the couch and stretching both his arms to search for the wall and use it to balance himself, “I’ve gotta go home, blondie.”

“Don’t call me like that, it’s ridiculous,” Adam laughs.

“But you’re blonde!” Blaine answers, as if that was reason enough. Then he trips over the coffee table and risks to fall down face first on the floor. Adam reaches out to help him, but luckily his help isn’t really needed, because Blaine manages to get a hold of himself and lean against the wall before he has an actual chance to fall. And he’s lucky to manage, because in his state Adam would have never been of any help, even if he could get him.

Relieved by Blaine’s only barely avoided death, Adam rests his shoulders against the back of the couch, laughing like a kid as he passes a hand over his face and then through his hair, trying to clear up his thoughts. “You can’t go, man,” he says, “You’re in no condition. You’re gonna kill yourself and Leo’s gonna kill me for letting that happen. He’ll think I planned it.”

“Ah!” Blaine shakes his head, “I will testify in your favor. He’s innocent, your honor. I wanted to go!”

“You won’t be able to testify!” Adam laughs again, flailing his legs as he falls on his side, “You’ll be dead!”

“Details!” Blaine answers defiantly, shaking his head. “Anyway, I’m going. I can drive, I promise.”

“Really?”

Blaine turns around. “Sure!” he says, and then the wall hits is face in an outrageous attempt to disfigure him. “Ah!” he yells, massaging his offended nose, “How dare you, sir. That’s extremely rude of you.”

“God, please, stop it!” Adam’s laughing so hard he can’t even breathe, and he’s curling on the couch helplessly, his face hidden in the pillows and his hands closed around them, “I’m dying! Stop!”

“Wasn’t I the one who had to die?” Blaine asks, puzzled, “If you die, who’s gonna testify about me not being drunk at all?”

“Blaine!” Adam gasps and wheezes, tilting his head upwards with his eyes filled with tears from laughing, “Shut up, already. And you’re not going anywhere, for tonight. Nobody’s gonna die and you’re gonna sleep here.”

“With you?” Blaine asks suggestively, winking like an idiot something like three time – the amount of times he actually needs to coordinate his face muscles in order to do the winking thing right – as Adam reaches him and passes an arm under his armpits to keep him from falling. They actually help each other stand and move down the corridor, even if they both have to lean heavily on the walls not to fall down.

“No, you idiot,” Adam chuckles, grabbing the fabric of Blaine’s shirt when his legs threaten to fail him, “In Leo’s room.”

“O-ho,” Blaine chuckles, “He has a room here?”

“Used to,” Adam chuckles embarrassedly, “We used to live together, when he attended college.”

“Ah, I see,” Blaine nods more seriously than the situation requires, “And you kept the room exactly as he left it, hoping he’d come back, at some point.”

“Stop talking about him,” Adam says with a small, shaky chuckle, “You don’t wanna see me sad drunk.”

“Right, right,” Blaine smiles and ruffles Adam’s hair, “Got it.”

Adam smiles kind of thankfully – it’s almost ridiculous how pretty he still looks despite being so overwhelmingly drunk; “husband material”, Blaine keeps thinking, thanking the Great Will of the Macrocosm for Leo’s blindness – and then introduces him into Leo’s old room. Taking a few steps towards the bed, despite his drunkenness Blaine manages to cast a curious look around, embracing with his eyes everything that room says about Leo’s past, from his old comic books in the small library to the countless action figures scattered everywhere. The room is tidy, and Blaine knows this can’t be Leo’s doing, because he’s one of the messiest people he ever met. He turns around to look at Adam, who’s standing on the doorstep, swinging a little right and left, and seems to have no intention of walking in.

“G’night, I guess?” he says.

Blaine chuckles. “Goodnight,” he answers with a little nod. He looks at Adam laboriously turning around to walk down the corridor towards his room, and then smiles, closes the door and lets himself fall on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He was expecting to somehow find Leo’s smell on the sheets or on the bedcover, but there’s none. And yet, all in that room speaks Leo’s name in a roar, and it’s astounding how unfamiliar and at the same time how close to his heart this all feels.

He closes his eyes and lets himself fall asleep thinking about a younger Leo he never got the chance to meet, and he’s dreaming about him when he gets suddenly woken up by somebody falling on him and a light snoring. At that point, the effect of the wine on him has mostly faded away, as it always does after a good few hours of sleep, and so when he opens his eyes and then narrows them, trying to spot a familiar outline in the body pressing closely against him, there’s no confusion in his mind, and he feels lucid.

Lucid enough to recognize Adam, and know he shouldn’t be here, right now. Blaine clearly remembers saying goodbye and watching him walk away to his room, just a few hours ago. It’s obvious he moved, and by how naturally he settles himself on the bed, pressing the pillow under his head, Blaine gets the feeling this isn’t the first time Adam does something like that. Actually, he probably does it every night.

“Unbelievable,” he whispers, a small smile lingering on his lips. He considers the situation for a while and then decides there would be no point in waking him up just now. They’d both be embarrassed and they’d probably end up arguing, and he doesn’t want that. So he discretely lifts himself up on his elbows and tries to slip out from under Adam, but the moment the boy feels him slip away he closes his arms around him tightly in an unconscious reflex, and Blaine holds his breath. “Damn,” he sighs, knowing he doesn’t have many options, now. It’s either wake him up now and face the drama, or hope he’ll move away during the night, risking he doesn’t and that they could wake up like this in the morning, which would be even worse.

Sighing dramatically, Blaine lets himself fall back down on the bed, stares at the ceiling for another couple of minutes and then speaks. “Adam. Come on, wake up.”

“Mmhno,” Adam answers, settling better against his chest, “Five minutes.”

“Not even two,” Blaine chuckles, passing his fingers through his hair, “Come on.”

Maybe it’s the suddenly concrete feeling of somebody touching him, maybe it’s Blaine’s voice, maybe it’s reality kicking in and wiping any last trace of sleep away, but Adam instantly opens his eyes and sits up, quickly scooting over. “What,” he says in a shaky breath, his eyes fixed on Blaine.

“Calm down, everything’s alright,” Blaine chuckles, “Breath.”

“Why did you come in my bed?!” Adam yells, grabbing a pillow and hugging it close to his chest as if it was some sort of shield.

“Your bed?” Blaine arches his eyebrows, and then laughs. “Adam, where do you think you are?”

His words apparently hit Adam harder than he thought they would. Blaine watches him as he turns his head around and gets pale as he recognizes Leo’s room. “Oh,” he says. Then he looks down, ashamed at himself. “Oh.”

“Now,” Blaine smiles embarrassedly, sitting up and moving a little closer, reaching out to pat Adam’s shoulder, “It’s alright. Leo doesn’t need to know. I’ll never tell.”

“Shut up!” Adam yells, his cheeks suddenly turning red as he moves away from his hand, “What do you know?”

Blaine sighs, casting an annoyed glance to the ceiling. “Well, for once, I know you like him.”

“I told you already, you got it wrong!” Adam answers in a low growl, “I’m not gay!”

It’s the word, Blaine thinks as he frowns, focusing on Adam’s face. It’s the word he uses, because it’s a weird word to use right now. Adam could have said he didn’t like Leo because they’re best friends, because they’ve been knowing each other for far too long and now they’re practically brothers, he could have just told Blaine “no, listen, you got it wrong, I don’t like him that way, that’s it”, but no. He needed to say he wasn’t gay.

“Alright, then,” he says, “I’ll make you.” Then he lifts himself up on his knees, moves closer, bends over and kisses him. He just does it, there’s a voice in his head telling him he has to, that after hearing something like that it’d be ridiculous not to. He has no idea why it would be ridiculous not to kiss somebody who just told you he isn’t gay, but somehow it sounded so fake, so forced, even a little painful in its artificiality, he felt the need to do something about it, to help the truth come out somehow.

The kiss isn’t deep. It isn’t fast, nor really sensual. It isn’t short either, though. Blaine takes his time to let his lips linger on Adam’s, feeling them soften under his touch. He puts a hand on Adam’s shoulder and lets it slide down his arm, and under the touch of his fingertips Adam relaxes his muscles, drops his shoulders, swallows and lets it go.

Blaine moves away and opens his eyes, finding out Adam never closed his and is now staring at him as if he had killed a kitten or something like that.

“Now,” he smirks, “You’re officially gay for the standards of the show business. Yes, it’s that easy. Now you can—”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” Adam says. His voice is sharp and deep, somewhat shaky, but sure. Blaine doesn’t have the time to find out what that sentence, spoken like that, could mean, because in the blink of an eye Adam manages to throw himself at him, pin him down against the mattress and kiss him wildly, both his hands closed in fists around his wrists to keep his arms still, all his body pressed down on Blaine’s to forbid him any kind of movements and his lips opening hungrily against Blaine’s, making room for his tongue, that instantly pries Blaine’s lips open, searching for a deeper contact.

Overwhelmed by how demanding every Adam’s movement is, Blaine doesn’t even manage to try and regain control over the situation. He lies there, unable to move in any way, trying to at least escape from Adam’s kisses but always finding himself back into his grasp every time he manages to gain a couple of inches of space.

“Adam!” he tries to call him back to reality. Adam actually lets him go and sits up, but it’s only to take his t-shirt off in a swift, quick movement. His head emerges from the rounded collar, surrounded by the ruffled mass of his blonde wavy hair, and Blaine watches the fast, strong tension of his arm as he extends it to throw the t-shirt away on the ground, and a wild shiver runs down his spine. “What are you even doing?”

“I told you, you shouldn’t have done it,” Adam says. He lifts himself up in his knees and then drops on all fours, crawling closer to Blaine like an hungry predator, “You have no fucking idea what you’ve done.”

“Clearly,” Blaine nods, sitting up quickly and backing off until his shoulders hit the headboard of the bed, “Would you please calm down?”

“No,” Adam answers in a whisper, pressing his lips against Blaine’s and dragging him into another messy kiss, “You have no idea. The years I’ve spent trying to fucking hold myself back.”

“Adam,” Blaine tries to stop him by putting his hands on his shoulders and push, but Adam’s strong, stronger than he is, and he lifts himself up on his knees again, sitting on his lap the second after, more to stop him from backing away any more than to actually touch him more. Although, he discovers as he rocks his hips lightly against Blaine’s crotch, that’s kinda pleasant too.

“Stop trying to make me calm down,” Adam growls, grabbing Blaine’s t-shirt with both his hands and forcefully tugging at it, “That ain’t gonna happen, and it’s all your fault.”

“Adam, I doubt anybody ever asked you to hold anything back as far as sex was concerned,” Blaine tries to make him use his brain again, “So if you could just—”

“Shut up,” he says harshly, tugging at Blaine’s t-shirt one more time and forcing him to lift both his arms to take it off him, “It wasn’t anybody. It was me. You could never understand. I wanted to hold myself back. I didn’t wanna be that kind of guy.”

“What kind of guy?” Blaine frowns. Adam doesn’t answer right away, he just lowers his hands and attacks the buttons keeping Blaine’s jeans closed. He unbuttons the first and Blaine puts both his hands on his. “Adam!” he yells, “Stop! What is it you even want to do, now, have you thought about it? You didn’t want to be that kind of guy, well, whatever that means, by the way you’re acting, you’re turning into an even worse one! You can’t force me—”

“I don’t care!” Adam yells back at him, freeing himself from his hands and grabbing Blaine’s head with both his own, keeping it still and looking into his eyes. “I didn’t want to try it, because I thought I only wanted Leo, and I knew I couldn’t have him the way I wanted him. How could I? Have you seen him? He’s hungry like a fucking wolf. He wants everybody, as long as they’ve got a hole to fuck. That would have never worked with me, so I thought well, fuck you, I don’t need you, you can go. And I let him go! Except now I kind of have a feeling that it wasn’t just Leo I wanted, I kind of have a feeling I fucking wanna get laid so bad I could scream if I don’t fucking do it, like, right now, and then you come and you fucking kiss me and now you expect to walk free out of jail just like that? Fuck no! Take responsibility, for fuck’s sake! Take responsibility and fuck me!”

Blaine parts his lips, looking back at him with wide eyes. The room is dark and he can barely see Adam’s features, but his eyes shine like those of a cat, making him kind of threatening – as if that light was trying to tell Blaine that he’s got no way out, that if he doesn’t comply and willingly give himself to him, Adam will make him – and kind of exciting. Blaine swallows and blinks, and his voice comes out as a whisper. “That’s possibly the hottest thing that has ever been said to me.”

“Thank God,” Adam exhales in a small whine as he gets closer to him and kisses him again, “I thought that sounded ridiculous and that you would kick me off the bed.”

Blaine’s hands find their way up Adam’s thighs, caressing his skin upwards, feeling the tension in his muscles underneath and then stopping around his hips and closing there like clutches. “I think I won’t,” he says.

Adam nods quickly and kisses him again, eagerly. And Blaine can’t help but think Adam was right, when he blurted out all those things at him a couple of minutes before. He’s horny, Blaine can feel it, even if he didn’t feel the pressure of Adam’s hard-on against his crotch he’d still know by the way he moves, by the rhythm of his breathing, by the hunger of his kisses, even by the smell of his body. Adam needs a good fuck. He’s basically dying for it.

Nothing ever made Blaine hornier than feeling somebody else so aroused. That’s the first thing that made him interested in Leo too. Leo used to lit up whenever he walked in the room, whatever the occasion, wherever they were. Didn’t matter if it was a party, an official occasion, the backstage of a summer festival or a quiet dinner in some common friend’s house, the moment Blaine walked in the room Leo would get instantly aroused. Blaine was fascinated by the process, and if he started teasing him was mostly because he wanted to see the point it could get to.

Then Leo managed to make him his, and now everything’s different, but if Blaine just tries and think about the electricity that filled him up inside whenever he could see hunger in Leo’s eyes, that feeling comes back again twice as strong and basically unchanged, and it’s awesome.

He can feel the same kind of hunger in everything Adam does, now, and it’s making him horny too. He closes his eyes and tilts his head and Adam’s eyes lighten up as if he has just been hit by some sort of revelation: he descends on Blaine’s neck the moment it’s exposed, he closes his lips around his fair skin and sucks hard as he’d have to draw blood from him.

Blaine lets out a small, desperate whimper, rocking his hips upwards and meeting Adam’s in a messy clash, and the moan that this movement tears out of Adam’s lip is so loud that he actually has to move his mouth away from Blaine’s skin to let it come out. “Fuck,” he says, wrapping an arm around Blaine’s waist and pressing his hand on the small of his back to keep his crotch as close as possible to his own, “God, yes, please, just get the fuck out of those pants.”

“Yes,” Blaine whispers breathlessly, and then lifts up his hips from the mattress in order to let Adam tug his pants down his thighs. They slip off him easily, and once they’re around his ankles Blaine kicks them away carelessly. Adam and him exchange a brief, lusty look and lock their lips together in a wet, sloppy kiss, and then Blaine parts his legs in a natural, shameless movement, and Adam freezes upon him.

The kiss dies down and Adam parts from Blaine’s lips with a wet noise, looking down at him, amazed. At first Blaine doesn’t even get what’s happening, he’s just kind of pissed Adam stopped so suddenly after molesting him for what feels like hours, but then he feels the pressure of Adam’s hard cock against his own, skin on skin, and he gets it. He swallows and looks up, and Adam’s still staring at him with that lost expression making his face look like a kid’s. “Are you scared?” Blaine whispers against his lips.

Adam nods. “Terrified.”

Blaine lifts his head up to kiss him gently on his lips and then stretches out his arm, searching for the top drawer in Leo’s nightstand. If he knows his boyfriend well enough, that’s where he’ll probably find the condoms, and in fact there they are. The pack is already opened and there’s only one condom left, but it’ll be enough. He unwraps it and shifts under Adam’s body, rolling it down his cock. The touch of his fingers and the slick feeling of the already lubricated latex make Adam shiver wildly, the stretched arms on which he’s keeping himself up not to weigh on Blaine trembling sensibly.

“It’ll be alright,” he whispers again, and since Adam’s looking away, embarrassed by how self-conscious he suddenly feels, Blaine holds his head between his hands and makes him look back down at him. “Concentrate on me,” he says.

Adam doesn’t really need to hear him say it twice.

*

They have no idea how much time has passed when they finally drop on their backs on the mattress, feeling free to breathe normally again. They both stare at the ceiling with wide eyes, their chests going up and down quickly, their hearts pounding in their ears.

“So?” Blaine asks, putting all his last bits of strength to turn at least his head and look at Adam. Adam doesn’t bother doing the same, but it’s so clear he can’t move a muscle that Blaine doesn’t even get upset. “How was it?”

Adam parts his lips, trying to speak. He only manages after a couple of deep breaths. “Can we do it again?” he asks.

“What, now?” Blaine laughs, “You want to kill me? Give me an heart attack, so then you’ll have Leo all for yourself?”

Adam actually manages to let out a breathless laughter, ploddingly lifting an arm to pass his fingers through his hair. “Nah,” he says, “I kinda like you.”

“Yes, you’re a boy, after all,” Blaine sighs, “You’d like anybody who could give you a decent orgasm.”

“Fair enough,” Adam laughs again, “This wasn’t just decent, though. I liked it. Very much.”

“I’m happy you did,” Blaine chuckles too, taking a deep breath and then settling better on the mattress. A little closer to him. “I’m afraid we can’t do it again now, though. That would probably be fatal for real, especially if it was like the first time.”

“I was a beast, wasn’t I?” Adam laughs, happy and proud of himself like a kid who managed to piss farther than any of his playmates.

“You kind of were, yes,” Blaine laughs too, hitting him on his shoulder with his own, “You need a little more experience, though. You’re completely out of control.”

“Cut me some slack,” Adam snorts, “It was my first time with a man. I think it went rather good, for a first.”

Blaine smiles a little tenderly, nodding slowly. “It did,” he admits in a low voice.

Adam finally manages to turn his head and the moment their eyes lock his gaze lightens up as Leo’s used to do when they were still at the beginning of their relationship and were still trying to get themselves. He’s horny again, and Blaine can’t help but chuckle when he notices. Adam whines and rolls over him, rocking his hips upwards against his as he kisses him deeply. “You’re the worst,” he says.

“I’m the worst?” Blaine asks in a half-laughter, “You’re humping me like a dog, and I’m the worst?”

“Yes,” Adam insists in a whiny voice, but he stops when he understands rubbing himself against him won’t take him anywhere. He looks up at him and bites at his lower lip, his pink tongue flicking quickly out of his mouth and then hiding back in. “This is never happening again, is it?” he asks, with a little early regret in his voice.

“I don’t think so, no,” Blaine smiles, shaking his head and caressing Adam’s cheek, “It’s too dangerous, all considered. None of us wants to hurt Leo.”

“But you said you’ve got an open relationship,” Adam pouts childishly.

“Yes, and you’re his best friend,” Blaine chuckles, “And you’re in love with him. It couldn’t work.”

“Well, I don’t wanna be your boyfriend,” Adam points out, making a face, “Just fuck you every once in a while.”

“God, Adam!” Blaine laughs, shaking his head again, “You’re such a romantic.”

“I am, ain’t I?” Adam plays along with a smirk.

Blaine looks at him and then laughs. “Husband material,” he says. And he isn’t even lying.

Adam nods and then sighs, rolling on his back again and stretching out a bit. “So I guess I’ll have to go and find myself a boyfriend,” he says, wondering.

Blaine nods. “Honestly, it’d be such a waste if you remained single.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Adam nods, “Besides, I wanna fuck more.”

“You don’t need a boyfriend for that,” Blaine points out with a short laughter.

Adam’s smile softens a bit. “I actually do,” he says, “That’s how I work. I need somebody, not just a hole.”

“Mmh,” Blaine turns on his stomach, lifting himself up a bit on his elbows and looking down at him, “What was I, then?”

Adam blinks a couple of times, casting him a pensive look. “You weren’t a hole,” he answers, shaking his head, “I know it sounds stupid, and does it ever happen?, I mean, that somebody can get a crush so easily just because they had sex with somebody else? Is it even a thing?” he asks confusedly. Blaine laughs, nodding vaguely, and Adam shrugs. “Anyway,” he says, “You were somebody. Unfortunately, you’re also somebody else’s. And my life philosophy is: shit happens.”

“Is it?” Blaine laughs out loud, resting his head on the pillow, “Some philosophy.”

“Shut up,” Adam growls, “I mean, shit happens and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it. It happens that you fall in love with your best friend and you can’t have him because you know if you tried it’d ruin your relationship forever. You accept it, you move on. It happens that your best friend’s boyfriend kisses you and you suddenly wanna do nothing else but ravish him for the years to come, but you can’t.”

Blaine laughs again, rubbing his face sleepily against the pillow. “Sure, these things happen every day in the world.”

“They do!” Adam insists, frowning, “And what can you do about it? Nothing. You accept it, you move on.” He turns to look at Blaine and smiles brightly. “I’ll move on,” he says, nodding. It sounds like a promise.

Blaine nods too, smiling back at him. “Somebody out there is going to be so lucky, when you find them,” he adds, combing one of Adam’s wild and messy wavy locks behind his ear. Adam chuckles and moves his hand away, embarrassed.

“You can bet I’ll be the best boyfriend ever,” Adam says, finally jumping off the bed. He stands there, completely naked in the moonlit darkness of the room, his legs barely parted, his hands on his hips, his chest all out and his chin up, a confident smile lightening up his face. “I’ll be husband material for real, and you’re both gonna want to marry me, at some point.”

Blaine can’t help but laugh, hiding his face in the pillow and swinging his legs in the air a bit. “Fine, then,” he says, “We’ll be ready to say yes, when the time comes.”

Adam nods happily, and then turns around to leave the room. Blaine lies down and tries to think of what will Leo’s reaction be when he knows he just promised both their hands in marriage to his best childhood friend. He can’t help but smile. That’s gonna be epic.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico.
Pairing: Blaine/OC(s), OC/OC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Angst, Het, Lemon, Underage, What If?, OC.
- Timmy's got a problem with his parents' divorce. Or maybe he's got a problem with his enlarged family. Possibly, he has a problem with his girlfriend, who's also his father's step-sister, or perhaps he's got a problem with the kid he goes crazy about, who's also his own step-brother.
He's got a problem, and maybe it's the Christmas party his father's throwing in a week or so. But maybe it isn't.
Timmy's got a problem, but the real question is not what's this problem about, but how's he gonna solve it.
Note: Per il ciclo "le cose che la Liz non dovrebbe mai scrivere, che poi sta male", ho scritto di nuovo sul divorzio (più di una volta all'anno non ce la faccio, evidentemente), un mostro bicefalo ambientato ovviamente nel Leoverse, perché se uno può farsi del male dovrebbe farselo in grande stile. Evvabbè.
Comunque, oltre ad aver fatto del male a me e alla Tab per due giorni (e ad essere lunga abbastanza da farmi sbancare FDP), questa storia ha l'indubbio merito di partecipare alla prima settimana del #summerCOWT, prompt famiglia, missione 2. Angeli, alla battaglia \o\
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
ROOTS

The word family has had to change its meaning, since the day everything became officially over, but Timmy’s not quite used to that yet. He looks at the papers almost every day, whenever he gets the chance to do it. He doesn’t even know what for. He looks at the words taped in dark ink on the white thick paper of the contract and sometimes he looks at them so intently they completely lose their meaning, their shapes become unreadable, the succession of letters doesn’t have sense, or at least he can’t make one out of it.

The spouses have reached an amicable agreement on the terms of their separation. And then copies of what looks like a thousand forms. Health insurance, legal agreements, children support worksheets, sworn statements and so on. Everything’s kept into a purple file, hidden inside Leo’s closet, in the drawer under his folded hoodies. Took Timmy three hours to find it, the first time he tried to put his hands on it.

He knows almost everything those documents say by heart. That doesn’t mean he understands any of it. And besides, what does that say about him? That he hasn’t got a family anymore. That his fathers broke up and split everything in two, their hearts included. But is that true? Sometimes Timmy thinks he’s got more family that he can possibly stand. And what about his fathers’ hearts? Were them broken beyond mending, were they, really? ‘Cause it doesn’t look like that, now. Sure, there was a time, right after the separation, where they both couldn’t stand to even wake up in the morning. He knows it, ‘cause he was there. But by the time they could actually sit down to discuss the terms of their divorce agreement, almost a year later, most of that sadness was already gone. Blaine had managed to make his relationship with Cody work – he had probably figured it would have been ridiculous, not to mention utterly stupid, to let go of him after basically breaking his marriage over his baby blue eyes and his pretty little ass – and Leo, despite not seeming interested in a serious relationship – now or never – had resumed seeing his friends, had thrown himself head first into his job, had gone to USA tours for the meet and greets his agent organized for him whenever a new book came out and so on.

His parents don’t look heartbroken anymore, and they probably just aren’t. They dealt with whatever they had to deal with, they moved on. Things aren’t easy for them, especially when they find themselves together, but after all they never were, and by now Timmy already figured they never will. Together or not, his fathers always made things hard for one another, that’s just how they work.

But still, what does this say about him? Timmy sits on the walk-in closet floor, the divorce papers scattered around him, and tries and think about it. “Family,” he thinks. He concentrates on the word.

What kind of family does he have? He’s got a father he’s not related by blood with, who took care of him devotedly since the moment he was born and up to his 15 years, and who then left home to run with somebody he had been together for two weeks ages before, breaking up with his other dad, with whom Timmy wasn’t related by blood either but that he had known for almost as long as Blaine. Timmy lived with him, now, and with the twins, the kids his parents has had when they still were together and nothing, nothing seemed bad enough to break them.

That’s who he lives with, but is that family? Is that really it?

It’s not. ‘Cause Blaine lives with Cody, now, and with them there’s Alex.

God, Alex. He’s not ready to think about him, now.

There’s Alex, Cody’s son from his previous marriage, and then there’s Lisbeth, the daughter Cody and Blaine had together.

Is that it now? No, it’s not. ‘Cause then there’s Tana, Leo’s younger sister, the girl Timmy’s been in love with since he was four. And Timmy’s not ready to think any further about her either, Alex’s face already swimming into view every time he closes his eyes and lets himself go.

And that’s it. Yes, now it is. But what does all this say about him? Does it say anything about him at all?

I’ve got two fathers, one step-father, and four siblings, and I’m in love with one of them. Then I’ve got an aunt, and I’m in love with her too.

Timmy looks down at the papers and tries and make sense out of them. He searches for something in those documents, something that could explain or justify his situation, now. Because it all seemed so easy when his parents were together, and it’s all so hard now that they’re not. Even the things he took for granted, like Tana and his love for her, are uncertain and confusing, now. It wasn’t hard, when he didn’t know Alex. It wasn’t hard when Cody wasn’t in the picture. It wasn’t hard when Lisbeth wasn’t there and Leo didn’t have to live with the thought that Blaine had had a child with somebody else. It wasn’t hard when he didn’t have to travel from one side of the city to the other to be shared by his parents, together with his siblings. Everything felt easy, normal, obvious, and everything felt good.

Now it’s not working like that anymore, and Timmy reads his parents’ divorce papers trying to crack them as if they hid some secret code that, once found out, could solve all the problems in his life, answer all the questions, wipe away every doubt.

But nothing comes out of the pages, nothing different than what Timmy has already read day after day for the last two years. The spouses have reached an amicable agreement on the terms of their separation. And, as a result of that, his life is ruined.

*

Alex can’t stand to be next to him. Every time Timmy stays over at Blaine’s place, everything gets incredibly awkward, especially dinners. They always got to sit close to one another because Blaine likes to see “all his children” together, one next to the other on the same side of the table. So Blaine and Cody sit together on one side and Timmy, Alex and baby Lisbeth squeeze themselves on the opposite, with the latter constantly standing up on her high chair, straightening her small arms and curling her chubby little fingers, reaching out for Cody as he leans on the table to feed her.

They make a perfect picture, and Blaine often looks at them all with fond eyes, embracing them with his warm gaze and smiling gently at them all, but Timmy can’t share his father’s feeling because Alex proximity messes with his head so much he can barely control himself when they’re so close.

He met Alex for the first time two years before, when Blaine and Cody settled down together. They moved into the huge two-stores house they’re living in now and Alex, of course, came with Cody. Timmy still remember that night. Walking inside that house, so similar to the one he was living in with Leo, and feeling confused for a moment, lost someplace and sometime where and when his parents were still together and nothing had changed yet, and then he remembers seeing Cody’s small, apologetic smile as he greeted him, that kind of smile that was going to stick with him for the rest of his life, as if he felt the need to apologize to the world for the happiness he had finally found because, to find it, he had to destroy someone else’s, and then Alex appearing from behind Cody’s back, his dark long hair, his huge baby blue eyes, that fair milky white skin, his incredibly small wrists, the straight but incredibly small line of his hips underneath his black jeans, and something exploding inside Timmy’s head, making a mess off him, blowing up everything he knew and arranging everything in a whole new way he couldn’t grow accustomed to for weeks after it had happened.

He should have had to sleep over at his father’s, for that night, it had been arranged to be so, but he just couldn’t. Right after dinner he had asked to be excused, said bye to his dad, awkwardly did the same with Cody too, completely ignored Alex and ran away, back to home, where everything was safe, where he had pictures of Tana scattered everywhere, where he could sit down, close his eyes and think that nothing had changed, that everything was still alright.

Alex was just twelve, then. Timmy was fifteen and he had been in love with Tana since he was six. The only concept he had of love was to see somebody and want to put them on a pedestal, adoring them from the distance knowing it was unlikely for anything concrete to happen. But the moment he saw Alex a different kind of interest burst into him. For the first time, he had wanted to be close to somebody, really close, possibly with no clothes on. It burnt like a fire, consuming him from the inside, and for days he could think about nothing else, despite knowing it was wrong for so many reason he struggled to list them all.

He didn’t know, then, that just a few months later Tana would have finally accepted to go out with him after keeping him on the line for years, complicating an already complicated situation without even knowing the half of it. Right then, all he could think about was Alex, the whiteness of his skin, the depth of his eyes, the shape of his cherry red lips.

Initially, Timmy had thought it all to be in his head. He was sure Alex had gotten nothing about it. How could he, after all? He was only twelve. Timmy remembered his twelve years old self, he only thought about playing soccer, playing videogames and playing with the idea of Tana becoming his wife someday in the future. There was no room in his head for anything more concrete than holding hands, as far as interacting with kids he fancied was concerned.

But then, one day, Alex had kissed him. They were playing some videogame together, in perfect silence. Alex never talked much. Actually, Alex never talked at all, and rarely expressed any emotion beyond a mild interest in anything that could happen. Timmy was always on the edge, whenever they were close, whatever they were doing. He kept throwing alarmed glances at him, as if expecting him to suddenly vanish if he didn’t look at him for too long. Then, all of a sudden, Alex had stopped the game and turned to look at him. Terrified, Timmy had turned around, fixing his eyes on him, watching his every movement. Alex had looked back at him, his eyes blank, apparently emotionless. Then he had stood up on his knees and moved closer to Timmy, placed his hands on his shoulders, squeezed and leant in to kiss him.

Unable to move, Timmy had stood still, his eyes open wide, staring at him as if he couldn’t believe he had done such a thing.

“It was pointless to go on that way,” Alex had said, answering to his silent question. “Do you like me?”

Timmy had backed away, sliding back on the floor, dropping the joystick and reaching the wall, gluing himself against it. He would have happily tore a hole through the wall, if he could, anything to move as far away from Alex as humanly possible. Alex had just stared back at him, frowning a little.

“What kind of a question is that?” Timmy had asked back, his voice shaking.

Alex had stood up and, still sitting on the floor, Timmy had watched him as he got closer and closer, until he stopped, towering over him. “You just answer it,” he had said, kneeling right in front of him.

Timmy had looked at him and had found himself unable to see anything else in the room. It was like all the lights had been turned off, except those pointing right at Alex’s face, illuminating its every detail.

He had swallowed hard. Instead of answering, he had asked “How did you know?”

Alex had casted him a silent glance, and then Timmy had known only a blind man could have missed to notice. And with the knowledge came the certainty he couldn’t keep it for himself anymore, especially not now that Alex had started getting closer on his own accord.

They had gone on with stolen kisses for months, and it had always been Alex who dared pushing things a little too far whenever they settled into a routine that Timmy needed to feel comfortable. They couldn’t find accord on this, mainly because they both stubbornly refused to discuss the situation, but also because they knew that, even if they did discuss it, they wouldn’t have reached an agreement anyway: Timmy ached for some tranquility, and whenever they managed to settle he kept wishing the situation never changed, while Alex seemed to aprioristically refuse the idea of standing still for much too long. Whenever they went on just kissing for weeks without never doing anything else, Alex was always the first to slip his hands underneath Timmy’s clothes, and after then Timmy always needed weeks to get used to the new deal. And when he finally managed to do it, that was the moment Alex pushed boundaries a little too far, kissing his way down his body, trying to get him naked into the clear light of the morning to look at him, rubbing himself against him hoping Timmy would finally catch the message and do the final step who would have made them a couple, if not officially, at least practically.

Alex was thirteen when they had had sex for the first time. He had asked and insisted for it, as usual. Timmy was there for the night, and they shared a room. He had been going out with Tana for almost a year, already, but despite the big change in his life he had somehow refused to end this thing with his step-brother, or better yet, Alex had clung to him so desperately that cutting the rope tying them together had never even become an option for him.

Whenever Timmy slept over at Blaine’s, they always shared the room, while the twins slept in the other room with Lisbeth. The arrangement had been convenient in more ways than one, especially considering the fact that every time, when night fell and the lights were off and the house was silent, Alex had the habit of slipping out of his bed and into Timmy’s, falling into his arms and resting his head over his chest for hours even when they did nothing else. They mostly made out up until their lips hurt, but there were nights, different nights, when Alex just laid himself down and rested on him, his ear pressed right where Timmy’s heart beat, closing his eyes and letting the regular noise sink into him, lulling him to sleep.

Timmy liked when that happened. The fact that they mostly didn’t speak a word before or after their wild make out sessions always made the whole thing somehow dirty, somehow cheap, and Timmy couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t accept that something like that, too, could answer to the definition of the word “love”, especially when the other example he had, his relationship with Tana, was so very different from the one he had with Alex. So, whenever Alex was just a little bit more cuddly, whenever he showed an even vague interest in him that wasn’t just founded on how and when he could put his hands on him, something in Timmy’s heart felt lighter, and he could bear the thought of being with him more easily.

It doesn’t have to be so bad, he dared to hope, Sex doesn’t have to be involved at all costs.

Recently, though, Alex had started to push for more again, and again. He had an unsettling way of dealing with Timmy, he never tried to act as if he wanted something different from sex with him. Whenever they were alone, the first thing he did was stripping, because he knew that, at that point, he’d have had Timmy on himself in no time. It was the quickest, easiest way to deal with it, and Timmy went along with it, because he couldn’t say no, because he didn’t want to say no and it was easier for him too, thinking Alex was mostly responsible of the whole thing.

Alex was aware of that. He knew Timmy blamed him, and he wasn’t bothered by it. He did it on his own accord, after all. He seemed okay with taking over his shoulders the blame of their whole relationship, as long as that managed to get Timmy close to him faster.

He had been okay with it that night too. The moment the lights had gone out, he had moved from his own to Timmy’s bed. Instead of lying down next to him as he usually did, he had sat right on him, straddling him. Timmy had looked up at him, watching as he put his hands on his underpants’ waistband, and then he had closed his fingers around his wrists, stopping him from pulling them down his thighs. “Don’t do that,” he had said, “If you do, I won’t be able to hold myself back.”

Alex had looked down at him, his eyes cold as ice and blank as usual. “Then don’t,” he had said. It was the last they had spoken that night. Timmy had grabbed him by his waist to overturn their position, and once he had been on top of him his brain had literally just shut down. He had leant in to kiss him, thrusting his tongue inside Alex mouth voraciously, and Alex had opened his lips eagerly, letting him in, moaning and whining and thrusting his hips up, rubbing them as hard as he could against Timmy’s.

Timmy had felt himself growing harder, had felt wild shocks of pleasure run up and down his back and had clearly thought that now it was done, it was over, he had no chance of running from it anymore. He had closed his eyes and he had given in to the flashes filling his mind with images, Alex’s white tummy, soft under his lips, Alex thighs closed tightly around his hips, Alex buttocks squeezed between his fingers, marked by the signs of his teeth, his neck red and blue with hickeys, his lips plump and red from kisses, and them together, trapped in that bed forever, bound to repeat this for the rest of their lives, no matter who were them with, how would they feel, where would they move to live.

It was done, it was over with, they were tied together and that was it.

Now a year has passed, things have changed, Timmy’s not officially engaged but he soon will be, but this thing with Alex never changed, and he looks down at his plate filled with pasta he doesn’t want to eat and he can’t help but feel helpless and weak. He was hungry, up to a moment before, but the instant he sat down next to Alex images started flooding his mind once again, and he didn’t want anything else anymore, he wanted nothing in his mouth that wasn’t Alex, his taste, the consistency of his skin and flesh. Blaine and Cody are talking about summer holidays and the Hamptons, Lisbeth’s whining ‘cause she doesn’t really like her carrot flavored baby food, Alex’s eating silently, his eyes fixed on his food as always, and he can’t help but want him, and feel guilty about it.

He knows what’s gonna happen in a few minutes. Blaine and Cody are going to put Lisbeth to sleep and then they’ll sit down on the couch, glued together, clinging to one another as if their lives depended on it, and watch some random movie on tv, and then Alex will start the dishwasher and walk into his room, casting him nothing but a glance and still managing to tell him everything that he needs to say. Timmy will try and try and try to resist, he’ll sit down on the armchair next to the couch and try to focus on the movie, he’ll grow bored by it, he’ll start seeing Alex whenever he’s got his eyes closed and then he’ll finally surrender. He’ll stand up, say goodnight, silently thank the twins for not being here tonight, lifting from his shoulders the responsibility of letting them play a bit before their bedtime comes, and he’ll walk into the room, where he’ll find Alex sitting on the bed. The moment he’ll walk in, Alex will stand up and strip his t-shirt off himself, and then there will be nothing else to do except kiss him.

Instead of letting this happen as it usually does, this time, the moment Lisbeth finishes her food Timmy stands up and asks Cody if he can put her to sleep. He knows Cody won’t say no, because he’s desperate for Timmy to finally accept him as a member of his family, something Timmy stubbornly refused to do for months after his parents’ marriage was over. In fact, Cody’s eyes lighten up and his lips curl into a small smile as he eagerly nods.

Blaine’s eyes fills with pride and joy as he watches him bend over Lisbeth’s high chair to lift her up between his arms. More than the fact that Timmy could hate him, or never accept Cody, Blaine was scared to death by the thought he wouldn’t be able to recognize Lisbeth as his sister, but as always, Timmy thinks quite sadly, Blaine was scared of the most unlikely scenario while he should have scared of something way more obvious, but way more possible. In fact, Timmy never had problems in recognizing Lisbeth as a sister – she’s sweet as sugar, she’s a little angel, never crying, never screaming, always looking at the world with those big, curious pools of clear water she has for eyes – but accepting her was way more easy for him than accept Cody, or forgive his father, two things he’s not even sure he’s managed to do now.

If Blaine knew why he wants to be the one putting Lissy to sleep now, he wouldn’t be as proud and joyful as he is. Timmy loves Lisbeth incredibly much, he’s fascinated by her, he’s drawn towards her, whenever he looks at her he knows that in fifteen years he’ll be ready to break the face of every guy threatening to take her away from them, but it’s not out of love that he wants to spend some time with her now. It’s just because he needs a way out.

He hugs Lisbeth close and she instantly puts her hands on his face, lightly slapping his cheeks. She rarely smiles, but she still manages to be cute, with those chubby pink cheeks and her black, long, curled eyelashes. Timmy smiles at her and she makes bubbles with her lips, spitting a little on him. Instead of getting angry, he laughs, climbing the stairs to the first floor.

Lisbeth’s room is bigger than Alex’s. Her crib’s in the middle of the room, right in between the twins’ beds. They’re empty, now, and Timmy misses his siblings looking at them. If he had them here, he could be able to stay away from Alex a little much longer.

He walks closer to the crib and bends over to put Lisbeth down, but Alex storms into the room – angry, cold eyes insistently fixed on Timmy – and Timmy stops halfway through, turning his head to look at him.

“Give her to me,” he says, walking closer and reaching out for his sister, “Right now.”

“What?” Timmy asks in a whisper, instinctively clinging to the baby girl a little.

“I said give her to me,” Alex repeats, his arms still stretched out. Lisbeth notices them and leans a little towards him, stretching out her arms too, and Timmy swallows, passing her onto him. Alex clings to his sister dearly, hugging her close. She lifts both her hands and closes her chubby fists around two locks of Alex’s hair, tugging them a little. He doesn’t even seem to notice. He kisses her on her forehead and then lifts his eyes on him. They’re on fire, and Timmy knows what this means.

“Alex, please—”

“You don’t do that,” Alex says, holding his sister tight and then walking to the crib to gently put her down, “You don’t use her to run away from me, you don’t use her at all. Don’t you dare.”

“Alex,” Timmy says in a sigh, looking away because he knows he’s lying, “I wasn’t—”

Alex doesn’t even let him finish the sentence. He lifts a hand and slaps him across his face, his fingers open wide, deliberately scratching his cheek with his nails.

“Don’t lie,” he says. His voice doesn’t shake, not even when Timmy looks at him in shock. He knows what Alex turns into when he gets angry, but the sight never fails to terrify him. “You’re a fool if you think you can lie to me without me instantly knowing it, but you don’t have the right to lie to me about my sister, to use her, or to disrespect her.”

“Fuck, Alex, I didn’t mean to— You know that—”

“That it’s hard for you, that I don’t understand, that I shouldn’t do or say what I do or say and all the rest of your bullshit,” Alex looks at him with dark, pitiless eyes. “I don’t care, Timmy. Suffer all you want, run away all you want, you know I’ll always catch you back, just don’t use my sister for it. Love her, and do it sincerely, or ignore her. Anything different from these two options, and I’ll carve your eyes out of your skull with my bare fingers.”

Timmy looks down, clutching his fists. “Always so sure.”

“Yes,” Alex answers. “Always. That’s how I survive.” Timmy looks up at him and holds his breath, and Alex’s gaze softens a bit as he walks towards him. “Let’s not fight,” he whispers, lifting himself up on his tiptoes and brushing his lips against Timmy’s, “Let’s not talk.”

“Alex,” Timmy backs away, putting his hands on Alex’s shoulders to keep him at distance, “That’s the whole problem.”

Alex frowns instantly. His eyes glisten with rage for a moment, but that lights fades away soon, leaving room for the usual blank stare. “Fine,” he says, “As you like.”

He crosses his arms over his chest, grabs the hem of his t-shirt and pulls it over his head. The whiteness of his skin flashes in the pale moonlight coming in from the window, and Timmy stops thinking. Alex walks past him and he follows him with his eyes. He stops on the doorstep and half-turns around to look at him, and then walks out of Lisbeth’s room, heading to his own, knowing Timmy will soon follow.

And he does.

*

It’s safer at home, and “home” is one of the few words that never got to change its meaning despite the circumstances evolving all around Timmy. Home’s where he’s always lived since he was a toddler, home is the big, white suburban house where he moved his first steps and said his first words, the unbelievably huge two-floor house his father bought when he moved back to Lima to be with Leo.

Home is the house that Blaine left to Leo when he went away. They didn’t argue about it – the spouses have reached an amicable agreement on the terms of their separation –, there was no need to. Blaine didn’t ask for anything, when he left. He could have asked to bring Timmy along, but he didn’t. He saw him clinging to Leo’s side for dear life and he left him there. He could have asked Leo to leave, since he had bought the house and he owned it, but he saw Leo cling to it for dear life too, and he just moved out.

Because of this, the house remained “home”. Blaine’s new home, the place he moved in when Cody and him decided to give themselves a try, just became “dad’s house” and nothing more. Timmy’s thankful to his father for not ruining this completely, but he also hates him with a fire for ripping himself out of home. Now home’s a place with no daddy. Sometimes the thought forms spontaneously inside Timmy’s mind, and it dawns on him with these exact words. Now home’s a place with no daddy. As if he was still a baby, as if he even needed daddy to be home. He’s old enough not to, he’s strong enough not to, he cares for his own sanity enough not to, but that’s how his mind realizes it whenever he’s back, every single time. Now home’s a place with no daddy. Now home’s a place with just half a family.

Home’s also a safe haven, though, the only place in the world where Timmy feels at peace. He’s surrounded by his own history, the history of his family, of his parents and siblings and relatives, and nothing can hurt him when he’s there.

Home’s where he has his room, with all his books and comics, and his laptop, and his console and all his favorite games. Home’s where he keeps the only photo he owns of his birthmother. Home’s the place he cleans up with Leo and the twins on Sunday after lunch. Home’s the place where he sits down and watch movies. Home’s the place he met Tana for the first time, one of those billionth time she had come to visit her brother while he was recovering from depression. Home’s where they first kissed, where he held her in his arms and told her he wanted to be hers, home’s where Tana leant her head against his and nodded, where she whispered “let’s give it a try, and don’t make me regret it” to his ear. Home’s where they were that rainy afternoon when the twins were at their grandparents’, and Blaine and Leo were out God only knew where, and they sat on the couch watching tv shows silently for hours, it’s where Timmy felt the air crackle for the first time, when he felt that shiver run wildly both on himself and her. It’s where they looked into each other’s eyes and decided it was time.

It was up those stairs Timmy dragged her, down that corridor he got pushed and hungrily kissed, into that room – his room – that he laid her down on the bed – his bed – and dove into her for the first time.

Home’s where Tana and him became one, not that afternoon, but for years. It’s where they build the foundations of their relationship, and where they consumed it. It’s where they mostly live it. It’s a sacred space.

It’s a space Alex never set foot in. He’s nowhere, there. So when Timmy runs from him, it’s home he runs to.

“‘Morning,” Leo yawns, walking down the stairs wrapped into a pajamas that wouldn’t fit him if he was twice his size, “Aren’t you supposed to be at your father’s?”

“Yeah,” Timmy shrugs, barely looking at him, concentrated as he is in trying to get the damn ball into the damn net in the videogame he’s playing.

“Did you run away again?” Leo frowns, his hands on his hips, tapping his bare foot onto the ground, “Does your father know?”

“If he does, it’s not because I told him,” Timmy shrugs again, and Leo sighs.

“Timmy, this has to stop,” he says sternly, “Either you decide you don’t wanna go anymore, or you decide you do. I’ll be fine with both, but decide already.”

“It’s not as if I don’t wanna be with him,” Timmy instantly turns to look at him, frowning. He hates when Leo starts inquiring about his escapes from Blaine’s house. He can’t tell him and, after more than a year, Leo should have gotten it by now.

“Then what is it?” Leo asks. Timmy turns away and snorts, annoyed.

“I’m hungry,” he says, instead of answering, “You making breakfast?”

Leo’s arms drop in resignation, and he sighs. “Fine,” he says, “I’m making pancakes. Since you’re here, go wake up the twins, at least.”

That’s something he can do with pleasure, so he drops the joystick and stands up, walking up the stairs, heading to the twins’ bedroom, already feeling his lips open up in a clear smile. He loves kids, he feels at ease with them – Leo says it’s because they’re simple-minded as he is, and despite knowing this is supposed to be some sort of affectionate mocking Timmy basically agrees with the notion – and he especially loves all his siblings. It’s so much easier to deal with children, really. They want something from you – care, affection, food, that you help them clean themselves after they went to the bathroom – and they don’t lie about it. They’re physically thankful to you, and they show it clearly, hugging, kissing, throwing their favorite plastic hammer at you much like penguins hit their partners with stones on their heads to let them know they’re loved. They don’t need to send mixed signals, they don’t even know what mixed signals are and even if they did they wouldn’t use them, ‘cause that would mean they’d get what they wanted way slower than they want.

Sometimes he wishes the whole world were made out of children. If his parents had been children, it would have been so much easier to help them make peace after Blaine’s cheating. ‘Cause what kind of a cheating would that have been? He would have kissed Cody on his cheek behind the old oak in the kindergarten’s yard? For how long would have baby Leo held grudge about it? They’d have made peace in a week. Blaine would have made Leo a mud pie and all would have been forgiven. They’d still be together.

Dealing with people is a pain. Grown-ups are stupid and complicated, and that goes for himself too, he knows that. He knows he is. Whenever Alex loses his temper at him, he knows it’s exactly because of that, for Alex acts like children do, he wants something – he asks for it, he needs something – he gets it, and when Timmy looks away and runs off he’s acting like most adults do, and Alex can’t stand it just like Timmy himself can’t.

Before entering the twins’ room, Timmy stops in front of the door and takes a deep breath. Alex isn’t supposed to be here, in his head. He must keep him out of it. He needs it, he needs to get him out of his system for a bit because he knows in a few hours Blaine will call him and ask him “aren’t you going to come back?”, and his voice will break a little in that way that only Timmy hears, and Timmy’s heart will sink, and he’ll have to go back, and Alex’s going to be there, and he must be ready to face him. He’s never ready to face him, when he thinks too much about him. The thought of him makes him overwhelming.

Once he calmed down, he finally walks in. The room is silent and sunk in darkness. The twins are sleeping peacefully on that contemporary art sculpture depicting a tree they have as a bed. Harper’s sleeping composedly on her tummy, her face turned on the pillow and her thumb stuck in her mouth. Logan’s sleeping face up, his mouth open, drooling and whining every now and then. His rounded belly moves up and down with each and every deep breath he takes, and Timmy smiles getting closer to the bed and kneeling in front of it.

“If you’re not awake in five seconds,” he says with a smile in his voice as well as on his lips, “I’m gonna eat all the pancakes and leave you with nothing.”

Logan’s the first to open his eyes, as always way more pressed by the thought of food or lack thereof than his sister is. “No,” he whines as he rolls on the bed, standing on all fours, “You’re mean.”

Harper wakes up too, blinking a little. She looks up at him and frowns, her small pink lips curling into a concerned pout. “You’re back,” she says.

Timmy turns to her and smiles gently, nodding a bit. “Did you miss me?”

Logan nods eagerly, already forgetful of his vile threat of before. Harper doesn’t move, she just looks at him, her eyes so serious she looks older than her age. “Did dad and daddy fight?” she asks then, still worried. She still remembers the last time it happened. She didn’t saw nor hear anything, of course, Blaine and Leo would have never fought in front of the children, but she remembers the consequences that fight had on her life, because she wasn’t allowed to go at Blaine’s place for two weeks after that. So, every time she catches Timmy home when he should be elsewhere, she instantly thinks that’s the reason, even though, after that time, Leo never dared to forbid them to go to Blaine again, no matter how badly they could have fought.

“No, Harp,” he reassures her, shaking his head, “Everything’s okay with dad and daddy. I just missed you all and wanted to come home.”

And here I go, he thinks, his eyes darkening, I’m doing it again. Making up excuses for running away from Alex. Using my siblings to clear my conscience.

“Mh,” Harper says, studying him silently for a moment. Then her lips open in a little smile and she nods, “Okay.”

Timmy takes them both in his arms and they cling on him like little monkeys on a tree, laughing in fear and excitement when Timmy jumps down the stairs skipping three or four steps at a time.

“Don’t do that, Timothy, please,” Leo says, holding out his arms the moment he sees him landing safely on the floor, with his siblings yelling like little Tarzans, “You know it’s dangerous.”

“Come on, you know they’re safe with me,” he says, but he does lean in to let one of the twins pass to Leo’s arms. Predictably, it’s Logan.

“Daddy, I’m hungwy,” he says, clinging to his father’s neck.

“It’s hungry,” Harper corrects him, settling more comfortably in Timmy’s arms.

“Leave your brother be, Harp,” Leo tells her with a small smile, “Or one day you too are gonna be bad at something, and he’ll take advantage of it and mock you to death.”

Harper pouts, wrapping her small arms around Timmy’s neck and sticking out her tongue. “Is this how you wanna educate her?” Timmy laughs, following his father to the kitchen, where the table already set and covered in food awaits for them.

“Give me a break,” Leo yawns, sitting down and blindly searching for his cup to start mixing milk and coffee in it, “I’ve been up ‘til 4am to get the third chapter straight.”

“Is the novel coming out fine?” Timmy asks, interested, pouring himself some orange juice.

“Of course, it’s awesome. But it needs time, it’s a tough one. Speaking of which,” he adds, dipping his face into the mug and drinking, “Would you mind getting the kids to school? Since you’re here…”

“Sure,” Timmy shrugs, “I don’t mind. You busy?”

“I wanna wrap up chapter three and get to at least half of the fourth,” Leo answers, “I’m already late, anyway, and these days are crucial. If I wanna get Mark off my back, I’ve gotta work harder.”

Since the divorce, Leo has been swimming through his life mostly behind the screen of his personal computer, lost in his stories. In the beginning, he wrote almost furiously. Nothing he wrote made sense, they were just long streams of consciousness filled with anger and regret he didn’t want to show anybody. Mark, his agent, had insisted on reading them. “They’re violent,” he had said, “They’re worth publishing exactly like they are, rough and raw. But if you say no, I won’t insist.” Leo had said no. Mark hadn’t insisted.

In time, Leo got better. He put those stories aside and went back to novels. “You cannot imagine what a relief it is,” he said once, sharing a beer with him on the porch, “To go back to talk about people who aren’t me.”

Timmy felt his heart ache as if somebody was squeezing it in his hand, and didn’t investigate any further.

For the last six months, Leo’s been writing sci-fi. He said he wanted to try it, that it was the only genre he hadn’t tried yet, and he started writing this thing about aliens sharing a planet, an alien kid ending up in the care of a human guy much older than he was. Timmy read the first chapter, and instantly knew the man was Blaine. The kid is nothing like Leo, or at least nothing like the Leo he knows, but the man’s his father, there’s no mistake about it. Leo described his every move so perfectly it’d be impossible to take him from somebody else.

Timmy wonders if Leo knows. If using him as the main character and hero of the story was a choice or an automatism. When he talks about it, Leo doesn’t seem aware of it, but after all Timmy knows that, even if he was, he’d never show it. So it’s impossible to guess.

The phone rings, interrupting Leo as he goes on about some researches he’s gonna have to do about amphibians for a race he wants to introduce in chapter five. He stands up and walks to the phone. He moves swiftly and quickly, as if his feet didn’t even touch the ground. That’s another change Timmy noticed after the divorce: since then, Leo’s been living on a different level of existence. He’s evanescent like an apparition, he barely makes a sound when he moves. He rarely goes out, and only when strictly necessary. He sees his friends, but he mostly receives them at home, and when he’s not around he’s always in his studio, behind his computer, writing and writing non-stop for hours every days, for days every week. He basically never stops except when he has to physically do something else that keeps him out of that room.

That’s how he heals himself, Timmy thinks. As long as he’s not hurting, it’s fine.

“Timmy,” Leo says, holding the receiver out for him, “It’s your father.”

Timmy nods and stands up, walking closer to the phone to take the call. In the back of his mind, Leo’s words swim into view and then fade away, disappearing into nothingness.

It’s always “his father”. It’s never Blaine.

*

When he sees Tana, the first thing he does is kiss her. He kisses her wildly, passionately, biting at her lips, searching for her tongue, thrusting his own into her mouth. He kisses her as if he hadn’t seen her in years, he kisses her as if she was water after centuries of thirst. She chuckles against his lips and pulls away, dragging him inside the house and looking around to make sure her parents are someplace else.

“What is it,” she asks, “You had a wet dream about me, tonight?”

“I have one every night,” he says, and pulls her in for another kiss. He’s lying, but she knows. It’s just playing around, and it doesn’t hurt anybody.

“Sure you do,” she answers in an amused chuckle. She pulls away again and Timmy looks at her, he looks at her and as always, when he sees her, he feels faint with how much he likes her. She’s wearing shorts and a simple black tank top, but she look so good she almost seems edible. Timmy decides to test appearances and leans in, taking a bite of her neck. She laughs and slaps him on his nape, but doesn’t push him away. “How come you’re so needy?”

“When aren’t I?” he asks back, and she has to admit he has a point.

“Still,” she insists, passing her caramel fingers through his hair when he leans against her and keeps biting his way down her neck, “Is everything alright?”

Timmy looks down at her golden skin marked with the traces of his teeth, inhales her soft peachy scent and feels the ticklish sensation of her long black hair brushing against his nose and, as always, he contemplates the possibility of telling her. About everything. About Alex.

Tana and him didn’t have the easiest, nor the most obvious relationship. She’s older than him – between them, there’s more or less the same age difference that goes between him and Alex – and she couldn’t stand him as a kid. He was always trotting around her, trying to get her attention in the silliest and most annoying ways. He was six and he had never seen such a beautiful creature before her. Tana was tall for her age, slim, and always wrapped in princess-like dresses that didn’t fit her personality at all but looked so good on her people weren’t able to look away when she strolled down the streets with her tiny hands into her fathers’. Everybody was convinced she’d end up wanting to be a model, or an actress, but she was never interested in such things. She wanted to play soccer, bless her.

They started hanging out together more when Timmy started playing soccer too. By imitation, of course, but Blaine felt that it was good for a kid to be involved in sports of some kind, so he let him try whatever he wanted, and Timmy tried them all. But soccer was his favorite, ‘cause he and Tana had put up a mixed team for the juniors tournaments, and by playing for the same team they got to spend so much time together Tana ended up seeing him more than his own parents.

The fact that they were more or less related never bothered Timmy. There wasn’t any common blood between them, after all. Leo had been adopted by Tana’s parents just like he had been by Blaine. And even if he had been Blaine’s real son, they wouldn’t have any direct connection anyway. She’s just his adoptive father’s sister. That makes her his aunt, officially, but he’s never looked at her that way. Tana never was anything but the woman he wanted to spend his whole life with. He had found love in her the moment he had seen her for the first time, and that had never changed, despite how many times she had rejected him for the most various reasons.

That hasn’t changed even now, he tells himself as he drags her upstairs, to her bedroom. That hasn’t changed, it hasn’t, he tells it and repeats it to himself again and again, trying to push Alex’s face out of his mind.

Alex is something different. He doesn’t feel for Alex what he feels for Tana. She makes him feel safe. She’s something he’s sure about. Christ, he’s never been surer of anything else in his life. She’s the one. He knows. She’s always been. He has always known. Way before Alex came, she was already there. She was, she is, she will be. He can’t let go of her. Not after all these years, not after sharing so much with her, not after all his dreams and projects, all the time spent fantasizing about what would have been to finally become her boyfriend, then her fiancée, then her husband. The house they’d buy in the suburbs, how many kids they’d have, how many dogs.

No, he can’t let go of her. He can’t even contemplate the thought. Not for anybody, not for Alex. It doesn’t matter how Alex makes him feel, the hold he has on him. It’ll pass, it’ll go away. Someday, somehow, Timmy’s sure he’ll grow out of it. He will never grow out of Tana. He will never leave her. The mere thought makes his head ache. That’s not an option, it won’t happen.

He buries himself deep inside her and tries to forget about everything. Anything that isn’t her isn’t worth his time, right now, and that includes Alex.

Then why does his face keep haunting him between the flashes of Tana’s body? Why does he still hear his voice in Tana’s moans? Why does he feel his skin on hers, why does her eyes hide his inside?

He comes hard inside the condom, Tana’s hands all over him, and they feel like Alex’s. Everything about her feels like Alex, and Timmy opens his eyes wide and his heart skips a bit when he realizes it isn’t Tana he just made love with.

*

Tana leaves him in front of Blaine’s house a few hours later. It’s way past dinner, but after all, when his father asked him if he wanted to come back, he just promised he’d be there in time to go to sleep. It’s basically bedtime, now. It’s not as if he lied.

He kisses Tana on her lips and she tells him they’ll see each other tomorrow. “I need a dress for the Christmas party,” she says, “And you’re gonna help me pick it up.”

The Christmas party, he thinks, What Christmas party?

And then it dawns on him, hitting him hard. But he doesn’t wanna think about it now. He’s happy and it’s probably late enough to find Alex already asleep when he walks into the bedroom. Any thought concerning the suicidal Christmas party Leo’s gonna throw for both sides of the family in a little more than a week can be procrastinated until tomorrow. It can wait.

He walks inside the house, and everything’s silent. There’s only a table lamp on in the whole sitting room, and there’s a note underneath it. It’s his father’s. “I waited for you as long as I could, but I kept falling asleep on the armchair, so I went to sleep. I hope you really come back, and that you’re still here in the morning. I think we need to talk. I love you, son.”

Timmy feels his heart clench to the thought of sitting down and talking with his father. He doesn’t know what he’d tell him, but he knows what Blaine will ask. He’d ask why he runs away, why he keeps coming if it’s just to run every time.

Timmy’s not sure the answer he’d give would be the one his father were expecting. He doesn’t even know if it’d be the one he’s expecting from himself.

He turns the lights off and walks upstairs. Alex’s bedroom’s light is off too, and he breathes out, relieved. He opens the door trying not to make it squeak and he spots the dark outline of Alex’s body lying down on his bed. He breathes out again and concedes himself a smile as he closes the door behind his back and takes his shoes and clothes off, sliding underneath the sheets in no time.

He has just closed his eyes and he’s about to prepare himself to sleep when he hears his voice.

“You never learn, do you?”

He instantly sits up and turns around. Alex is sitting on his bed too, leaning on his elbows. He’s looking at him. In the darkness of the room, Timmy can’t see his eyes, but he can feel them well enough.

“I thought you were asleep,” he says, trying to keep his voice low.

“I figured,” Alex nods. He shifts on the bed, sitting on the edge now. His skin is so white it almost glows in the pale blue light of the moon. “Would you have walked in if you thought me awake?”

Timmy tries to put up some convincing lie quickly. Yes, of course he would have come in. What difference did it make if Alex was awake or asleep? It’s not as if he cares.

“No,” is the only thing that comes to his mouth.

Alex nods slowly. “I figured that too,” he says. Then he stands up and walks to Timmy’s bed. He stops by its side and looks down at Timmy. He’s close enough to see his eyes, now. They’re two deep, dark pools of nothingness. Timmy can’t read them, they speak a different language than him and he never learnt how to translate it. “I’m gonna kiss you,” Alex says in a low voice.

Timmy doesn’t answer, but a voice inside his head is begging Alex please to be quick about it, because he’s dying to have his taste on his lips. And Alex leans in, places a hand on Timmy’s shoulder and presses his lips against his, and Timmy closes his eyes and for a moment he hopes to see Tana’s face, ‘cause that would at least compensate what happened before, but it doesn’t happen this time. There’s no substitution. He can only think of Alex, he can only smell, touch and taste him, he’s everywhere, he’s overwhelming, he’s everything in the world.

Timmy opens his eyes and Alex is but a few inches away from him, his eyes dark with desire, his lips wet, barely swollen. “Will you keep running forever?” Alex asks.

Timmy would like to tell him he won’t, but he knows that’s not gonna happen anytime soon, probably never. “I will,” he says then, nodding.

Alex’s expression doesn’t change. “I don’t mind,” he says, before descending on him like an avalanche.

It’s over too soon, and it couldn’t have been over soon enough. Timmy feels himself get softer and slip out of Alex’s body, and then Alex lies down next to him, his breathing heavy, his hair a mess, dirty with his own orgasm, still sticky from Timmy’s between his legs. They didn’t use a condom. Timmy thinks about it. They didn’t use a condom. They had them. They’re in the drawer of his nightstand. They could have used one, but they didn’t.

“What are you thinking about?” Alex asks in a low voice, staring at the darkness of the ceiling.

“The Christmas party,” he says, making up the lie as quickly as he can despite the confusion reigning undisputed over his mind.

Alex turns to look at him and arches an eyebrow, and Timmy knows he knows he’s lying. Luckily, he chooses not to call him out on that, and goes with it. “Me too,” he says, “Dad says your father’s gonna invite everybody. Including us.” He turns to look at Timmy again and his lips curl into a wicked smile. “You don’t want me there, do you?”

Timmy holds his breath as his eyes widen. It’s the first time he sees Alex smile like this and he knows he should be careful, now, he should choose cleverly what to tell him, because there’s trouble in those eyes, trouble on those lips, and he’s not sure it’s trouble he’d be able to survive.

His head moves independently from his own will, shaking a little right and left. No, he doesn’t want him there. The mere thought terrifies him. He doesn’t want him there. Don’t come, Alex.

Alex’s smile widens a bit. “Then I’ll come,” he says.

They don’t share the bed, for that night.

*

Breakfast has been mostly silent, especially on Timmy and Blaine’s part. While, at least, Cody tried to make conversation, and Alex got very close to show signs of almost human functional behavior when his sister tugged at his pajamas’ shirt and asked for some attention from him, both Timmy and Blaine remained quiet, only speaking when they were asked about something and moving as if trying not to make a sound.

The prolonged silence has affected Timmy’s voice. He’s sitting in front of his father, now, in the kitchen. Cody’s already busy with the chores and Alex is unwillingly but dutifully helping him out, while Lissy takes a nap, and all Timmy thinks about is that his throat aches, and that he doesn’t wanna talk because he knows that, when he will, his voice will come out all weird and shaky and low for lack of use.

He used to love Sunday mornings, before the divorce. They’d all sit around the kitchen table and Leo would make tons of food for them, and they’d eat slowly, talking about random things, taking care of the twins and listening to them as they tried to tell their shared weird dreams about jelly worlds and cotton candy dragons.

Sunday mornings are different, now. They’re awkward, like this, at best. They’re excruciatingly painful at worst, like when he’s at home and Leo wakes up in a bad mood and his eyes are dark and his skin too pale and he wanders through the kitchen in silence, moving like a robot out of habit and inertia, and nothing seems funny enough to cheer him up. And Timmy tries, he tries so hard. He’s been trying since the day Blaine went away, he remembers his first thought not to be about his dad leaving, not having him in the house anymore, seeing him less often, sharing him with somebody else’s kids. He remembers his first thought to be “but I have to try and make Leo feel better. I have to, it’s my responsibility”. That’s the main reason why he didn’t leave home. Leo’s eyes kept him there, the vague but pressing knowledge he might have not survived if left there alone with just the twins.

For the first time today, though, he looks at his father’s face now and he wonders, why didn’t he think the same about him? Why didn’t he think he had to stick with him, to make him feel better? Was that because he was leaving, because it was his fault? And then Timmy didn’t think he deserved to be helped at all in coming out of a nightmare he had crafted on himself with his own hands?

Blaine’s got sad eyes as he looks at Timmy. He notices, and with that comes the notion of having forgotten the last time he’s seen his dad’s eyes smile. When he left home, that light he always had and had never lost disappeared forever. It was as if somebody had turned it off from inside him, something quick, sudden. A quick burn that didn’t left room for any other try to rekindle it.

Maybe, he thinks, that’s why he never went to live with him. He thought his father was a lost cause, while Leo somehow still gave him hope.

Or maybe he was just scared to leave home too, to leave family, to leave his nest. Maybe because he knew Blaine would have never left if he hadn’t been forced to, and how pleasant could the world be if his father, his strong father, the man he had looked up to as if he was a superhero all his life, didn’t want to step out into it if not because he just couldn’t do anything else?

Timmy clenches his fists on the table, looking away from his father, avoiding his eyes, those sad, melancholic eyes. He keeps making excuse for himself, he keeps choosing things telling himself stories. I do it for Leo, I do it for the twins, I do it for Lissy, I do it for Tana, I do it for whoever the fuck he’s got on the long list of name he can pick up from to cover his own ass.

He’s never done anything in his life for his father, and that’s only because it was never convenient for him. He’s never done anything for anybody, he’s always done things only for himself.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Blaine says in a soft, low voice, “That it’s alright.”

Timmy looks up suddenly, feeling his eyes sting. “What?” he asks in a shaky voice.

Blaine smiles kindly, tilting his head a bit. “That you run away,” he says, and nods. “I know why you do it.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Timmy, please,” Blaine reaches out for him, patting the back of his hand with his own, “You don’t need to lie. It’s fine. I know this is all very hard on you, and I’m sorry about it. That’s why,” he straightens his back up a bit, looking down and clearing his throat, “I will understand, if you decide you want to stop coming here. Leo and I talked about it, and I told him it’s fine. If that’s what you want.”

Blaine never calls Leo “your father”. He never calls him anything but Leo.

The spouses have reached an amicable agreement on the terms of their separation.

Timmy clenches his teeth, swallowing down his tears. He can’t afford to cry, not now. He looks at Blaine and, for the first time in his life, he sees his fragility, and he wants to protect it. His father looks like he’d shatter if he got touched just a little bit harder, and the thought makes Timmy hurt so deep it almost seems as if pain was trying to pierce a way out of his body to escape on the outside.

“Daddy,” he says, forcing a smile on his lips and looking up at him, “I’m fine. I’m just a little weirded out at this whole Christmas thing. I’m sorry if I made you worry. You’ll see, everything will be okay again once it’s past.”

He stands up and smiles again, he turns around and leaves the kitchen, and he’s grateful for the fact that his father renounced to ask him, if that was the problem, then why has he been running away since the beginning?, because he knows he can’t take this mask up for much too long. His smile falters and disappears the moment he’s out of the kitchen, his lips twisting into a painful grimace as he runs up the stairs.

He prays for Alex not to be in the bedroom because he couldn’t stand him now, and he’s relieved when he doesn’t find him there. He shuts the door behind himself and falls on the ground next to the bed. Holding his knees close to his chest and his head between his arms, he silently starts to cry, his shoulders shaken by sobs and his chest hurting for the effort he puts in trying to keep his whining down. He feels like a little boy, but he’s helpless enough not to care, for now. He never cried like this during the divorce. He had to keep himself strong. He had to keep himself up. For Leo. For Leo, he kept telling himself. For himself, honestly. He had to keep himself together, he had to keep himself strong because if he had let himself go back then he’d have fallen to pieces and nobody would have been able to stitch him back the way he was before. Much like his parents’ marriage.

The door creaks open and he lifts his tear-stained face, his heart skipping a beat. It’s Alex, and he’s looking at him from the doorstep, one hand still on the handle, half his body in, the other half out of the room. His eyes are dark and unreadable as usual, but wide and a little surprised, and his lips are closed tight in a troubled line. “What happened to you?” he asks, his voice strangely feeble, a soft whisper flying through the thick silent air of the room and landing on Timmy like a blanket.

A desperate moan escapes his throat and he starts crying again. He doesn’t even find the strength to tell him what’s going on, how guilty he feels, how sorry he is for everything that happened, that’s happening, that will surely happen. He feels like his heart had been collecting tears for years, now, and now it broke open, and there’s a flood running through him, and he can’t stop it.

Alex’s hand jerks closed around the handle and his eyes grow a little wider, but then he seems to take a hold of himself and his expression turns more serious, controlled. He walks in and closes the door behind his back. He kneels next to Timmy, opens his arms and welcomes him against his chest. Timmy wraps his arms around Alex’s thin waist, he hides his face against the curve of his neck and muffles his tears against his white skin.

It feels like it goes on for hours. Timmy doesn’t mind.

*

Leo did a great job with the house. It’s decorated the way they used to decorate it when Blaine and him were still together. In the last week Timmy helped him out a bit, but clearly Blaine must have talked to Leo to tell him about their little chat in the kitchen, because Leo didn’t ask for much and, whenever Timmy offered to help, he kept repeating it was okay, that he could do it alone, if Timmy wanted to help he could go play with the twins so they would stop screaming like eagles.

Everybody’s here, and as Timmy sips at his sparkling wine and looks around at the members of his enlarged family hanging out with one another – Annie talking with Cody, his grandfather Kurt trying to make conversation with Alex, everybody fussing stupidly around Lissy and the twins – he can’t help but think back at the short conversation he had with Leo yesterday night, sitting on the couch in front of the incredibly tall Christmas tree he bought for the occasion and decorated with everything he could put his hands on.

“I know it’s hard for you, T.T.,” Leo said, his eyes fixed on the tree, not even pretending to be trying to smile. “You don’t have to be there, if you don’t want to.”

Timmy turned to look at him, to the fine, straight line of his profile against the flickering lights of the tree. “But do you want to be there?” he asked, reaching out for him and holding his hand into his own.

Leo turned to look at him, a faint smile curling his lips upwards. “You don’t understand, Timmy,” he explained, “There’s nothing I want more in the world. I know you all think it’s unhealthy and awkward and that I shouldn’t do it, but I want to. I need it.”

“But it’s gonna be painful,” he insisted, squeezing his hand.

Leo laughed, shaking his head. “And, what, now it isn’t?” he asked back. Then his smile turned softer again, and he brought a hand over Timmy’s, patting its back lightly much like Blaine had done during their last conversation. “I don’t expect you to understand, kiddo. In fact, I stopped expecting anybody to understand when I was fifteen. Your father—”

“He’s Blaine,” Timmy stopped him, frowning a bit, his heart beating too fast.

A little surprised, Leo looked at him for a long time, and then smiled gently. “No, he’s not,” he said, shaking his head, “He’s your father. Blaine was somebody I had, and don’t have anymore. It’s better to think him lost. It’s better to think him de—”

“Don’t say it!”

“It’s better to think him dead.”

Timmy closes his fingers tight around the flute, but lets go when he feels the crystal creak under his fingertips.

“Dude,” Adam approaches him, making his glass clink together with his own and then leaning with his back against the wall like he’s doing, “Some party, huh?”

Timmy offers him a faint, tired smile, and Adam smiles back, lifting a hand to ruffle his hair. Timmy knows he wasn’t alright with this party, like apparently everybody except Leo and Blaine. The day after Leo told him, Adam and Annie came to visit together, sat down on the couch and asked him please to rethink the whole thing and forget about it. “It can’t be safe,” Annie said. “It’s not healthy,” Adam added. Leo didn’t care about any of that, and went on with what he wanted to do exactly as he had done for the rest of his life up to that moment.

“At least,” Timmy says, “Nothing bad happened, yet.”

“Yeah,” Adam nods, “I guess as long as nobody ends up killed we could call it a success,” he sighs, and then turns a curious look around, “Where’s Leo, by the way? Wasn’t he going to bring appetizers? I’m starving.”

Timmy chuckles, moving away from the wall and putting his flute down on one of the small rounded tables Leo scattered all over the sitting room. “I’ll go check on him, maybe he needs help,” he says, and then walks down the corridor, to the kitchen where he knows Leo will be. Leo’s the kind of guy who prefers attending parties without being directly involved in them. The kitchen is his natural element, when it comes to this. He can spend the majority of his time there, preparing food and drinks, and only show up to bring them to the others, so nobody will talk to him, nobody will ask questions.

A sad but affectionate smile blooms on Timmy’s lips when he reaches the kitchen, but when he takes a peek inside he freezes on the spot, his arms down his sides, his eyes wide open.

Blaine and Leo are hugging behind the table. Blaine’s got his arms tightly wrapped around Leo’s shoulders, and Leo’s clinging to the back of Blaine’s sweater, his face pressed hard against Blaine’s neck, Blaine’s mouth pressed strongly against his hair. They don’t move, they don’t talk, they barely seem to breath. Timmy can’t see his father’s expression, but Leo’s is pretty revealing. All his features are relaxed, his eyes are closed, he’s got his lips parted as if he was breathing in and out as much Blaine as he could before it’s over.

But what hits Timmy the most isn’t the hug itself, or how intimate it seems, and not even how used they seem to share a moment like that. It’s something else, the overwhelming knowledge of it being something they concede themselves only because they know it’s inconsequential, it won’t have any effect on their life. They give in to the hug and make it as close and desperate as they can only because they know it’ll break eventually, that they’ll part, they’ll go back to their houses, their usual lives, lives in which Blaine barely exists anymore for Leo, lives in which Leo’s name brings a veil of indelible sadness to Blaine’s eyes, a veil that grows thicker and thicker by the day and threatens to make him blind.

If he didn’t feel it, Timmy would dare to hope they could get back together, because nobody who feels the need to hug somebody else this way can really be apart from that person.

But he feels that, and there’s no space in that hug for any childish fantasy about divorcing parents making peace and marrying again. It’s done, it’s over with, Timmy lost it, he can’t have it back, nobody can.

The spouses have reached an amicable agreement on the terms of their separation.

Is this amicable?, Timmy asks himself, tears streaming down his face as he barely manages to contain the sobs, is this an agreement? is this even a separation?

Leo’s the first to pull away. He keeps his hands on Blaine’s chest and smiles a bit sadly at him, asking him how he feels. Blaine lets out a small chuckle and wipes away a tear from under his own eye. He’s growing old, his daddy, Timmy thinks as his chest tightens and hurts. He’s growing old and he can barely stand the weight of his own heart.

Timmy looks down, bites his lips to the point of cutting them and clenches his fists to the point of getting cramps to his fingers, and desperately thinks he needs Alex, now. His whole skin itches to feel his soothing hands. He wants to hold him now, he feels his throat ache with tears of need to the mere thought.

He imagines that’s the way his parents feel when they want to hug each other that bad. But he can’t afford to turn himself and Alex into them. He’s not gonna be the one who secretly holds onto the person he loves during parties or in the rare occasions they’re together just because he didn’t find the guts to admit that, despite everything and all the fucked up shit that had been going on between them, he still wanted to be together.

He remembers Blaine trying and trying to reach out for Leo, after cheating on him. Begging him to talk, to let him explain, to let him apologize. Too hurt by what had happened, Leo had kept shutting the door on his face, and in time Blaine had simply given up because he didn’t have any more heart to give.

Timmy won’t be the one who keeps shutting the door. He won’t let Alex reach the point of having no more heart to give.

He lifts his face and wipes his tears off his eyes, he leaves his parents to deal with their own fucked up shit because it’s not his responsibility. It’s just not. He doesn’t have to make them happy, he doesn’t have to mend their hearts, he doesn’t have to make things work for anybody but himself.

He turns around and walks back into the sitting room, where everything’s going on exactly as it was when he left it. He searches around for Alex, but he can’t find him. He sees Tana, instead. She’s sitting down on the couch and Adam’s by her side, they’re clearly talking sports and having so much fun Timmy doesn’t even try to get close to her. She turns and sees him, she smiles gently at him and waves her hand mid-air to say hi. He smiles back at her and waves too, but then she turns to talk with Adam again and Timmy decides to leave her be. There’s no point talking to her right now. He’s got just one thing to tell her, and it can wait for after Christmas, it can wait until it’s over. It can’t wait much more, but that, it definitely can.

*

He finds him outside in the garden, and he didn’t even think he could be there, ‘cause it’s snowing.

“Alex!” he yells, running towards him. He’s wearing his jacket, but it’s still clearly too cold for him, and Timmy rushes to take his scarf off and wrap it around his neck. “What are you doing out here?! It’s snowing.”

“I hadn’t noticed, thank you,” Alex answers, arching an eyebrow. Then he looks at Timmy and he must notice something, because he sighs and gives up on his usual behavior, leaning better against the wall as he crosses his arms behind his back. “Your grandfather wouldn’t leave me alone,” he says, “He kept asking me questions about school and friends and so on… I mean, not that I mind, but I feel out of place enough as it is without him trying to make conversation at all costs.”

“Maybe he just felt awkward and wanted to involve you so it wouldn’t be as weird for you to be there,” Timmy shrugs, standing next to him. “It’s different for Lissy, she’s easier to deal with and everybody loves her ‘cause she’s so cute.”

“Yeah, you don’t have to remind me,” Alex says, “I know, I love her too.”

Timmy sighs, passing a hand through his hair. If he ever thought this could be easy, he was wrong. “Listen—”

“No, you listen,” Alex says. Timmy shuts up abruptly and, turning to look at him, Alex probably realizes he’s been too harsh, ‘cause he blushes a little and his eyes soften. “I mean, I’ve got something to tell you. I’m not good at words, so just shut up and listen, please.” Timmy swallows and nods, looking back at him, but Alex instantly averts his eyes, looking at the falling snow covering the front yard, mixing with the green of the grass and the deep blue of the thick cloth that covers the kids’ pool. “When I first saw you, I knew you’d be trouble.”

“How ironic,” Timmy can’t help but chuckle, but he instantly stops when Alex turns to glare at him.

“I said shut up,” he barks. And then he sighs and looks away again. His skin is so pale that the light blush of his cheeks stands out twice as much. “I knew you’d be trouble to me, ‘cause, you know, you’re not as good as you think you are at handling things.”

“About that—”

“God, didn’t you hear I just told you to shut up?!” Alex yells at him, slapping him on his shoulder. “See, that’s the whole thing, with you. You don’t listen. To anybody! Let alone yourself. It’s so fucking hard to reach out for you, ‘cause you’re always lalala-ing.”

“I’m what?”

“Lalala-ing!” Alex opens his arms in surrender, “Constantly! You know? When you don’t wanna hear and you keep singing ‘lalala!’ so nothing reaches you. That’s what you do all the time. You don’t listen to your parents, you don’t listen to your own desires and you run from them, and you certainly don’t listen to me. ‘Cause, if you did, you’d know how I feel about you.”

His eyes fixed on him, Timmy opens his mouth to say something, but when Alex looks up at him there’s so much vulnerability in his gaze that Timmy gives up and nods, inviting him to go on.

Alex nods too, swallowing hard. “I knew from the start it’d be hard for us. You were my brother, and even if you weren’t you still had your fucking head filled to the brim with that girl,” he says, throwing a glance towards Tana through the whitening glass of the window, “I kept telling myself I had to let go, that I didn’t have a chance, but I wanted you. I just did, and I thought that maybe if I had you once then I’d be satisfied and I wouldn’t have wanted you anymore, but I was wrong. Once I had you, I couldn’t let go of you. But you,” he growls a bit, clenching his fists, “You kept running away, slipping through my fingers. Whenever we managed to share one moment, just one fucking moment that was really good, like sleeping together or just be close or whatever, you always ran away. Back to home, and to your girl, avoiding me.” He lifts his eyes back on Timmy’s, and they’re sharp, now, dark and fiery, “I hated you. I wanted to hurt you. I kept wanting you close and wanting to break you, thinking that maybe, once I had broken you, you’d just surrender, and you’d come back to me, and you’d finally stay.” He looks down again and sighs, his breath condensing instantly as it slips out of his lips. “But I can’t go on this way, and you certainly wouldn’t be able to get through another minute of it, so, Timmy, I give up,” he opens his arms and looks back at him, his eyes troubled and a little teary, “I just— I give up. Now you know what’s on my mind, and I’m done playing games. I can’t stand it anymore. I’m fucked up, but not to that point. It’s hurting us too much. So do what you want, I refuse for it to be my call anymore.”

Timmy swallows hard, looking intently at him. He feels drawn towards him to the point that it almost hurts not to touch him, so he takes a step forward, getting closer to him and brushing his cheek with his thumb. “You’re right,” he says, nodding, “I’m a dickhead and I’ve been running. I wish I could say I’ve been running from my parents, or from you, ‘cause that would make things easier. When you’ve got a problem with somebody, you can always talk it out, it’s when you have it with yourself that it gets harder.” He sighs and offers him a small smile, that Alex doesn’t reciprocate. “But I wanna get better,” he says, and Alex’s lips part and tremble a bit, “We’re gonna work it out. I’ll break up with Tana, tomorrow, it’s the least I owe her. I never listened to you or myself, and that’s true, but that doesn’t mean I’ve never heard.”

A strangled hiccup escapes from Alex’s parted lips, and Timmy wraps his arms around him, pulling him in for a hug. Alex grabs the back of his coat and closes his fists around it, almost tugging at it for how desperately he’s clinging to him. He’s crying, but he’s not making a sound. Timmy only knows because he feels his small shoulders shake under his fingers.

“You’re an idiot,” Alex says when he wins the battle over his shaking voice, still hiding against Timmy’s chest, “It’s not as if you could make me your boyfriend just because you dumped her, we’re still brothers.”

Timmy chuckles lightly, passing his fingers through Alex’s dark hair. “Honestly? I don’t even care,” he answers.

Apparently, that’s all Alex wanted to hear, because his lips curl into a small smile, and he says nothing else.
Storia facente parte del Leoverse.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico, Avventura.
Pairing: Blaine/OC(s).
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Polyamory, Slash, Het, Underage, Lemon, AU.
- Blaine gets hurt during a fight, and not even Annie's magic seems enough to save him. Adam decides to take him to a healer he heard about while in Mistral City, a mysterious kid that apparently heals wounded and sick people by sleeping with them. Despite Leo's protests and the disappointment of all his kids, once healed Blaine will decide to get involved in Cody's personal situation, something that will have consequences on everybody's lives.
Note: Io non sono mica normale. Dunque, questa storia innanzitutto nasce in quanto partecipante alla prima settimana delle mie adorate Badwrong Weeks, dedicata all'underage, allo shota, all'age difference e a tutte queste belle cose. Inizialmente, doveva fillare anche il prompt ferita, e in realtà lo filla anche, solo che al momento del postaggio mi sono dimenticata di postare in risposta al prompt, e vorrei vedere voi cancellare quattordici commenti e poi riscriverli uguali perché siete stati pirla al primo postaggio. Be', io di sicuro non sono mentalmente in grado di farlo XD
In compenso, adoro questa storia alla follia ♥ Da tempo immemore sognavo di scrivere una cosa del genere, in cui Blaine stesse sostanzialmente con tutti i suoi ragazzini contemporaneamente XD Alla fine la cosa si è rivelata ben più complessa e stratificata del previsto, e con la Tab abbiamo sviluppato tutto un headcanon enorme che comprende un passato, un presente ed un futuro per tutti i protagonisti della storia. Forse, un giorno lo metteremo anche su carta, ma nel mentre, anche come standalone, questa storia si regge, per cui enjoy XD
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
I'M A TREE THAT GROWS HEARTS

As fire starts to rain over their heads from the dark night sky, Leo realizes that Adam’s probably been right all along, and that attacking the castle might have not been the brightest idea, after all.

“I told you!” Adam yells, as he tries to pick Blaine up from the ground, “I told you they had defenses! But no, you had to come and wreak havoc, anyway!”

“I didn’t know for sure there would be magicians too!” Leo snorts, running by his side and grabbing Blaine from under his arm, helping Adam out, “How’s he doing?”

“He’s got his fucking stomach torn apart by an explosive bullet!” Adam answers, struggling to hold the man up at least enough to try and see if he can wake up and drag his feet on his own, “How do you think he’s doing?”

“Can you two stop fighting and start running?” Annie barks, casting one last icing spell to the top of the castle, from where the magicians keep launching fireballs against them, “God, this is just so stupid!” she gestures vaguely in mid-air, streams of magic springing from her fingers like shiny golden laces, swirling around Blaine’s body and making it almost weightless. “Is he still alive?”

“For now,” Adam nods, running faster now, “But if he dies, Leo, I swear—”

“He’s not gonna die,” Leo says categorically, leading them to the nearby woods, “Now let’s just get to our horses, and I don’t wanna hear a single word more.”

As if feeling on their skin Leo’s own rage, both Adam and Annie keep their mouths shut for the rest of the run.

*
All the events leading to the battle seem vague and distant, as if hidden in a mist. Leo knows there’s a reason why they were all there, fighting to get inside that castle. He has a knowledge of the facts – the artifact their client commissioned them to steal, the plans, the endless discussions to get everything straight before the assault – but somehow none of that makes sense now that he has his eyes locked on the impossibly still figure of Blaine lying on the ground between the bushes while Annie tries and cure him with her magic.

He wonders lazily about the money their client has promised them. Five millions in gold, he said, to be given to them the moment they came back with the medallion. He tries and mentally count five millions – they’ve never seen such an amount of money – but he doesn’t really care. It’s just a way to try and keep his brain occupied because, if he stops thinking, then he’ll notice how pale Blaine looks, how sunken his cheeks, how his chest doesn’t move with his breaths, because he’s not breathing.

Five millions, he thinks. That’s a lot of money. But it wasn’t worth this.

“Is he alright?” Adam emerges from the bushes behind him, rushing next to Blaine. He stops a couple of steps away from his body, noticing its stillness and whiteness, and steps back, horrified. “Oh God,” he says in a strangled whisper.

“Would you shut up?” Annie demands in a low, deep growl. Her eyes are focused, concentrated on the dim flashes of light emanating from her palms as she presses them against Blaine’s torn flesh.

“Fuck you, Annie!” Adam reacts instantly, frowning at her, “I’m just worried!”

“Be worried as you like, but be quiet too, or I swear I’ll have your lips sewn together,” she warns him, lifting her pale blue eyes, cold as ice, on his face.

He backs off a little, startled. “…fine,” he snorts, walking away and stopping by Leo, casting him an half-annoyed glance. “Are you hurt?”

Leo looks up at him, arching an eyebrow. “Weren’t you angry at me?”

“I still am,” Adam answers coldly, and then sighs, dropping to sit next to him, “But not enough to want you hurt,” he adds in a softer voice, casting him an indulgent look. “Tell me you’re fine, come on.”

“I am,” Leo sighs too, looking back at him and forcing a small smile on his lips, before looking back at Blaine’s apparently lifeless body, “As much as I can be.”

“He doesn’t seem to be recovering,” Adam says, his voice uncertain.

“I know that already, Adam,” Leo frowns, “You don’t need to tell me.”

“Well, you ought to hear me!” Adam insists, turning to look at him, eyes filled with rage, “Because it’s your fault! I told you it’d be dangerous!”

“Like everything we do, Adam!”

“More so!” Adam yells, pointing a finger towards Blaine, “I told you there would be magicians, that we were too few, that night wasn’t enough to cover us up! But you had to have it your way, as usual! And he was by your side, as usual! And now he’s dead!” he says, his voice breaking a little on the last word, his eyes growing wide as he realizes the meaning of it.

Leo looks back at him with cold, hard eyes, unwillingly filling with tears. “Are you done?” he asks with a shaky voice.

Adam looks down, ashamed at himself. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Fuck you, Adam,” Leo stands up, his whole body trembling with rage as he turns around, meaning to leave.

He only stops because of Annie’s voice. “Guys!” she calls out, “He’s awake!”

Leo quickly turns around, running towards Blaine and kneeling by his side. Adam gets there only a second too late and loses the spot, deciding to just stand there. For a moment, this reminds Leo of when they were children, at the village, and they used to have races all the time to see who would be the first to get to training, or who would run faster, to catch Blaine’s attention. They basically never stopped.

“Blaine?” he asks softly, leaning over him and stroking his hair, damp with sweat and blood, “Hey. You with us?” he tries a smile when he sees Blaine’s dark eyes struggling to focus on him.

“Is…” Blaine says, his voice faint, almost barely audible.

“What?” Leo leans closer, offering his hear, “Don’t force yourself, you don’t have to talk if—”

“Is it gonna leave a scar?”

Leo pulls away, blinking a couple of times before frowning madly. “You idiot!” he yells, hitting him on his shoulder, “You’re so stupid, I have no idea how you survived your own stupidity up to now!”

“Ouch,” Blaine whines faintly, his lips twisting in a painful grimace.

“Leo, stop it,” Annie says, her smile showing how relieved she is, “You’re hurting him.”

“He deserves it!” Leo insists, and then his voice softens, as his hand falls in a tender caress over Blaine’s bare chest, “You scared the shit out of me, asshole.”

“I’m fine,” Blaine says, but he’s breathing heavily, and when he turns his head and coughs, he spits blood. “I guess.”

“You’re not fine,” Annie says, retrieving her bag and fetching some bandages, that she carefully starts to wrap around him, “I wasn’t able to mend your wound. It’s deeper than I thought. I barely managed to catch you before you slipped away,” she adds with a sad smile, her blue eyes a little teary, “But we need to get you to a city, and to a real medic.”

“Oh, please,” Blaine gestures vaguely in mid-air, snorting, “Now that I’m alive, it’ll heal by itself.”

“If I hear just another word from you,” Adam finally says, his voice unreadable, as his eyes, “I swear I’m gonna finish the job and cut you in half. Now we’re gonna get you back on the horse – you’re riding with me.”

“He can ride with me,” Leo tries, looking up and frowning at Adam.

Adam glares at him. “He’s riding with me,” he says, and it’s final. “We’re gonna get you to Mistral city, it’s the nearest. I know a guy, I’ve heard about him last time we were there. He’s gonna take care of you.”

“Adam,” Blaine whines, trying to move and failing, “I don’t wanna see any creepy lizard-skinned or cat-eyed warlock.”

“You’re gonna do exactly as I tell you!” Adam states, pointing the finger at him and waving it under his nose, “And that’s final,” he adds with a snort. “Besides, he’s not a warlock.”

Annie blinks a couple of times, looking up at him in surprise. “And what is he?”

Adam sighs, looking away and shrugging. “Judging by what people say,” he answers nonchalantly, “Apparently, a whore.”

*
The room is dark and smells of sex and incense. Leo makes a face the moment he steps into it, and turns to look at Adam with a disappointed face. “Really, Adam? Really? This place’s filthy.”

“It’s our best chance,” Adam answers coldly, looking around the shadowy, bare room. There’s only a couple of old wooden chairs lined up against the scraped, dirty gray wall. Barely enough to lie Blaine down, but it’ll have to do, he decides, as he drags Blaine’s body there and puts him down.

Leo rushes by his side, helping Blaine to put up his legs as Annie finally releases the magic control over the man’s limp body, now that she doesn’t have to keep him from falling at every step of the way anymore. She leans against the wall, breathing heavily. She’s pale and her forehead’s covered with perspiration.

“You know very well our best chance is a medic,” Leo protests, but Adam’s not even listening to him anymore. He straightens up and walks towards Annie, passing a hand through her fiery red locks and then down along her neck, massaging it affectionately.

“You should rest,” he tells her.

Annie looks up at him, forcing a small smile on her peachy lips. “Not until he’s alright.”

“Is anybody even listening to me?” Leo whines, still kneeling beside Blaine’s body.

Blaine lifts a hand, stroking Leo’s cheek with his thumb. “I am,” he says, his voice faint like a distant echo.

“Don’t talk,” Leo instantly tells him, pressing both his hands against his mouth with his usual lack of grace, “Don’t strain yourself out. Somebody’s gonna take care of you soon, I promise,” he tries and smile reassuringly, before he stands up and glares at Adam, “If anybody actually shows up, of course.”

“I’m here,” says a voice from behind him, and Leo turns around to see a kid around his age, dressed with a white satin tunic that barely covers his chest, made by two layers of fabric that crosses right over his belly, leaving it uncovered, and then slide down his thighs in a short skirt that leaves the most of his legs exposed. There’s a trace of a week-old bruise on his left cheek and one of his arms is covered in bandages, and if it was any other time, or Blaine was in any less danger, Leo would ask about it, but not now.

“Finally,” he says sharply, looking at the kid with no mercy, “He could be dead by now.”

The kid turns to Blaine, studying him carefully as the man lifts a hand and waves at him, putting up a smirk that looks more like a painful grimace. “He’s alive,” he says.

Leo growls, annoyed. “Gods— Are you dense? Are you retarded or something?”

“Leo,” Adam calls out, placing a hand on his shoulder and pulling him away, “Let go,” he turns to the kid and looks at him, studying him shamelessly. “I expected something different. Anyway, if you’re Cody, you’re the one we’ve been searching for. They say you can cure mortal wounds, that you have a way with it. We can pay, you’ve gotta cure him.”

Cody looks again at the man, and then back at Adam. “And you are…?” he asks.

“His boyfriends,” Adam and Leo answer together.

“And girlfriend,” Annie adds with a weary smile.

Cody looks at them all, his eyes suddenly growing wide with surprise. “Oh,” he stammers, “Oh, I— I see. I mean, that’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?”

“Do we have to talk about it now, while he bleeds to death?!” Leo yells, unnerved.

Cody backs away, startled by his voice. “I’m— I’m sorry,” he shakes his head and moves out of the way, “Please, take him and follow me,” he says, leading them behind a curtain and into a smaller but also cleaner room, with a bed and a small desk in a corner. “Lay him down on the bed,” he nods, gesturing towards it. “I suppose you’re familiar with my methods?”

Leo makes a face, looking away. “Adam told us all about them.”

“We heard about you last time we were here in the city,” Adam explains with a sigh, “They say there’s some ritual you do, some gods you invoke. Through sex.”

“Please,” Blaine says wearily, his voice now nothing but a wheeze, “The offer is tempting, but I doubt I can be up for the task, if you know what I mean,” he jokes with an uncertain, broken laughter.

“Blaine, please, do shut up,” Annie sighs, lightly hitting him on his forehead.

“You won’t have to force yourself,” Cody smiles embarrassedly, “The ritual will take care of everything.”

“See?” Blaine snorts, trying to get up and failing, “It’s damn magic.”

“It’s not magic,” Cody shakes his head and gets closer to him, pressing a hand over his shoulder to make him lie down again, “It’s a prayer. I don’t deal with magic, it’s unholy.”

“Excuse me?” Annie instantly frowns, “For your information, magic’s what got him here still alive despite a damn hole in his stomach to begin with! Show some respect.”

“I’m sorry!” Cody instantly backs away again, blushing furiously in shame, “I didn’t know—”

“You shouldn’t have said it anyway, whether a magician was actually here or not!” Annie insists, and then bends over Blaine, putting a hand on his shoulder, “Come on, let’s get you out of here and to a medic.”

“Let him go!” Adam says, his voice a threatening growl as he grabs Annie by her wrist and pushes her away from Blaine. “God, you two are such idiots!” he goes on, glaring at both Annie and Leo, “Why do you give such importance to such bullshit? Who cares what he is or how he does it? Who cares what he thinks about magic or that he uses sex to heal people? Blaine’s dying!”

An heavy silence falls over the room after his words. Leo and Annie both look away, ashamed at themselves, while Blaine closes his eyes, trying to breath in and out slowly. Each and every breath he draws sounds painful, shaky and faint as if every one of them could be the last.

Leo’s the first to look up. “I’m sorry,” he says. His eyes show he means it.

“Me too,” Annie nods, her eyes still locked to the ground, but filling with heavy, tired tears.

Adam sighs, relieved, turning around to face Cody. “He’s all yours,” he says, “Cure him.”

That’s the last Cody hears, before watching him walk away, quickly followed by the other two.

*
“Well, aren’t you a pretty one,” Blaine jokes, looking at Cody as the kid moves swiftly all around him, placing burning incense and weird wood and metal talismans carved with symbols he’s never seen before, “Walking around in that skirt. How do you manage to walk safely back home every time you go out?” he asks, as he playfully lifts a trembling hand up, stroking Cody’s thigh with his rough palm.

“Don’t do that,” Cody withdraws, hitting his hand lightly as he finishes preparing the room for the ritual.

“Why be so shy? You’re gonna shag me anyway, so,” Blaine laughs, and his laugh turns into an hard, heavy coughing, and he tilts his hand to the right to spit some blood on the floor. Then he closes his eyes and tries to breathe regularly again, but apparently his lungs refuse to be of any help. He breathes in and out slowly, too slowly for what he’d like, and when he places a hand on his stomach he can’t help but feel grossed out and quite scared by the amount of blood he’s losing. “That is if you manage to be done with your last minute decorations before my entrails leak on the floor.”

“Please, don’t joke about this,” Cody casts him a patient but clearly upset look, his pretty lips curling into a childish pout, “I’m not going to shag you, that’s a vulgar term that doesn’t describe at all what I do in here.”

“You fuck people for their own good and you make a living out of it,” Blaine laughs again, and a painful moan escapes his lips as the amount of blood dripping out of his wound doubles. “Was that descriptive enough?”

Cody doesn’t answer for quite some time, getting closer to him and examining his wound with attentive eyes. “Do you always joke like this?” he asks then, removing the sloppy bandage wrapped around his stomach, “You could be dying this very moment.”

“But I won’t,” Blaine smiles, closing his eyes and relaxing under Cody’s soothing, cool fingertips against his burning skin, “I’ve got you to do your pretty magic and take care of me.”

“I told you, it’s not magic,” Cody points out, annoyed at Blaine’s stubbornness, “It’s a sacred ritual. I invoke the Triple Goddess and ask her to cure you, and save you.”

“And why would she?” Blaine asks, his grin twisted with pain, “I’m not exactly a fan.”

“Then you’re lucky she listens to me,” Cody finishes, his voice suddenly stern, final.

Blaine decides not to speak again as he watches Cody lift up his already short skirt, showing himself naked underneath, and climb onto him, sitting on his lap. He lets out a desperate cry as he feels the light and yet apparently unbearable weight of the kid pressing against his wounded stomach, but Cody presses one of his hands on the cut and there’s that soothing coolness again, working like a charm on his feverish, quaking body.

“Ssh,” Cody whispers, leaning in on him and speaking against his lips, “Everything will be alright,” he says with a soft smile, just before kissing him.

An unexpected wave of weakness washes over Blaine’s body, leaving him tired and limp on the bed. That’s it, he thinks, That’s me, dying, but in a few seconds Cody’s lips move apart from his and the kid starts chanting something in a language he doesn’t understand, and suddenly there’s fire burning inside of Blaine’s body, not the fire that’s consuming him from his wound, but a different, healing one. He feels himself filled to the brim with strength, his heartbeat growing faster as if his heart was racing for its life, pumping new, hot blood through his veins to show the world it can still do it, it’s still strong enough to survive this.

Blaine opens his eyes wide, trying to focus on Cody, but the kid’s changed into something else. There’s a dim white glow emanating from his skin, a light that makes him look paler than the moon, and Blaine instinctively thinks that must be magic, but then there’s a voice inside of him, a female voice, speaking slowly, softly, that tells him it isn’t. There’s no magic that powerful, no magic that overwhelming, no magic that divine.

It’s something different, something holy, and right now, Cody’s not a whore, he’s a goddess.

Blaine lifts his hands, closing them strongly around Cody’s hips as the kid lifts himself up from his lap, uncovering the bulge in Blaine’s crotch. “Unbelievable,” Blaine whispers, looking at himself. The wound’s healing, but it’s not only that. There’s a new kind of power running through his veins, filling his body with strength, with light. His skin starts to glow too, golden like the sun, a perfect match for Cody’s, and when he looks up at him he notices that his eyes are the bluest he’s ever seen, actually too blue to be natural.

He feels his body changing, and it makes him tingle all over. Cody lets out a needy whimper and Blaine sees his bloody hands run to the belt keeping his pants closed. His wound is still open, but he couldn’t care less, right now. When Cody manages to get him out of his pants, he instantly pushes him down on himself, his erection almost naturally finding its way inside Cody’s body, that welcomes it eagerly, hungrily, as the kid arches his back, his body shaking with pleasure, his head thrown back, exposing his neck.

Blaine sits up, the cut on his stomach burning like hell, blood squirting out of his wound, staining Cody’s white tunic, and digs his teeth into Cody’s white skin, scratching it, drawing blood out of it too. It tastes heavenly, he tastes heavenly, and Blaine tasted magic, in his life, he tasted it on Annie’s fingertips, in her mouth and between her thighs, and it tasted nothing like this.

There’s something more. Something valuable. And despite having been on the threshold between life and death up to a moment ago, his mind’s already spinning at max speed, now, screaming we need the kid, the kid must come with us.

He comes with a deep, low growl, all the strength that filled him up until now leaking out of him with his orgasm. Suddenly, all his limbs feel heavy, and he’s not strong enough to keep himself up straight anymore. He falls back on the mattress, breathing heavily, eyes quickly losing focus of what surrounds him. He manages to look down at himself, though, and notices his wound’s completely disappeared, leaving no trace, not even a scar.

“Who the hell are you?” he whispers breathlessly as he watches Cody climb down of his body and stand up right next to him, come dripping down his thigh and onto the floor.

The kid smiles, placing a hand on his forehead. “Rest, now,” he says softly.

Blaine’s asleep before he can even notice it.

*
He wakes up hours later, though he couldn’t tell how many, not even if he wanted to. The first thing he hears is screaming, and suddenly all his kids are onto him, hugging him and tugging at his torn apart shirt, covering his face in kisses. “Now, now,” he laughs, amused, as he tries to kiss back every hungry mouth searching for his, and pat every small troubled head that tries and slip underneath his hand like a little kitten’s, “If you pull at me that way, my stitches will come off,” he jokes.

“There are no stitches, you idiot,” Leo scolds him, slapping him on his stomach to prove his point.

“It’s a miracle,” Adam nods knowingly, proud to have been the one to suggest the clearly only solution they had. Annie doesn’t answer to that – she doesn’t believe in any God, just in the strength of her own magic, that she believes it’s drawn by the world’s energy and certainly not bestowed upon her by some godly creature living in spirit form in the sky – but she’s too happy to see Blaine alive and well to waste time talking about miracles and whatnot.

“You… certainly are a colorful, funny lot,” Cody chuckles from the chair he’s been sitting in as he waited for Blaine to wake up together with the other kids. He changed his clothes, he’s now wearing another tunic, white and revealing as the one he wore as he laid with Blaine, but tighter around his chest and waist and looser around his hips, the soft silky fabric sliding down his thighs like water, showing off his curves.

“You haven’t seen the half of it,” Leo smirks, turning to look at him and eyeing his clothes. “Do you always dress like that?”

“Well,” Cody blushes, looking down at himself and closing his legs tightly, suddenly painfully self-aware of his own nakedness underneath a dress that does nothing to cover him, “I find it more practical, considering what I do.”

“More practical?” Annie looks at him too, amused by his femininity but somehow also feeling threatened by it enough not to hold back any snarky remark, “I bet you’ve got all eyes and hands on you when you walk out. Even crossing the street must be an hard task, with all those little skirts flying up with the faintest gust of wind.”

Cody looks away again, scratching his flushed cheek. “I wouldn’t know,” he admits, “I don’t go out often.”

“You don’t need to go out often to be stripped off by the wind, if you’re always wearing clothes like these,” Annie chuckles, “Just once will suffice.”

Cody’s smile gets more uneasy, as he tries to make himself even smaller on the chair by crouching his shoulders. “I suppose…” he says, vaguely.

Blaine frowns lightly, throwing his legs of the bed even though he decides to stay sit for a while, not sure he’d be able to stand straight just yet. “You do come out of this hole every now and then, don’t you?” he asks, his voice darker.

Cody smiles apologetically at him, shaking his little black haired head. “Not really, sir, no,” he says, and then blushes even more when he feels his guests’ eyes shockingly fixed on him for several seconds after his revelation. “But I don’t mind!” he hastens to say, shaking his head and waving his arms in front of himself as to blow away everybody’s concerns. “Tell me about you, instead,” he tries, hoping that a change in subject will take their thoughts away from him, “It’s so uncommon to see a man like you traveling with so many kids, unless they’re his children.”

“Well, I guess, in a way, you could say they are,” Blaine answers with a small chuckle, “Aren’t you, my dear little ones?”

“Stop calling us that,” Leo protests with a pout, “You know we don’t like it,” he turns to Cody, facing him with pride, “We’re his partners.”

“Oh,” Cody blushes, looking at him and then turning back at Blaine, “Are they?”

“I let them believe so,” Blaine answers in a small chuckle, as Adam’s hand lands on his nape with a soft slapping noise, “We’re all from a small village north of the Great Lake,” he says then, his smile softening at the memory, “Adelar, you may have heard of it.”

“Oh,” Cody’s hand runs to his mouth, covering it, “Wasn’t it one of those villages that got destroyed during the Plunderers’ Descent?”

“Exactly,” Blaine nods, “They attacked the village and set it on fire, stealing everything and everyone they could put their hands on. I managed to save these three,” he says, looking fondly at the kids, “And we’ve been traveling together ever since.”

“So you take care of them,” Cody smiles sweetly, moved by the loving way Blaine speaks about his companions.

“And we take care of him,” Leo clarifies, pouting again, “We work for him.”

“Well, we had to make a living, somehow,” Blaine explains with a short laughter, “At first they were all very small, so they depended on me for everything, and that was fine by me, but as they grew older they decided they wanted to help out, and I didn’t see why they couldn’t,” he says, shrugging casually. “We’re relic hunters, even though we only work for commission. That’s how I got hurt, we were trying to get something, but clearly it went all wrong. Even though, maybe we just didn’t have the proper equipment,” he suggests, his eyes studying Cody’s figure with interest.

“Yeah, and whose fault was that?” Adam asks mockingly, turning to look at Leo, but in doing so he manages to intercept Blaine’s gaze, and his eyes grow wide, “Oh, no. No way!”

“But why not?” Blaine asks, as Annie and Leo turn to look at him too, puzzled by what’s happening. Those two often don’t realize instantly what’s on Blaine’s mind, contrary to Adam, with whom Blaine shares the same practical way of thinking, “He’d be useful.”

“I don’t care,” Adam insists, shaking his head, “We can’t have another mouth to feed. And then look at him, he’s all pale and small, and look what he walks around in, we’d have to protect him all the time.”

“But we don’t have a healer,” Blaine points out, smiling calmly, as if already knowing he’ll win the fight in the end.

“Hey!” Annie protests, frowning, “I can heal people.”

“I know you can, princess,” Blaine turns to her and kisses her on her forehead, “But some wounds are deeper than others, and some things you can’t cure. He can, though.”

“Wait… Wait a moment,” Leo says, finally catching up, “You wanna take him with us?” he asks, turning to look at Cody, horrified, and then looking back at Blaine, “No! We don’t know him! We can’t trust him!”

“Well, he saved me, didn’t he?”

“He fucked you!” Leo points out, frowning, “That’s why you want him around.”

“Ah, baby boy,” Blaine laughs, genuinely amused, “Don’t I have enough of it from the whole of you pestering me all day? I’m merely saying we could use one like him during our missions, that’d make things easier for all of us. For you to plan our actions and for us to do as you say without fearing we’ll end up slaughtered by the end of the day,” he explains with another chuckle.

“Are you saying my plans are shit?” Leo asks in a low growl.

“E-Excuse me,” Cody’s soft voice reaches them from the other side of the room, “May I ask what you’re talking about?”

Blaine smiles charmingly, gently freeing himself from his kids’ embrace and standing up, his hands on his hips, his chin up, an amused yet intrigued light shining in his eyes. “We’re talking about asking you to come with us, pet,” he says, “If you’re interested.”

Cody instantly stands up, fear rushing to his eyes, filling them to the brim. “No!” he says hastily, and then he clears his throat, looking away, “I mean, thank you for your kindness, but I’m not allowed to leave.”

“Yeah, that much I already got all on my own, see how smart I am?” Blaine smiles, walking closer and putting two fingers under Cody’s chin, pushing it up so to meet his eyes again, “Come on, don’t tell me you never wondered about the world outside,” he goes on, smiling invitingly, “I wouldn’t believe it.”

“That’s— That’s not the point, sir,” Cody struggles to look down again, moving away from him and turning his back at them all. He doesn’t notice, but he moves his hand to his wounded arm covered in bandages, and strokes it slowly. He doesn’t notice, but Blaine does, even though he says nothing about it. “I’m fine here,” Cody goes on, repeating words like he learned them by heart and forgot he doesn’t even believe in them, “I may be curious of the world, but that doesn’t mean I want to see it. I’m just fine like this, doing my job, with the Goddess comforting me, so please, don’t worry about my well-being. I’m taken care of.”

“Yeah,” Blaine answers, frowning lightly, “I can see that.”

When the door opens, the squeaking sound it produces cuts the thick silence in half, and everybody lifts their eyes on a tall man with dark blonde hair and clear blue eyes who enters the room without knocking. “Cody—” he says, and stops abruptly when he realizes the kid isn’t alone, “What’s with all the people?”

“William!” Cody runs towards him, pressing both his hands against his chest as if to preemptively keep him from advancing any further, “They’re— He’s the man I cured this morning,” he explains with an uncertain smile, “He’s alright, now, so his companions came to pick him up. They were just leaving.”

“You wasted precious hours keeping him here after you healed him?” William asks, looking down at him with stern, cold eyes. Blaine can almost see the frightened shiver that runs down Cody’s spine as he withdraws.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “He fell asleep, I didn’t know how to move him.”

William keeps looking at him with hard harshness for a couple of seconds, and then asks, “Did they pay?”

“Yes,” Cody nods quickly, hoping that this will keep him from getting any angrier, “Yes, they already did.”

“Then go,” William says, looking up at Blaine. Their eyes meet in a deafening silence, and Blaine’s hands clutch in fists down his sides.

“Who’s he?” he ask, nodding towards William.

A spark of pure rage ignites into Williams eyes, and the man moves a step towards Blaine. “How dare you—”

“William, please,” Cody puts a hand on his forearm, trying to hold him back without him noticing, and then turns to Blaine, and smiles faintly. “He’s the one taking care of me,” he answers, “Please, go.”

Blaine keeps looking straight at William, showing no intention to move a single step until it’s Leo pressing a hand on the small of his back, pushing him towards the door. “Let’s go,” he says softly, leading him away.

They leave the building in but a few seconds, but even when they’re finally out, and the sun is warm and shining above them, and a gentle, cooling breeze ruffles their hair as they walk down the street, looking out for a place to stay for tonight, Blaine’s expression doesn’t soften. His eyes are dark and unclear, and his lips are petrified in a stern, disappointed line.

“Blaine,” Adam says, walking by his side but not looking at him, “Let it go. You can’t save him. You cannot be everybody’s hero, and besides, he doesn’t even want to be saved.”

Blaine doesn’t answer immediately, but when he does his voice is low, deep and angry. “That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have tried anyway.”

*
He wakes up earlier than anybody else. He went to sleep unwillingly, he wasn’t even tired, traces of the supernatural forces Cody had pushed inside him still in rushing through his veins together with blood, and he only desisted from staying up anyway because all the kids kept insisting and insisting until it wasn’t reasonably possible for him to explain one more time why he wasn’t sleepy at all.

They couldn’t understand it, he knows that. They have had a bad, tiring day, all they looked out for was to cuddle up with him in the bed and never wake up until it was the morning after. He, though, as much as he could like to cuddle up with them, didn’t want any of that. Strength was keeping him up, awake and aware. He could still feel its taste on his tongue. Cody’s.

He sits up on the bed, gently freeing himself from Annie’s arm over his chest, and then stands up, looking at the three kids peacefully asleep on the bed. The moment he’s out of the picture, they all get closer to one another, entangling arms and legs and hair, hugging each other exactly like they used to do when they were little and he wrapped them all in the same blanket beside the fire, as he stood awake to watch over them.

He sighs, moving to the window and resting his forearms on the windowsill, looking outside, right at the dawning sun.

He dreamt of the fire again. There was fire everywhere, and people screaming, and children wailing. The Plunderers’ black horses were running from one side of the village to the other, and everywhere there was nothing but destruction. He was trying to get out of there, but first, he was thinking, the children. He had to get the children. They were somewhere under the burning, wrecking houses, and he had to rescue them.

In the dream, he kept searching for them until he heard a muffled cry coming from under a pile of burning logs. He run there, lifted them with his bare hands – fire scraping his fingertips, burning his skin – but there weren’t Leo, Adam and Annie underneath it. It were Cody’s blue eyes, filled with tears, looking up at him and screaming “help me”.

He closes his eyes, covering his face with both his hands and exhaling slowly.

“You’re still thinking about him,” Leo says from behind him, and Blaine instantly turns around, startled by his voice.

“I thought you were sleeping,” he says with a soft smile, changing the subject.

“I was,” Leo says, “Until you got up. I searched for you, and you weren’t there, and you know you never can do that.”

“I’m sorry,” Blaine smiles again, opening his arms and waiting for Leo to come rest his head against his chest with a soft sigh, “You should go back to sleep, though. You’ve got at least another couple of hours, before we have to go.”

“Why don’t you come too?” Leo asks, tugging at the waistband of his pants, “You must be tired.”

“I’m not, kid,” Blaine smiles patiently, “I told you, that ritual put something inside me. It was more than just healing. It gave me strength, something I’ve never felt before.”

Leo looks down, sighing sadly. “That’s why you can’t stop thinking about him, isn’t it?”

“Leo…” Blaine smiles sweetly, cupping the kid’s face into his hands and making him look up, “Don’t be jealous. I promise it’s not that,” he says, leaning in to kiss him lightly on his lips, “It’s just that he gave me something, and I left him there, with that man.”

“We’re not sure he was hurting him,” Leo points out, pouting.

Blaine smiles again. “You’ve seen them,” he says, “He was frightened by him. His arm was wounded, there was a bruise on his face. He told us he never goes out of there. How much more do you need?”

Leo sighs, resting his forehead against Blaine’s naked shoulder. “So it’s like Adam said,” he whines, “You wanna be everybody’s hero,” he looks up at him, holding back the tears, “Aren’t we enough?”

“Oh, you’re more than enough, child,” he says, leaning in to kiss him again, deeper this time, ending the argument. You’re more than enough, he thinks, as he feels the crackling fire against his skin again, But if I could save just one more child, just one…

*
They’re all out on the streets a few hours later. “Alright,” Adam says, clapping his hands after he secured his sword to his hip, “Let’s put all this behind us and go back to the damn castle, this time possibly with a less stupid plan to go by.”

“My plan wasn’t the problem,” Leo snorts, looking angrily at him, “It was your blatant incompetence that got in the way.”

“How is my incompetence the reason why Blaine got hurt, considering he was protecting you?” Adam retorts, glaring at him.

“Well, maybe he was protecting me because you were doing nothing!” Leo points out, “Fifteen minutes battling with house gnomes, Adam, really?”

“They were more than twenty, for fuck’s sake!”

“At least I was trying to do something useful!”

“What, climbing a wall bare-handed under the crossfire?”

“My God, aren’t you two annoying,” Annie sighs, rolling her eyes and then slipping her arm under Blaine’s, clinging to it. “Hey, why are you so quiet?” she smiles up at him.

Blaine smiles back, lifting a hand to ruffle her red hair. “It’s nothing, princess,” he answers, “I was just thinking.”

“About the boy, am I right?” Annie’s smile falters a bit, but the grip around Blaine’s arm just tightens. “You really must have the hugest crush on him.”

“Oh, dear,” Blaine laughs, shaking his head, “Why are you all so convinced I like him that way?”

“I don’t know,” Annie shrugs, “You did have sex with him, after all.”

“He was healing me,” Blaine answers, “Saving me. I just think he’s got a valuable power, and that it’s unfair to leave him there, with that man, locked up in a dirty room fucking wounded pricks and sick old men when he could come with us, see the world, be of help. Be free.”

“You asked him,” Annie reminds him, looking up at him, “He said he didn’t want to come.”

“He was scared, princess,” Blaine tells her with a patient smile lingering on his lips, “Ask any scared child if they want to be rescued, they’ll always answer they’re fine just like that.”

“Yes, but he isn’t a child, Blaine,” she answers back, looking almost sharply at him, “We’re not helpless children anymore, and he’s our age.”

Blaine looks away, that smile still on his lips. “I know, princess,” he says, sighing softly.

Annie sighs too, looking away. “You’re not gonna get over it, are you?” she asks in a whisper, “It’s always gonne be like that. We’re always gonna be children to you, despite the things we do together, despite how much we’ve grown. And every time you’ll meet someone who’s helpless and in need, you’re always gonna take it like this. On your shoulders. Like everything else.”

Blaine lifts a hand, covering Annie’s shaking one with it, and squeezes her pale pink fingers affectionately. “I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice sounds like he is, but his heart’s racing in the other direction.

“Don’t be,” Annie says with a sigh, shaking her head, “It’s who you are, after all,” she adds with a little smile, “It’s why we love you.”

*
They pass by the house Cody lives and works in on their way out of the village. Blaine stops in front of the door and instantly Leo’s by his side, grabbing him by his elbow, urging him to move. “Come on,” he says, “We can be halfway there by noon if we leave now.”

“Yes,” Blaine says, his eyes fixed on the building, “Yes, I’m only going to stop for a minute. Say thanks and bye, see if everything’s alright,” he adds, freeing himself of Leo’s hold and walking into the place.

Leo watches him go with no looking back and sighs deeply, biting at his bottom lip.

“Come on,” Adam says, patting his shoulder and then pushing him towards the building too, “Let’s go after him, see he doesn’t put himself into any unnecessary danger.”

Leo looks down and nods, but his eyes are dark. “I don’t see why he has to do this,” he says, disheartened.

“It’s in his nature,” Adam shrugs.

“It’s what brought him to save us in first place,” Annie says, walking next to them.

So we should be grateful, Leo thinks. But he doesn’t say it out loud, because he just feels jealous.

Inside, the room is dark and stinks just like they remember it from yesterday. Only the curtain separates them from the other room, and Blaine quickly sets it aside, walking in. He stops right there, though, on the doorstep, his eyes growing wide as they fall on Cody’s small frame all curled up in a corner of the bed, his face a mask of bruises and curdled blood, his body covered in scratches, the bandage around his arm undid, showing a nasty, still unhealed cut down his forearm.

“Oh, Goddess,” he whimpers, bringing his arms around his chest and then over his face, sheltering himself, “You shouldn’t have come back.”

“What is it?” Leo asks, lifting himself on his tiptoes to look past Blaine’s shoulders. His jaw drops the moment he sees Cody, and in his eyes there’s the same horror that dawns into Adam’s and Annie’s when they, too, get to see the condition Cody lies in. “My God, what happened to you?”

Despite remembering perfectly well how awful, and painful, and tragic the burning of their village was, since then none of them has ever felt any real pain. Blaine has sheltered them like a big oak down whose branches they could swing with no fear of falling down and bruise themselves. They’ve been protected, they’ve been secure. It had never occurred to them, before, that somebody could be provided for by someone else who also caused them harm. In their simple mind, that the same man who feeds and provides a roof over Cody’s head could also be the one who hits him and then leaves him alone, bleeding on his bed, sounds just as sick as pillagers ravaging a village filled with innocent people.

Cody brings his knees to his chest, groaning in pain and involuntarily showing the huge purple bruise that covers his side, just over his ribs, and that’s enough to make something switch into the kids. Leo pushes Blaine into the room and out of the way, “Let me pass!” he yells, as he runs towards the bed, kneeling on it and looking at Cody from every angle, “What the hell happened to you?”

“Was it that man?” Adam asks, briskly grabbing Cody’s arms by his wrists and pulling them away from his face, “Is he still around? Why didn’t you do your thing and cured yourself, you silly? You’re all black and blue.”

“I…” Cody starts, looking at them with huge, scared eyes, “I can’t do the ritual to myself, it’s—”

“Useless, that’s what it is,” Annie snorts, moving Leo aside to kneel next to Cody, “Let me take care of it. Magic might be unholy, as you called it, but at least it’s effective.”

No one seems to care about Blaine anymore, and he’s left a few steps away from the door, looking at his kids taking care of another kid. Saving him, somehow, like he saved them ten years ago. The vague knowledge of the fact that they’re able to stand on their own feet now only briefly crosses his mind. Sometimes he just thinks he needs to know he still has to take care of them more than they need to be taken care of at all.

“What the hell’s happening here?” somebody says, entering the room a few moments after. Blaine turns to look at him and instantly recognizes him as the man they saw yesterday, William.

Blaine only needs to see the way Cody curls against the wall, almost clawing at it in a desperate attempt to even climb it if it helps him get as far away as possible, shaking, wailing, terrified, to decide what to do.

He turns around, and reaches out for William. His hand closes tightly around his neck, and despite the fact that, slim as he is, he certainly isn’t fragile nor skinny, his bones feels thin like sticks under his fingertips.

“What—” William tries, but Blaine’s fingers tighten their grip around his throat and cut his breath, as he gets easily lifted up in the air, his legs kicking aimlessly and his hands desperately hitting Blaine’s as he tries to make him let go of him.

“Blaine!” Leo calls out, but he shuts up instantly when he sees Blaine’s skin glowing golden.

“What the hell…?” Adam says, astonished, and when Cody jumps up from the bed, standing still in front of it with his arms rigid and his fists clutched down his sides, he asks “You know what it is?”

“He knows,” Blaine answers. His eyes are red as fire, now, and the glow emanating from his skin is warm as sunlight, “It’s the power you gave me, pet. I’m using it to pay you back.”

“Wait—” the kid says in a strangled whisper, eyes filled with that bottomless fear, so typical of children, the one that would make you adore the hand that hits you just because you know nothing else, just because you fear that, once it’s gone, there’s going to be nothing else for you.

But Blaine doesn’t wait. His fingers close violently around William’s neck, snapping it with an ugly cracking sound. William falls to the ground, gargling blood for a couple of seconds, his whole body convulsing restlessly until it moves no more. His open eyes are left to stare into the void, and Cody stares into them, and he feels faint, and he drops to his knees and screams, so hard and for so long that, when he’s done, the other kids’ ears are ringing.

He stays crouched on the dirty floor, his hands closed in fists, his small shoulders shaking with sobs. Blaine walks to him, but he doesn’t kneel beside him, he doesn’t even touch him.

“You’re on your own, now,” he says, the glowing light of his skin slowly fading away, “I’m gonna ask you one last time, so make it the correct answer. Do you want to come with us?”

Cody looks up at him, breathing heavily. There’s a lost expression on his face, but there are no tears in his eyes.

*
Cody’s shoulders are already red and showing freckles, and they’ve only been on the road an hour. “We’re gonna have to find him something else to wear,” Annie muses, looking at him, “I don’t think we have something that fits him, right now. I think he’s got a thinner waistline than I have, I’m kinda jealous.”

“He’ll thicken up,” Blaine smiles fondly as he takes off his shirt and wraps it around Cody’s shoulders. It’s so big on him that it almost looks like a cloak. “How does the world look, pet?” he asks curiously.

Cody smiles excitedly, casting eager, hungry looks all around himself, to the road, the mountains on the horizon, the quiet river alive with fishes and a thousand other water animals they’re following. “Different than the last time I saw it,” he answers with a small chuckle.

“When was it?” Leo asks in a bored, forced voice, looking away. He’s trying very, very hard not to show any interest, but Blaine knows better.

“Um, when William bought me, I guess,” Cody answers with a small, embarrassed smile, “Ten years ago, more or less.”

“That’s a lot of time,” Adam comments, casting him a suspicious look, “So you were free, before?”

“I suppose,” Cody nods, “But I didn’t see much of the world back then either. I lived in a convent.”

“What?” Leo snorts, looking at him in shock, “What kind of nuns sell a child to a man like that?!”

“Um,” Cody, mutters, blushing and looking down, “I suppose… not very pleasant ones,” he says.

Blaine squeezes his shoulder, laughing out loud in amusement.

The road goes on in a straight line for miles in front of them. It’s surprisingly reassuring.
Genere: Commedia, Erotico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC, OMC/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lime, What If?.
- Blaine has been Leo's boyfriend for three years and a half, but they broke up. Their break up was ugly enough to let Blaine think he'd have nothing to do with the kid or his friends again for the rest of his life, but one sunday morning somebody knocks at his door and it's Adam, Leo's former best friend, now promoted boyfriend, with a favor to ask and in serious need of help.
Note: Omg, finalmente, finalmente, per la prima volta da quando il Def ha cominciato ad organizzare il MMOM italiano, riesco a prendervi parte *A* Ho approfittato della mia recente voglia di scrivere Blaine/Adam (il Leoverse è la mia religione e la Tab è la mia papessa) e dei meravigliosi set offerti quest'anno dalla community. Ogni prompt verrà utilizzato per scrivere un capitolo, per un totale di dieci capitoli si spera non tutti lunghi quanto il primo perché sennò non ne esco viva. Vi direi "enjoy!", ma nessuno leggerà mai questa storia, solito what if? del 'verse principale, per cui. XD
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
ADAM’S HANDS’ LESS THAN EPIC ADVENTURES

1. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Blaine’s break up with Leo has been ugly enough not to make him want to see the kid ever again. It’s not that he holds grudges against him, more like the fact that, when they actually broke up, it came after months (and months) (and months) of stalling and waiting and sulking and moping and regretting and a lot of other unpleasant words all ending in -ing. Sure, he remembers Leo and him had a pretty good time, when they were together, but whatever good they had was completely destroyed by those months in which they both knew one of them had to find the guts to just put an end to their misery, and none of them would.

In the end, Blaine decided it was his duty, after all. He was older, wiser, and at some point he just couldn’t take it anymore. It was unfair to wait for Leo to take responsibility in breaking up, and Blaine clearly remembers how surprising it has been to find out how easy breaking up actually was. Just sitting down around a table and say goodbye.

He keeps a good, pleasant memory of his relationship with Leo, but their break up has been definitive enough to let him believe he wouldn’t have to have anything to do with him or his friends anymore for the rest of his life.

So, when Adam – which he remembers to be Leo’s best friend since kindergarten – shows up on his doorstep on Sunday morning, interrupting his beauty sleep and finding him practically half naked, at first he doesn’t even know how to take it.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks, peeking right and left to see if Leo’s with him and looking back at him in clear astonishment when he realizes Adam’s alone.

“I need a favor,” Adam answers. He’s looking away and he’s kind of blushing. Last time Blaine had a boy in his teens with flushed cheeks and eyes locked on the ground on his doorstep, it didn’t end well.

“You walked a long way for some sugar, didn’t you?” he asks, arching an eyebrow.

“What?” Adam asks back, puzzled, and then he frowns. “No, you idiot, I don’t need fucking sugar. Are you completely retarded or something?”

“And this puts me in such a good disposition towards you, doesn’t it?” Blaine snorts, hands on his hips, blocking the door as if to make clear Adam’s not gonna come in.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Adam just growls, pushing him back inside the house and then coming in as well, closing the door behind himself with a kick.

“What the hell?!” Blaine yells, pushing him away, “Are you out of your fucking mind? Get out of here!”

“Would you shut up?!” Adam growls in frustration, pacing the room like a beast in a cage, “Just… sit down and hear me out, if you can actually manage to shut that hole for a second!”

“Alright! God, alright!” Blaine screams, dropping on the couch and crossing his arms over his chest. Wearing only his underpants makes him feel slightly uncomfortable, but it’s nothing compared to the blind rage he feels swelling in his stomach. What the hell does this kid want from him?! Can’t he just go?! “Speak. Quickly.”

Adam sits down on the coffee table right in front of him. Blaine tries the impossible not to yell at him to stand up immediately, but it’s useless. The only problem is that, when he actually opens his mouth to scold him, Adam’s quicker to talk.

“I’m Leo’s boyfriend, now,” he says, and Blaine arches his eyebrows, looking at him in complete bewilderment.

“You?” he asks, “That’s not possible. You were straight, I remember that.”

“Well, yeah, surprise,” Adam shrugs, “Apparently, I wasn’t.”

Blaine frowns, crossing his legs. “Alright, congratulations. I’m happy you saw the light. Anyway, as you can see, I’m not Dr. Drew, so what the hell—”

“We’re having issues,” Adam says. His eyes drop to the floor again. Blaine’s starting to find it unbearable.

“Issues,” he says. “Well, not my problem, is it? Work it out. You don’t need a translator, he speaks English just like you do. Better, perhaps, but still.”

Adam looks back at him, anger burning in his eyes. “You’re the most irritating and unnerving man I ever met!” he says. He never liked Blaine that much, this Blaine can remember very well. He supposes now all the raging jealousy and all the snarky remarks make sense, what with Adam clearly being in love with Leo since the beginning of time and all, but still. “I’d punch you right in the face if I didn’t need your help.”

“Yes, about that,” Blaine snorts, “You still haven’t told me why on earth would you need my help, and nothing you said up to now was of any indication about it. So what? Speak fast and clear, and then get the fuck out.”

Adam keeps looking at him, eyes shining with pure hate and a touch of shame, every line of his body and face so tense Blaine thinks he’d break if he tried to touch him. And then he says it. “Leo’s not satisfied with the way we have sex, you have to teach me how to do it better.”

For more than a couple of minutes, Blaine can do nothing but stare blankly at him, as if he had suddenly started speaking in an alien language. “Excuse me?” he asks then, when his voice finally manages to find its way out of his throat.

“You have to help me,” Adam answers, “Or Leo will leave me.”

“Alright, first of all, surprisingly enough, I do not care!” Blaine yells, standing up and nervously walking around the couch, as if putting some space in between himself and Adam could help him get away from his clear insanity, “Secondly, but more importantly, what?! Why should I help you?”

“Well, it’s your fault he’s like this, isn’t it?” Adam stands up, following him around and forcing him to back away every time he comes closer, “You’re the one who fucked him non-stop for three years! You basically programmed him to be like this.”

“Like what?!”

“Like this!” Adam insists, gesturing vaguely, “He can never get enough of it! He’s always asking for more, like, he can’t be stopped! Do you have an even vague idea of what it is to try and keep his rhythm? Last night he had to came thrice before he considered himself satisfied! Thrice! I couldn’t even move my legs the morning after!”

“I didn’t want to know any of this!” Blaine barks, horrified, flailing his arms in mid-air. First rule of everybody who’s talking with the ex of his own boyfriend: you don’t talk about sex. Ever! Adam’s incredibly ill-mannered. There was a time in which gay people were the best people. Now they let everybody become part of the club, it’s outrageous. “Adam, listen, I’m sorry you can’t keep up with Leo’s appetite, but I can assure you I didn’t make him like this, I just popped open the ready to explode champagne bottle he was. What came out of it is not my responsibility, and it sure isn’t my responsibility that you’re with him now, so no, I won’t help you. You can go.”

Adam frowns, clutching his fists down his sides. “It is your fault, whether you want to admit it or not.”

“Alright!” Blaine snorts, “I don’t care! It’s my fault, but I don’t care! Better? Now, go.”

“I can’t!” Adam yells, and as he does it, his voice breaks. It’s a small change in the sound it makes, vulnerability and fear and frustration leaking out of the crack as he looks down again in shame. “If I don’t do anything about it, he’ll leave me. Or I’ll die from exhaustion, but it’ll be worse if he leaves me.” He looks up again, searching for Blaine’s eyes. “I can’t stand the thought of him leaving me. I’ve wanted him since I can remember, and now he’s mine, and I’m…” he sighs, looking down again, “Not enough. But you were,” he says, and his eyes search for Blaine’s once more, “You were, and I want you to teach me how to be enough myself. I swear I will never bother you again, but please… help me.”

It’s weird to see Adam like this. He’s never been really tough in his life, but he’s always been the kind who would have died before showing weakness. He must be desperate, Blaine thinks, and he can’t help a small amused smile to curl his lips up. “God, have you always been such a drama queen or did you become one after you went gay?”

Adam instantly frowns, growling at him. “You’re an asshole!” he says, “I should have never come here!”

Blaine laughs. That’s more like the Adam he knows. “You’re right, you shouldn’t have,” he says, and then sighs, “But alright.”

Adam, who was already heading for the door, stops on the spot, turning around to look at him. “What?”

“I said alright,” Blaine repeats, passing a hand through his hair, “I’ll help you.”

The ghost of a smile starts to linger on Adam’s lips, but he instantly stops it. “Wait, you’re not messing with me, are you? ‘Cause I really need help, and if you plan to make me believe you’re helping just to mock me, I swear, I’ll cut your dick in your sleep.”

“It’s good to know you already want to shove your hands down my pants,” Blaine nods, “That’s the spirit.”

“I’m serious,” Adam insists, crossing his arms over his chest, “Promise this is for real.”

“Kids,” Blaine sighs, shaking his head. “I promise I’m not messing with you, and that I’ll do my best to help you with your problems. In return, you’ll promise me that, the moment we’re done with this, you’ll get out of my life and never look for me again. Do we have a deal?”

“No,” Adam answers, shaking his head.

“What?” Blaine snorts, surprised.

“Well, not yet!” Adam explains, walking back to the couch and sitting down, “We have to set rules. We can’t just go and take things for granted, we have to discuss the terms of this agreement.”

“I’m not taking money for this,” Blaine says, making a face.

“Good, I wasn’t going to offer you any,” Adam nods.

“Now I want them just to spite you,” Blaine snorts, but Adam ignores him.

“Rule number one,” he starts listing, “There will be no kissing. And no touching. And absolutely no fucking.”

“God almighty,” Blaine rolls his eyes, “How am I supposed to teach you things if I can’t show you them?!”

“We didn’t need to dissect a human body to know biology in school!” Adam points out, “So you don’t need to fuck me to teach me sex. It’s simple.”

“Alright, alright!” Blaine shakes his head, “As if I could ever want to touch you anyway!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Adam frowns, narrowing his eyes and looking suspiciously at him, “You saying I’m ugly?”

“What?”

“You just said it,” Adam explains, “You said you wouldn’t touch me with a stick.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“So you would.”

“I didn’t say that either!” Blaine looks at him, eyes wide with unbelief, “Are you completely out of your mind?”

“I’m just trying to understand,” Adam shrugs, looking away, “Would you fuck me or not?”

“I wouldn’t!”

“So you think I’m ugly.”

“Nobody in their right mind would think you’re ugly, Adam!” Blaine yells, his hands in his hair, “You look like you just came out of a boyband! Of course I think you’re hot!”

“Ah!” Adam points the finger at him, “Suppress that thought!”

“What?!”

“Suppress it!” he insists, pointing the same finger right against Blaine’s nose, accusingly, “You can’t think I’m hot!”

“Okay, then!” Blaine yells in frustration, “You’re ugly!”

“You can’t think I’m ugly either!”

“Adam, for fuck’s sake!” Blaine hits the armrests of the armchair with both his hands, “I won’t try and fuck you! I promise! That enough for you, can we move on already?!”

Adam’s lips curl in a smartass smile, as he leans against the back of the couch. “Rule number two,” he says, that smile still lingering on his lips, “You don’t mock me. And, if you do, expect me to do the same.”

Blaine’s jaw drops, his eyes growing wide as he searches for something smart to say and comes up with exactly nothing. “…you’re a devil,” he exhales then, his shoulders relaxing a little. “Alright, I got it. I’ll be good. No mocking, so never mess around with me like that again. If I get angry, I’ll kick you right out of my house. That’s my rule.”

Adam nods. “It’s acceptable,” he concedes, “Rule number three—”

“More rules?” Blaine whines.

“Rule number three,” Adam repeats, glaring at him, “This never goes out of here. Leo must never know. You have to promise you’ll never tell him, whatever happens between us. Even if I make you the angriest you’ve ever been, you don’t use this to make me pay. Promise?”

Blaine sighs, looking at him and shaking his head. “Adam, I haven’t spoken with Leo once in the last year and a half, and I don’t intend to. Your secret’s safe with me.”

Adam nods, offering him half a smile. “I figured that much,” he says, “That’s why I came here. Besides the fact that I honestly believe that you’re the only one who can help me with my problem, of course.”

“Yes, what about it?” Blaine asks, frowning curiously, “I mean, try and be clear about it. Is it just that you can’t manage two or three times in a row?”

“Not just that,” Adam sighs, and he looks down again, his cheeks flushed as he speaks. “He says I’m boring.”

“You’re what?”

“Boring!” Adam yells, standing up and flailing his arms in the air in disbelief, “Can you believe it? I’m a fucking football player, I’m probably the hardest fuck he ever had, but he doesn’t care about strength, of course he doesn’t, no, he wants diversity! Not only he wants to do it three times a day, but he also wants those three times to be all different between them and between the ones from the previous day and the ones from the next!” He stops for a moment, thinking about what he just said. “He’s honestly unbelievable, I don’t know how you managed.”

“Well, I have imagination,” Blaine answers, arching an eyebrow, “You should too. You’re a football player, okay, but you’re an artist too, aren’t you?”

“What does this have to do with sex?” Adam asks, blinking at him.

Blaine stares at him blankly for a few seconds. “Are you stupid?”

“No,” Adam frowns, answering as if that was a real question and, in doing so, showing he is indeed stupid, despite what he might think.

“Alright, let’s just… move on,” Blaine sighs, shaking his head. “So, you’ve got no fantasy whatsoever when sex is involved. And you lack in stamina. We can work on that. Let’s start.” He stands up, walks towards Adam and drops his underpants, kicking them away. “Jerk me off.”

“I will never, ever touch you, not even with a fiery stick!” Adam yells, backing off a few steps and actually shielding himself with both his raised arms, “Ew, that’s disgusting!”

Blaine arches an eyebrow, completely unimpressed at him. “Well, we’ve got to work on your technique too. How can I, if I don’t know how good or bad are you with your hands?”

“My hands are in no way involved in this process!” Adam says, his eyes growing wide.

“Oh, come on,” Blaine laughs, amused, “Stop being a pussy and talking nonsense, of course your hands are…” he stops for a moment, focusing better on Adam and his completely astonished, almost shocked expression. His smile quickly fades from his lips. “Adam, you do actually know you have to use hands too during sex, don’t you?”

Adam doesn’t answer.

“Adam!” Blaine barks at him, almost scaring him away.

“What?!”

“You don’t touch him?!” he asks, “You don’t even jerk him off while you have sex?! Are you serious?”

“I can’t touch his dick, come on!” Adam whines, annoyed, “He’s a guy!”

“Well, yes, of course!”

“He can touch it by himself! He has hands too, you know?”

“Yes, I do, but that’s not the point at all!” Blaine explains, almost refusing to believe he really heard what Adam said, “When you have sex with somebody, you touch them! It’s obvious, and the person you have sex with expects you to, just as you expect them to do the same with you.”

“I don’t expect Leo to touch me,” Adam snorts, making a face, “In fact, I don’t let him.”

Blaine’s arms drop down his sides, as he keeps looking at Adam as if he’s starting to believe this must be a dream. “You don’t let him touch you,” he repeats, just to be sure he got that right.

“Of course I don’t,” Adam confirms, almost proud with himself, “If I don’t touch him, I can’t expect him to do the same. And it’s better, really. Touching is awkward.”

“Awkward,” Blaine repeats again, slowly walking back to the couch and sitting down. He’s already weary, and they haven’t even properly started yet. “Adam, come here, please.” Adam blinks a couple of times, but then walks towards him and sits down, far enough not to find his nakedness threatening. “Listen to me,” Blaine says with a sigh, passing a hand over his face, “Basically everything you just said up to now is disturbing me so much I’m almost uncomfortable. You’re messed up, my friend.”

“We’re not friends.”

“Yes, we’re not, but you’re still messed up,” Blaine sighs again. “Now, if what you want from me is some sex tips and some sort of lessons to make you better in bed, I can do that, it’s no big deal. I’m qualified, I’ve got patience, I still care for Leo enough not to want him forever stuck with an animal with no sexual skills whatsoever, but… if you expect me to do so, you’ve got to be ready to experiment. To try new things out. Like, this fact that you don’t touch. Seriously? What’s the problem with touching?”

Adam looks away, shifting uncomfortably on the couch. “It’s… well, Leo’s a boy.”

“Yes, I believe we already discussed the topic.”

“This means he’s got a dick.”

“Obviously.”

“Yeah, but not only!” Adam insists, “I mean… it’s the whole thing. He’s got a male body. The shape of his body, the way he responds to things… I mean,” he sighs, looking away again, “I adore him, he’s the best thing that ever happened to me and I find him sexy, and I want him, but he’s just… it’s awkward, for me, to touch a male body. I’m not used to it.”

Blaine leans against the back of the couch, intently looking at him. “Alright, Adam,” he nods, “I understand that. Really, I do. But you’re with him, now. You’ve got to get used to it. It’s the first step. How can you expect to get better at sex if you can’t even touch him properly?”

Adam raises his eyes on him, his lips curled into a small pout. He’s pretty cute, right now, with his blond hair and his perfectly chiseled features and skin. Blaine finds it easy to understand why Leo would fall for such a beauty. And he also finds it easy to understand how disappointed he could be to learn not always a perfect beauty makes for a perfect match.

“I suppose you’re right,” Adam concedes, sighing deeply. He stares into the void for a moment, and then seems to come back into himself. “Okay, let’s do it.”

“Let’s do what?” Blaine asks, blinking a couple of time.

“I’ll jerk you off,” Adam answers, moving closer to the couch, “You’re not ugly, you’re being kind to me. I can do this.”

“Now, now, I’m moved. Stop before I start crying,” Blaine says, arching an eyebrow, “But, now that I think about it, isn’t this against rule number one?”

“Well, this isn’t the real thing, is it?” Adam shrugs, “I mean, this is not a proper lesson. It’s some sort of preliminary evaluation. Yes, it is. Those rules don’t apply.”

“Honestly,” Blaine half-laughs, “I’ve been talking to you for less than twenty minutes and I have no idea how your mind works, but I can tell already it’s a dark, scary place.”

“Fuck you,” Adam snorts carelessly, “Now, can you just shut up and let me jerk you off?”

“Oh, my God, Adam, you’re so romantic!” Blaine mocks him, one hand on his heart, “Be careful, you’ll make me fall in love.”

“God, do you ever shut that mouth of yours?” Adam sighs, shaking his head in surrender as he casts a desperate glance to the ceiling.

Blaine’s just about to say something else, when Adam’s hand lands on his cock, slapping it a little.

“Ouch!” he grumbles, glaring at him, “Would you please be gentle? I’m not made of iron.”

“Aren’t you?” Adam smirks, his fingers closing around Blaine’s still soft cock, “Leo could go on for hours about how hard you always were. Listening to him, it seemed you never had it down or something. I used to wonder if it was true or if he was just exaggerating.”

“It makes me really happy to know you used to fantasize about the hardness of my cock when I was your best friend’s boyfriend,” Blaine smirks.

Adam scoffs a laughter and playfully glares at him as he starts to stroke him gently, as he’d do with himself. “Sometimes I really did, you know?” he says, looking down at him as he feels him grow bigger and harder between his fingers.

“What?” Blaine asks in disbelief, his eyes fixed on Adam’s concentrated expression.

“Yeah,” Adam laughs, embarrassed, “I was kinda curious. Not that I realized. You think I’m messed up now? You have no idea how messed up my mind was two years ago. Most of the time I couldn’t even think straight. I had all these urges and needs that I couldn’t understand— I mean, not that I didn’t understand what they were or what they meant, I just couldn’t accept them, you know what I mean?”

Blaine chuckles, relaxing against the back of the couch and sliding down a little, breathing slowly in and out as he closes his eyes, Adam’s fingers getting warmer and a little slicker around him. “Yes, I know. Go on.”

“Talking?”

“That too, if you like,” Blaine laughs.

Adam laughs too, still embarrassed but finding out that speaking as he strokes him makes the whole thing less awkward. “Well, anyway. I used to lie down on my bed, shut the door, close my eyes and, you know, turn my brain off. That way, I couldn’t control my fantasies anymore. They just came straight dancing in front of my eyes, and they were what they were, and I decided I wouldn’t feel guilty about them.” He shrugs, passing his thumb over the head of Blaine’s now hard erection, “And sometimes it was Leo, and sometimes it was some faceless nobody, and sometimes it was you.”

“Me?” Blaine asks in a laughter that comes out muffled by the fact that he’s biting down at his bottom lip hard, his toes already curling with every shock of pleasure that the movement of Adam’s hand sends bolting through his entire body.

“Yeah,” Adam admits with an embarrassed laughter, “I hated you, but you still were one of the most beautiful men I had ever seen in my life,” he stops for a moment, and when he starts stroking Blaine again, he does it looking up at him, eyes fixed on his, “You still are.”

Blaine comes quietly, but only because he had promised himself so. The shiver that runs up and down his body isn’t quite at all, though, and it forces him to grab the armrest with one of his hands to try and stop himself from shaking.

It’s just a moment. It passes soon, and then he’s back to normal.

God, how much he loves coming.

“So?” Adam asks eagerly, reaching for his backpack and retrieving a tissue to wipe the trace of Blaine’s orgasm off his palm, “Was I any good?”

He hasn’t been half bad, but Blaine can’t risk to say that, can he?

“Let’s just say you need a lot of practice, my friend,” Blaine says with a smirk, standing up and stretching out, “Now, I’m going to go and take a shower, and when I’m done with it I’ll come back here, and you’ll be already out,” he says, heading for the bathroom door without even turning around to say goodbye.

He hasn’t even told Adam when he should be expecting a call for another lesson. It doesn’t matter, though. “I’m not your friend,” Adam grumbles, frowning.

He leaves the house right after that.

to be continued

Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC, Blaine/fem!OMC, Blaine/fem!OMC/OMC.
Rating: R.
AVVISI: AU, Threesome, Genderswap, Slash, Het, Angst, OC.
- "Blaine brings the girl home on a cold winter night, and despite all the talking that preceded the event Leo just can’t help how annoyed he feels about it."
Note: Scritta per la #Uovachallenge con prompt Threesome, Genderswap ed Angst.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
VOICELESS SCREAMING

Blaine brings the girl home on a cold winter night, and despite all the talking that preceded the event Leo just can’t help how annoyed he feels about it. It’s not just the mere fact of having to welcome a complete stranger into his own home out of the goodness of Blaine’s heart – if goodness is just what it is, though; Leo has heard him talking about her countless time, and there’s no philanthropic desire alone behind the spark the lights his eyes, or the sweet note that softens his voice.

It’s something else, and Leo doesn’t hide it, he’s not ashamed – he’s dead jealous of Connie.

Before her, the only time he had seen Blaine lighten up so much about something, has been about him. It’s not like he feels unloved, now, he’s pretty good at understanding Blaine’s volatile and somehow annoying way of expressing love, and he’s sure Blaine still loves him. That’s not the point, he’s not scared of Blaine leaving him, he knows it’s not about to happen and it may as well never happen at all. But Blaine’s heart is not a single thing, it’s divided into small pieces, crumbs and bits he left on the way with every single person he’s been with and who has meant something for him. Now, Leo knows the biggest part of Blaine’s heart is with him all the time. But losing a bit of it always hurts him more than he feels inclined to tolerate, and he’s seen that bit getting lost over Connie easily, in the last few days.

That knowledge alone was enough to hurt over. Now, having her around in his own house, is only making things worse.

“You’re angry at me, aren’t you?” Blaine smiles, turning over and placing an arm over Leo’s chest, getting closer to him on the bed.

“Yeah,” Leo answers with a sigh, his hands moving over Blaine’s forearm, lazily caressing it, “Is it so obvious?”

“It is,” Blaine smiles again, leaning in to place a soft kiss over Leo’s cheek, “I want you to know I’m very grateful for the way you’re handling this.”

“Yeah,” Leo snorts, “Definitely husband-of-the-years award worth winning. I’m so understanding, so faithful I even accept the presence of your wannabe lover in my house.”

“Whoa,” Blaine laughs softly against his skin, his hand running down Leo’s side in a tender caress, “Now, you’re not my husband, Connie’s not my wannabe lover and I’m pretty sure you’re not accepting her presence here particularly goodheartedly, so…”

“Shut up,” Leo cuts the argument, turning on his side and pressing his lips against Blaine’s. He lets out a deep sigh, closing his eyes as he feels Blaine’s hand press on the small of his back, pulling him closer. If he only concentrates on the warmth emanating from Blaine’s skin, wrapping him up like a soft blanket, he can pretend none of this is happening. That the girl isn’t here, that her being here doesn’t make him feel weak and insecure, that Blaine’s resigned smile doesn’t mean that he can’t help wanting her here, because he just does. Leo loves Blaine so much, but dealing with him sometimes just hurts in deep, secret ways he almost can’t stand. “Is she gonna stay long?”

“I don’t think so,” Blaine shakes his head, and by the sound of his voice Leo can tell he’s not lying, “I’m trying to arrange for some other place for her to stay. Sam says there’s a flat up for rent in her condo, she’s in talks with the landlord. It’ll be free in a couple of weeks, and then I think she’s going to move there.”

“But you’ll have to pay the rent,” Leo sighs, rolling his eyes, “Seriously, how much is she going to cost us?”

“I’ll make it work,” Blaine answers with a short laughter that means a lot, but you won’t even notice.

“Whatever,” Leo sighs, resting his head against Blaine’s shoulder. “Seriously, though. This hero complex of yours. Stop saving people, already.”

Blaine lets out a small, amused laughter, hugging Leo closer as he kisses him affectionately. “Don’t you want me to save you from your anger, now?” he asks, his hand already traveling down the curve of Leo’s spine, aiming for his ass.

“Mmh,” Leo bites his bottom lip, trying to conceal a smile and failing, “You can stop from tomorrow, then.”

*

The bandage covering Connie’s wounds is thick, but every single morning, when Leo looks at it, he finds it stained with blood. It’s like her body wouldn’t heal. She doesn’t cry, never does, but her wounds keep bleeding. Leo has no idea how this works – when he cuts himself mincing parsley, whether he puts a band aid on the wound or not, it always stops bleeding in just a few minutes; he can’t see why it should be different for Connie – but he knows he finds the thought unsettling and disturbing.

He asked Blaine about it, in the past few days. “Shouldn’t she have stopped, already?” he said, watching curiously as Blaine threw away the dirty bandages after changing them, “Isn’t she gonna bleed out, if she keeps going like this?”

“It’s not her wounds that are bleeding,” Blaine just answered. Leo didn’t got what he meant, but he’s pretty sure he didn’t mean Connie’s transpiring blood or anything. It must have something to do with a bleeding heart and so on, but to be honest Leo’s never been much of a poet, and as much as he understands about human suffering – especially considering he takes his own in great consideration – he’s not inclined to think so poetically about Connie’s condition.

She’s a girl who suffered. But she attempted to do something stupid. She failed at it – or better, Blaine was stubborn and good at his job enough to bring her back despite her efforts – and now she’s got to face the consequences of her actions. She’s got to deal with them. She’s got to live with them. And herself. That’s all. That’s not what makes her bleed. Her wounds make her bleed. The rest is inside. That’s the hardest part, Leo thinks. The wounds inside, the ones you can’t see. They’re not making her bleed, they’re destroying her from the darkness of corners of her mind that she probably isn’t even aware of.

Leo’s scared of Connie. She’s a tiny, pretty, fragile thing, her skin so pale sometimes he thinks he could take a peek underneath it, her shoulders-long dark hair falling straight down her cheeks, framing her delicate features like a Renaissance picture lady; she’s quite and discreet and her voice is soft and charming in its own way, but Leo’s scared of her. Scared of the darkness inside her, of the way her always dry baby blue eyes seem to double their size with fear and loneliness.

She’s a breakable thing. A breakable thing sometimes he wishes he was able to break.

And that’s what scares him the most.

*

It’s weird, almost comical to think about it, but it’s way easier to deal with Connie when Blaine’s around. If he’s home, both their attention – Leo’s and Connie’s – is completely absorbed by the man. He’s a filter between them, he’s also the North both their compasses points towards. When Blaine’s home, Leo deal with Connie through him, which basically means Blaine’s the one dealing and Leo just keeps asking questions to try and get up to date with the whole situation without having to experience it firsthand.

It’s easier, safer, and Leo’s more comfortable with it. He doesn’t have to step out of his comfort zone to reach out for her, forcing her to step out of her own too. Blaine’s better at reaching out for people – he never pulls them in towards himself, he’s the one getting closer, he’s the one adapting. So you can basically keep being yourself as he molds himself around you to better welcome your shape inside his own.

That’s what he did with Leo right from the start, at least, and judging by the way Connie reacts around him Leo has all the reasons to believe that’s what Blaine did with her too.

She even smiles at him.

She’s the prettiest thing, when she smiles. She’s got thin, well-shaped lips, the corners of which barely curl upwards when she does it. Hers is a sweet but sad smile. “It makes me hurt,” Blaine said one of the first times he told him about her, back when she was still recovering at the hospital.

“How’s that so?” Leo asked, unable to understand how could it be possible, “Smiles mean happiness. They should bring happiness to others too.”

“Not every smile,” Blaine answered, smiling sadly. There Leo understood what he meant, because Blaine’s sad smile, it didn’t bring him happiness at all, only a strange, desperate urge to wipe it off his face with kisses.

“Do you want something else to eat?” he asks, breaking the silence in the living room for the first time in hours.

Connie looks up at him, surprised to hear his voice. She looks down at the table covered in trays and plates filled with only half-eaten food – Leo finds it easier to just shower her in food during meals; he has no idea what to do with her, most of the time, so when he found out she actually enjoyed eating, as much as her recovery let her, he decided that would be his way to compensate with all the other things he had no idea how to provide, because he had no idea what could them be – and then looks back up at him, shaking her head. “I’m stuffed,” she answers.

“You feel sick?” Leo inquires, standing up as if to be ready to rush to her aid if necessary.

“No, I’m fine,” she hastens to say, shaking her head, “I’m just full. Thank you for taking care of me.” Leo just nods, and silence falls heavy and uncomfortable over them again. “I’m a little sleepy,” Connie says after a while, slowly standing up, “Can I be excused?”

Leo nods, feeling as always awkward and embarrassed when Connie acts so ceremoniously with him, which often happens. He’s used to her getting sleepy all the time, though. Her meds tend to have that effect on her. And it’s good they do, because every time she’s awake Connie seems to have no idea what to do with herself, and she just spends hours sitting on the couch, staring at the void, her eyes lost who knows where, who knows when, someplace that isn’t here, isn’t now. Also, her wounds are always bothering her; sometimes they itch, sometimes they hurt, sometimes she feels the bleeding and it makes her sick. Yes, it’s better when she sleeps.

Connie tried to kill herself three weeks ago, right in between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. As Blaine said, she probably wanted to have one last Christmas, but she didn’t want to wake to face a new year, knowing it would probably just be worse than the one that just passed.

Leo can’t even begin to understand how deep one’s suffering must be to bring them to the point of preferring death over the thought of living to see another day. When he’s hurt by something, he usually gives in to it completely, because he believes in being self-absorbed in one’s own pain. He thinks it’s better to just sink in it open-mouthed, drink it all until there’s none left. Swallowing sadness makes people sick, but it’s a dealing process faster than denial. When he feels pain, he never denies it. He lets it win him over. He surrenders to it. Then he comes out of it.

He’s aware that he only manages to get on with it because all his pain is mild and bearable. He’s a happy guy. He lives with the man he’s in love with and he feels loved back, he feels taken care of, he’s in good terms with his parents and relatives, he’s got friends who makes him feel comfortable and understood, he’s studying at the college, he’s close to get his degree, he looks forward to the rest of his life with excitement and curiosity. The pain he feels every now and then is fleeting, temporary. He values it, but it’s not deep enough to scar him. He knows that’s why he can afford to sink in it and then emerge from it unscathed.

Connie’s abusive boyfriend made sure she couldn’t, instead.

Leo has no idea how Connie managed to live with him for three years. He couldn’t stand the thought for three minutes. And the sickest part of it, the thing that Leo just can’t bring himself to understand in any way – she didn’t try and off herself while they were together, because he was hurting her; she did it after he was gone. When he left her, when he disappeared from her life, that was what she couldn’t stand. She was in constant pain when they were together, she felt worthless and hurt and misused and unloved, but what really broke her wasn’t this. It was being left behind, discarded after three years of endurance.

“She was thinking all her efforts would amount to something,” Blaine tried to explain him when Leo asked him about it, “She kept herself going thinking if I go through this, if I manage to survive it, then he will love me. When she understood it was never going to happen, when she realized she’d been lying to herself all along, when she realized all her efforts were for nothing and she was broken and empty and alone… she couldn’t take it.”

“I couldn’t stand it,” Leo told him, horrified by the mere thought, “Why didn’t she leave him first? Why didn’t she report him? I would have.”

“That’s why I love you,” Blaine answered, smiling sweetly.

Then why do you love her too?, Leo wanted to ask. Scared by every possible answer, he didn’t, though.

*

One day, Connie just faints.

She’s been shaky and trembling on her feet the whole morning. She sat at the table with them for lunch, but she wasn’t hungry. She was paler than she usually was and she barely touched any food.

Then she stands up, thanks Leo for taking care for her, offers a small, wary smile to Blaine – who instantly frowns when he sees it – and then, after taking just a couple of steps, she falls to the ground.

The sound she makes is the scariest Leo’s ever heard. It’s a hard thud, similar in every detail to the ones objects do when they’re dropped and fall to the ground.

It’s a lifeless sound, and Leo instantly associates it with death. She’s dead, he thinks, a rush of blood running to his head, awakening his every sense, forcing him to jump up quick as he’s never done.

Blaine’s faster than him, though, also because his experience makes him readier to face these situations. Leo doesn’t know what to do with his own sudden hyperactivity, with his own sudden awareness of every detail of what’s happening, but Blaine does. He rushes to Connie’s side, kneels near her and turns her over, lifting her from the ground. She hit her face and is bleeding from her nose, but that’s not what worries Blaine. He quickly pulls Connie’s sleeves up, uncovering the bandages. The bloodstains are bigger than they usually are. Way bigger.

“Leo, call 911,” he instantly tells him, and then he mutters under his breath, “She’s been picking at them.”

Leo freezes on the spot, a wild shiver digging inside him, heading to his very center. He always had quite a vivid imagination. The words Blaine used formed violent, perverse images in his mind, awakening a kind of physical pain Leo wasn’t even aware he could feel. He feels his own skin itch and burn, and he clutches his fists violently to stop his hands from shaking.

It must have felt like this, he thinks, trying to stop himself from wanting to crawl out of his own skin, That’s how it must have felt to her. That’s how it must feel to want to tear one’s own skin apart.

“Leo!” Blaine calls out for him, raising his voice. It’s so unexpected and unusual for Blaine to address him like that, that he instinctively takes a step back, focusing on him with wide eyes filled with terror, “Come on!”

What happens next blurs away in front of Leo’s eyes. The ambulance arrives, Blaine explains what happened, he goes with the paramedics when they lift Connie off the ground on the stretcher and take her away. In just a few moment, Leo’s left alone in the house echoing with his own silent, horrified scream.

It dawns on him, violent and fast like a slap. He doesn’t need to break Connie. She’s perfectly able to do it on her own.

*

When Blaine comes back home, a couple of hours later, he’s tired and his eyes are red with tears. Leo rushes towards him, hugs him tight, clings to his shoulders. “Tell me she’s fine,” he says. He doesn’t even know why it means so much right now. He thought he hated her for stealing away pieces of Blaine, now all he wants to know is that she’s alive, and that she’ll get better.

Blaine nods slowly, hugging him back, hiding his face against Leo’s neck. “They’re keeping her for the night. I’ll go pick her up tomorrow.”

Leo pulls away, looking at him. Blaine’s face shows his age, tonight. The weight of the years make the lines on his face deeper, darker. He looks ready to give up. “Don’t cry,” he tells him, caressing his cheek, his thumb wiping away Blaine’s tears.

“I don’t think I can help it,” Blaine answers, his voice broken.

“She’s gonna be fine,” Leo says, trying to believe in the words.

“That’s never going to happen,” Blaine answers. It hits hard. Harder than Leo ever thought it could.

*

When Connie comes back home, Leo can’t even look at her. Not really a problem, considering she can’t look at him either. They dance around themselves for a couple of days, slipping into old habits easily. They only communicate through Blaine for days. Blaine barely leaves Connie’s side. He talks to her at every waking hour. He’s constantly asking her how she feels. She only answers yes or no, and she keeps her eyes and voice down. She talks in whispers, and Blaine’s more worried by what she doesn’t scream.

At night, when he lays down beside Leo on the bed, Leo wraps his arms around his shoulders and passes his fingers through his hair, trying to soothe him. “It’s useless,” Blaine says, “Everything I’m doing is useless. I’m useless.”

“It will be fine,” Leo whispers to him, “She will be fine.”

One night, Leo asks Blaine “What’s wrong with her?”, and Blaine doesn’t answer right away.

After a long silence, he says “I can’t fix her. Nobody can. And she doesn’t know how to fix herself on her own.”

“Can’t we teach her?” Leo asks in a low voice, “How does one fix oneself?”

Again, Blaine needs a few seconds to answer. “I have no idea,” he says then. Leo tries to understand how painful it must be for him to admit it. He doesn’t manage, and he thinks it’s better this way.

*

Connie looks at him as if she’d rather die than talk. She doesn’t leave the room, doesn’t stand up from the couch, doesn’t even back off, but all of her body’s screaming, begging for him to leave her alone.

He sits on the couch right next to her, and she understands he won’t.

“I can’t understand you,” he tells her, “You’re so beautiful. I don’t know if you’re stupid, but I don’t think so. Truth is, stupid people usually lead pretty happy lives. So why? I don’t get it. This man you were with, why did you stick with him? Why can’t you stand the thought of being apart from him?”

She doesn’t speak for minutes. Five pass, but Leo doesn’t move. He keeps looking at her, waiting for an answer. Connie’s eyes are troubled, there’s a lot stirring deep inside them. She seems to be hoping for him to forget it and walk away for as long as she can, but ultimately she understands this is not going to just stop.

She curls on the corner of the couch, hugging her knees to her chest. She’s so thin and flat she doesn’t take up more than a small square of it. “I’m way past that,” she says, “William’s not the problem anymore.”

“So what is?” Leo asks, turning to look at her, “How can we fix it?”

She sighs deeply, closing her eyes. She tilts his head down, hiding behind her knees. “I just want the pain to be over. At this point, I’ve been hurting so much, so long, that I can’t even remember why, or how did it happen, or how could I endure it for so long. I want it over, but there’s no such thing. I can’t feel anything else but pain. I’m filled to the brim with it and I can’t find a way to let it out. It’s just… there. There’s no space for anything else.”

Leo looks at her, this fragile, messed up little thing. He feels so small, so useless. But for the first time, possibly in his life, he wants to do something. There’s something inside Connie, something resonating with him. The way she let herself sink into her own despair is so similar to what Leo does with all his little daily pains. Except, he always manages to swim himself up to the surface again. Connie just drawn.

He wants to protect her. He wants to fix her.

“Blaine cares so much about you,” he says. Connie nods. “Can’t you feel it? The love he pours over you. It’s selfless and pure. Doesn’t it feel good?”

“I can’t feel it,” Connie answers, her voice breaking. “I don’t know love. I lived for years believing what I felt for William was love, what he felt for me was love. It wasn’t, and I don’t know what love is now.”

Leo swallows hard, reaching out for her. His fingertips touch the back of Connie’s fingers lightly, and she turns to look at him. Her eyes are filled with tears on the verge of falling down her pale cheeks. There’s something different in her, she looks like she’s been uncorked.

“Let us teach you,” he whispers, moving closer to her, holding her hand in his own, “We can teach you love.”

Connie’s eyes grow wide, as she turns to look at him.

The tears start falling, and she starts moaning softly as she cries. It’s the first time Leo sees her cry, and she does it for what feels like hours. Leo hugs her close, hides her against his chest, passes his fingers through her hair and whispers soothing nothingness to her ear. When the tears finally stop, she looks up at him, and she looks so beautiful Leo can barely believe his eyes.

Only then he notices she’s smiling.

*

“Are you sure?” Blaine asks, looking at him with unbelieving yet amused and quite proud eyes. He listened to the whole story as Leo told him about it, and when finally Leo tells him he doesn’t want Connie to move out too soon he feels the need to ask for confirmation, even though Leo’s voice and eyes were sure enough the first time.

“Don’t ask me twice, I hate to repeat myself,” Leo answers with a pout, hitting him lightly on his shoulder. “And I didn’t say she won’t move out ever, mind me.”

“I got it, I got it,” Blaine chuckles, shaking his head. “But are you alright with it?”

Leo shrugs, searching automatically for Blaine’s body under the covers. “I think I like her,” he answers, “I wanna help her. Is that so strange?”

“Not at all,” Blaine says with a sweet smile, stroking his cheek and then moving closer to kiss him lightly on his lips. “It’s gonna be weird, though. Don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” Leo admits, “I mean, I don’t know the rules. I feel drawn towards her, but I don’t know how deep that goes. Do you?”

“I have no idea,” Blaine answers with a small laughter, “But then, you know me. My feelings are pretty messy. I care for her, I like her. I don’t know if there’s more. But I feel drawn towards her too.”

Leo gives in to a soft smile, leaning against Blaine’s shoulder. Sure, it’s going to be pretty weird. “Are we together in this, then?”

Blaine nods easily. “Of course,” he says, “As always.”

It doesn’t get better than this, Leo thinks to himself, closing his eyes and surrendering to Blaine’s tight grip. Now they just need to let Connie know.
Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: PG-13.
AVVISI: Slash, What If?.
- Blaine has a talent to see through troubled kids' minds.
Note: Scritta per la settima settimana del COW-T 3, su prompt viaggio.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
LET’S PUT OUR STRONG FACE ON
(and go right through it)

Adam opened the door, and then closed it again in an instant, right on Blaine’s face.

“Oh, come on!” the man shouted from behind it, knocking insistently, “Let me in!”

“No way,” Adam moved away from the door, sitting back on the stool he had set right in the middle of the living room, in front of the easel with the blank canvas on. He has woken up that morning feeling as if he’d wanted to paint the first thing he had seen walking out of his bedroom, and that thing happened to be the glorious mess the living room was covered in.

Since Leo had been away for three days already, and Adam had made a strict rule out of not wanting to do the cleaning on his own – it was boring; and then, why would he have wanted to do them alone? It was Leo’s mess too –, there were clothes – some of them clean and folded, waiting to be put away in drawers and closets, some of them dirty, waiting to be put in the washing machine – scattered everywhere, on every piece of furniture, and the coffee table in front of the couch was covered in old magazines, dirty dishes and takeaway cartons. The couch itself wasn’t that better off: when Adam was alone, he tended to let himself go more than just a bit. He usually ended up sleeping on that couch more often than not, using the armrest as a pillow – despite how hard it was and how bad his neck would have felt the morning after – and just an old wool blanket his mother had made for him when he was little to cover himself. That blanked laid spread on the couch now, falling off one side and brushing the floor, while the armrest has already changed its shape according to Adam’s head weight, and also smelled a bit of his cologne.

The ensemble looked exactly as he had often imagined impressionist painters’ poor houses would look like, and he wanted to capture that feeling.

“Adam,” Blaine called out once again, resting against the door, “Come on, open up! It’s cold out here!”

“You’re welcome to freeze your ass all you like,” Adam shouted at him, getting back to sketch the room with charcoal on the canvas, “I didn’t ask you to come.”

“Yes, I know,” Blaine admitted, still knocking at the door every now and then, as if trying to unnerve him to force him to open it, “But I’m here, now, so…”

“So what?” Adam put the charcoal down, casting an irritated glance to the door. It was impossible to draw knowing Blaine was there, his mere presence was drawing all inspiration out of him. “As if I care if your cock turns to ice and falls to the ground breaking in pieces out there.”

Blaine took a couple of seconds, probably to picture it happen, before answering. “I think you spend way too much time fantasizing about my cock falling off in the weirdest ways.”

“Yeah, I’m so gonna open the door now that you accused me of fantasizing about your cock.”

“Why is this conversation getting so surreal?!” Blaine yelled in astonishment, knocking on the door again. “Come on, Adam, open up! At least listen to what I have to say!”

“I’m not interested in anything you could possibly want from me.”

“And what about something Leo could want from you?”

The air stood still for a long moment, no sounds breaking the perfect silence that had followed in Blaine’s words’ wake. Obviously, Blaine knew Adam and Leo had fought, Leo must have told him. It had been one of those fights born by silly arguments that have erupted into something more serious just because they both were incredibly, annoyingly stubborn.

Basically, Leo’s 19th birthday was approaching, and he had expressed the wish to have a birthday party organized at Blaine’s place in Westerville.

Adam had said there was no way in the world he could accept to spend his own money to get on a two hours train trip to the lair of the man he loathed the most in the entire history of humanity, and when Leo had told him it was okay, that he would have paid for the train ticket if that was the issue, Adam had insisted saying no, showing clearly that money weren’t the issue at all; as usual, after all, when Blaine ended up being involved there was a 99,9% chance he was the issue, especially for what concerned Adam, who was more than inclined to consider Blaine the one and only cause for any war, pestilence, famine, drought, flood and everything bad happening in the world as long as he was alive.

Adam and Leo had ended up fighting because Leo had insisted wanting to have the party at Blaine’s, and Adam had insisted not wanting to have anything to do with any party as long as it wasn’t happening in the flat they shared in Lima. Such opposite desires couldn’t be conciliated in the short time that took Leo to pack his things for a week or so and move to Blaine’s, and they haven’t spoken a single word to one another ever since. Which was probably the reason why Blaine was there now.

Adam honestly hated to be that subject to Leo’s every whim, but it wasn’t something he could exactly help. After all, they’d been glued to one another since before first grade. That was a shared lifetime, a bond none of them would have ever been able to cut, and so, sighing in frustration and annoyance, Adam stood up from the stool and walked back to the door, opening it and glaring at Blaine. “Speak.”

Blaine smirked, tilting his head a little. “I knew it would work.”

“I’m still in time to slam the door in your nose again, ruining your surgeon’s work,” Adam threatened him, hands on his hips.

“My surgeon’s work?” Blaine said, laughing and shaking his head, “You’re hilarious.”

“Are you going to say something interesting, already?” Adam insisted, ready to shut the door.

Blaine placed his hand on it, pushing a little, not to slam in open but to let Adam know he wouldn’t have let him close it anyway. “Are you going to let me in, already?” he mocked him with that hateful smirk still curling his full lips upwards.

“Fine!” Adam snorted, turning around and walking back to his stool, his easel, his beloved canvas, “Fine! Do whatever the hell you want! As usual!”

Blaine chuckled, letting himself in and casting an amused glance around the room, verifying the conditions it was in. “My God, Adam, should I be surprised you bothered to shower, at least? This place is a mess.”

“Did you really travel all the way from Westerville, leaving Leo all alone, just to come here and play the health inspector or something?” Adam snorted again, not even looking at him as he sat back on the stool and tried to resume his drawing.

“I don’t know,” Blaine chuckled, walking closer and bending over Adam’s shoulder to peek at the canvas, “Would it make you hot?”

“What?!” Adam almost screamed, jumping off the stool and backing off as fast as he could.

Blaine laughed again, amused by his hysterical reaction. “Yes, you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Some women dream about the plumber, some other about the mailman, maybe you’ve got health inspector fantasies.”

“Shut up!” Adam yelled again, his cheeks getting red as he backed off until he reached the wall, against which he pressed himself, possibly to make sure nobody could attempt at the safety of his virgin ass. “I’m not a woman! I don’t have fantasies! And even if I did they wouldn’t be about you! Pervert!”

“Would you calm down?” Blaine laughed again, his elbow resting on the edge of the canvas, one hand in his pocket and the general attitude of the man who’s so cool nothing in the world could ever make him falter – an attitude Adam hated from the very depth of his soul. “Unfortunately for us both, I’m not here to molest you, which anyway would be a much more pleasant and satisfying activity compared to the one pertaining to a task, I hope you agree with me.”

“I don’t,” Adam instantly answered, shaking his head, “I mean, I’m not sure I’m following, but I don’t agree with you anyway.”

“Of course,” Blaine chuckled. “To make things clear, I’m here to pick you up.”

Adam frowned instantly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not coming,” he said, growling a bit, “I already told Leo. He wanted his party at your place? Fine. He can’t expect me to come over too. I hate you. I won’t come to your house.”

“Adam, please,” Blaine sighed, “He feels horrible for fighting with you. He misses you and he wants you at his party. He’ll be miserable if you don’t come!”

Adam blinked a couple of times; the idea of Leo moping his absence made him feel lightheaded enough to bask in it for a moment. Unfortunately, he knew his best friend well enough to know he wasn’t sufficiently aware of anybody else’s feelings beside his own to really feel guilty for somebody’s absence. Anybody’s besides Blaine’s, of course.

“You’re making it up,” he sighed then, leaning with his back against the wall and looking away, “I bet he’s not even remotely sad.”

Blaine sighed too, his smile sweetening up a little as he got closer to him. “You know him,” he said, “He’s not the most sensitive of souls.”

“Yeah,” Adam grunted, “So why are you here? If he’s not even sad—”

“Because I know he’ll be,” Blaine answered, not even leaving him enough time to finish his sentence. That self-confident, calm smile was still lingering on his lips, and Adam found himself blushing, even though he wouldn’t have been able to explain why. “If you don’t come, he’ll be,” Blaine added, “He won’t show it and he’s more likely to express that sadness with anger than by… well, just being sad, but he’ll be anyway. And you know it just as well as I do,” he finished, his smile widening just a bit.

Still blushing, Adam looked down, sighing, and managed to let himself be honest enough to nod.

“Great,” Blaine said, clapping his hands in satisfaction a couple of times, “So you’re coming with me?”

Adam snorted, muttering some vague consent. After all, it was just a two hours trip in Blaine’s new, offensively expensive SUV. What could possibly go wrong?

*

Three hours later, after the car had shockingly decided to shut down and refuse to start again right in the middle of the heaviest storm ever seen while they were halfway through the highway to Westerville, Adam started to think God was clearly trying to punish him for whatever horrible sin he could have committed in his past life. He wasn’t sure he wasn’t mashing up two different religions while explaining his bad luck this way, but right now he couldn’t care less. He was stuck. In the same car with Blaine. In the middle of nowhere. And he couldn’t even get out for a walk because judging by the amount of rain that was falling he could have drowned out there!

“I hate you,” he said, right in the middle of his second sulking session – the first had started the moment the car had broken, and had stopped when Blaine had decided to stop playing the hero and trying to fix it on his own and finally surrendered to call for the assistance his outrageously expensive insurance covered for anyway.

“Adam…” Blaine whined, looking out the car window to try and spot the light van of his insurance company approaching through the pouring rain, “Please. I’m not overjoyed to be stuck here either, we both have to just wait for this situation to be over. Pouting will only make your lips look cuter and give you wrinkles, help won’t come any faster.”

“You could call one of your friends and ask them to come an pick us up!” Adam insisted.

“Adam, who could I possible ask to come out here in the middle of a damn storm?” Blaine tried to reason with him, “Besides, I can’t just leave the car here on its own. It’s new.”

“And it’s shit!” Adam barked, “It’s, like, two months old or something and it already broke! You sure have an eye for cars, don’t you?”

Blaine sighed, looking up at the ceiling for a moment, as if to wait to gather enough patience to answer him without slapping him. “My point still stands,” he explained. “Also, help’s on the way. I’m sure it’ll come soon.”

“God,” Adam whined, passing his hands over his face, “I hate you so much.”

“Adam, for fuck’s sake!” Blaine snorted then, hitting the steering wheel with both his hands, “What are you, twelve?! I’ve had it with you! I tried to be patient and to swallow your actually quite unbearable behavior for Leo’s sake, but this is starting to get too much for me to bear. Not only you practically force me to drive all the way to your filthy apartment in Lima—”

“Nobody asked you to!”

“Shut up! Not only you shut the door on my face, not only you act like the most insufferable prick who ever laid feet on the ground of Mother Earth, but you even have the nerve—”

“The nerve!”

The nerve! to act as if the storm, the car breaking, everything bad happening in your life up until now was my fault! It’s not, alright? I haven’t stolen Leo away from you! It’s not my fault he didn’t even ever see you as a possible fucking tool! Get over yourself, already, for fuck’s sake! Accept me, for I can assure you I’m not planning on leaving anytime soon, or ever, for that matter! And accept me quickly, as in right now, or I swear to God I’ll kick you out and leave you here.”

Unable to stop the flood coming out of Blaine’s mouth, or to even interrupt him again to try and answer some of his accusations, Adam seemed to freeze in time. His eyes grew bigger and he stood there, staring at Blaine, his lips partly open in shock, and for a good couple of minutes, after Blaine had ended his invective, he kept staring at him, his lips trembling a bit while he attempted to find the words – and enough breath – to answer.

At some point, the gravity of what Blaine had just said finally got him, and he looked down, frowning.

The whole thing between Leo and him had always been a severe issue. It’s not like Adam was completely unaware of the depth of his feelings towards his best friend. He knew the way he felt about Leo wasn’t fully described by the word “friendship”. He also knew, though, that beside the fact that he had no chance to become Leo’s boyfriend, there was another equally important fact: he didn’t want to be Leo’s boyfriend. It wasn’t something he felt like to, he wasn’t alright with the implication of being boyfriend-y with a boy, let alone Leo, which would have been enough complicated even if he were gay after all.

Adam knew both Blaine and Annie – or anybody with eyes, for that matter – were aware of his condition. He knew Leo probably was the last person on Earth who still failed to notice.

But that just made even more unfair for Blaine to use that knowledge against him now.

He hated when people played dirty with him. He had no idea how to play dirty himself, he couldn’t fight back with the same weapon and that made him weak. And he despised feeling weak. He was a man, an adult man. He wasn’t built for weakness.

“…okay,” Blaine sighed, breaking the silence. Adam looked up at him and found him passing a hand over his eyes, as if to try and clear up his thoughts, “Is there any chance you could ever forget what I just told you and forgive me? I’m sorry, it wasn’t my place to—”

“You’re right,” he whispered, looking back down.

Blaine turned to look at him and took a moment to answer. “…yes, alright, but still. I shouldn’t have attacked you that way. It was low of me.”

“It was,” Adam nodded, and then bit at his lower lip. “That doesn’t make it less true.”

Blaine breathed in and out slowly, sitting more comfortably on his seat. “Listen, we don’t need to do it now,” he said, “We just have to spend another hour or so together, then help will come and we’ll be back on the road in no time. We could just listen to music.”

“You can’t tell me something like that and then expect me to act like nothing happened!” Adam snorted, “So, now, you listen to me.”

Blaine couldn’t help to scoff a small laughter as a light but sympathetic smile surfaced on his lips. “Alright,” he said, “I’m listening.”

Adam took a deep breath, looking away again. The thought of spilling the beans with Blaine was made somehow lighter by not having to look directly at him while doing so. “I hate you for being Leo’s boyfriend,” he said, “Whenever I think about it, I always thing I’d be so much better for him than you are.”

“That’s not overconfident at all,” Blaine joked, “As if Leo was an easy task. For anybody, for that matter.”

“Yeah, I know,” Adam smiled, a bit sadly, crouching his shoulders. “That’s the point. I always think I’d be better, but really, I know I wouldn’t. I’d be a mess. I mean, please. I can never explain myself, and Leo usually don’t get anything straight even with people who can. I’ve got no tact at all and Leo’s perfectly capable to get offended if you tell him you want to change the awnings in the kitchen. Not to mention the sex.”

“Now,” Blaine chuckled, “I can understand everything, but what about the sex? I’ve seen the way you look at him, don’t tell me you wouldn’t want to hit that.”

“Yes! Exactly!” Adam nodded, firing up altogether, “See, that’s exactly my point! In theory, I would! I so would. But then I think about the practical act of even just kissing him and it’s… eww. I mean, really. Just eww.”

“Oh, come on,” Blaine laughed, “You can’t put back up the straight guy mask now that you finally managed to admit you like him.”

“But it’s not a mask!” Adam insisted, “I don’t like men.”

Blaine smiled indulgently. “Have you tried?”

“You don’t need to eat shit to know that it tastes like shit,” Adam said, frowning, “Do you?”

“Kissing a man is not in any way comparable to eat shit, Adam,” Blaine laughed again. “Also, it’s so weird to discuss this with you.”

“I bet,” Adam snorted, “You’re Leo’s boyfriend.”

“Not because of that,” Blaine chuckled. “It’s just, I’m having such a massive déjà vu. It feels like history’s repeating itself, first I had to fix Leo and now I’ve got to fix you too.”

“Don’t you dare!” Adam backed away, pressing himself against the car door, “I know how you fixed Leo, lay a finger on me and I promise I’ll be the last thing you ever touch in your life!”

“Have you ever thought about doing it, though?” Blaine said calmly, ignoring his protest, “I mean, really. Not with Leo, because of course that’d be problematic for you, considering that he instantly makes you panic whenever you think about him that way. But what about some other guy, some random guy?”

“Like you, for example?” Adam snorted, side-eyeing him, “Is this a way to try and extort a kiss from me?”

“Yes, because, you know, I live for the day it’ll finally happen,” Blaine chuckled, making Adam blush in shame for having presumed it. The most irritating thing was that he knew Blaine would have liked to kiss him. Not because he had a soft spot for him or anything, actually Adam was pretty sure they honestly, wholeheartedly couldn’t stand each other, but because there wasn’t a single guy on Earth Blaine wouldn’t have wanted to kiss. He didn’t give the slightest meaning to the act himself. A kiss was just a kiss, something that could be done with everybody, even just to pass time, even out of boredom, even just because you needed to feel some pleasure, or some warmth, or some general closeness to another human being.

Adam hated this kind of attitude.

He also envied it to the point of getting angry at himself for not being able to share it, though.

“I never thought about it,” he admitted in a sigh, “Partly because I feel like I’m not supposed to, you know? I mean, I’m straight. I know I am. Even if I hadn’t already kissed and have sex with girls, I’d know it anyway, it’s not something that has to do with what you experience, you know what I mean? It’s just something you know.”

“I know,” Blaine smiled, nodding.

“So,” Adam reprised, “No, I haven’t. I never even asked myself if I should have. I mean, should I? Fantasize about men and all? But why?”

“Aren’t you just curious?” Blaine chuckled, “I mean, you clearly like a boy. You probably aren’t ready to turn this abstract statement into something more practical, you might as well never be, but aren’t you curious to know? To experience what kissing a man feels like, to see if it really is so different from kissing a girl and all?”

Adam looked up at him, nibbling nervously at his lower lip. “Even when I do… wonder,” he whispered, “I never manage to talk it out up to the point of deciding to try. Because, you know, I don’t talk about it with anybody. Usually.”

Blaine relaxed against the backseat, his lips curling upwards in an amused smile. “Well,” he said, “Now you did.”

Adam didn’t need to answer to that.

*

They had actually been making out for at least ten minutes straight, when they heard somebody knocking at the car window. They struggled to focus enough to part from one another, and when they did reality hit them both in the face, caring nothing for their general lack of preparation to deal with it.

“Fuck!” Adam yelled, backing off so violently he ended up hitting his back against the door handle as he tried to wipe his mouth with his forearm.

“Mister Anderson?” the man standing under the umbrella in the raging storm outside called out, tapping with two fingers against the glass covered in raindrops, “I’m sorry to intrude, but we’ve been here for a couple of minutes already, and…”

“Yes! Yes! Sure!” Blaine nodded quickly, opening the door and launching himself out of the car, “I’m sorry, thank you very much.”

“We brought along a courtesy car for you,” the man explained, gesturing behind himself to point at the shiny new black family car approaching, “So you can go home while we take care of your girl,” he added with a tentative smile.

“Oh my God,” Blaine said, nodding eagerly, “Thank you. Really, you’ve been overly kind, you shouldn’t have.”

“Actually, we did, sir,” the man answered, blinking at him, “It’s covered by your insurance.”

“Ah,” Blaine nodded again, passing a hand through his hair as they got damp with the pouring rain, “Yes, you’re right.”

“You’re… getting wet, sir,” the man tried, a little awkwardly, “May I suggest you to take the car? You’re not required to stay, we can take care of it.”

“Yes, sure,” Blaine nodded, pulling himself together enough to smile at the man and shake his head, “I’ll be in touch. Thank you for your kindness,” he said. He then proceeded to walk around the car and open the door for Adam, who was looking at him with such big, lost eyes that made him seem at least ten years younger. “We’re good to go,” he said.

Without a word, Adam walked out of Blaine’s car and into the courtesy one, and it wasn’t before another good twenty minutes that he gathered enough strength to speak again. “I don’t really think anybody needs to know,” he said.

“I agree,” Blaine nodded.

“Let’s just do as it never happened.”

“Yes,” Blaine nodded again, “You can count on me.”

“Thank you,” Adam nodded too, “And… thank you.”

As he kept driving under the pouring rain, Blaine smiled softly. “You’re welcome.”
Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVISI: Slash, Lime, Angst, AU.
- Adam and Blaine have been together, once. It went on for a couple of years and it was intense and perfect, and then, just like a lot of other things, it was over. They, though, were not.
Note: Tutto ciò è partito con me che volevo scrivere porno, ma poi non so bene cos'è successo, ho lasciato che Blaine prendesse il timone della storia (una cosa che avrei dovuto già da tempo imparare a proibirgli!), e ciò che ne è venuto fuori è una storia depressissima sull'incapacità di superare le storie importanti una volta che sono finite. Perché l'ho fatto? Non lo so. Ma la mia scusa sarà che mi serviva una storia su prompt fisso per la missione uno della sesta settimana del COW-T, e l'argomento si prestava. Posso andare a casa adesso? Grazie. *si avvia mestamente*
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
YOU'VE GOT STUCK IN A MOMENT
and you can't get out of it

Blaine never calls, when he drops by Adam’s place. He knows he should – sometimes, when he’s already on his way for his flat, he even realizes it’s a disrespectful behavior and is tempted to grab the phone and just send him at least a text to let him know he’s coming, but then he thinks about how priceless Adam’s face will be when he’s going to see him leaning on the doorframe with a smile on his lips and his head just a bit tilted, enough to expose the neck under the leather jacket, and he thinks “what the hell”, and he never does.

Adam’s never really surprised by his visits, and this, somehow, always forces Blaine to realize how dangerous their relationship has got through the years. Showing up randomly at any time of the day and the night, especially since Adam went to college and started living on his own, Blaine basically educated him to live a life of constant expectation. Adam unconsciously has his whole life planned and organized around Blaine’s visits.

He never brings other boys home, for example. He fucks around a lot, that Blaine knows very well, and of course he’s not bothered by it – how could he, after all? He fucks around just as much –, but he never, not even once, brought his one night stands home. He always goes at their places, so if Blaine drops by he just finds the house empty and walks back home. He doesn’t have to find him with somebody else, which would be awkward and also force Adam to choose.

Blaine never wanted to put Adam in an uncomfortable position. It happened without him noticing and, when he finally realized what had happened, he also realized he wasn’t ready to give up on it, despite how fucked up the whole thing was. Still is.

So, even if he basically keeps doing whatever the fuck he wants, showing up unannounced and using all his charm to always put Adam in the right mood to give them both what he knows they both really want, he tries his best not to be too much of a bother. And, just as Adam does, he plans his days accordingly to Adam’s needs.

For example, he knows Adam usually paints non-stop from four to eight pm. He never shows up during that time window, even though he knows that, if he did, he’d find Adam in his coverall with paint smeared all over his face, hands and forearms – basically the best Adam he could possibly expect to see.

He knows it’s wrong, he doesn’t expect people to understand and he knows why Adam prefers not to talk about it. He also knows it’s inevitable, though, and he knows that if their romantic lives – both Adam’s and his – aren’t getting anywhere it’s not exactly because of this, but because this is exactly what they want, what they protect, even if keeping up with this routine means not being really able to consider any other human being enough to try and start a relationship with them.

Adam tried once, and gave up after a couple of weeks. When Blaine asked him what had gone wrong, he answered with a shrug. “I didn’t want to change anything to let him in,” he said, “He was cool, you know, he was smart, handsome, a good guy. He was fun. He wasn’t you. And it was okay, he just… wasn’t that much worth it, I guess.”

Blaine knew right away Adam’s words didn’t make sense at all, generally speaking. They did for him, though, because he felt just the same. Whenever his fantasy wandered off, like for example when he was hanging out at Scandals and he focused on some really hot guy, wondering if he might be worth a try, his brain always took less than five minutes – the exact time it needed to formulate the question “would he really be better than Adam?” and its relative answer (“no”) – to give up on it. And, more often than not, suggest him to stand up and go find Adam wherever he was.

What brings them together is not love as they know it. And they know it well, since they felt it for each other up until three years ago. Blaine loves Adam, he deeply loves him, and he’s sure Adam loves him back just the same, but it’s not the kind of love that once was.

Blaine didn’t really know that kind of love, before he knew Adam. It was sudden and violent, a rapture, the physical inability to stop thinking about him, the insatiable need for his body, the taste of his lips, his strong arms, his muscular hips. It was nothing like that kind of volatile, light as a feather attraction he felt for his one night stands, or the sweet affection he felt for his family and friends. It was a deep hunger, a deep sense of dependence that made him feel strong and powerless at the same time. Sometimes he felt he needed Adam by his side only to breathe, sometimes when he was off somewhere else it was the thought of him somewhere in the universe and his that kept him steady on his legs.

It’s hard to settle for something less than this, when you feel this kind of desperate need wither and die, and then fade away.

That’s the reason why they broke up, three years ago. Blaine came back after a trip and passed by Adam’s place to see him, and they weren’t cold with each other, they kissed and hugged and had sex as they would always do, but the hunger was gone. There was no urgency, no frantic desire to touch and bite and hold and kiss and grab and keep close to the heart.

That evening they both looked right into each other’s eyes and felt it go away. It was gone in a second, slipped through their fingers in an instant, not even leaving them the time to try and close their hands in fists to hold it.

They talked it out, because it would have been stupid not to. They admitted something was gone, they admitted they both knew it was going to happen. Their voices sounded like they had both been resigned to it happening, almost waiting for it to happen for months, already. Blaine will never forget how faint and sad Adam’s voice sounded that night. He has never heard it touch the same notes again. It was like Adam had saved that special tone for that occasion alone, and was determined not to use it ever again. Blaine has heard him sad about a various number of reasons since then, but as sad as his voice could be in any of them it never quite sounded the same again.

Blaine knows they probably should have stopped seeing each other right away, after breaking up. At least for a while. He doesn’t believe that cutting all contacts is the only reasonable solution for the end of a love affair, but now he sees it probably would have been better if he has decided to do it with Adam.

He didn’t, though. And he knows he can’t keep using ifs and buts to try and feel better about himself.

The door of the building, when he arrives there, has been left slightly open, so he pushes it and walks up the stairs to the third floor, where Adam’s flat is. He knocks quietly at the door because Adam told him that Mrs. Delbford – his neighbor – always comes out of her apartment to scold him whenever he hears him make noise.

Adam opens the door almost instantly. He’s got sleepy eyes and ruffled hair, but he smiles as he says hi and then moves away from the doorframe to let him in.

“Free night?” Adam asks him, turning to smile at him for a moment and then disappearing into the kitchen.

“Kind of,” he answers, sitting down on the couch. Adam’s favorite blanket, an old blue wool thing his mom made for him, is all rolled up in a corner, near a squared pillow with a cartoon-ish sheep stitched on the fabric. Blaine touches both the pillow and the blanket and feels the warmth of Adam’s body still lingering on them, and the sudden rush of need that twists his insides, tying them in knots, is so intense that it almost makes him cringe in pain.

He doesn’t find the guts to tell Adam he just wanted to see him. Sometimes he just does, and it’s stupid, and he shouldn’t, but he can’t help it.

When Adam comes back from the kitchen, he’s got a cup of coffee in his hand, and he’s sipping at it quickly, trying to wake himself up. He’s holding another one in his other hand, for Blaine.

Blaine looks at the cup, then up at Adam. Adam stares back at him, swallows hard, then bends over and puts both cups down on the coffee table. He stands still in front of the couch Blaine’s sitting on. Their knees almost touch, as they look at each other and do nothing else except breathe slowly in and out, like waiting for the right moment to move.

Then it just happens. Adam bends over, both arms stretched, and cups Blaine’s face in his hands, keeping him still as he presses his lips against his and kisses him deeply, closing his eyes. Blaine puts both his hands on Adam’s hips, dragging him down on the couch, and then settles under him, spreading his legs to make room for Adam’s body. Adam moans when their hips collide, and it doesn’t take him much to completely lose control over his own body.

That’s something that always happened between them, since the first time. Like the first time they kissed, for example. Should have been just a kiss, and in a couple of minutes they were half naked and up against a wall, grinding against one another, whispering all sort of things in each other ears. Blaine remembers how hearing Adam say “I wanna fuck you senseless” made him feel, he remembers the way his hands pressed against his skin, as if trying to dig underneath it to feel his flesh and bones, he remembers how powerfully Adam’s hips thrust against his own, the unbelievably strong shock of pleasure that run through his whole body when he felt him come inside him for the first time.

He remembers this, just as he remembers all the other times, the countless times they fucked their brains out for hours, as if unable to stop themselves from getting at it again and again and again no matter how many time they had come already. All the times Adam opened up for him, spread his legs, hooked them up his shoulders, begged him to fuck him harder. All the times they touched each other, so overwhelmed by the urgency they couldn’t even wait to take their clothes off, they just let their hands scramble underneath them searching for their hot, already sweaty skin.

Every time they fuck, they bring those memories back. For those twenty minutes, those memories are alive. They’re not the past, they’re now, and they still love each other like the first day.

Then they come, and Adam looks at Blaine, and there’s so much love in his eyes, so much love that it almost makes Blaine cry, but it’s not that kind of love. This is not the way they used to look at each other before. That way’s gone, lost forever, and they could go on searching for it for years, in themselves or in any other person, for that matter: they still wouldn’t be able to find it again.

Blaine holds his breath and bites at the inside of his cheek to stop the tears from falling. He manages, but that doesn’t mean that Adam didn’t see their shadow.

“I’m sorry,” he says, still buried as he is inside Blaine’s body, “Really, I’m so very sorry, Blaine.”

Blaine nods, tries a smile, lifts a hand and caresses Adam’s cheek. “I know,” he says, “I am too.”

They could say it, right now. It’d be easy, and it’s not like it would be a lie. They could say “I love you”, and it’d be the truth. They could say “let’s try again”, and it would be right. Hell, they would probably manage to pull it off, for a week, a month, a year, maybe even more. But they would eventually feel it fade away again, as they did the first time, and they don’t want to. They’re not prepared to go through that again, they’re not even sure it wouldn’t kill them this time.

So Adam slips out of him, and smiles sadly, passing a hand through his hair. “Please, stay for dinner,” he says.

Blaine laughs. “It’s almost two in the morning,” he says.

Adam laughs too. “I don’t care,” he answers.

Actually, neither does Blaine.
Genere: Romance, Drama, Erotic.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC, side: Kurt/Dave, OC/OC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lemon, Het, Underage, What If?.
- Leo is fifteen and he has been hating Blaine for all his life, since the moment the man tried to ruin his fathers wedding. So when the man ends up spending the night at their house, last thing Leo wants is to stay under the same roof. Little he knows that during that night, things will change forever for both of them. The couch where Blaine is sleeping on will be the beginning of a relationship that will cause more than a few problems.
Note: Hello, y’all! Here’s us trying to explain what this story is and miserably failing at it. But watch us try, if you will.
Broken Heart Syndrome is a sequel, based on Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The World, a story we wrote last year, in which we had an original character, Leo (Dave and Kurt’s son), interact with all the other characters from the Gleeverse.
We basically fell in love with him so hard we couldn’t let him go, even when the story was over. And so we started wondering about what could happen to him in the future, and that’s where this new story’s coming from. We’ve planned quite a lot of it, even though this first chapter is the only one we’ve written by far. We already started working on chapter two, but we decided not to wait until the story was over (mainly because we reasonably think it’s not going to be over before years after today), also because we imagine there won’t be a crowd of people banging to our door for new chapters to come out, given the fact that this is a story we basically write for our own entertainment and for the incredible love we feel for all the new characters we invented to play big roles in Leo’s world and life.
That said, of course, we’d be delighted if you wanted to read this story, and we promise we’ll put our best efforts in it. Also, this new universe we created revolving around Leo and his relationship with Blaine is now so different and independent from the original Gleeverse that the story could easily be read as an original, which is what we hope you all will want to do.
Thank you very much, if you’ll decide you want to give us and our story a try. Comments will be cherished and appreciated greatly.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
BROKEN HEART SYNDROME
REPORT ONE: AMBIVALENCE

“So,” Adam says, walking inside the room with a couple of Coke cans in his hands and countless different types of junk food between his arms, “Mom said you can stay as long as you want, maybe even stay the night if it pleases you, but I’m telling you, if you’re really planning on planting roots in here, you better start paying your own share of bills, you hear me?”

“Fuck you,” Leo answers, trying to kick him in his knees when he walks past him and the chair he’s sitting on, but clumsily missing the target, “Gimme one of those,” he whines, pointing at a chocolate bar.

“I should have you pay for this too,” Adam chuckles, throwing the snack at him and then opening one of the cans to sip at it, “You know, not everybody here is the son of the most important Broadway actor of the last ten years, with a hundred dollars per week allowance. Some of us are poor. I hate to break it down for you.”

“I said fuck you,” Leo snorts, unpacking the snack and taking an angry bite of it, gnawing violently, as if he’s trying to take his anger out on the innocent chocolate bar, “They used to give me more before Tana was born.”

“Yeah, let’s complain about that, Leo, that’s exactly what I’m in the mood to hear about when my mom’s doing double shifts to pay the rent,” Adam shakes his head, rolling his eyes and casting a resigned glance to the ceiling. He’s not really angry at Leonard, he knows him too well, and has been knowing him for much too long, not to know he doesn’t see anything else in the world that doesn’t concern himself. He doesn’t do it on purpose, he’s not even mean. He’s just self-centered. And kind of dumb, actually.

“I’m sorry…” Leo sighs, finishing his snack in a couple of bites and then asking for some coke. Adam gives him his can, and opens the other one, “It’s just that… that man’s home now. It’s making me even angrier than usual.”

“And, considering you live your life in a constant state of deep, wild and unreasonable anger even when he’s not around, that’s saying something,” Adam chuckles, mocking him.

Leo turns to glare at him, but he ends up losing all his drive halfway through, so when he’s actually looking at Adam he’s doing it with an annoyed but too-tired-to-be-really-threatening look, which is fine. Adam knows him enough to know he’s about to surrender. “You don’t need to make me feel stupid about it, y’know?” he says.

Adam nods. “I know, but it’s funnier that way,” he answers, and when Leo starts whining, he chuckles. “Come on,” he says, “You can’t expect me to take it seriously, I mean, you never talk about him, I don’t know what he did to make you hate him like that, how can you expect me to sympathize?”

“Maybe ‘cause you’re my best friend?” Leo asks back, arching an eyebrow.

“I am,” Adam nods, “But that doesn’t mean I can hate a man just because he exists or something. Come on, all I know is that he was your father’s boyfriend when they were in high school, and that coach Karofsky has always been jealous of him.”

“And that he almost ruined my parents’ wedding, a wedding I had worked my ass off to make possible!, nine years ago!”

“That’s not exactly accurate,” Adam laughs, opening a pack of onion-flavored chips to start eating them, “What really happened is that he was a guest at your parents’ wedding and that you misunderstood what was the purpose of him being there for your father, and you ran away in tears, making the hugest drama queen scene you’ve ever done, getting yourself lost in the woods and putting yourself and the wedding in danger, until your fathers just sat down and figured everything out, making it alright again.”

Leo swallows down all his coke and then throws the empty can at Adam, missing him spectacularly. “Fuck it,” he whines.

“You really are hopeless, aren’t you?” Adam chuckles, standing up to retrieve the empty can from the floor before the couple of drops of coke still left inside it could stain the carpet. “I don’t know what this Blaine guy did to you, beside looking like you in quite a disturbing way—”

“He doesn’t look like me!”

“—but you really should let it go, Leo,” Adam sighs, throwing the can in the trash.

“Listen, I’m not making this up or anything,” Leo snorts, sitting better on the chair so he can look at Adam straight in his eyes, “I’m not exaggerating! He’s, like, the worse human being ever conceived, I refuse to acknowledge he has a mother because nothing that evil could ever come out of a living woman, it would kill her. Maybe that’s why his is dead, after all.”

“Now you’re being mean.”

“No, now I’m being the one who doesn’t give a fuck about Blaine Anderson, okay?” he insists, getting all fired up, “I hate him. Now, you’re free to believe that I do it for stupid, trivial reasons, or whatever, but I know him better than you, I’ve been knowing him my whole life, and that man is scum. He’s inconsistent, always showing himself off inappropriately, he doesn’t know what the word respect means, he’s a whore and he’s not even ashamed of that, and yet everybody looks at him like he was some sort of Greek God, just because he’s good-looking and has abs. I can’t stand him, he’s exactly the kind of person I don’t want around, and yet I’m forced to have him around because my father, just like everybody else, falls for his Prince Charming shit every single time. So, is this enough, Adam? Is this enough for you to understand why I’m so fucking angry whenever he’s around?”

Adam blinks a couple of times, looking at him like he’s never seen him before. “Leo?” he calls out, standing up from the edge of his bed and walking towards him to put a hand on his shoulder, “I think you should talk about this with somebody.”

“I just talked about this with you,” Leo answers, frowning.

“No, I mean somebody who can understand what’s going on in your head, because dude, what you just said sounds so totally unhealthy and kind of messed up, if you want my opinion.”

“Oh, please…” Leo says, letting out a frustrated moan and standing up too, walking away from Adam, “I don’t need a shrink because I fucking hate Blaine Anderson.”

“You sure?” Adam insists, tilting his head a bit as he keeps following him around, “’Cause, dude, everything you said… I mean, what do you even care about it? So he fucks around, alright. What do you care?”

“It’s not just that! It’s everything else too! Did you even listen?”

“Yeah, man, I did! I heard you fine and clear, it just seems to me that you’re, like, you know…” he tries to find the right words to say, because he knows Leo’s in a very bad place now, he feels like he’s been cornered and Adam’s almost sure that if he tried to reach out for him carelessly, Leo would bite his hand off. “…a little overinvested, maybe?” he tries, looking cautiously at Leo.

Who drops his arms down his sides and parts his lips in shock. His eyes scream “betrayal!”, and Adam instantly knows maybe he didn’t choose the words correctly enough.

“Yeah, sure. It’s me. I’m the problem,” Leo mutters, walking past Adam as if he didn’t even see him, to retrieve the jacket he abandoned on the back of the chair when he walked in, three hours ago, when he took it off. “Doesn’t matter anyway, he’s still going to be there. Dad wouldn’t throw him out even if I ran away from home.”

“Leo… come on,” Adam sighs, following him as he tries to stop him, “Aren’t you taking it a little too bad? And don’t get mad at me!”

“I’m not mad at you, okay?” Leo turns around to look at Adam, as if he could trick him into believe that if he’s able to look at him straight in his eyes, he’s telling the truth. Adam, however, knows it’s not that simple. “I just need to go. If I move now, I’m gonna be home before midnight.”

“Wait— what?” Adam opens his eyes wide, almost throwing himself between Leo and the door, “Leo, you live in the other side of the city! Come on, at least wait for my mom to be back, she’ll drive you home!”

“No, I’m fine,” Leo shakes his head, forcing a smile that doesn’t look even half as sincere as he wanted it to, “I need to walk. It’ll help me cool down. I need it, if I don’t wanna punch him in the face the very moment I see him.”

Adam sighs, moving away from the door and opening it. Leo smiles at him and walks to the front door, whispering a “thank you”.

“You sure you don’t wanna stay for the night?” Adam asks, “I was joking, you know, about making you pay for it.”

Leo lets out an amused half-chuckle that actually sounds half-honest too. “I know, Adam, I know,” he says, “I’m fine, don’t worry. Besides, even if I slept here, he would still be there in the morning. And I can’t let that man kick me out of my own house. Don’t worry, I’m gonna be okay.”

“Sure you are,” Adam sighs once more, lifting a hand to ruffle Leo’s already wild enough curls, “Some day, my hand’s gonna get stuck in it,” he says with a light chuckle.

Leo echoes it with a chuckle of his own, looking at him with a flash of gratitude in his eyes. “Then you should stop doing it, already,” he says, punching him lightly on his chest, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“No, you’ll call me tonight, so I know you’re alive,” Adam says, with one last sigh.

Leo’s not going to call him tonight, but this he still doesn’t know.

*

When Leo has said he was fine going back home alone, he hasn't realized how really far his home is from Adam's. While he walks down the road with his cellphone on so to make some kind of light the seldom drivers can see and not run him over, he understands thoroughly the difference in condition between their family. Never, in all his life, he has wished more not to live in the suburbs.

Apparently, they are a longer way away if you don't drive a car or take a bus.

He has just passed the cafeteria downtown where they always go when they should be studying at the library and for some reason or another they don't want to – that's the furthest he and Annie can convince Adam to go before his ever present sense of duty kicks in – when a text message arrives. It's Adam of course, asking if he has made it home yet.

“No, I didn't made it home yet, Adam,” Leo snaps and writes him an answer. Geez, can the guy stop worrying for a couple of hours? He has all it takes to be the so called leader of their trio: he is the strongest, the most popular, he is the tall, handsome blonde and he is not even dumb. He could be the hero. Instead, he goes on and plays the mother-hen for him and Annie.

When he gets home, another hour has passed and Adam has written ten other messages, one more anxious than the previous one. Leo has answered the first four, then stopped all together because he may receive more money than Adam from his parents, but his allowance is not endless, and he doesn't want to spend it all in one night to make sure his overprotective best friend knows he's still alive.

The house is dark, of course.

Since Santana is born, his parents go to bed early, hoping she will follow their example and fall asleep sooner, but she never does. She always keeps them awake for the most part of the night. Luckily, Leo is an heavy sleeper, so she can cry all she wants, he never notices. Only the morning after he knows that she has been generally unbearable because Kurt is so tired that he doesn't even bother covering the shadows under his eyes before showing up for breakfast.

But they have a guest in the house tonight. The thought of Blaine being unable to sleep because of his annoying little sister's crying makes him happy. “I hope you wanted to sleep, Anderson, and that she kept screaming and screaming and screaming until your head felt like exploding and you ran away,” he says aloud, as he looks right and left approaching his home.

Santana did cry.

She cried a lot. She cried so much Blaine actually thought she was going to scream her head off or something. He usually loves kids. He's not the kind of man who goes head over heels just to hold them or makes those stupid little noises every time a toddler under six months is anywhere near, but he finds them cute. He was sure that someday he would stop fucking around and even have a kid; possibly with the gorgeous guy who tends to all his needs in his dreams every time he is in bed alone. But Santana did whatever she could do to make him reconsider. The little girl – no more than five months old if he understood correctly – was the cutest thing ever while she was with them at dinner and right after that, while they were talking in the sitting room. But as soon as her fathers said goodbye and brought her to bed, she started howling and she wouldn't stop.

Blaine tried to ignore her for a while, burying his head under his pillow on the couch, but to no use. Even behind a closed door the kid's high pitched wailing was clearly audible. He even wondered how Kurt and Dave could stand that torture every night without swinging her out of the window. After hearing Kurt singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” Barbra Streisand style for the third time in a row, he decided it was time for him to do something different instead of tossing and turning on a couch and went to have a shower.

Spending the night at Kurt's house after their lovely's monthly homecoming dinner wasn't a great idea. He likes Kurt and he sort of likes his family – even though part of it hates him – but he likes sleeping as well, and apparently he can't do that in Kurt's house. Luckily, the shower gave the little princess enough time to collapse and when he gets out of the bathroom, a white towel perfectly wrapped around his equally perfect hips, the house is finally silent.

Blaine combs with his fingers his long and curly hair that is still ruffled and dump. It's in moment like these that he regrets not sticking with the tidy look he had in high school. Wild curls look wonderful at any given moment, except when he actually has to comb them. As he tries to make sense of his hair again, he goes back in the sitting room, which is comfortably dark and quiet now, and just watches the moon that he can see through the window.

He is toying with the idea of drying his hair as quickly as possible and enjoy what little is left of the night before Santana wants to eat or something, when the front door opens, however silently, and he suddenly remembers that not all the members of this family were already back home. He thanks his legendary shamelessness for being able to turn around and facing with a smile who's entering, wearing only a towel.

Leo tiptoes into the house and tries to close the door as silently as he can. God forbid that the click of the lock wakes up the demon upstairs. A few days ago he dropped the keys in the hallway, Santana started crying and his father appeared on top of the stairs, looking ready to claw his eyes off. He doesn't want to repeat the experience, so it takes him a little time to realize someone is watching him doing his best not to be noticed.

“Oh, great,” he snorts, as he tries not to show Blaine has startled him. Last thing he needs right now, having to deal with this man he hates so much. “I was hoping you would be gone already. Or dead.”

Blaine doesn't lose his smile. He knows Leonard since he was six years old. Yes, he almost ruined his fathers' wedding, but in the course of his life he had also the privilege – and the mildly devastating rotten luck – of babysitting him multiple times at different ages, much to Leonard's annoyance, and if he doesn't know him pretty well, he at least learned how to bear with him. “Oh, hey,” he says, waving nonchalantly. “I'm sorry I have to invade your privacy like this. It's only for tonight, anyway. Your fathers and me had a late night and Kurt invited me to stay. I hope you're not mad at me.”

“You can bet your ass I am,” Leo replies, being excessively rude just to show he's tough. He usually doesn't speak like this to adults, but he feels the need to when Blaine's around. He leaves the keys at the entrance and takes off his coat that bears every sign of Kurt's sense of fashion, being a three quarters coat that has nothing to do with the jeans and shirt the kid wears underneath.

Blaine looks genuinely surprised. “And why's that so?”

“You ask me why?” Leo says, unbelieving. This man is here, exceeding his dad's hospitality by being naked around the house and he asks why Leo is mad at him. How shameless can he be? “'Cause it's not cool, dude. That's why. And it's inappropriate. My dads are a married couple and they almost broke up because of you once. I'm not eager to go through that experience again, thank you very much.”

Blaine understands teen's anger. Or at least, he acknowledge its existence, even if he finds it stupid to be angry at everything and everyone as teens usually are. So, he is not surprised that Leo is angry, but he honestly thinks that he should be so over the wedding issue already. “I honestly can't understand why you're so stubborn about it,” he says matter-of-factly. “I couldn't get it back then and most of all i can't”

Leo raises an eyebrow. “'Cause I love them and I don't like you? And Geez, dude, put some pants on if you wanna keep talking to me. You're distracting.”

Leo looks away, making himself busy with whatever he keeps in that ragged looking backpack of his. Blaine can swear he has just seen him blush, and that's something that can keep him entertained for hours: embarrassing Leo. He's been doing that for years now.

“Am I?” He says, looking at himself with a raised eyebrow. “All my intimate parts are perfectly covered, kid. I'm not showing off for you in any manner, and if you think I'm doing that, please, remove this thought from your head, because I'm not.”

Leonard blushes even more, and whatever he is looking for in his bag seems suddenly nowhere to be found because he keeps rummaging and rummaging. “You're half naked, you're wet and that towel won't cover you for very much longer,” he declares, confusedly, giving proof of having spent the last few minutes watching him very closely. “In this house, that's for me the signal to go and sleep at one of my friends house 'cause my parents want to get some. Now, maybe you're not showing off, but I don't know if I'm talking to you or your six pack, so please, dress. Or leave, better.”

Blaine is incredibly amused, but it's hard to tell his amused smirk from his usual smug one. He looks at himself once again. “Well, my six pack wouldn't find completely bad to talk with you for a while. You never really had the chance to meet him during all those years. And now this sounds terribly dirty, but I swear I started it as a joke,” he says, blinking.

“What makes you think I would like that?” Leo says, outraged. “Dad's so right about you. There's something creepy in what you say sometimes.”

Blaine knows he's talking about Dave this time. It's pretty easy to get the change in tone. Leonard is always angry as Dave when he speaks his words. Blaine just wishes he would be sweet as Kurt when he speaks like him. He rarely does, though. “I wouldn't call myself creepy, and neither should you. It's not exactly a compliment, you know?” He says. “Didn't your dad teach you that, too?”

“Dad taught me to be honest too,” Leo grins because he can answer to the point for once.

Blaine finds him really cute when he tries to talk as cleverly as himself and fails miserably. Leonard always thinks to be right and to have the right answer to everything. Unfortunately, he almost never does. “Yes, I appreciate honesty, but there's a difference between being honest and being rude, and I think you're being rude. So maybe your dad didn't teach you very well.” Then he smiles, trying to sweeten his last words, maybe. Or maybe not. “Why don't you come here?”

Blaine pats the spot beside him on the couch. For the longest moment ever, Leo looks at him, then at the spot on the couch, then at him again. He doesn't know exactly what makes him go there, eventually. Probably the wish to show Blaine all the disdain he feels right now. He wouldn't see it in the dark, if he wasn't close enough. He goes there slowly, though, always watching him and sits on the other end of the couch. “What?” He barks.
Leonard doesn't exactly sit on the couch, he just falls on it, like his legs couldn't hold him up anymore. Blaine watches him as he curls up in a stubborn ball the farthest he can from him, crossing his arms on his chest and trying to look very mad and deadly serious. He fails again. There is something off with the kid, tonight. Blaine has noticed that since the kid has looked up at him, entering the house. The way his eyes never linger on him too much doesn't seem quite angered as it usually is. He knows Leo's rage very well, and it doesn't look like that. Plus, his knee is shaking so fast he could make a hole in the ground with his foot if he keeps moving it. It looks like someone is feeling really awkward at his naked presence.

If it's a nudity problem, and he is not sure about that.

“Don't worry, I just want to talk,” he says, with his best reassuring tone as he tries not to smile affectionately at the way Leo is looking at everything but him. “So, when did it start?”

“When did it start what?”

Blaine smiles sweetly. He has the feeling this is going to be a very long night. “When did you first notice that you like boys.”

The snicker that comes out of Leo's mouth is so ridiculously nervous and sudden that Leo closes his mouth right after it, feeling ashamed. Then he swallows and tries to chuckle in a more controlled way. “I don't like boys,” he says with half a smile.

Of course he doesn't. Who ever admits it right away the first time? “My gaydar never failed, boy,” he says with a raised eyebrow. “Plus, you're staring at me. Like, really staring.”

Leo pouts instantly and glares at him. “Maybe you should have it overhauled, then 'cause I'm not gay. I'm staring at you because you are naked.”

“Why do you insist on me being naked? I am not. I could show you what the word naked means, if you wanted, but this,” he says, calmly pointing at himself as if he wanted to talk some sense into him with logic “is not how you define naked.”

That's exactly why Leo hates him, because nothing ever phases him and, instead of getting mad, he always answers with tons of explanations nobody wanted to hear in the first place. Leo always ends up arguing on his own because Blaine doesn't even start to get as upset as he is. “Well, you're half naked then. And I'm not used to have half naked guys on my couch, OK?”

“Don't you?” Blaine smiles. Leo is so hilarious right now that he's having a hard time not just laughing in his face. “How do you find the sight, then?”

Leo averts his eyes almost immediately. “Pretty disturbing,” he says, pretending to sound disgusted while the only thing that comes through it's his mounting awkwardness.

Blaine watches him as he picks at non-existent loosened threads on the couch. Leo hasn't lost all his baby fat yet, so his face is still a little rounded and his now blushing cheeks are adorable in their puffiness, but you can already see the beauty he's bond to become in a few years. The kid has gorgeous, delicate features that would make you think he really is Kurt's own blood. His nose is a straight line and his almost almond-shaped eyes are so azure like Blaine has never seen before. But the thing that never fails to catch Blaine's attention are Leo's lips. They are full, just slightly pinker than the rest of him and when he happens to look at them, he always thinks that he really should be looking at something else.

“Now, disturbing is a word that can have a lot of different meanings,” Blaine says, moving a little closer to him. “So, since your father told you to be honest, what kind of disturbing are we talking about?”

Leo sighs heavily and what comes out of his mouth has a strange resigned tone to it. “Why are you asking me these questions?” He would like to ask Blaine what the hell he wants from him, but then he realizes that he has given nothing but rage and sarcasm to him, which he deserves anyway, so maybe this is just revenge, or something. He just needs to find a way to get away from him.

“I don't know,” Blaine shrugs. “Maybe I just want to understand if you really hate me or if you just don't want me to come too close to you, because you're scared of the consequences. It's a possibility I'm still taking into consideration, regardless of your continuous denials.”

Leo turns on the couch, so to face him. “OK, let's put this straight once and for all. I don't like you.” He tries to state this as much clearly and slowly as he can, so if the man has some hearing problems or something, he will understand anyway. “And even if I did, you're one of my dads' ex boyfriend and the other's archenemy, so...”

So the problem really is me, Blaine thinks amused. The flow of Leo's words goes on for a few minutes, describing how much he doesn't like him at all and how hypothetical scenarios where he likes him would be hilariously and stupidly so not true. It doesn't matter, Blaine has already stopped listening to him long ago, as soon as the problem was crystalline clear to him.

“OK, now it's my turn to put this straight.” He smiles and moves even closer. So close he is now inches away from Leo. So close that when he speaks again without being bothered by the fact that he's embarrassing him to no end, Leo can blush but he can't move away, unless he stands up. And he doesn't. “I think you like me. I don't know if you already found me cute when you were a kid, but now? You're eating me alive with your eyes, kid. Do you know why you keep saying I'm naked? That's because you're undressing me. In your head.”

Leo's eyes grow so big he is almost comical. He gets instantly agitated, but even if he fidgets on the spot, he doesn't go anywhere. “I'm not!” He almost screams. “What... What are you talking about? It's nothing even close to that!”

“Come on, kid, it's so obvious. Don't you even notice? You're freaking out and I haven't even touched you, yet.”

“And you won't do that!” He shrieks, outraged. But then he deflates, like he had put all the strength in denying Blaine the permission to do something he has never really intended to do, and now he had to resign to just sighing and begging him to just leave him alone. “I'm not comfortable with this.”

There's an echo of Kurt in these words. Blaine remembers very clearly how Leo's father used to say he was uncomfortable every time he had to face something he was scared to do, however curious he was to do it. He stated he was not comfortable, and the case was closed. Not that Blaine would have forced him to do anything he didn't want to, but Kurt continuously closing to him was one of the reason why he and Blaine broke up in the end.

Leo is exactly like his father. He is scared, therefore he's trying to avoid speaking of what scares him, but Blaine is not gonna let him because he doesn't want to repeat the same mistakes he made with Leo's father. “So you are asking me not to do it, not because you don't want me to, but because you're scared about it?” He inquires.

That's when something changes in Leo's eyes, as if the question had melted something inside him. Blaine knows he has hit a soft spot by the way Leo finally gives up and sighs, looking confused. “I'm asking you not to do it because I'm not exactly sure of my things.”

“What things are we talking about here? And why aren't you sure of them?” Blaine asks gently, his voice almost soothing as he comes even closer to him. They are practically touching now. “Maybe I could help.”

Leo doesn't think Blaine can help anybody, let alone him. But these feelings he's been having lately about other people torture him and mess up his head to the point that he is more than willing to talk about them with the first person who bothered to notice that something was off about him. Too bad said person is one he despises so much. But he showed some interest at least, didn't he?

“Sometimes it happens that... I can tell a male body is gorgeous,” he eventually confesses, looking down, his face as red as it can be. Now that he has said that, he doesn't feel any better about it, but at least he feels lighter. As if he has just passed his problem to somebody else by saying it aloud. It doesn't work like that, of course he knows that, but it feels good. So maybe that's why he doesn't run away. “And I'm not sure why this happens.”

Blaine smiles at him reassuringly. “That doesn't mean anything, you know? We're human beings, and it's our nature to be particularly fascinated by beauty. If you just think a male body is beautiful, that doesn't make you gay, or even bisexual. It just makes you a normal human being. On the other hand,” he raises a hand and lets a finger slide on his chest down to his stomach “if a male body has other effects on you other than making you notice how beautiful it is, than maybe there's something else.”

Leo follows his finger with his eyes and he is a little startled when Blaine gently pushes his stomach with it.
He knows what he means by that. He knows really well the tangled feeling that makes his stomach hurt sometimes. “It might have done that once or twice,” he says vaguely, turning purple.

Blaine knows how much it costs Leo to say it aloud, especially to him. He can read how troubled he is on the tense lines on his face. “And does it happen in a specific moment or with a specific person?”

“No, it just happens randomly,” he says.

And that's a lie. Sometimes, when his eyes fall on his male friends during P.E., he feels weird, and even if this upsets him, he can't really turn away from the curve of their back or the way their flat stomach dives underneath the waistband of their pants. Exactly as it happens when he's looking at girls and he's intrigued by what lies beneath their clothes. That's why he is so confused. He doesn't know which one of the feelings is real.

But all this came after.

The truth is everything started with Blaine, and Leo is very well aware of that. He may not know what drooling over both guys and girls means right know, but he knows what happens in his head every time this stupid man is around, how his stomach hurts at the sight of him. How it's not really his stomach that demands attention. And how his mind answers with rage to that upsetting and embarrassing feeling between his legs.

So now he doesn't know anything for sure. If he likes boys, girls, both. Or what in the world this man has done to his head lately. He thought that hating him would stop the confusion, but it's not working very well, it seems.

But he can't tell him any of this, though. That's why he needs to lie, because he really doesn't want to face the consequences of confessing to Blaine stupid fucking Anderson that he has felt something for him in his belly more than once.

Blaine is currently holding his breath because Leo is so beautiful in his confusion. Whatever wall there was between them, it has crumbled down, leaving him defenseless. Even though this sounds bad even in his head – and he knows it's gonna sound even worse once he will speak again – he just can't look away from the kid.

“Then you should probably try,” Blaine says. “Just to see how your body reacts.”

Leo shivers. “You are not suggesting with you, are you?”

Blaine chuckles, but he makes sure not to make it come across like mocking him. “Well, as a matter of fact, I am,” he says. “I mean, it would be alright. I promise I would never do something you don't want me to do. It would be just a test. Plus, you could even finally stop hating me afterward. So I'd really like to take the chance.”

This is not right for so many reasons, Leo is pretty sure about it. But what really worries him now are other kind of possible consequences. “What if I don't like it and hate you even more?” It shouldn't be a problem hating him more than he hates him now. But since Leo is not so sure that hate means really hate in his case, he doesn't want to risk to sort of-hating him even more. He doesn't know what could happen then.

Blaine doesn't look as worried as much as Leo is. Actually, he shrugs like this is not a big deal. “They're two different things, you know. You could still hate me but like the kiss, for example. And that would mean the experiment wasn't completely useless, because at least we would know if you like boys too, or if you don't.”

Leo makes a face. “Why exactly if I like kissing you, I like boys?”

Blaine blinks, pretending to be very puzzled and dying a bit of laughter inside. “Because I happen to be a boy, maybe?” Then he grins in that way that always manages to give Leo shivers he can't quite define as good or bad. They're just weird. “Obviously, there's another possibility, that is you liking to kiss me because you just like me. But we're not even taking this in any consideration, are we?”

Leo instantly shakes his head, looking outraged and purple. “No way. Not even the slightest chance!”

“I thought so,” Blaine nods, as he sits more comfortably, resting his back against the couch back. “Well, then, there's nothing more to discuss, am I right? Come here.”

Leo looks at him very suspiciously, but he goes there anyway. “For what?”

Blaine doesn't waste much time to explain what's gonna happen. He strongly believes that there's only so much you can explain with words. “For this,” he says, grabbing Leo by his nape and pulling him closer for a hungry and incredibly wet kiss. For a very long time, this is the only thing he says.

Leo feels Blaine's hair dripping water on his t-shirt as he's pulled closer, and the next feeling is the softness of Blaine's moistened lips. For a moment, he'd like to stop him because this is happening too quickly, but he doesn't. Instead, he kisses him back the moment after, with a soft moaning noise.

Blaine lets his fingers run through Leo's hair, caressing his scalp and pulling him slightly closer, so that their bodies touch, even though not too much because he doesn't want to frighten the kid away. Leo is so lost in it already that he just leans in. Blaine lets that same hand slide down his neck then, and starts caressing him slowly as he deepens the kiss.

Leo opens his mouth, allowing Blaine's tongue to explore it as much as it wants. And it actually feels so good that he stops trying to understand what is really happening with and around them. He rests one hand to the couch to balance himself as he gets a little closer by himself.

Encouraged by the way Leo's reacting, Blaine pulls him to his chest, deepening the kiss even more. But now that there's nothing but Leo's clothes separating them and Leo can feel Blaine's body against his own, something clicks in his head and he withdraws, suddenly.

“Wait... I...” he stutters, lips red as cherries and the most confused expression Blaine has ever seen on him. “That's enough.”

Blaine immediately stops pulling him by his nape, but he gives him one last kiss anyway. “So, how did it feel?” He asks, still so close to him that he breathes on his puffy lips.

Leo takes a moment before answering as he unconsciously wets his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Weird... that it's so good.”

Blaine smiles a little, his hand still lazily caressing Leo’s neck. “You want to do it again?” he asks, and it’s not like he’s expecting Leo to say yes, considering the kid was the first to pull away, after all, but somehow that’s exactly what he gets: Leo barely lets him finish his question, and the second after he’s literally all over him, pressing his little body against Blaine’s, and that’s an invitation Blaine is not really able to refuse.

He wraps his arms around Leo’s shoulders, keeping him close as the kiss grows a bit more forceful, a bit hungrier, a bit messier. Leo whines when Blaine’s teeth playfully close around his already swollen bottom lip, but he doesn’t pull away, and it’s up to Blaine, this time, to put a stop on things, before they get too wild, too fast.

“You sure learn fast,” he comments, an even smile curling his lips, still so very close to Leo’s, “You’re adorable,” he adds, gently stroking one of Leo’s cheeks with his index finger, and then biting at the kid’s bottom lip again, before he starts trailing its outline with the tip of his tongue, making the boy shiver with pleasure. “You know, I could make it better, if you wanted.”

Leo slowly opens his eyes, struggling to focus on him. It’s so obvious – written all over his face – that, if it was for him, he would have kept going on kissing him for the rest of his life. It kind of feels like, whatever it was that kept Leo so frustrated and angry, it’s slowly fading away, leaving him freer to do things he would have never thought he could do before. “You… You can?” he says, his voice cracking in surprised anticipation, like he wasn’t even struck by the possibility of a kiss feeling even better than how it had been up to that moment.

Blaine smiles sweetly, nodding slowly. “Yes, I can,” he says, every word a kiss on Leo’s lips, so light that the boy keeps chasing those kisses and never manages to catch them, “You just have to let me know when I have to stop because you’re not feeling comfortable anymore,” he warns him, kissing him once more and smiling when Leo lets out a frustrated moan because, once again, he didn’t manage to kiss him properly, “Promise you’ll stop me if this ever becomes unpleasant.”

“Stop running away…” Leo whines, firmly holding Blaine’s head between his hands and keeping it still to win another real kiss, taking his time to savor it before he pulls away, looking kind of lost, now. “By the way you’re saying it… I mean, am I supposed to feel uncomfortable, at some point?”

Blaine kisses him again, and then stays as close to him as he can, lips brushing against Leo’s with every word he says. “I tend to be honest,” he says, “And I can’t lie: you could, depending on how far you want to go. But,” he promises with a light smile, “I’ll do my best to make you feel good.”

Leo somehow manages to find his lost smartass self back again, and smirks against Blaine’s lips. “You forget I never trusted you, I’m not trusting you now and I certainly won’t do it from now on. But I’m curious to see how far your lies go.”

Blaine grins, his hands running down Leo’s body and closing around his hips. “Sounds like a challenge,” he says, helping Leo to lay on his back on the couch while holding the towel at his place, so it doesn’t slip away while he settles on him. Then, he starts kissing Leo again, hands running up and down his body, through his clothes, and the kid, who wasn’t expecting another kiss, moans slightly at the feeling of Blaine’s lips. He fidgets uncomfortably under the man’s body, though. He’s not used to the new position, and right now, with the torturing pressure of Blaine’s body all over his, he definitely thinks he could never get used to it.

It’s so embarrassing, for fuck’s sake. He’s so hard. They both are, and he can’t help to ask himself if he’s prepared for where this thing’s going.

He’s not sure he is, but after all he’s not sure he could ever be, even in twenty years. He figures he just has to take the chance.

“Listen…” he says, when Blaine’s lips let him free to talk, “Who decides who gets to top or bottom, exactly…?”

Blaine can’t help a laugh from slipping out of his parted lips. He’s trying not to mock the kid because he doesn’t want to have him run away with an angry mood – who knows what he could do in retaliation? After all, he put a dead snake in his bag not more than three years ago just to spite him during a family holiday Blaine had been part of – but Leo’s making it very hard to be serious, right now.

“Now, now,” he says, shaking his head, “Aren’t you running a little too fast? I never talked about getting to the real thing. Yet,” he adds with a dirty smile that sends wild shivers down Leo’s spine.

Leo frowns, blushing furiously, and Blaine stops the hell from breaking loose by kissing him deeply again. One thing he’s sure of: Leo likes kisses a lot. He instantly melts under his fingers when Blaine starts to kiss him, and so, despite having clearly offended him, with just that single kiss Blaine gets the free pass to let his hands run down Leo’s sides and then dive under his t-shirt, fingertips gently brushing his skin. “You’re hot,” he whispers on Leo’s lips, and he can almost feel Leo blushing again.

“…am I?” he asks in a low, soft, kind of surprised voice. “I mean,” he adds then, clearing his throat and looking away after he realizes how his voice sounded, “Are you even supposed to say that to another guy? I mean, even if you like him, shouldn’t you say something more…” he shrugs, “I don’t know, manly?”

Blaine laughs again, harder, trying to restrain himself but not really making it at all. “I just meant your skin is hot,” he clarifies, shaking his head. Leo blushes more violently and tilts his head, looking someplace else, to some random point behind Blaine’s shoulder. “As for how you look,” Blaine says, his smile growing a little sweeter as he lets his eyes wander on Leo’s childish and stubbornly angry expression, “I think you go far beyond every dream of a man my age.” He pulls up Leo’s shirt to take a look at him. Leo’s tummy is still a little rounded, and seems so very soft, and Blaine wants to take a bite of it so much that he feels dirty just thinking about it. “You are flawless,” he says in a whisper as he gently bends over Leo, kissing his navel and playing with his tongue in and out of it.

Leo lets out a liquid moan, arching his back enough to offer his belly to Blaine’s kisses. “That was…” he says in a heavy breath as he throws his head back after Blaine kisses his navel again, “That was so lame.”

Blaine laughs, and he’d like to answer that – asking Leo, for example, why did he blush so much, if the compliment was so lame – but he prefers to keep kissing his skin, soft and smooth, silky like a baby’s, and so his answer ends up to be his laughter alone.

“If you stopped laughing,” Leo says, annoyed, “That would be very helpful. You’re distracting me from your tongue,” he adds in a light smirk.

Blaine looks up at him, raising an eyebrow at his newly found confidence in himself. “How could I possibly laugh with a mouthful of your tummy?” he asks, running his tongue up the kid’s chest, “Would you take your shirt off for me?” he asks then, eyes half-closed as he covers Leo’s chest in casual kisses, “I could do it myself, but I want to watch you as you do it.”

“You perv…” Leo says in a mild protest, but still he crosses his arms over his chest and grabs his t-shirt by its hem to take it off. Once he gets rid of it, he lets it fall on the floor by the couch and then lies there on his back, feeling uncomfortable, embarrassed and horny as hell, basically not even knowing what to do with himself. “Like this?” he asks, just to give himself something to think about. Learning about the right way to get undressed in front of a man twenty years older than him and that he’s definitely supposed to hate sounds like a good way to pass time.

No, it’s not. Like, at all. And Leo wants to die. But then Blaine moistens his lips and looks at him like he could swallow him all at once, and then whispers “Yes. Exactly like this,” as he kisses him down his chest again, and Leo doesn’t want to die anymore, he just wants to feel this as long as possible, and when Blaine takes one of his nipples between his lips and teeth, and sucks and nibbles at it to make it oversensitive, something inside Leo’s brain just explodes, and he loses control over his whole body.

He closes his eyes shut, holding his breath in surprise. He didn’t even know that something, let alone some guy sucking at his nipples, could feel like that. Like electric shocks of pleasure making him shiver and moan uncontrollably. He doesn’t know much about male-on-male stuff, which – he admits – is a bit absurd considering he’s got two dads, but he really didn’t know that sex could feel like that, with another guy or at all. It’s scary, but surprising. And kind of addictive, he finds out when Blaine starts to stroke both his nipples with his fingertips, and he can’t help but let a shocked “omg” slip out of his lips.

Blaine suddenly raises his head, letting out an amused chuckle as he looks at Leo. "What did you just say?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

Leo manages to open his eyes, looking at Blaine with a bit of confusion showing on his face. He has no idea why Blaine stopped, and he knows he could kill for way less than this. "What?" he murmurs, fidgeting under Blaine's now unnervingly still fingers, "I said OMG. Don't you use this kind of exclamations in your... whatever place you come from?"

Blaine laughs again, shifting over him to settle into a more comfortable position. Leo can feel the man's hardness against his own thigh, now, making his thoughts even more confused. He feels so dizzy he could swear he's about to faint. This can't be good for him, in any way. "You know," Blaine says, "I had a fair number of sexual encounters, but it doesn't matter what I did to my partners, none of them ever responded to something I did saying 'omg'." He pulls himself up to reach Leo's lips, kissing him again as he resumes playing with the kid's now hard nipples.

"Yeah, well..." Leo mutters, keeping his eyes half opened to look at Blaine's face as he kisses him, "Next time don't bed a teenage kid, if you don't wanna hear acronyms in response to what you do." Blaine laughs again, and Leo frowns, trying to fight the urge to arch his back to offer his own chest to Blaine's ministrations, "Would you stop laughing? You're really annoying."

"It's not my fault, I swear," Blaine keeps chuckling, and Leo keeps hating him, even if he's starting to get used to the sound of his laughter, "You are unbelievable. And I mean it," he says, looking right into Leo's eyes. Leo blushes, because he could get used to the sound of Blaine's voice, or his laughter's, but his eyes, he's never gonna get used to them. Whenever Blaine stares at him, he feels uncomfortable, naked, exposed. His gaze turns him inside out, and it's nothing like pleasant. It's just disturbing and annoying, and the fact that he himself keeps searching for it makes it even more so.

Blaine moves slowly, but firmly, and in a second Leo feels him rubbing against his thigh, and it's way more than just feeling the pressure of his hard-on against it, because in the movement Blaine's thigh rubs against his crotch, and it makes Leo instantly want more.

"Shit..." he moans, fidgeting slightly under Blaine's body when he feels Blaine starting to rub against him following a slow and regular pace. He hangs to the man's shoulders, trying to follow those movements and failing constantly. He'd like to tell Blaine to stop, to not do whatever he's doing right now, because it's too much, and he's still dressed, and he couldn't stand the thought of coming right away like a ridiculous, inexperienced kid, but he can't even manage to open his mouth for something else than moans and whining. And he feels so lost he's almost scared to open his eyes, fearing the world he would see then could be completely different than the one he knows.

"Calm down," Blaine whispers, kissing him slowly, "You don't want this to end up too soon, do you? I promise it'll be better, if you let it last longer."

"Yeah, well..." Leo breathes slowly, trying to think about something else than Blaine's body pushed right up against his. He ends up understanding that those urban legends about thinking of your granny to stop yourself from getting off too soon are just that, urban legends. When you've got somebody like this so close, touching you this way, there's no chance to let any other thought take their place. It's the first time he finds somebody so captivating, and it's scary, especially considering it's Blaine he's thinking about, and he should hate the man with a fire for a numerous variety of reasons he can't manage to recall right now. "It's not my fault, you know, I'm fifteen," he snorts, "It's kind of an issue teenagers have. Maybe you don't remember 'cause it happened to you in the past century."

"Hey," Blaine chuckles, "I'm not that old."

"Yeah, I'll let you know when I cut your arm and count the rings."

"Shut up!" Blaine laughs again, leaning in to kiss him. When the kiss breaks, Leo looks at the man and finds him smiling. That's scary too, because he finds himself to like that smile. "Now, say I wanted to touch you."

"Aren't you already?"

"You're not being serious at all," Blaine giggles, playfully slapping his hip to keep him in line, "I'm talking about under the Walls of Jericho," he clarifies, letting one of his hands travel down Leo's tummy to reach the button of his jeans to make his intentions even clearer.

Leo blushes violently, looking away. "The Walls of Jericho?" he mutters, his cheeks so flushed he's scared he'll start to glow in the dark soon, "Seriously?"

Blaine smiles again, catching the kid's chin between his fingers and making him turn his face enough to have his eyes on him once more. "I need an answer," he says in a low voice, "I need permission."

Leo blushes more, enough to start feeling a headache coming. He looks down at Blaine's fingers, so still around his jeans' button, like waiting for instructions. And he nods, biting at his lower lip.

"Fine," Blaine smiles again, unbuttoning Leo's jeans and pulling them down his thighs enough to expose him, but not enough to let him free to move. Leo fidgets uncomfortably, but it doesn't last long, and he freezes on the spot when he feels Blaine's fingertips trailing the outline of his own hard-on.

Stranger hands down there feel good enough for him to cry, but he can't make a show of himself, not now, not more than he's already doing, so he closes his eyes, breathes in and out and settles under Blaine's body, resting his hands on his shoulders as he tries to focus on the feeling alone, letting the context and what's causing it out of him, like it was just a dream that he could forget comes morning.

Blaine doesn't let him.

"Open your eyes," he says, his voice somehow stern, like he's scolding him, "Look at yourself. You're gorgeous."

Leo doesn't know why he obeys, but he does, guided by Blaine's voice and by how good it feels now that the man has closed his fist around him and is stroking him harder. He holds his breath, looking down at Blaine's hand moving slowly around his erection, and bites at his inner cheek, fidgeting under him. "That is..." he breathes out, "...wow."

"It could feel even better," Blaine whispers against Leo's skin, sliding down the kid's chest and tummy in short, barely wet kisses, "But it could also be kind of embarrassing. So I guess this calls for another question," he smiles, placing a tender kiss right under the boy's navel. "Do you want me to take it in my mouth?"

Leo's whole body starts to shake uncontrollably, unable to resist all the feelings that seem to keep him under siege. The touch of Blaine's hand, the warmth of his breath on his barely sweaty skin, the intensity of his eyes locked with his own, the deep vibration of his voice, those words echoing in the air all around him and inside his brain. "I've... I've never..." he swallows, his hips almost automatically thrusting upwards to meet Blaine's strokes better, "I mean, nobody has ever... to me, y'know..." he lets out a desperate sigh melting into a restless sob, covering his face with both his hands, "Geez, can I be any more pathetic?"

"You're not pathetic at all," Blaine says, his voice even lower, nothing but a whisper, now, but still reverberating through the room, like it was made of thunder. "You are not," he repeats, his lips brushing against the head of Leo's cock, licking it tentatively, "Do you hear me?" he says, and he looks up at Leo, locking eyes with him with no shame at all as he sucks him inside his mouth, still stroking him slowly.

Leo chokes on his own breath, eyes wide open in the darkness of the room. The warmth, the wetness, the sucking, it's all too much, and when he thinks his heart's going to fail him, Blaine stops, and still looking at him whispers a "you taste so good" that pushes a whole new series of buttons inside Leo's body, buttons he didn't even thought he had.

"Shit!" he squeals, pushing his hips up carelessly, eager to dive deeper inside Blaine's mouth, unable to stay still. Blaine lets him, stroking his hips with both his hands and moving his head up and down, following Leo's movements.

He pulls away a few seconds later, licking pre-cum away from his own lips. "Now you can choose again," he says slowly, articulating his words, "I could go on like this and make you come," he suggests, kissing the head of Leo's cock, still wet and almost hurting now that the kid's so hard he can barely stand it, "Or I could show you how grown-ups like to come," he smirks, sucking him into his mouth again.

"God..." Leo whines, throwing his head back on the couch, "Just do something, I'm going crazy."

Blaine chuckles, his lips sliding slowly up and down Leo's length. "I recognize I'm acting a little teasingly," he says, "But that's not something I can decide on my own. I need your permission. Even though, I can't lie, I want you. I really want to feel you all around me," he moves up, kissing Leo on his tummy and then staying there, drawing wet, curly lines on his skin with the tip of his tongue as he can't help letting a dirty grin crawl its way up to his lips, "I would really like to fuck you."

Leo lets out a desperate, breathless moan, hesitating before he answers. There's a part of him that wants this so much he's sure he'll regret it forever if he doesn't find the guts to say yes. Another part, though, is so terrified he could just as well jump up and run away crying. "...is it gonna be devastating like it seems it will?" he asks, whining, "Maybe I'm not drunk enough."

"You don't look drunk at all," Blaine notices with a small chuckle.

"Exactly," Leo answers, covering his face with his forearm.

Blaine smiles tenderly, climbing up his body in little dry kisses as he keeps stroking him gently. "I promise it'll be worth it," he whispers in his ear, just before sucking at the soft, sensitive skin right under his earlobe, "You'll come harder than you ever did."

Leo breathes out, terrified now, because that's a yes. Yes, it's gonna be just as devastating as it looks like. Probably even more. There's something blooming inside himself, Leo can feel it. Some sort of warm wave mounting deep inside of his body, something drawing him ruthlessly towards Blaine. Something bad, something Leo can see casting a long shadow he can't see the end of. He can't decide if it's just lust or something else. He knows he can't escape it now, not because it's been running after him and it almost reached him anyway, but because, on the contrary, he feels like he himself has been running after it for years now, and he can't wait to hold it in his hands, see what is it, if it's scary as it feels it could be, if it will burn his skin like the touch of Blaine's hands is doing right now.

"Is it normal that I want you to do it anyway?" he asks, his eyes closed as he tilts his head to make room for Blaine's lips running up and down his neck, "I mean, even if I know it's gonna hurt, and even if I'm scared... is it normal if I still want you to do me this way?"

"Totally," Blaine answers, laughing a little. Leo hates him now more than ever, because Blaine doesn't know. Blaine doesn't get it. How hard it is to even speak in his presence, how much strength Leo's needing right now just to keep himself together under the even touch of his fingertips, how frustrating always was for him to just stand right in front of Blaine and fight not to fall, fueling his rage against him with all the flaws Blaine kept throwing at him, exposing them as if he was proud of them. And it was never enough, never enough to move his eyes away from him, not really, because even in the worst days, when he just wanted him gone and as far away from him as it was possible, it was only to stop facing the fact that his body was aching for it. For this. And Blaine, he just stays there, and it's a game, for him, just something new he's playing with, and he keeps laughing like what's happening is no big deal, and Leo keeps thinking "fine, then, it's not gonna be a big deal for me either", but when Blaine's lips touch his in another kiss that quickly grows deeper and hungrier, it's impossible to keep thinking straight. It's impossible to push away the deep, instinctual knowledge of the truth his body's telling, when all he can hear is his own heartbeat roaring in his ears.

"I missed the taste," Blaine says, almost talking to himself, smiling kind of stupidly as he takes his time to play with Leo's lips, tracing their outlines with the tip of his tongue and indulging in a couple of little bites that instantly make them swollen, cherry red and incredibly sensitive.

"So..." Leo says, letting Blaine kiss him, just opening his lips to let Blaine's tongue in, "What about my first question?"

Blaine laughs again, tightening his grip around Leo's cock and stroking him harder. "That's not something you decide preemptively. You mainly go with the flow, with the inspiration of the moment. Did you know," he says, opening his eyes wide as if he was telling something completely new and uncommon, even if Leo knows he's only using this tone because he wants to mock him, "Did you know you can actually switch roles, if your partner is open-minded enough and doesn't believe homosexuals should be divided in two categories, one of which stands for the male role while the other stands for the female?"

Leo looks away, his lips curling in a pensive expression, and just by looking at that Blaine can tell that right now the kid's thinking about his own parents and the way what Blaine just described simply doesn't apply to them. "Oh, God," he chuckles, "I can read it in your eyes. Please. Just don't," he says, kissing Leo deeply again to switch the subject of his musing. Leo whines between his lips, clearly unhappy with the way he probably feels Blaine's patronizing him, but the man just ignores him and, when he parts from his lips, he's already smiling. "Let's say I'll top, for this time," he suggests, "Just because I'm actually dying to be inside of you," he adds, leaning in to kiss the kid lightly on his lips. "How about it?"

Leo blushes, embarrassed by his words, and glares at him. "You say this time like there's ever gonna be a second," he snorts, but then he sighs and nods. "Go ahead," he says, "I wouldn't know where to start anyway."

"I was saying it just in case, you know," Blaine laughs, "You seem to enjoy it."

He pulls away, standing on his knees and slowly freeing himself from the towel. The light of the moon, coming inside from the window, makes his lightly sweaty skin almost glow in the darkness of the room. And even though it's dark, and even though Leo's upset because he can't help liking Blaine despite how unpleasant he finds him as a person, he can't help but swallow whatever snarky remark he had conjured from the last rational bit of himself, and stop to stare at him. His eyes travel quickly down the man's body, falling rapidly on his cock, so big and hard to scare him.

"Now I know for sure I won't survive this night," he says in an even, frightened, shaking breath, as he tries to swallow once more and finds out his throat's completely closed.

"Why do you say so?" Blaine smiles softly, bending over the kid and rubbing against him, keeping himself up on his arms, the tense line of which Leo follows with lost eyes, moistening his lips.

"'Cause..." he starts off, quickly losing control over his own body as he feels his own cock answer to Blaine's rubbing, "'Cause clearly you're gonna break something, possibly in half. I don't know. It's in no way possible."

"I am in no way this big, kid," Blaine kisses him slowly, lightly hitting his knees with one of his own to ask him to part his legs. "Would you make some room for me?"

"You seem so, to me," Leo answers, opening his legs anyway.

"I'm going to take this as a compliment," Blaine says, laughing a little, "But you don't have to be scared. It will hurt just for a moment. And it's part of the game," he adds, speaking softly over the sensitive skin right under Leo's ear, "There's a life lesson in it too. Nothing really good can be earned without having to suffer for it a little bit before," he whispers, licking one of his own fingers and pushing the tip of it gently against Leo's opening.

Leo tenses nervously, closing his knees in a sudden reaction to the weird, surprising feeling of that slick finger against a place he never thought could be touched that way.

"Hey," Blaine speaks softly, kissing him on the tip of his nose, "...you probably don't like cuddles, do you?" he stops right after, just while Leo's body had started to tense all towards his to get some more of said cuddles, "Just try to relax," he tries, as Leo falls back down on the couch deciding that, as much of a cuddles-whore he can be, he's never gonna ask for it. Not to Blaine, anyway. "It'll feel good soon, I promise," Blaine goes on, "I know how to make it feel good."

He pushes half of his finger inside of Leo's body, moving it slowly in circles. Leo makes a face and tries to relax, holding onto Blaine's shoulders. "It's not as bad as I thought," he says, "It just feels... uncomfortable."

"Yes," Blaine chuckles, "That's why people usually don't sit on fingers." Leo glares at him and Blaine laughs again, shaking his head. "Alright, sorry, I won't try and make jokes anymore."

"You better. Your jokes are lame."

"Do you want me to stop?" Blaine asks suddenly, leaning in to kiss him. It's an open, wet kiss that moves along with his finger pushing a little bit deeper, touching some spot inside of him that makes him shiver in something that, even if it's not pleasure already, certainly reminds it greatly.

"Don't you dare, not now that it started to feel good," Leo answers to his question and to the kiss, his hips moving down to meet Blaine's finger, "Keep doing... whatever you're doing. You're..." he breathes out, letting a little moan go with it, "I don't know, it feels different, now."

Blaine kisses him hard again, his hips moving against Leo's thigh with a will of their own. "Then I'm going with another one," he says, "Be strong, kid."

Leo bites at his lips, trying to relax and to distract himself concentrating on how fucking pleasure it feels to have Blaine this close to him, to feel him hard against his body, even to know he's gonna be inside of him in a few minutes.

"Don't bite too hard," Blaine says, kissing the offended lip sweetly, sucking it inside his mouth and biting it gently, as if to show Leo how it's done, "You're too beautiful to ruin yourself like this," he adds, twitching his fingers inside the kid's body, drawing a surprised scream out of his lips.

Leo tries to cover his mouth, hoping his parents didn't hear them. "What did you just do?!" he asks, trying to recover from how breathless that sudden shock of pleasure he felt left him.

Despite how amused he is, Blaine tries not to laugh, so to not upset Leo again. "That's the part in which you admit I was right, and it was worth it," he says.

"Oh, dream, Warbler," Leo answers, frowning, "I didn't say it was good. I just asked what-- shit," Leo almost screams again, parting his legs and pushing his hips down on Blaine's fingers again when he feels the man twitch them inside his body once more, searching for the same reaction from before.

Blaine celebrates his victory with a self-satisfied grin. "You’re not calling me warbler during sex, kid," he says, pulling and pushing his fingers in and out of Leo's body.

"Is my name allowed just until sunset or something?" Leo snorts, annoyed with how easily Blaine let that nickname - kid, he's always been kid for him, since he was six - slip into what they're doing now. Just what Leo needed, some innocent, everyday word to become triggering for such a thing like sex.

Blaine smiles, kissing his pout away and smiling once more when Leo lets out the umpteenth needy moan, answering to the pressure of his fingers inside him. His smile growing wider, he leans in to whisper in Leo's ear, "Think about how much better it's going to be when I'm doing that with my cock, instead of my fingers."

"Shit," Leo breathes out, moaning shamelessly, "Don't... talk like that. I'm not used to this, it's weird."

"Oh, but what about all the other things I'd like to tell you now?" Blaine keeps going, smirking as he kisses his way down Leo's neck, "Like that I want to fuck you until you beg me to stop. Or that you're so fucking beautiful you almost make me want to come by just looking at you. Or how I like the way your cock twitches and hardens for my fingers inside of you."

"God..." Leo starts moving up and down, following Blaine's fingers and rubbing himself against the man's thigh, clearly losing himself to those words. He's never had somebody talking to him like this and somehow he had always thought he'd be squeaked out by dirty talking. Now, he doesn't understand if he likes it, or if it's just Blaine's voice that's making it work. "You won't stop, will you? How many more fingers do we need?" he asks, eagerness growing quickly in his belly.

"I think we're done with the fingers," Blaine whispers on his lips before kissing him hard, "Now on to the real thing."

Blaine settles himself better between Leo's thighs, while the kid looks down, trying to watch closely what's about to happen, secretly hoping that if he manages to keep his eyes fixed on it, it's not gonna hurt. He feels him pushing tentatively against his opening, and then entering for just a couple of inches.

"God..." Blaine says, trying his best not to move too quickly, despite how tempting the warmth of Leo's body feels, "I'm not stopping for anything in the world, kid."

Leo grimaces, biting at his own lip to try and bear the uncomfortableness. "Maybe... maybe you should've kept going with the fingers..." he breathes out, hiding his face in Blaine's neck, "Gosh, it feels even bigger than it looks."

Blaine laughs breathlessly, moving in for a couple of inches more as he wraps his fingers around Leo's cock to start stroking him. "You know, flattering's not going to get you anywhere," he says, letting out another chuckle when Leo sticks out his tongue at him. "You're unbelievable tight," he adds then, closing his eyes as he thrusts once more, finally managing to push himself entirely into the kid's body, "I am literally in love with you."

"Oh, you love me because I'm tight," Leo answers in an annoyed snort, "That's so sweet. How come you're single, with all this romance pouring out of you?"

"You really are gorgeous," Blaine laughs again, "And funny. I can't believe you are still single," he adds, resting still inside of Leo's body, to help him getting used to the new, cumbersome presence.

"Maybe I'm not and you're fucking a taken man, what about it?" Leo mocks him, and then he moans again, grimacing at the same time, fidgeting restlessly under Blaine's body to find a more comfortable position, "It's better if you move," he says in a troubled whisper, "I feel... insanely full, if you just stay still."

"And doesn't it make it more exciting?" Blaine asks, a dirty smile curling his lips as he slowly starts to rock back and forth, still stroking Leo's cock to the rhythm of his own thrusts.

"From now on," Leo says, grabbing Blaine by his shoulders and pulling him down, "You do stuff, I tell you if it's exciting. I'm the one with your cock up his ass, I've got privileges," he decides, pulling Blaine in for a kiss.

Blaine chuckles between Leo's lips, pushing a little harder inside of him. "You really are something," he says, "But you've got a point. What about this, then?" he asks, lifting himself up just a little but holding Leo's hips still to change the angle of his thrusts, getting way closer to hit with his cock that same spot he already hit repeatedly with his fingers before.

"Yes!" Leo breathes out, arching backwards in a desperate attempt to follow his body's imperative to suck Blaine in as much as he can, "You did it again..."

"I can do better," Blaine whispers, thrusting more forcefully now that Leo got used to his presence inside his body. He pushes so deep inside him that the tightness and the wet warmth start to feel overwhelming, and for a moment Blaine just forgets what he's doing and where he is, and all he can understand is how deliciously trapped inside Leo's body he feels. "Fuck," he whispers, "You're just... fuck."

"Oh, shit," Leo holds onto Blaine's shoulders, hanging to him, "God, keep doing this," he begs, searching for his lips almost desperately, his hips moving at the pace Blaine's setting with his steady, quick thrusts.

"Keep your voice down, kid," Blaine says, though he's finding hard to follow his own advice and keeps moaning loudly, squeezing Leo's cock inside his fist and stroking him hard while he pushes even deeper, "God, you're just unreal. I didn't even know something like this could be possible, I don't want to come out of you ever again."

Barely opening his eyes to watch Blaine's features and the lines of his body as he moves in the dark, Leo smiles, lost in what they're sharing. "I don't know," he says, his voice so sweet he'd be embarrassed with himself if he only could hear it from the outside, "It's just crazy that I'm doing this with you."

"Does it really sound so crazy?" Blaine says, thrusting harder inside Leo, using the armrest to point his feet against it and push deeper, "Am I not good enough for you?"

And that's when Leo would like to let himself free to speak, because right now he probably could. He could manage to gather all his courage together and just tell him that yes, he's good enough, he's too good, probably, that he can't recall a single moment of his whole life since he actually started to understand what being attracted to somebody means, that he hasn't thought about being taken like this, from him.

But he just can't say that, that'd be too much, that'd be embarrassing and stupid and he's Blaine, of course it's just a game for him, of course he's just another fuck, of course he's gonna disappear in a couple of days again as he always does. There's no reason to say anything. He'll be gone in the blink of an eye and what they're doing right now won't matter anymore, by then.

So he avoids the question, keeping Blaine in as much as he can, letting him barely free to move to put off the moment he'll pull out as long as he can. "I... I don't think I'm gonna last much longer," he says, biting at his lower lip when he feels himself tensing all around Blaine's cock, a warm wave of pleasure mounting in his underbelly.

"Then come," Blaine whispers in his ear, "Come for me," his lips curling in a tender smile, "I want to feel how much you liked it, I want to know you'll want me again, inside of you, just like that."

Blaine's words push some button inside him, something that hasn't got to do with pleasure alone, something deeper, and Leo tenses for the last time, arching beautifully on the couch and coming with a suffocated moan, as Blaine sucks the tender skin of his neck, thrusting inside of him a couple of times more and then coming hard inside him.

That's when Leo first notices. And Blaine does too, opening his eyes when he falls down, resting himself on top of Leo's body.

They didn't even use a condom. And, wrong as it is, the moment Blaine came with no barrier whatsoever between them, something lit inside of them both, some mysterious spark that, instead of fading away when the sex was over, is still tingling even now that the air starts to feel suddenly colder on their bare, sweaty skin, and the silence starts to grow awkward in the perfect calmness of the night.

Blaine lifts his head and they lock eyes. Leo holds his breath, knowing that this is the moment. He doesn't know what this moment will bring, but whatever it is, this is the moment it's decided.

Then Blaine leans in and kisses him softly on his lips, one, two, a hundred times, and Leo plays along, settling comfortably in his warm embrace. He's still moving lazily inside of him, every now and then, and even if Leo's oversensitive and starting to feel a bit of pain again this is the most pleasant feeling he ever felt in his life.

"Are you cuddling me?" he asks, a tired, almost already sleepy smile blossoming on his cherry red and puffy lips.

"Just a bit," Blaine answers, smiling against Leo's lips after another sweet kiss, "I'm finding kind of hard to, you know... let you go, at the moment." Then he opens his eyes, as if he just realized that Leo's a teenager, after all, so there's every chance he just finds cuddles stupid and annoying. "Don't you like it?"

"Mmh, maybe," Leo answers with an enigmatic smile, "But, you know..." he adds, his cheeks turning red with embarrassment, "I'll have to stand up, eventually. I mean, I can't sleep here."

"I know," Blaine nods, "But it's early. You don't have to run right away-- unless you want to, of course."

"It's just..." Leo looks away, nervously scratching his cheek, "My dads are gonna kill me, if they find out."

The thoughts of Kurt and Karofsky still asleep in the first floor bedroom crosses Blaine's mind for the first time in what feels like hours. He knows that, as much as they could be angry at Leo too, if they found out, they'd never hurt him or kick him out or anything like that. On the contrary, nothing would save him from their righteous and terrifying wrath. "We don't have to tell them, you know?" he sighs, "This could just stay between us."

"As if I ever thought about telling them," Leo blinks a couple of times, looking at Blaine as if he said the most obvious thing ever said by somebody since humanity moved its first steps on the planet.

"And, if it ever comes out, somehow," Blaine goes on, "You're not going to tell them I, like, forced you to do something you didn't want to do, are you? Because that, you see, would be very bad. And if you want to ruin me, there are less cruel ways."

Leo lets out an amused chuckle, arching an eyebrow at him. "Are you by any chance scared to death I could tell everyone you raped me?"

"With kids like you, one never knows," Blaine grins, and then kisses him on the tip of his nose. "Hold your breath, kid," he suggests as he pulls away, his now soft cock finally slipping out of the kid's body.

"Ouch!" Leo blurts out, making a face, "It's even worse when you pull out... wait, what did you mean with that? How many kids like me did you do, exactly?"

Blaine laughs, rolling on his side and resting his head on the palm of his hand, "What's that, jealousy?"

"It's not jealousy," Leo pouts, crossing his arms over his chest, "I just want to know if you're a serial underager or something."

Blaine laughs again, shaking his head. "I actually am not. I've had a couple of things with kids your age, but then I was their age too when it happened, so I guess that doesn't count. You're my first," his smile softens, as well as his eyes, "As I'm yours."

Leo blushes violently, looking away as he searches for something to say to change the subject immediately. "So... I guess it's safe to say that I'm at least bi."

"See?" Blaine chuckles, nodding, "I told you it would be a useful experience, however it went," he says, leaning in to randomly kiss the kid on his cheek.

"Yeah," Leo nods, giggling, "Grandpa's gonna freak out. You know, he always thought a kid wasn't a good idea for my dads. He loves me, of course, he's just old fashioned. So he was okay with them being gay, but a kid... he had issues. And then it turns out I'm half gay too! He's gonna say it's my dads' fault, for sure," he giggles again, as if the thought of telling his whole family, possibly during Thanksgiving or some other festivity that could be easily ruined by this confession, was the most amusing thing he ever thought about in his life.

"Let's write a note and then print a hundred posters to glue to every single door of this house," Blaine nods, "Hello, family. I accidentally found out I'm bisexual. Thanks you for your cooperation in letting me found an half-naked man on the couch right when I needed it."

"No, you idiot!" Leo laughs, slapping him on his shoulder, "But eventually, I'm gonna tell them. I always end up telling everything, anyway, so... but don't worry," he adds when he notices Blaine's eyes growing bigger and worried, "You're the only exception, I won't tell about you."

"Thanks," Blaine chuckles, and then stops to look at him for a couple of seconds. Leo can see there's a question lingering on his parted lips, and he's curious to hear it, but at the same time he'd happily kiss him right now to not let him even try and ask it. He doesn't, anyway, and eventually Blaine speaks. "Can I be the exception again," he asks, "Sometime soon?"

"...I don't know," Leo answers, looking away. They both know Blaine shouldn't have asked, and at the same time they're both glad he did. "Maybe," he tries and joke about it, "I have to think about it, you're still the man who tried to drag me out of a bush after I saw you make out with my father on his wedding day, you know?"

"I wasn't making out with your father, you stubborn kid!" Blaine laughs, "That was just a goodbye kiss," he says, leaning in to kiss Leo deeply and slowly, so passionately Leo's happy he's still lying down, or else he would have needed something to hang onto not to fall. "...as this will be," Blaine adds, "If you decide you don't want to try this ever again."

Leo slowly bats his eyelashes, trying to focus again and having a hard time doing it. "If this is the kind of kiss you gave him, then I totally hate you."

Blaine smiles against his lips, brushing the tip of his nose against the kid's. "Did anybody ever tell you you're kind of addictive?"

"Here you go, changing subject," Leo chuckles, snuggling closer, "You really are shameless, aren't you?"

"I'd say I'm good with words," Blaine laughs, "That sounds better. But, seriously," he looks at him again, "I'm going to be in New York by tomorrow evening, and after the audition I'm probably just going to go home. So... if you want to see me again, you'll have to be the one that makes the first step."

"The man asked to the fifteen years old kid who wasn't even allowed to get his driver's license," Leo answers, casting him a disapproving glare, "Let's just say that if you see me in Westerville or wherever you warblers live, then it means that I probably run away from home or I decided to be with you... at least to use you, 'cause I will be homeless and penniless and it'll be basically be all your fault, so you'll have to take responsibility."

Blaine laughs again and then sighs, looking at him with that sort of tenderness Leo's quickly growing fond of. "How am I supposed to leave your smart ass here all alone?" he asks, and then shakes his head, as if to clear it from dangerous thoughts, "Now, give me a goodbye kiss like you think a goodbye kiss should be, and then run to bed. Your bed."

Leo bites at his lower lip, looking at Blaine in silence for a long moment. Then he kisses Blaine deeply, slowly, savoring the taste of his lips. And deep inside he knows this whole thing's being too unnecessarily romantic not to hurt someway when it'll be over. But he can't bring himself to mind. Not right now.

Blaine keeps his eyes closed, dwelling on the strong emotion coming from the kiss. He answers with the same intensity, actually surprised by how quickly their level of intimacy escalated in just one night, and parting from Leo only a few moments later, their wet lips producing a soft smacking sound as they unlock. "...that was breathtaking," he admits, resting his forehead against Leo's.

"I..." Leo says, suddenly trying to pull away from Blaine's hug. For a moment, that was just too much to bear. It was unexpected and awkward and Leo just wants to go. "I have to go, now," he stands up, gathering his clothes from the floor and covering himself with them.

Blaine pulls away from him, alarmed by his sudden agitation. "Yes, sure," he nods, trying to look as calm as he possibly can.

"So... that's it, then," Leo says, hugging his clothes to his chest, "Um, goodnight, I guess."

Blaine nods slowly, trying to smile to reassure him. "Goodnight."

Leo nods and turns around, moving a couple of steps in the dark. In the deep silence of the house, his feet make the most unnerving sound tapping against the cold tiles of the floor. He suddenly turns back to face Blaine, finding him still sitting on the couch like he left him, with his eyes on him. "Listen," he starts off, "About what you said while we were... doing it... I mean..."

Blaine clears his throat and then smiles again, this time almost embarrassedly. "We were having sex, kid," he says, "You say a lot of things when you're having sex, but they're just... things. Don't worry, I won't make a big deal out of this."

Leo lowers his eyes and mutters something unintelligible as he turns around again and runs upstairs.

Because that's exactly the problem, he thinks, hiding in his room and throwing away all his clothes as he crawls in his bed, hugging himself under the sheets. It already is a big deal, and he can't help thinking that try and not make one out of it is only going to make it worse.

to be continued

Please note that the title of this chapter, as well as all the other titles for future chapters, is used in a metaphorical way, using psychiatic terminology only to set the mood and the main topic of the chapter and not in any way to indicate mental illnesses or anything similar. At least for now.

Genere: Commedia, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine Anderson/OMC.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, What If?, Underage, OC.
- "This is a great opportunity to snoop around. And he's not going to miss it."
Note: Scritta per la Sagra del Kink 2.0 @ kinkmemeita su prompt dildo.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
CURIOSITY
it didn’t kill the cat, it just made it horny

Blaine's house is like a playground, especially when he's asleep. Which doesn't happen really often, considering the fact that Leo likes to sleep only a little bit less than he likes to fuck - and he likes to fuck very much -, so it never really happens to him to be awake when Blaine isn't.

Sometimes, though, he's able to make his personal sleeping spell work (as in: they fuck so hard and so many times that Blaine literally needs twelve hours of sleep to recover, while Leo's fine with just his usual nine-or-ten), and he actually manages to wake up first, and that's what he did this morning.

When Leo wakes up, first thing he does is turn around into Blaine's embrace and look at him. This is such a rare view. Leo can't help but smile as he leans in to place a small kiss on Blaine's slightly parted lips, keeping his eyes opened to watch his face as he sleeps. He'd never do something like that, if Blaine was awake. Not because he doesn't like cuddling or even random sweetness, because as girly as it can be, he does, but because Blaine has a tendency to mock him when he's trying to be sweet and romantic, and since Leo hates to be mocked he decided long ago never to be too soft with him.

If Blaine's asleep, however, he can do whatever he wants, which is what he does now. After the kiss, he just takes another couple of minutes to watch him sleep - his relaxed features, his chest that slowly moves up and down with every single breath, how his right arm stands still trapping Leo in a warm embrace - and then he just shrugs him off himself and jumps off the bed, stretching and moaning in pleasure when he feels on his skin the warmth of the sunbeams passing through the half-closed curtains.

He opens the first drawer of the nightstand on his side of the bed and fetches a couple of clean underpants, wearing them before he walks out of the sleeping area and heads straight to the kitchen. As always after a good night of sex and sleep, he's famished.

It doesn't take him much to make himself a good breakfast. Blaine loves to play the daddy with him, Leo knows the fact that he's so young is not the reason why Blaine's attracted to him, but he also knows that this is something Blaine likes a lot. He likes the idea to take care of somebody so much younger than him, he likes the idea to pamper him and make him feel like a spoiled little kid, and so he keeps buying him sweets and snacks that would be perfect for a five years old kid, though Leo's not.

Not that Leo would ever complain about something like that, of course. He doesn't love anything more than his favorite cornflakes with multi-colored sugar stars, and he keeps and adores every single small surprise he finds in the huge packs of chocolate and vanilla snacks Blaine keeps buying. He could live on them alone. The hell he's gonna ever complain about being treated like a child. He still is, after all.

After he treated himself with a couple of bowlful of milk and three or four - or, okay, maybe five - snacks, he finds himself sitting on the stool right beside the kitchen island as boredom already starts creeping in. He's already been alone too much. Which is like thirty minutes or something, but it's clearly already too much.

He jumps off the stool and walks back to the sleeping area, kneeling on the bed, crawling on the mattress until he reaches Blaine's side, where he crouches like a kitten to watch him closely. He's still plunged into a deep sleep and, if Leo knows him well - and he does -, he'll be for another couple of hours at least, unless Leo wakes him up, of course.

He pouts, thinking that he could wake Blaine up now, but that would only make things worse: if Blaine gets woken up before he fully recovered, he passes the remaining hours he should have spent sleeping by wandering up and down the house with zombie eyes, zombie attitude and even zombie ability to speak and reason. Which mean he would probably be useful awake, right now, as he's useful asleep. Which is not very much.

Sighing dramatically, Leo climbs off the bed once again, and starts looking around. He never really has the time to explore the bedroom, whenever he comes here. Not because Blaine forbids him or anything - Blaine seems to have no secrets, and even when he does he's always eager to share them with Leo -, but because being near a bed with Blaine always leads to sex - actually, being near whatever surface with Blaine leads to sex, but that's a detail -, which usually leaves a very small window of time for every other activity, especially considering the fact that Leo usually manages to come over once every two weekends, for just a couple of days. Forty-eight hours, thirty of which are usually spent having sex.

This is a great opportunity to snoop around. And he's not going to miss it.

He starts with Blaine's wardrobe. For some reason, the fact that Blaine doesn't have a walk-in closet always sounded incredibly funny, to him. It's like Blaine's basically the perfect homosexual ever created by mother nature, but then he's got this flaw making him suddenly less gay. Leo can totally imagine all his friends running after him, threatening him to take away his personal Gay Man of the Year white gold plate if he doesn't instantly get himself one.

Leo loves Blaine's clothes, anyway. He loves everything about them, their smell, the way they look hanging orderly inside the wardrobe, the way they look on Blaine, the way they look when he puts them on and when he takes them off. Blaine - and this is something he always knew, even when he was nothing but a kid and he couldn't help but hate Blaine because of how unnerving he was for a variety of different reasons - has always been cool. It's his job to look cool and he knows how to do it. He's the kind of man you can't take your eyes off when he walks in the room, and part of it comes from how ridiculously good-looking he is, part of it comes from his outrageously high confidence and self-esteem, and part of it comes from the way he dresses. He's exactly what you'd expect an actor to be. It's like he decides what to wear thinking about what people will think when they see him.

Which is kind of irritating, now that Leo thinks about it, especially because he himself basically never thinks about what he puts on, and so, when Blaine and him are walking around together, they look like a classy father and the stupid teenage son who decided not to wear anything that isn't at least two years old and completely ridiculous. Leo likes his own clothes, he cares about his silly t-shirts and baggy peculiar hoodies with zombies and Homestuck-referred jokes, but he always feels out of place near Blaine, especially when they go out dancing and Blaine looks like he just came out of the Out magazine's cover while he looks like one of those average models from cheap clothes' online catalogues.

Anyway, if he stops thinking about how much cooler than him Blaine looks when they're together and just sticks to the smell and how sexy Blaine is while dressing and undressing, he still loves his clothes a lot. He shamelessly retrieves Blaine's favorite D&G black leather jacket and puts it on. It smells like leather and Blaine, it's delicious, and he smiles happily as he feels the rough touch of the fabric against his bare skin.

He closes the wardrobe, already bored, and moves in front of the upright mirror in a corner of the room, looking at himself with pleased eyes. Oh, he's cute. This definitely looks good. That's exactly how he wants Blaine to find him when he stops snoring and finally wakes up.

But there's still time before that. That's why, when he gets bored of looking at himself, he walks around the bed and kneels in front of Blaine's nightstand, pondering his next actions. He knows what he wants to do is completely wrong and despicable, but he's going to do it anyway, so there's no point in procrastinating. He just grabs the first drawer's handle and pulls it towards himself, peeking inside.

And that's when he finds it.

At first, he doesn't even get what it is. It definitely looks like a dick, but it definitely is not a dick, what with being transparent and purple in addition. He even picks it up from the back of the drawer where it's stored, to look at it more closely, and then, his brain starts to catch up, he realizes what is it that he's holding between his fingers and squeals, letting the dildo fall on his lap and roll on the floor. "What the fuck," he mutters, blinking rapidly as he leans on the floor to look at the dildo without having to pick it up. "Oh my God," he says then, erupting in a nervous chuckle, "It's huge, for fuck's sake."

He turns towards Blaine to make sure he's still asleep, and when he sees he is he just decides to give back his whole attention to the dildo. He leans in towards it again, sniffling it suspiciously, like a dog. No weird smells coming from it, just plastic and silicon. He decides it's safe to pick it up with his hands again when he understands Blaine must have washed it after using it.

That's enough, he thinks, standing up and climbing on the bed again, taking the dildo with himself: this needs explanation, he's got to wake Blaine up. "Anderson?" he tries, shaking Blaine's shoulder, "Wake up. You need to see this."

Blaine lets out an unintelligible moan, simply turning the other way and hiding himself under the sheets. "Five minutes," he mutters in a deep breath, quickly going back to sleep.

"Oh, stop it, already, you've slept plenty," Leo insists, pouting. He climbs on his boyfriend's side, straddling him and jumping up and down on him. The whole bed moves under them, and if Blaine's still dreaming now he's probably picturing to go down with the Titanic. "Come on! I've got a dick in my hand and it's not yours."

"What...?" Blaine snaps out of his light sleep, rubbing his eyes as he turns on his back. Through his still sleepy eyes, all he can see is Leo riding him while holding a dildo. "Am I still dreaming...?"

"Yeah, you'd like that," Leo makes a face, jumping up and down on him a couple of times and laughing when he feels Blaine's body reacting almost automatically under him.

"Stop that..." the man whines, still confused, looking around like he didn't recognize his own bedroom. "God, why did you wake me up so soon? Why the hell are you holding that thing and..." he blinks another couple of times and then instantly frowns, "Leo, is that my leather jacket?"

"Yup," Leo nods, moving a little back and forth and grinning when Blaine has to put his hands on his hips to make him stop, "I borrowed it."

"Then you can un-borrow it and put it back where you find it. You know I love it."

"Oh, come on," Leo snorts, hitting him lightly on his shoulder with the head of the purple dildo, "It's not like I'm gonna shred it to pieces and then set fire to it. You're so boring."

"Just take it off, and-- What the hell are you doing with that?!" Blaine blurts out when he finally manages to recognize that dildo as his own.

"I found it," Leo answers candidly, shrugging like it wasn't a big deal after all.

"Have you been prying into my stuff, Leo?" Blaine asks, taking away his hands from Leo's hips only to cross them over his own chest, casting the kid a stern and reproachful glare.

"I thought that was made obvious by the fact that I'm wearing your clothes, but yeah, I've been," he answers with a light chuckle. Blaine's rage always worries him, but this time it's different, because they're arguing about a dildo, and this makes everything simply too much ridiculous for Leo to grow worried about it.

"Oh, you must be proud of that," Blaine goes on, frowning, incredibly disappointed by Leo's utterly unnerving oblivious behavior.

"Nah, not really," Leo shrugs again, "But I was getting bored, you wouldn't wake up and I had to find something to do. The sooner you get me a Macbook here, the better."

"That's ridiculous and I should kick you out of this bed right now," Blaine pouts.

Leo smiles cockily. "But you won't," he says, and Blaine sighs with desperate resignation.

"No, I won't," he admits.

Leo chuckles with clear satisfaction, climbing off Blaine's lap and sitting more comfortably by his side, lifting up the dildo and almost shoving it under Blaine's nose. "Now explain this."

"What's to explain about it?" Blaine asks, turning to look at Leo like he couldn't believe what the kid just said, "I'm sure you've seen one already, if not in real life at least on the internet."

"You think you're so funny," Leo chuckles anyway, hitting him again with the dildo, this time on the tip of Blaine's nose, causing him to back off a little and make a disappointed-slash-annoyed face. "What I meant is, why would you need something like that?"

Blaine blinks a couple of times, taken aback by the simple yet completely-senseless-to-his-ears question. "What do you mean? I put it in--"

"Yeah, I know that!" Leo stops him, rising up on his knees and hitting Blaine repeatedly on his head with the dildo, "You're an idiot."

"I don't even know what we're talking about!" Blaine barks, pushing the kid's hand away and massaging his own scalp, "What was that question supposed to mean? It's a dildo! Everybody knows how to use a dildo, it's like an ancestral innate instinctual knowledge telepathically passed on from father to son since the beginning of time!"

"Stop it!" Leo laughs, kicking Blaine's leg, "You're so stupid. What I meant was, what does one like you need a dildo for? You practically go out and fuck every night, be it with me or somebody else! What do you need extra fake fucks with this toy for?"

"Alright, first of all you just made me sound like a slut, and that's offensive," Blaine pouts, crossing his arms over his chest again.

"But you are a slut," Leo points out, cocking his head on the side.

"Hey!"

"But you are!"

"I don't get paid."

"..."

"Alright, maybe I am a bit of a slut, but still, you're not supposed to say that, you're my boyfriend."

"You're not supposed to be a slut because we're boyfriends," Leo grins, and Blaine lets the argument go, knowing the kid just owned him this time.

"Whatever," he grumbles, looking away while Leo chuckles in the background, "Anyway, I don't go out and fuck every night, that's unfair."

"Yeah, I know you don't," Leo smiles a little more sweetly, moving closer to him and leaning against his shoulder, "But still, it's not like you're sex deprived or anything."

"I'm not, but this has got nothing to do with sex in general," Blaine explains, shaking his head, "It's more like a... an emotional need," he says, and by the time he's over with the sentence Leo's already laughing his ass off, so overwhelmed by laughter he's actually bent in two on the mattress, holding his stomach with his hands and having a hard time finding the strength to breathe between one laughter and the other. "What?!" Blaine barks, blushing furiously. He's not used to be mocked about anything, and even with Leo he's usually the one mocking, so this is new, unexpected and uncomfortable.

"An emotional need?" Leo remarks, wiping a tear away from the corner of his eye, "Seriously?"

Blaine frowns, moving away from Leo in an extreme protest about his clearly unfair treatment. "Yes," he answers scornfully, "Don't you ever have them? Don't you have a heart?"

"But..." Leo chuckles again, unable to stop the spontaneous laughbursts escaping his lips, "I mean, what does being horny have to do with emotional needs? Come on. Don't try and find excuses."

"That's not what I'm doing!" Blaine insists, "Listen, do you have any idea of how many people fall on their knees in hope that my cock magically flies to their mouths whenever I walk in a club?"

"Yeah," Leo laughs to the mental image of Blaine's cock growing wings and flying away from his crotch while Blaine's left behind crying its loss, "I'm aware of them."

"Good. Then you can easily understand that if I'm horny and I just want to get off, all I need to do is walk out of this house and into a club. Or call you," he adds with a grin.

"Now," Leo smiles dangerously, crossing his legs as an implicit threat, "Be careful what you say, 'cause I'm being a very kind and understanding boyfriend, right now, but I could stop." Which, as Blaine promptly translates it in his mind, would mean to stop being a dick about all the people he could fuck and actually fucks and move on with the explanation.

"Alright, alright," he surrenders with a little smile, "Anyway, the point is, sometimes I just need to do it by myself. You know, just do to myself the things I like without having to explain somebody else how I'd like to be taken and everything. I don't do it because I'm horny, I do it because sometimes I like to love myself. Don't you ever get the need to feel loved?"

"Of course," Leo nods, "And, when I do, I usually walk out to Game Stop and buy myself a treat. This makes me feel very loved."

"You're empty inside," Blaine grunts, shaking his head, and Leo laughs again, getting up on his knees once more and moving towards him.

"I'm a shallow kid," he smiles, circling Blaine's neck with his arms and hiding his face against the curve of his neck. He feels Blaine relaxing in his hug, letting out a deep breath and breathing deeply in immediately after, drawing in his smell mixed with the jacket's. "So what you're going for here is that you don't masturbate only when you're horny, you also use sex to spend some quality time with yourself."

"More or less," Blaine answers, "Even if, if you say it like that, it suddenly sounds incredibly stupid."

"'Cause it isn't already, huh? It's only me making it sound like that," Leo mocks him in a small laughter, letting out a disappointed but playful moan when Blaine answers by slapping him on his ass.

"Seriously, though," Blaine lifts his eyes, searching for Leo's, "Don't you ever do it? I mean, jerking off when you're not exactly horny but you just want some self-love."

"Fifteen years old, here, remember?" Leo arches an eyebrow, a cheeky smile hovering on his lips, "I'm always horny."

Blaine laughs, leaning in to kiss him on his nose. "Point made," he says, "But I'm not getting rid of the dildo, even if you think it's a stupid habit. I like it, I will keep using it whenever I want."

"Well..." Leo smiles, rubbing his nose against Blaine's, "You've got tons of stupid habits, but I'm not trying to change them. I won't do it with that either."

Blaine smiles, kissing him lightly on his lips. "Such a good boyfriend," he says, just a moment before Leo deepens the kiss, clinging to his shoulders to straddle him again. Blaine lets him do it, but then, when he's almost settled on him, he holds him by his hips and drops him back on the mattress, chuckling. "There's no chance we're having sex again until I've managed to drink some coffee, kid," he says, standing from the bed and walking straight to the kitchen.

"Oh, come on!" Leo whines, falling limp on the bed and then flailing his legs in the air in disappointment, "Come back here, I'm horny now!"

"Thirty-five years old, here, remember?" Blaine mocks him from the kitchen, pouring himself a plentiful cup of coffee, "I need to wake up, first."

Leo snorts, rolling on and off the bed. "Point made," he says with clear disappointment, but when he reaches the kitchen he finds out Blaine already finished his coffee, and he's waiting for him leaning against the kitchen counter with a bold smirk on his face. "Liar," he says in a laughter, flying between his arms.

The dildo's forgotten, at least for the day.
Genere: Introspettivo, Erotico, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lemon, Underage.
- "Blaine always comes up with the greatest things for Christmas."
Note: Scritta per la Sagra del Kink 2.0 @ kinkmemeita, su prompt topping.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
CHRISTMAS DISAPPOINTMENT LEADS TO LUST NONETHELESS

Blaine always comes up with the greatest things for Christmas. It happens to be a very important festivity for him, he once forced Leo to sit on the couch through the whole afternoon as he listened to him explaining why.

Basically, Christmas used to be this sort of big happening when mama Anderson was alive. She hadn't much of a life, from Blaine's point of view. This pretty, classy young woman, coming from a decayed noble family and forced to marry a man ten years older than her she cared for but definitely didn't love, mostly spent all her days entertaining high society pricks in her royal sitting room in what Blaine always likes to refer to as "Anderson castle" (though really, Leo saw it, it's more of a manor than a proper castle), and that was how her afternoons passed, day after day after day, until around Christmas.

Apparently, in addition to having such a personal life story that people wouldn't believe she even existed in the first place whenever Blaine talked about her, she wasn't much of a motherly soul (Blaine kept repeating nanny Clea was the closest thing to a real mom he ever had), but once a year, just during Christmas, she seemed to let instinct take over her plastered soul, and, filled with good will and loving spirit (and, Blaine would swear, some alcohol too), she turned into this incredibly sweet creature keen on house-decorating and children-loving. She used to spend hours just planning everything since Christmas Eve to the next day's lunch, and Christmas was basically the only time of the year she refused to have guests around the house, which had to be exclusively destined to her husband and her beloved sons.

Blaine doesn't remember much about his mother, but this Christmas addiction somehow stuck with him, which is why Leo is so excited today. It's their second Christmas together (well, not exactly the second they've spent together at all, considering that Blaine's been a constant presence in his life since he was six, but the second they spend together as a couple), and since for the first one Blaine took him to a fucking cruise in the fucking Caribbean sea, Leo feels entitled to expect something even bigger this time.

That's why he's so disappointed when, on the 26th afternoon (they're not allowed to see each other on the 24th and on the 25th anymore, of course, since Leo's parents found out about them and decided that a routine that had worked perfectly for the previous ten years had to be dismissed because, all of a sudden, Kurt's ex high school boyfriend was fucking his son), Blaine's ridiculously huge car stops right in front of a place he knows way more than just well.

"The Holiday Inn," he says, turning around to look at Blaine with very unimpressed eyes, "Are you kidding me?"

"What?" Blaine chuckles, getting off the car and waiting for Leo to join him before giving the keys to the parking attendant, "Aren't you happy to see home?"

"First, the fact that we spend most of our time together in this place doesn't actually make it home," he corrects him, frowning, "And then..." he sighs, annoyed, "We're always confined here like we're prisoners or something. I got that we can't just walk out for a stroll around town 'cause you're old and I'm young and everybody would look at us and judge..."

"You're such a sweetheart, Leo," Blaine chuckles, leading him inside the hotel and only then daring to hold his hand.

"Whatever," Leo shrugs, "What I mean is that I'm okay with spending our time here, but at least during Christmas holidays we could do something different! Like last year!"

"Last year we both needed a break from Lima, kid," Blaine smiles at him, approaching the reception. Leo knows he's right. He knows he hadn't really planned the cruise, that it was just a side effect of how awful the Christmas lunch with the family had turned out to be, a reaction to the pressure Blaine had felt over his shoulders before, during and after that, but he can't help but think he'd prefer to go through another hundred family lunches instead of passing another hour locked up in their suite. "This year," Blaine goes on, apparently oblivious to Leo's disappointment, "I wanted to spend the holidays with you alone."

Leo looks up at him, blushing a little. It's not often that he hears Blaine say things like this, and he takes a moment to bask in the ridiculous, embarrassingly childish feeling of pure happiness and satisfaction that always fills him up when Blaine makes him feel wanted and needed.

"Okay..." he admits, chuckling lightly, "That's cute. But still, you've always been doing all these great things for Christmas! I mean, let alone last year, d'you remember that year, I was ten, I guess, you showed up dressed in a Santa Claus costume, with a sleigh and real reindeers, I mean, how cool was that?"

"Do you want me in a Santa Claus costume, kid?" Blaine mocks him, smirking at him, "Because that can be arranged for later."

"Shut up," Leo frowns, punching him on his arm.

Blaine asks the receptionist for their usual accommodation - the suite Leo believes Blaine secretly bought, paying in cash, in order to always have a place to drag Leo to whenever he feels horny - and they're in front of the door less than five minutes later. Blaine's excited - Leo can feel it on his own skin, as if Blaine's emotions were able to find their way through the space in between them to reach him - and so Leo smiles, thinking that his Christmas gift is probably waiting for him inside the room.

It would make sense. Blaine is always giving him presents, like, all the time. Kurt and Dave hate him for this. Well, for this and for a hundred other reasons, but they're wrong about each and every one of them excluding this. The presents issue is actually something even Leo can see as wrong, he knows his twenty years older than him boyfriend shouldn't be showering him in expensive presents like he was his sugar daddy, but it's hard to say no when Blaine's presents' list counts basically every single Apple product ever produced and ticket to go and see basically every single concert around from the front row.

Maybe the new Silver Skinny Macbook's waiting for him all hiding underneath a layer of Christmas wrapping paper, and that's why Blaine brought him here, to have him see the present and also have a comfortable bed to fall on when Leo decides to thank him properly as he always do when Blaine gives him something nice.

(Yes, he knows he shouldn't give Blaine sex every time he buys him a gift. He knows it's unfair and probably unhealthy too. But it brings him both more sex and more presents, two things he actually enjoys very much, so he can't bring himself to stop.)

By the time Blaine opens the door, Leo has already convinced himself he's gonna find that Macbook sitting on the desk, waiting only for him.

And so, once again, he's disappointed when the suite presents itself just like Leo remembered it from last time. The sitting room, the couches, the 42 inches flatscreen, the bedroom, the California king size bed, the armchair, the other 42 inches flatscreen, the desk. Nothing new, nothing's changed. He turns around, looking at Blaine with yet more disappointed eyes, and he's about to bark an annoyed "so what?!", when suddenly the usual shift in the air announcing Blaine's closer happens, and in a couple of seconds Leo feels Blaine's lips against his own, and Blaine's body all pressed together with his, and all of a sudden he couldn't care less about Christmas presents at all.

"So... is this it?" he asks in a chuckle the moment Blaine lets him finally free to catch his breath, "This is what you came up with for Christmas? Just have sex like we always do?"

"Oh, come on," Blaine smiles, slowly pushing him towards the bed, "How lame do you think I am? How could I ever choose as a present something that I already give you all year long?"

"Yeah, that's exactly why I was expecting something else," Leo smiles too, blissfully enjoying the feeling of Blaine's lips down his neck and the always careful but never too much pampering way his hands close around his hips while settling him down on the bed.

"And it is something else," Blaine smirks, holding the hem of Leo's hoodie between his fingers and pulling it up to uncover the kid's belly.

"What is it, then?" Leo asks, looking fondly at him as he lifts a hand and passes it through Blaine's hair, his curls wrapping around his fingers and getting tied up in easy to unfold knots every now and then.

"You'll know," Blaine answers, brushing his lips against the soft skin of Leo's tummy, "In due time."

"Oh, come on!" Leo chuckles, fidgeting under Blaine's lips when his kisses turn wetter, the tip of his tongue showing up every now and then for a quick lick or a fast dive inside his navel.

He shivers violently when Blaine's kisses turn again into something new: they're hungrier, now, not just kisses but long, lustful licks and messy bites. Blaine takes a mouthful of Leo's tummy and lets a hand slide between his thighs, rubbing his crotch through his clothes, and Leo melts in a liquid moan, instantly arching his back to offer himself to Blaine's hands.

"Be a good kid," Blaine smiles, slowly unbuttoning Leo's jeans, "And when the right time comes you’ll find out what the present is."

"Congrats, that doesn't sound creepy nor badwrong in any way," Leo mocks him, trying to work out a sassy smile that lingers on his lips only for a couple of seconds. Then, Blaine's hands become more eager, quickly sliding underneath his clothes to touch him better. Leo pushes his hips up, helping Blaine to get his pants and underpants off him, and then looks down. Blaine's looking up at him and they lock eyes, Leo's whole body going crazy when Blaine goes down on him, taking his cock in his mouth and sucking hard while playing with his tongue up and down his length.

Leo lets out a desperate, loud moan, his hips moving on their own will, thrusting inside Blaine's mouth, his eyes unable to leave the man's face while he swallows him whole. The curve of Blaine's lips closed tight around his cock makes Leo whimper in need. Sometimes he gets the feeling Blaine's too much for him to stand, he becomes overwhelming. Because there are so many things he'd like Blaine to do to him, and there are so many things he'd like to do to Blaine, that sometimes, when Blaine's pushing and pulling him towards complete madness, he gets confused, and he just wants everything at the same time.

He could lose himself inside Blaine's mouth, between his fingers, against his hips. Maybe he already did and he just didn't have enough time on his own to notice. Because Blaine is always around, but at some point he won't be anymore. And Leo's scared of that moment. Of what will be of him the moment Blaine goes away and he discovers there's nothing left to live with.

He lets out a breathless whine, his whole body arching when Blaine takes him deeper inside his throat. He hates when sex becomes such a big deal, it used to be all laugh and pleasure, but since love's involved it's been heaven in hell. And right now he needs to come so bad that he almost wants to let himself go right now, come inside Blaine's mouth and just release everything, but Blaine pulls away from him, catching his breath again, and Leo's body falls on the mattress as if electricity has been running through his body until a moment before, but now somebody just turned the switch off, leaving him limp.

"What...?" he breathes out, searching for Blaine with hazy eyes.

"That was not your present," Blaine smiles, standing up on his knees and crawling by Leo's side, catching his lips in a kiss that tastes like him.

"Blaine, please," Leo whines in between kisses, fidgeting restlessly under the hand Blaine placed on his stomach to keep him still. He grabs Blaine's wrist with both hands, pulling the man's hand down and rubbing himself against his palm, "I need it, please."

"I know you do," Blaine smiles once again, not making any effort in trying to stop Leo. His hand's not closing around his hard-on, he's not stroking him voluntarily, he just lets Leo make use of his hand as he wants, enjoying the desperate need that changes the features of the kid's face into a mask of lust.

"Then fuck me," Leo blurts out, his voice now nothing but a symphony of moans and whining, "Please!"

Blaine kisses him again, still not moving. "You would do anything to come, right now, wouldn't you?" he asks, speaking in a low voice against Leo's wet and swollen lips, "You're so desperate. Do you want to try something new? Something we never did?"

"Blaine, please," Leo whines once again, his voice now so thin and needy to sound even more than just a little bit slutty.

"Come here," Blaine just says, holding Leo firmly by his hips and bringing him with himself when he lies down on the bed, settling comfortably against the mattress and between the pillows.

Leo lets out a relieved sigh, spreading his legs to straddle him. Finally, he thinks, just finally, but Blaine stops him with a smile and another kiss, and when Leo's forced to open his eyes to see what's going on he can't help but frown lightly when he sees that Blaine has parted his legs too, and seems to be waiting for him.

"What the hell...?" he wonders in a whisper, but then it strikes him, and he opens his eyes wide, surprised.

They've never done it this way. Blaine and him have had sex in almost every possible combination, but Leo just really never fucked Blaine. It's always been the other way round, and frankly Leo has never felt like he was missing out on something. It just always felt more natural for him to want to be fucked by Blaine, more than fuck him.

"I don't think it's a great idea..." he starts off, whining a little, aching to feel Blaine inside but recognizing he is gonna fuck Blaine, if Blaine doesn't give him any other choice, just because right now he's so desperate to come that basically every hole would serve its purpose just fine.

"Luckily," Blaine says on his lips, before kissing him deeply, "Now's not the right time to think."

Leo melts in between Blaine's lips; one kiss after another, Blaine manages to pull him in, hugging him tight. Leo settles naturally between Blaine's thighs, and once their crotches touch, and they start to rub one against the other, every concern and every disappointment disappear. Sex with Blaine is more than just mechanics, it's a rapture. It's like opening a window on a brave new world, like peeking outside and see everything that was there before, but with new eyes, eyes that change things.

Leo knew pleasure, before Blaine. He knew how soft lips could be, how sweet breath could taste, how lost one could feel stroking himself to the point in which pleasure's the only thing you're interested in and you wouldn't stop your hand if hell broke loose above you.

But pleasure with Blaine it's a whole different thing. It's still pleasure, but new, surprising, meaningful. It's still pleasure, only more.

"Come here, kid," Blaine whispers in his ear, hypnotic, confusing, sexy as ever, arching his back and pushing his hips up, letting Leo's cock slide between his buttocks. Leo lets out a whimper, caught by surprise by the new sensation. It feels so fucking intimate. He never thought something like this before, when it was him opening up for Blaine, but now that he feels Blaine opening up for him, letting him in, taking him deep, it's like he finally can understand better what it is that he's been giving Blaine up to now without even noticing. Access. Permission. Complete abandon, borderless trust.

It's funny it's taking him to be the top once to get what to bottom really means.

Blaine drags him into another kiss, and Leo feels him shift and fidget against his body. He dares to open his eyes, and the sight mesmerizes him: Blaine's eyelids are closed, but every single feature of his face, every single muscle of his body, every single line on his skin talks about tension. He looks stretched to the limit, and yet somehow so completely in control Leo's almost frightened by it. He knows himself, he knows that, when he bottoms, at this point he's always reduced to a mass of whimpers and moans and shaking little bones, but Blaine... he's completely different. He's got the same focused expression he usually has when he tops. He's in control. He always is. And if there's something Leo knows is that this is not going to change, ever.

In their relationship, may sex be involved or not, Blaine will always be the one who knows what he's doing. While Leo never will.

That's why Blaine's the one to keep the situation in his hands even now. He starts tightening his muscles around Leo's cock, sucking him in deeper than before, forcing restless, desperate moans out of Leo's lips one kiss after another. Then Leo sees Blaine's hand run down his stomach, tracing the outline of his pecs and abs, and his fingers close around his cock, and in that moment, watching him stroke himself and part his lips to let out countless heavy breaths and moans, Leo loses his mind completely. He steadies himself on his hands, thrusting faster inside Blaine's body, and Blaine answers by arching more under him and welcoming him deeper, his legs crossing behind Leo's back to keep him closer, as if he didn't even want him to pull away before he could push back in.

Close as they are now, their skin keeps clashing every time Leo thrusts, and the air is filled with only that slapping sound and their echoing moans and whispers. Leo rests his forehead against Blaine's shoulder, breathing heavily. "Blaine..." he calls on him, his whole body shaking, "I'm sorry, I... I think I'm gonna come..."

Blaine smiles against his cheek and kisses him on the corner of his mouth, his free hand running through Leo's wild and messy curls as he nods slowly, in a silent consent.

Leo comes less than ten seconds after, burying himself deep inside Blaine's body and releasing himself up to his last drop. Then he collapses over Blaine, feeling as if all strength's been sucked out of his own body. Blaine keeps stroking himself under him, his knuckles rubbing insistently against Leo's tummy, and after a little while Leo feels him tense and freeze for just a second, after which he just lets go, coming all over both their stomachs and relaxing against the mattress, helping Leo to settle more comfortably over him.

"Very, very good," he comments with a light chuckle. Leo frowns instantly, blushing like mad as he lifts a hand to hit Blaine on his hip.

"Shut up," he snorts, glaring at him, "Don't ruin everything with your usual bullshit."

"Oh, come on," Blaine chuckles, kissing him on his forehead, "Where's the fun if I can't even mock you after we had sex?"

"You shouldn't want to mock me after sex!" Leo barks, outraged, "You should want to cuddle me."

"There he goes, morphing into a girl right after he's had his cock stuck up another man's ass."

"Cuddling's not for girls only," Leo corrects him, glaring once again, "Now shut up and cuddle me, or I swear next time I'll fuck you with a fiery stick."

"So you mean there's actually going to be a next time?" Blaine chuckles, and even if his voice is still somehow mocking, he at least decides to wrap Leo in his arms and cuddle him a little, so Leo lets him get out of prison for free, only for this time.

"I don't know," he answers eventually, resting his head against Blaine's chest, "Is it an issue for you? I mean, is it so important?"

"Is it, for you?" Blaine chuckles, searching for his eyes. Leo looks back at him, nibbling at his own lower lip.

"Actually... yes," he admits, shrugging a little, "I mean, okay, I liked it, but... I think I kinda like it more when you fuck me. It's more... I don't know. It just feels better."

Blaine smiles, kissing him on his nose and laughing a little when he sees Leo curling it like a little rabbit. "If you like it so much, then you can easily understand why it would be very important for me too to be in the same position, every once in a while. Now, I know it's hard for you, because you're incredibly thick and you always want to do things your own way or not do them at all..."

"Hey..."

"But still," Blaine chuckles, interrupting Leo with another kiss on his lips, "I can live with being the one who tops more often, between us. But what about you promise that every now and then you'll be the one in charge to take care of me?"

Leo pouts a little, resting his head on Blaine's chest again. It's not like he doesn't know Blaine's right. He is, in every way. He's right when he says Leo's spoiled, that he only wants to do things his own way or he prefers not to have them at all, and he's also right when he implies that it's unfair that he should always be the one in charge while Leo's left to the safer position of the coddled, pampered one.

He just... doesn't like being in charge. It's scary, and it makes him feel under pressure, frightened not to be able to live up to expectations.

But he's been able to overcome many fears, thanks to Blaine. So maybe this is just another one. And maybe for Blaine he could.

"'Kay," he nods, curling up against Blaine's side, hiding against his chest, "But, honestly... you could've come up with something better for a Christmas present."

Blaine grins, turning to look at him with cheeky eyes. "I never said it was me giving a present to you, and not the other way 'round."

Leo opens his eyes wide, hitting him hard on his shoulder. "You asshole!" he shouts, and for a second he's incredibly angry, because hey, Christmas is important, and he deserves a present, anyway, but then Blaine laughs, a pure, amused, happy laughter, and Leo blushes thinking that there, there goes his present, and it's the most perfect Blaine could ever give him.
Genere: Adventure, Romance.
Pairing: Blaine/Kurt, Dave/Kurt, Blaine/Dave, Blaine/Dave/Kurt, Brittany/Santana, Jesse/Rachel, Lauren/Puck.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: AU, Slash, Threesome, Lemon, OC.
- Since Queen Sue ascended to the throne of the Iron Lands, the war against the pirates of the Floating Lands (a war for territory possession that's been going on for a little less than a century, now) got worse and worse with every year. The pirates claim the Midlands as their own, but the Steam Army of the Queen conquered them, and they're not going to let the pirates take them back again, since more than half of the iron for the Capital and all the other cities of the empire comes from the Midlands' mines.
History seems about to change, though, when Burt Hummel, a scientist living in the Midlands, works out a device that transmutes common dirt into iron. That way, it shouldn't be necessary to fight for the Midlands anymore, and the war could finally stop. Queen Sue asks the scientist to bring the device to the Iron Palace, so that she can see it at work and, once it's proven working, stop the fighting. Burt, though, would be an easy target for anybody who wanted to steal the device, considering that he's very well known for having worked for the Queen for years.
For that reason, he sends his only child Kurt to the Iron Palace with the device, hoping that it could be safer with somebody who's not as well known as he is. Kurt accepts the mission and departs on his fiancée Blaine's train. He's one of the heads of the Steam Army, and his battletrain survived countless fights.
That's why Kurt feels safe.
Unfortunately, he's wrong.
Note: Threesomes are always good things, everybody knows that. But we wanted to kick it up a notch, so we started talking about pirates. And battletrains. On tracks up in the air. With alchemy. You can't get any cooler than that. Except for dinosaurs. We'll be working on that next time.
With that said, we really, really had fun writing this, creating this world from scratches and having it masterfully drawn by kironomi who not only got exactly what we had in mind but delivered it in the best way possible. You will find her beautiful drawings inside the story, enhancing some part of it.
As usual, we tried to write as well as we could, but nothing changed from our last fic and we're still Italian. So, even though we hope we're getting better and better with every fic we write in English, grammar mistakes and horrors are bound to be there. Have patience. ~ reviews will be cherished, criticisms are welcomed, but please be gentle.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

PIRATES VS CONDUCTORS
CHAPTER 1

The war predated everything Kurt knew, as well as the whole actual living population of the continent. There wasn’t a single alive person that was born before the conflict had started. After a hundred years of war, whoever was born before it was already dead, and in the meanwhile a lot of people were born while it was happening, and died before they could see its ending.

Kurt, for example, had lived his whole life, up to his seventeenth year of age, firmly believing the war would never stop. It would have gone on and on until the end of the world – or, alternatively, until the end of available soldiers.

If you asked history professors and learned people about the beginning of the war and its reasons, they always knew how to answer in details. They seemed to take delight in keeping you there as they went on and on for hours about this or that king of the Iron Lands and this or that pirate captain from the Floating Lands, the conflicts they had, the battles they fought, the tactics they went by.

If you asked normal people, though, those who lived in the country or in the iron cities, those who worked in the caves in the Midlands, they only knew the basics. Some of them didn’t even knew that. They knew a war had started way before they were born, they knew that war was all about conquering the Midlands and their mines and keeping them in control, they knew it had probably started when the Iron Lands first stepped into the Midlands claiming them as theirs despite them being considered neutral territories since the beginning of time, but that was all. They didn’t knew about people fighting on the front line, they didn’t knew about generals and commanders that were nothing but strangers’ names to them, they didn’t knew about all the money the war cost to the Iron Lands, or the multitude of lives it took.

They wanted the war over, but they didn’t care about what it really was, what it meant to the Iron Lands. Some of them even sided with the pirates, believing – Gods only knew why – that they were saviours, that they wanted to free them all from the Queen’s unfair treatment.

In Kurt’s opinion, they were fools. From where did they think the iron used to forge their tools, their utensils, even their money and the posts used to build their own homes came? Of course it came from the mines in the Midlands. The Iron Lands covered a huge territory through the whole continent, while the Floating Lands were nothing but a few little islands roaming around in the sky, always changing place with every month. They hosted not more than a hundred thousand people while the Iron Lands were home to billions. The pirates ruling the Floating Lands could have easily settled to buy a small portion of the iron the miner extracted from the caves in the Midlands, but no, they wanted the whole Midlands to be theirs, despite the little use they had for them, and still people really believed the war was some Iron Lands’ King’s fault.

Sure, Kurt hated war too. He hated waking up in the morning knowing people were going to die, he hated that there was a very little he or anybody else could do to save them or make the massacre stop, but he knew somebody had to fight that war, somebody had to kill and be killed to defend the Midlands and the Iron Lands’ wealth from the pirates’ invasion, and he wanted the war over, of course, but he wanted the Iron Lands to win it. Surely, he didn’t want some uncivilized pirates from the Floating Lands to sit on the iron throne and rule the whole land by his immoral and barbaric rules.

People didn’t know how pirates truly were. Kurt wasn’t exactly learned – he was the son of an alchemist, after all, he knew almost anything about basic alchemy processes, but he wasn’t really acquainted about history or sociology – but he had read some books about them, he knew how they lived by. They almost never left their battleships, they were known not to take any prisoners, and whenever they caught someone from the Iron Lands they always tortured them to death, even soldiers who clearly knew nothing about the Steam Army strategy, in an attempt to make them reveal Gods only knew which kind of secrets they thought they could use to their advantage on the battleground.

Pirates were cruel, ignorant brutes, and they only wanted the Midlands so that they could use the iron from the caves to enlarge their fleet and finally take a move against the Iron Lands, to conquer them, slaughter all the people who adverse them and enslave the others, and those who thought pirates were fighting this war to free the people of the Iron Lands from some kind of cruel and vicious queen, clearly knew nothing about anything at all.

“Kurt?” Burt said, waving a hand in front of his eyes to try and bring him back on earth from the stream of thoughts that had clearly brought him to some place else, “Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, dad,” he answered, turning to look at him with a little smile, “But you already told me everything a dozen times in the last three days. I think I know, now.”

“No, you don’t!” Burt insisted, placing both his big, calloused hands on his son’s shoulders, shaking him a little back and forth, “The mission you’re going to go on is a very difficult, very important, very dangerous one. We can’t risk for you to get caught, you will bring the philosopher’s stone to the Queen, and—”

“I know, dad, I know. If it can convince the Queen that the stone alone could provide the iron to sustain the whole land, the war will be over.”

His father had lazily searched for the philosopher’s stone for his whole life, just like every other man who considered himself an alchemist had done and still did since the beginning of the world. It wasn’t until he had found concrete evidence of his existence and utility that he told the Queen about it.

The stone had been working and improving non stop for the last eleven or twelve month, since Kurt’s dad and the Queen had last spoken about it, and Kurt had seen it at work a thousand times at least: it never transmuted into iron more than just a stone or something. And even then, the quantity of iron resulting somehow never managed to compare to the quantity of stone or dirt or even wood used at the beginning of the transmutation process.

Kurt had serious doubts that something like that could ever solve the Iron Lands’ problems to the point that the war would be useless, but his dad firmly believed that was what was going to happen, and after the countless years the old alchemist had spent working on that project he wouldn’t want to be the one to tell him “dad, no, this is clearly not going to work”.

“Exactly,” Burt said, nodding quickly. “You have to be brave and careful, son.”

“And you know I won’t,” Kurt chuckled, freeing himself from his father’s grasp, “That’s why you’re handing me over to Blaine, so he will be for both of us.”

Burt didn’t seem to find his son’s joke any funny, and frowned sternly as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Kurt, do I have to remind you about the crucial importance of this whole operation? How many lives we could save, how many battles we could spare the army with just one stone?”

“I swear, dad, if you remind me about it one more time, I’ll puke,” Kurt answered with a bright smile, “Dad, really, I know. And I understand. And I trust Blaine and his battletrain,” Kurt added, turning a bit to lovingly glance at his fiancée, waiting for him near the train, already ready to depart, “And so should you. He’s not a commander of the Steam Army for nothing.”

Burt sighed, passing a hand over his face. “Yes, and I do,” he admitted, gesturing towards Blaine to invite him to come closer. “Blaine, I entrust my son to you. Take good care of him and the valuable load he carries.”

“I will, mister Hummel,” Blaine said, smiling confidently at him. They shook hands, Kurt already by his fiancée’s side, an arm wrapped around his. Blaine turned towards him and smiled. “Now, shall we go?”

*

Blaine was a war hero whose name was known through the whole land. If there was one member of the Steam Army, only one, that commoners would have saved from the fury of the pirates’ fleets, that was him. He was a decorated soldier who had proven his value fighting bravery on the front line before he was awarded with the grade of commander, and he had the responsibility of the Warbler, the first, the biggest and the strongest among all the battletrains of the Steam Army.

At his command, the Warbler had won countless fights, shooting down dozens of pirate ships, and the soldiers he now commanded had captured hundreds of pirates that were now safely held prisoners into the Capital’s prisons, where they couldn’t hurt anybody anymore.

He was a well respected commander, a man about whom people could do nothing but talk with deference and admiration.

Yet, he clearly had no clue of what it meant to be a boyfriend. Three days had passed since they had left Lima, headed to the Capital, and Kurt had only seen him a couple of times tops. He had passed his days caged in a carriage equipped with all the comforts he might need, except of course for the strong arms of his boyfriend firmly wrapped around his body.

Blaine and Kurt didn’t exactly have a very close relationship, but that was only because they couldn’t see each other as often as they would have liked to. When they actually managed to finally spend some time together, they were always very close, and Kurt was hoping that this trip would have brought a lot more moments of intimacy between them, but it turned out that Blaine could barely leave the cabin, and in any way he preferred to have Kurt always locked up in his private cab, so to keep him safe and controlled day and night.

Kurt hated it. He was bored, tired, and missed his boyfriend. And he wanted to see the cabin, he had asked Blaine countless time to let him go there and watch him as he drove the train, but Blaine insisted it was safer to keep him in his room, and never let him out, and if he had to watch those same four walls for another instant Kurt was sure he would have gone crazy.

He couldn’t believe he had been so excited for this trip. What an adventure it will be!, he had thought while planning the departure; he couldn’t wait to be on that train, to pass through the Midlands with all their little villages, to see the high mountains on the horizon shelter the sun as it was setting while the rail led them straight to the Capital. And he couldn’t wait to see the Capital itself, with all his iron palaces, and the Queen, of course, oh, how he couldn’t wait to finally meet the Queen. He had always dreamed to just have a little taste of the adventures Blaine lived in his everyday life, and he couldn’t even look at himself, now, trapped in a stupid wagon with a stupid stone in a stupid box and nothing but the desert all around because Blaine thought it would be safer not to take the way through the Midlands.


He was sick of it all, and he was about to grab the phone hanging on the wall, the one Blaine used to communicate with him from the cabin without even having to move, to call him with the specific intent of fighting, when he heard a soft knocking on the door.

Finally! Something happening! Kurt could barely believe it, the knocking had been so soft it could have just as easily be nothing but his mind playing tricks on him. “Who is it?” he asked, standing up from the armchair he had been half-sleeping in boredom since he had woken up that morning.

“Private soldier Melchior Gabor, sir, serial number 114220316. I ask permission to come in, sir.”

Kurt chuckled lightly, covering his mouth with one hand as he tried to muffle the sound so the soldier wouldn’t hear it. He still hadn’t had the time to get used to how formal Blaine’s soldiers were. He really knew how to keep them in line. “Come in, please,” he said, smiling gently as the soldier opened the door and walked inside his room.

He was tall – at least compared to Blaine, after all – and kind of handsome, Kurt had to admit. He had pale skin and wavy light brown hair, and his eyes were a light, mysterious shade of a mixed tone in between green and grey. He was smiling warmly, standing there in his elegant uniform, as he politely saluted him with a little bow.

“I hope you’re finding yourself comfortable in here, sir,” he said. Kurt chuckled, nodding without hesitation.

“Of course, of course,” he answered, “But please, just call me Kurt.”

“I can’t, sir,” Melchior laughed a bit, “My commander would certainly reproach me if I dared.”

“Oh, but I won’t tell him, I promise,” Kurt insisted, playfully winking at him, “It’ll be our little secret.”

Melchior laughed once more, but he didn’t answer to that. He probably knew it wouldn’t have been proper for a soldier like him to play that way with somebody like Kurt. Blaine really knew how to handle his men, after all.

“Sir, I’m here because commander Anderson asked for your presence in the head cabin,” Melchior said, “Would you be kind enough to follow me?”

Kurt’s eyes immediately started to shine as a happy smile appeared on his lips. “Oh, my Gods,” he said, folding his hands over his chest, “He remembered! I asked him to let me see the cabin so many times!”

How could Kurt be so mean, how could he think Blaine had forgot about him, or was keeping him locked up in that room because he didn’t care about what he wanted? Of course Blaine cared! Of course he did, he was clearly just waiting for the right moment to call him! He was carrying the responsibility of his safety on his shoulders, and Kurt would have understood that better. He would have waited patiently for his fiancée to be sure there were no threats around, because, as it was obvious now, Blaine was just waiting for a safe moment when he could tell him to come without worry for his life.

His fiancée was a hero, a noble and honourable man, and Kurt loved him so much he couldn’t wait to finally see him again so he could show him.

“Commander Anderson also wanted me to ask you if you could bring that device you’re carrying with you on the cabin,” Melchior added, “He would like to watch it closely.”

“Of course,” Kurt answered without even listening to him. He was too happy to be concerned about that stupid stone or everything else in the world, for that matter. He was about to see Blaine! He was about to stand by his side while he drove the train towards the Capital in the blinding light of the day! He couldn’t imagine anything more adventurous or exciting.

He took the little velvet box the stone was kept in and followed Melchior out of the room.

“Weren’t there two soldiers here?” Kurt asked as Melchior led him along the wagons, walking slowly so to let him free to take a look around. He was grateful to Melchior to be so kind to him, he must’ve guessed or known that Kurt hadn’t really had the chance to explore the train before, but not seeing the soldiers he was sure Blaine had put to guard his door was kind of making him nervous.

“Yes, sir,” Melchior nodded, moving from one wagon to the other and keeping the door open for Kurt to pass through it, “Since I was going to take care of you here, commander Anderson asked them over to the head cabin. You know how it is on a battletrain, we can’t just leave men guarding an empty room.”

“Actually, I don’t really know how it is on a battletrain, since I had never been into one before three days ago,” Kurt chuckled, “But it makes sense. I guess you’re all very busy, all day long.”

“Constantly,” Melchior nodded, helping him into yet another wagon.

“Thank you,” Kurt said, actually looking around himself for the first time since they had left his room. “Wait a minute, isn’t this the end of the train?” he asked, looking outside the window.

“It would appear so,” Malchior nodded, opening the last door. Instantly, the wind started to blow inside the wagon so hard and fast Kurt had to grab one of the handles hanging down from the ceiling not to fall on the ground.

“What are you doing?!” Kurt screamed, terrified, “Weren’t you supposed to bring me to Blaine?!”

“Oh, was I?” Melchior asked, his formerly kind smile turning quickly into a way more wicked one.

Kurt felt his heart skip a beat and held on to the handle tighter. “Who the hell are you?” he asked in a breath.

He didn’t have the time to hear the answer, though. “Jesse St. James,” the man answered, hitting him on the back of his head and managing to grab the little velvet box he let go of fainting, before it could hit the ground, “Nice to meet you.”

Jesse opened the jacket of the uniform he had stolen from one of the soldiers he had found outside of Kurt’s room before throwing them both out of the windows, and put the box in one of the countless inner pockets it had, and then retrieved Kurt’s unconscious body from the ground, lifting him up on his own shoulders. He secured the sleeping boy on himself with a rope and then walked outside the train, jumping on the two-seater floating air-scooter tied to the iron handrail.

Whistling happily, perfectly satisfied with himself, he cut the rope and flew away.

*

The Warbler was the first train of the fleet and the first battletrain ever built, too. It had a body of iron, a steam turbine and four alchemy powered auxiliary engines. When it first came out, more than a hundred years prior, its only engine was coal-powered and it was replaced ten years after with a modern, more functional model, which was the one it had now.

Not the newest train of the fleet, perhaps, but the more reliable.

Blaine had driven it for five years and he wouldn't have changed it for any of those ten-engines monstrosities that industry was building nowadays. They were gorgeous and well armed, absolutely essential to fight the war, but they still couldn't compete with the flagtrain's stability. To date, the Warbler was still the best train, as far as the ratio between power, speed and endurance was concerned. Also, the flagtrain didn't need to be the best, but it needed to be indestructible because it was the only real reference point in battle. All the other conductors would look for it if they were in trouble, therefore it could not fall easily, for it was the sign that the army had still hope, that it was still fighting. And the Warbler, with his century of service, had never broken down but once, while Blaine had at least forty of the latest units in repair every week.

Blaine checked the pressure gauge and the levels of energy in the engine compartment through the control panel Hummel had installed on the bridge. Everything seemed perfectly normal. Cruising speed was good and at this pace he could hope to get to Capital City on schedule, given the pirates didn't decide to attack, which would have been unfortunate indeed.

Usually, it would have been reporting via radio to the command every twelve hours about his squadron's whereabouts and status, but the delicate nature of the current mission required total secrecy because communications between the train and the headquarters however coded could still have been intercepted, and he couldn't let it happen.

Therefore, left with really nothing to do, he realized this was a good moment to show Kurt the train, for he had been asking to visit it since their departure. He called an orderly and when he came, clicking his heels and giving a salute, he ordered him to fetch his fiancée from the cabin he had been locked in for three days and escort Kurt to him.

Knowing Kurt, Blaine doubted him would be in any way interested in what the Warbler was. Kurt wasn't exactly the kind of young man who fancied train or the art of war, in general. He was artistic, he loved art, singing and theatre. He would not understand the poetry of the pistons moving in perfect harmony, like the giant keys of a piano, pushing the train forward instead of making music. But that was one of the reason Blaine loved him so much. They were so different from one another, and still shared so much. Like a passion for music, Blaine himself used to sing from time to time, even though he was not good at it as Kurt was.

They were a strange couple, Kurt and him.

They had met by chance, in a moment when Blaine wasn't thinking about love at all. He had just been named commander of the royal fleet and he was determined to live up to the honour that had been given to him. All his efforts and energy were focused solely on lead a battle after the other and possibly to win the war as soon as possible, bringing the Iron Lands back to the peace they had long forgotten.

It was late April, some time after the fleet's victory at Kinley's point – one of the most strategic and important sites on the borders, that the pirates was about to take, opening a way not only between the fleet's lines, but to the Iron Lands as well – and a party to celebrate the astounding performance of the Queen's fleet had been thrown by a rich merchant of a city nearby. All the highest in command were there, together with all the personages of the towns all around. Mister Hummel and his son were invited to, in consideration of what the alchemist had done for the fleet.

Blaine and Kurt had never met before, but Blaine knew Burt. The two of them were talking about possible modifications on the Warbler, when Kurt had approached them, taking his father away from him with a polite apology in his direction. Blaine could honestly swear he hadn't be able to look at anything else but Kurt, that night. His eyes had followed him through the room, even when he had been expected to listen to his superiors asking about this or that detail of the battle. Every time he lost sight of Kurt's peculiar outfit, his eyes would look for it until they find it again. By the end of the night, he could recognize Kurt in the crowd by the mere sight of a button.

They didn't speak at all that night, except for saying goodbye.

Blaine had been pleased, though, to see in Kurt's eyes the same kind of longing desire that he was sure was in his own. For this reason, he had found the courage to try and court him, because all of a sudden, fight an entire fleet of pirate ships with one single battletrain left seemed easier than ask Kurt out. Blaine's visits to Burt's lab became quite frequent and so did the invitations to stay for dinner. After what felt the millionth time that he was invited to stay and he spent the time nodding politely to whatever Burt was saying while looking at Kurt and smile awkwardly every now and then, Burt had taken the problem in his own hand and asked abruptly – and a little bit sternly to add a touch of scariness – if Blaine liked his only son, for it certainly looked so. Blaine had turned red, and Kurt purple but Burt had stood his ground. “You two don't do anything but look at each other all day,” he had said. “I gave you plenty of chances to make a move, so now please do it or give up because I can't bare the lovey-dovey act any longer.”

And Blaine did it. He asked the man the honour to court Kurt and he said yes. They went out a couple of times, but it was clear since the beginning that they were meant to be together. Four years after, which means a year before this mission had became necessary, Blaine had asked Burt for Kurt's hand and they were now going to marry soon, possibly after the end of the war that both Burt and Blaine felt closer and closer with the discovery of the stone.

He was smiling stupidly at the window of the head cabin, looking not at the dry beauty of the desert but at his own mental images of how the wedding was going to be according to Kurt's fashion sense, when the door of the cabin burst open and his orderly run in, screaming his name.

“Commander Anderson,” he said, breathing heavily. “Mister Hummel is gone, sir. The room is empty and I couldn't find him.”

“What?” Blaine moved away from the window as all the wedding images disappeared from his head, his brain entering in a perfect emergency-mode. “What do you mean he is gone? Did you ask the men at his door?”

“They are gone too, sir.”

“Damn!” Blaine was already in motion before the orderly had even stopped speaking. He started running down the hall and the soldier run after him, awaiting orders. “He's been abducted. Call the security. Stop the train. Block all the exits. Now!”

The young orderly stopped and took out his radio, which frizzled a little as soon as he pressed the button. “Attention, to all units on board. We have a breach. Repeat: we have a breach. Suspected intruder. Train in red mode.”

The orderly didn't need to say his name or that it was Blaine's order. Whoever was accused of pretending a red code for a battletrain would go to the court-martial. Nobody would ever dream of playing like that, so if a red mode had been called, then it had to be real. The brakes were pulled a second after, while the orderly was still shouting about the state of emergency. The train screeched, a wave of sparkles washed over the windows as the brakes bit at the tracks. The train jumped to a stop and then, all together windows and doors shut down, leaving the whole train in the dark for a brief moment before the emergency light turned on.

Used to every single movement of his train in battle, Blaine was unaffected by its jumping and shaking, and he kept moving down the hall, avoiding things falling down from the highest shelves and soldiers throwing themselves out of the cabins and running to their duties. He shouted orders as he passed them by, taking some with him for good measure.

Kurt's door was open, obviously. He quickly checked the room but as soon as he saw his window was intact he didn't waste any more time and kept running down the hall. Whoever took Kurt had had to run that way, because they were coming from the other. He passed an awful numbers of intersections, scattering his men in each and every wagon to check for Kurt while he run forward.

There was a strange noise ahead. Some sort of enduring whistle with a knocking sound in the background. It took him a few moments to realize the whistle was strong wind coming in the train from outside, meaning that one of the exits had to be open. When he reached it, the last door was open. The shutter had closed too late and not completely. He knelt down to discover that the knocking sound was the end of a rope, slamming against the side of the train. Looking up, he saw a flying vehicle in the distance, the intruder and his precious load were gone.

“Flying vehicle, probably a scooter, going South-Eastwards” he said in his radio. “I want two squads after it.”

“Roger,” A frizzling voice said from the other end. “Squad one and two ready, sir.”

“Get him and take back Hummel and his load.”

“Roger.”

The orderly caught up with Blaine as he put away the radio. “The train is clear, sir. What are the orders, now?”

Blaine sighed. There wasn't much he could do. There were no doubts Kurt had been kidnapped by the pirates, but he couldn't just turn the train around and go toward the Floating Lands. That constantly moving place was too dangerous to walk through without a map to follow. He had to hope the squads got Kurt back or at least catch up with the scooter and followed it, so to know exactly where he was heading to. “We get the Warbler ready,” he said as he walked back to the head cabin. Once there, he unlocked the system and cleared the state of emergency. “We leave as soon as we have the coordinates.”

“Yes sir,” the orderly said, nodding.

Around them the Warbler came back to life, roaring and ready to fight if necessary, as its conductor was.

*

Jesse had driven his scooter randomly for almost two hours before getting bored and nose-diving toward the ocean, run on the surface of the water for three miles and then literally disappear behind one of the many falls generated on the floated stones, giving the slip to Blaine's soldiers, running after him on their flying vehicles. He had confused them for a while, taking them away from the Warbler and right at the board of the pirates territory, where he could orient himself and they couldn't. The game was over.

He turned off the scooter's engine and waited, hidden behind one of the huge masses of rock floating in mid-air. He watched them search for him around, but not daring to cross the border. They could, of course, try and follow him, maybe they could even catch him – Jesse wasn't so sure about that but he was willing to give the poor guys at least that merit – but without a map of the rocks' migration, they were bound to turn around with their precious intruder and find themselves trapped in a labyrinth that wasn't there before. And in the land of pirates, being a group of royal soldiers away from their battletrain was never a good idea.

Jesse had to admit they were persisting, though. They searched for at least another hour, forcing him to check on Kurt and see if he was waking up, before giving up and preparing to go back to their commander to tell him he was lost.

In the beginning, the Floating Lands were attached to the continent, separated from the Iron Lands by that same Midlands that now were the reason of the war. Then various earthquakes opened a crack in the ground, that eventually resulted into big chunks of rock the size of cities to come off the land. But instead of staying where they were, they started floating due to the alchemical energy in excess, that was also the main cause of the earthquakes to begin with. Alchemists said those parts of the land were lost, because the energy was bound to run out sooner or later. The rocks would fall into the ocean, bringing the cities with them.

People left the rocks and their cities, and went to live in the Midlands or in the Iron Lands, if they had enough money. Many of them even faced the long journey to the Capital, hoping to find a job as servants and maids, there. The Floating Stones were abandoned, awaiting for them to fall and disappeared in the deep waters eight hundreds feet below them.

But it never happened.

Somehow, the energy that was keeping the rocks in the air started to interact with the energy on solid ground, creating currents that would keep these rocks floating but push them around in no predictable patterns. Because of its constantly changing geography, the Floating Lands became the perfect place to hide for runaways and criminals and people who needed to disappear from the face of the world for whatever reason. They started to live there and developed a way to understand the migration of the stones they lived on and they built ships that could fly, powered with little stones extracted from the floating rocks. And like sailors at sea, they learned how to orient themselves in a land with very few constant landmarks.

They built their own kingdom, mirroring the one that had turned them into outcasts and they took their revenge on it by attacking the people on the ground and stealing from them. They started roaming the sky in little fleets, they became pirates and the rest was history.

Jesse waited for the royal soldiers to fly away and disappear beyond the line of the horizon before turning on the engine again. Kurt was moaning now and stirring every now and then, he needed to get to the target soon. He came out from behind his hiding place and speeded up through the path of rocks without hesitation. Jesse wasn't born in the Floating Lands but he knew exactly how to move through them. A man with his kind of job needed to be able to find his way wherever he was, otherwise he wouldn't live very long. And since he planned to have a long, happy life and then retire at a very old age in one of the tropical islands in the South to enjoy all the money he would have had, he was very good at saving his ass in every possible situation.

It took him another hour to get to where he needed to be.

Eventually, the hugest rock he had seen so far slowly moved aside to reveal a pirate ship, glorious and shiny in the dying light of the day. And behind it, about other twenty ships, smaller and somehow not as impressive as the flagship but still visibly as armed. This fleet was huge, and it wasn't the only one. Jesse knew for a fact that, twenty miles East from there, there was another one, as big as this one, and the same went from twenty miles in every direction. The pirates were indeed a power to be reckon with, because they had done the only thing they needed to do: they joined forces and they were now many, angry and merciless.

Jesse approached the flagship slowly and stopped in mid-air thirty feet from it, knowing pirates tended to shoot at anything they didn't know and that moved around their ship. A man with a purple bandana over a ruffled head of blonde hair frowned at him and squinted his eyes as if he couldn't see very well.

“Who th' hell be ye?” He asked in a deep, throaty voice before coughing and then spitting in the ocean.

Jesse made a face at his astounding lack of grammar, but he smiled anyway. “Hello good sir, my name is Jesse St. James. Your captain is waiting for me. I have something he wants.”

The pirate looked at him very intently, as if he was trying to understand what exactly Jesse was saying, which was ridiculous since it should have been the other way around. Eventually, he seemed to give up on some of the words and focus only on the ones he understood, which were very few.

He nodded and then turned his head. “Avast, thar, Cap'n, thar be a scurvy dog here who says ye be waitin' fer him,” he shouted. “He says his name be Jesse St. somethin'. I shoot him?”

He was speaking to someone Jesse couldn't see, but he could hear the clear, stern voice answering him and recognize it as the captain's voice. “Of course you don't shoot him, you idiot. Let him on board.”

“Aye, Cap'n.” The pirate nodded again and then turned to Jesse again. “Th' Cap'n says ye can come on board. Leave that sailin' thin' thar 'n use th' ladder.”

After he said that, a rope ladder was thrown overboard for him. He got the scooter closer to the side of the ship and then climbed the ladder, with Kurt's sleeping body secured to his back. Once he got on top, the blonde pirate helped him out, almost dragging him on board. “Here, ye land people be not jolly at gettin' on a ship.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jesse said, dusting off his trousers. He carefully took Kurt off his shoulders and lied him on the planks, where he moaned a little and then curled up in his sleep. The captain came forward, taking a couple of slow steps toward him and stopping a few feet away, right next to the blonde pirate who obligingly took a step back. “Captain Karofsky.”

“St. James,” the captain grumbled.

Captain Karofsky was a big, sturdy young man, with dark brown hair and a constantly pissed off expression on his squared face that made him look like if he had just eaten something nasty. He hadn't missed any limbs yet and his eyes were a deep brown that matched the planks of his ship when they got wet at high tide. In his early twenties, he was quite young to be ruling a ship as big as The Fury but he was the son of a captain, the grandson of a buccaneer and the nephew of a corsair, so he wasn't expected to be less than a sea robber himself. He had got his ship and half the crew from his father, but the rest of his men and the other ships that followed his lead he had owned himself.

Jesse didn't like pirates too much – actually, he didn't like anyone in general too much, because liking someone required a certain amount of interest toward other human beings which he lacked by nature – but he found Karofsky amusing, and he enjoyed the brief moments they spent in civilities before their business.

As a pirate, he was quite peculiar. First of all, he wasn't cursed with the usual blatant ignorance. His notorious grandfather was the illegitimate son of a baron and had been educated in the finest school before going off roaming the sea. The old man was a true pirate, but he had as well the heart of a man of letters. He loved books as much as he loved treasures and he passed his passion to his son and to his son's son after that. Even though Karofsky had a lot of the restlessness of his father Paul, which made him a troubled soul, he was much like his grandfather as far as his education was concerned. Secondly, he followed no rules but his own, and that was something Jesse could relate to.

“I was starting to think you'd never show up. You're late,” Karofsky said.

Jesse smiled charmingly as he always did. “I have my reasons, sir. Men of the Queen were after me, I had to get rid of them in order to get here unharmed and with your requested goods safe and sound in my hands. So I did and here I am. I believe this should be a good enough explanation to be forgiven.”

“I suppose it is,” Karofsky granted. “Do you have what I asked?”

“As I said, I do,” Jesse smiled again and rummaged in his jacket's inside pocket, retrieving the little box. “This is the device you wanted and the kid here was the one who had it.”

Karofsky tilted his head, frowning as he watched Kurt. “This is not Hummel,” he said.

“Actually, he is. Kurt Hummel, only son of Burt Hummel and his late wife, died during a raid of your fellow pirates ships in Lima town, approximately ten, maybe fifteen years ago.”

The captain was totally unimpressed by Jesse's knowledge. “Still, the son of the alchemist is not what I asked you.”

“No, what you asked me was to bring you the box and who had it and that's exactly what I brought you, Karofsky,” Jesse said. “If you don't like it, that's fine. Feel free to lodge a complaint to the battletrain army of Her Majesty, but don't blame me.”

In the meanwhile, Kurt was finally starting to wake up. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the point of Karofsky's sword, aimed at his neck as the captain was arguing with Jesse over his body. “Are you trying to fuck with me, St. James?”

“For God's sake, no!” Jesse sighed. “He was on the train with the box. There wasn't anyone else. I'm sorry if you are disappointed, but let me tell you, you should get your information right next time, if you don't want this kind of unfortunate situations to happen. Now, if you'd be so kind as to pay me.”

“Who are you?” Kurt said as he tried to move away from both of them and failed because his hands and feet were tied.

“Avast, Cap'n, he be awake,” the blonde pirate said, drawing Kurt's attention toward himself and the dozen of other men on the ship.

“Oh my Gods, you are pirates!” Kurt screamed, hearing the way he spoke. He wiggled away and turned to Jesse, glaring at him. “You sold me to the pirates, you bastard!”

“At least I was trying to before you woke up and delayed this transaction even further,” he answered. Then he sighed, as if to regain his composure. “Captain, if you don't mind, it's getting late and I have other things that I need to take care of.”

Karofsky wasn't convinced about the whole matter and his crew seemed to notice that. His men came closer, all with swords or pistols in hand. Kurt started screaming even louder, accusing Jesse of treachery and ordering the pirates to stay away from him because he was the fiancée of Blaine Anderson, commander of the Warbler, first battletrain of the Queen and that soon the whole army of Her Majesty would fall upon them to save him.

Nobody listened to him.

“Dave, you wanted the thing. You have it,” the voice of a woman said, apparently out of thin air. “So, cut the bullshits and let's see if it works. The kid here is the son of the alchemist, he must know something. If he doesn't we will use him to get to the man himself.”

Kurt shut up immediately, terrified by the ghostly voice. He looked up at Jesse, but he was as calm as ever and nobody seemed to mind that a bodiless woman was speaking to them. “Did you hear it too?”

“What if he's screwing with us?” Dave said to the voice, showing that he had indeed heard it.

“He would never do that, wouldn't he?” the incorporeal woman said. “He knows that we hunt down, torture, skin and kill bastards.”

Jesse smiled as if that was a compliment. “I would never dare, miss Lopez. I swear to the Gods that this kid is Burt Hummel's son and the box he brings with him is the device you asked me to retrieve.”

“Aye, fine. Gimme that.” Karofsky reached out but Jesse shook his head. “What?”

“We are both gentlemen, aren't we, captain?” Jesse titled his head. “Let's do as gentlemen do.”

Karofsky nodded to one of his pirates, a beautiful young lady with a blonde pony tail on the top of her head who came forward, dangling her hips on a pair of staggering heeled boots. “If you are a leprechaun, why are we giving you money? Shouldn't be the other way around?” She said, giving him a sachet of clinking coins. She had the most beautiful blue eyes Jesse had ever seen. It was a pity they couldn't do nothing for her blank expression, probably mirroring a severe case of vacancy in her brain too.

“C'mere, me beauty,” the same pirate said as he grabbed the girl by her wrist and dragged her away from Jesse. “Ye need to sleep, Brit, ye be knowin' that.”

Britney nodded vaguely and walked away with the man, turning to look at Jesse every now and then, probably making sure he wasn't going to disappear. “Here is your device, Captain,” Jesse said, giving the little velvet box to Karofsky. “And the kid, of course, is yours too. I suggest that you treat him well. Anderson seems very fond of him and the man's got money, if you know what I mean.”

“This is none of your business, St. James,” Karofsky growled as he nodded to a couple of pirates who lifted a screaming Kurt from the ground and took him away. “Now, get lost. I've seen enough of you face for a lifetime.”

“I would love to oblige, but unfortunately there is something else I need to retrieve from this ship before I can consider myself excused,” Jesse said with a bow. “Now, I would ask you if you keep your marine charts in your cabin, Captain, and where it might be, but I feel you won't tell me, am I right?”

Karofsky frowned, not getting what was happening for a moment. “What are you talking about?”

“Someone else – I don't want to name names, let's just say he is a renown train conductor who happens to drive the same train that was transporting Hummel, what a coincidence! – asked me to get the charts and since he too was paying, I couldn't say no, could I?”

Karofsky literally growled, unsheathing his sword. “Take him! Take him but don't kill him,” he shouted to his men, scattered all around the deck. “I wanna do that!”

“There's no need to be so touchy!” Jesse said, swirling away from the grasp of a pirate and then jumping on a barrel to avoid the sword of another. “I'll find the cabin by myself, thank you very much.”

From the barrel, Jesse jumped up on the quarterdeck and then, he turned around to fend with two pirates from up there. While the entirety of his crew flocked toward Jesse and followed him on the quartedeck, Karofsky went the other way, knowing that St. James was going to jump down sooner or later.

Jesse didn't want to kill anyone, it wasn't his style. But he didn't have nothing against wounds, especially if they could help getting him out of bad situations. So he cut people open here and there and he scratched one pirate's face from cheekbone to chin, actually making him more handsome. He walked backward, looking back every once in a while to avoid a pitiful, totally not gorgeous fall.

“I appreciate your eagerness, gentlemen,” he said after a while, “but I need y'all to back off, now.”

Suddenly, he dove on the ground, propping himself up with his free hand as he swung the sword with the other. He kicked the first man in line in his shin and he fell to the ground, bringing with him all the ones behind him. Jesse took a moment to himself to watch the scene. “Oh, that's why I love bowling.”

Then he jumped off the quarterdeck, right in front of the door of the captain's cabin.

When he landed, Karofsky was there. “Where do you think you're going?”

“I get you feel violated by me entering your cabin. I know, everybody always does,” he said, as they started fencing. Like two trained dancers, they moved in circle, every hack and perry precise and graceful, beautiful to watch. Karofsky's men stopped where they where, keeping an eye on the intruder, in case he escaped from the captain. “But I swear to the Gods and to the soul of my poor mother, that I'll be as unobtrusive as possible.”

“Shut up and surrender!”

“I'm afraid this is not possible. Would you try and order me something else? Who knows, I might even like it!” Jesse didn't lose his smile as he looked around, searching for a way out. He found it when he saw the copper bracelet on the captain's left wrist glowing red. He avoid Karofsky's hack by bending down and then rolled on the ground. When he was ready again, he aimed his sword not to the man but to the bracelet.

“Dave, watch out!” The voice of the woman screamed.

Karofsky focused exclusively on avoiding the blow and saving the bracelet. He withdrew the arm just in time, so Jesse ended up only scratching the back of his hand, but the captain got distracted and when he looked up again, St. James had already locked himself in the cabin.

Once he was inside the captain's cabin and the door was locked, Jesse leaned against for a second, catching his breath. From outside, came the voices of the pirates, already re-organizing to knock the door down. He would have to search fast if he wanted to get out of there alive and with the charts. The cabin was huge, considering that the other hundred men slept all crowded in half the space. The captain had a four posted bed with an upholstered headboard, a wooden table that had to weight as much as the ship, more books that he would care to count and a chest in a corner that Jesse would have loved to empty if he had the time.

“So many robberies, so little time,” he sighed, dramatically as he went through the papers on the table.

“St. James, you are a dead man!” The captain shouted in a deep, angry voice.

“Aren't we all?” He answered, as he threw the log book behind his back. “You know, it's a mess in here. How are you supposed to find anything?”

Under the pirates' blows, the door was already cracked and twisted. Jesse could see their dark, sometimes missing eyes from a hole they managed to open. “Alright, it's time to get out of here,” he murmured to himself. That was when he saw the marine charts spread on the table like a tablecloth under everything else, and pinned down with heavy stones at the four corners. “Here you are.”

He moved everything else aside with an arm and he rolled the charts. By the time he was done, the door blasted open and a ridiculous number of pirates started coming in, Karofsky in the lead. Jesse was out of the window already, and climbing the broadside to get back on deck. Once there, he met Karofsky again. The bracelet was still there, but Jesse couldn't try the same trick twice, so he had to fence with the man for real, this time.

“You're not gonna leave my ship alive with those!” The captain roared.

“Come on, Capitain! I bet you don't even need them, anymore” he said, slowly moving around him to get closer to the shrouds. “Let's donate to the unfortunate people who don't know their way around here.”

Karofsky lunged but he missed. Jesse had jumped and grabbed the shrouds, heaving himself up with one arm. The captain growled and followed him, but Jesse was slimmer and faster, and he moved like a monkey. The sword back in its sheathe and the charts secured to his belt, he climbed the shrouds up to the top, with Karofsky on his heels and his crew climbing next to him, knives between his teeth and all.

He looked around, feeling Karofsky's grin of triumph on himself. “It's over, St. James,” The captain said. “Hand me the charts, and we'll be even.”

“I would, seriously, if I was trapped.”

“Well, I'm sorry to break it for you, but you are.”

Jesse's face lighted up and he smiled so graciously that for a moment Karofsky was confused. This man was trapped on top of the mainmast of his ship with his whole crew after him, why was he fucking smiling? Then Jesse jumped. He let himself go in the air, overboard. They waited to hear the splash but there was none. One moment, and the man showed up again, waving on top of his scooter.

“Thank you, Captain!” He shouted, giving him a salute. “It was a blast! We should really do it again another time.”

The crew looked at Karofsky, waiting for orders but he knew they couldn't follow him now, because the ship would never move fast enough to catch up with him. Dave took his time to calm down and then just turned around, like Jesse's escape didn't even matter. “We can do without the charts, but we need to follow other paths,” he said, serious. “Prepare the Fury, we are sailing in half an hour.”

As the crew run on deck to get everything ready, the bracelet glowed again. “What about St. James?”

“The tide will bring him back to us sooner or later,” he answered the woman.

Then, he entered the cabin and locked himself in.

Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: Cooper/Blaine.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lime, Underage, Incest, Angst.
- "Il regalo era stata un’idea di papà."
Note: Scrivere questa storia mi è stato molto utile per capire dove poter settare un certo limite alla mia indecenza XD Ho scoperto scrivendo questa Andercest che, sebbene io non abbia problemi a infilare bambini di dieci anni in storie a chiaro contesto sessuale, coi bimbi di sette ho problemi anch'io X'DDD Fatemi i complimenti, è una cosa importantissima che non sapevo e che ora so. E questo è peraltro l'unico merito di questa storia, visto che la odio di odio vero XD
Comunque, partecipa alla challenge di 500themes_ita per il prompt #89 (Beneamato peccato), ed anche alla Badwrong Week #3 @ maridichallenge, a tema incest, su prompt Glee, Blaine Anderson/Cooper Anderson, coniglio di pezza.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
A LOVESICK LULLABY

Blaine non si allontanava mai dal suo coniglio di pezza. Era uno dei primi regali che avesse ricevuto, il primo che Cooper gli avesse fatto in una vita da fratello in realtà abbastanza priva di qualsiasi tipo di regalo. Quando Blaine era nato, in Cooper la fiammella della rivalità non aveva impiegato moltissimo ad accendersi. Era stato un figlio unico per dodici lunghi anni, e quando erano sfumate sia la curiosità che il moto di improvviso, inaspettato e spaventosamente naturale affetto che l’aveva investito quando aveva posato gli occhi sul fragile e paffuto involtino di copertine di lana che sua madre gli aveva posato in grembo tornando a casa dall’ospedale qualche giorno dopo il parto, Cooper non era più stato granché contento di dover dividere la casa, i giocattoli e le attenzioni dei parenti col moccioso strillante che occupava abusivamente la culla in camera di mamma e papà.
Ma prima, prima di tutto questo, per qualche giorno la vita di Cooper era ruotata tutta attorno al suo nuovo fratellino minore. Blaine era arrivato a casa annegato in una tutina di lana azzurra che gli cascava da tutte le parti e dentro la quale il suo corpicino sembrava perdersi senza speranza, e la mamma, dopo averglielo poggiato sulle ginocchia per qualche minuto, l’aveva immediatamente portato in camera da letto, adagiandolo nella culla. Era stato allora che Cooper era corso in camera propria a recuperare il coniglio di peluche, e si era avvicinato.
Il regalo era stata un’idea di papà. Vedendolo diventare sempre più irrequieto man mano che la data prevista per il parto aveva cominciato ad avvicinarsi, gli aveva proposto di uscire insieme ed andare al negozio di giocattoli per comprare qualcosa che desse il benvenuto al fratellino, una volta che fosse arrivato. A Cooper l’idea di regalare qualcosa a un bambino che ancora nemmeno conosceva non era piaciuta granché, ma non aveva quasi mai avuto occasione di uscire assieme a suo padre, dal momento che spesso, quando c’era da accompagnarlo da qualche parte, era la bambinaia a provvedere, perciò aveva accettato l’invito di buon grado.
Il coniglio era stato scelto perché, una volta giunto al negozio di giocattoli, suo padre gli aveva detto di ricordarsi che all’inizio il fratellino sarebbe stato molto piccolo e fragile, e non avrebbe capito i giochi più complicati, come le macchinine, i robot, le costruzioni e i videogiochi con cui ormai Cooper giocava abitualmente. Serviva un regalo che fosse sicuro per il bebè, e quando Cooper aveva posato gli occhi sull’enorme coniglio di peluche e ne aveva tastato la morbidezza in punta di dita, aveva deciso che sarebbe stato il regalo perfetto.
Papà aveva riso sotto i baffi, soddisfatto della scelta. “Sarà più grande di lui, sai?”, gli aveva detto, e Cooper aveva annuito. Qualche settimana prima, la maestra Patty, che era stata via quasi un anno intero per dare alla luce il proprio bambino, era tornata a scuola per salutare gli studenti che sarebbero andati alle medie prima che lei tornasse dalla maternità. Aveva portato con sé il suo bambino appena nato, e Cooper ricordava di essersi stupito parecchio nel vederlo così piccolo. Per questo il coniglio sarebbe stato il regalo perfetto: una volta nato, Blaine sarebbe stato così piccolo da potersi nascondere tutto contro di lui, così sarebbe stato al caldo e al sicuro anche quando mamma non avrebbe potuto tenerlo in braccio.
Quel pomeriggio, Cooper si era avvicinato alla culletta con timore, preoccupato che mamma avrebbe potuto rimproverarlo per le dimensioni del peluche, ma mamma aveva sorriso, l’aveva lasciato libero di sporgersi sulla culla e posizionare il coniglio gigante proprio di fianco a Blaine, perché gli tenesse compagnia. Cooper l’aveva osservato per un po’, e Blaine non era sembrato interessarsi granché al suo nuovo amico, ma quando più tardi, dopo aver terminato i compiti, Cooper era tornato a sbirciare suo fratello, l’aveva trovato con un pugnetto ostinatamente chiuso attorno ad una delle lunghe e morbide orecchie del coniglio, ed aveva sorriso.
Poi Blaine aveva aperto gli occhi su di lui per la prima volta. Due grandi occhi castani confusi e assonnati avevano fissato Cooper per quelli che gli erano sembrati i minuti più lunghi della sua vita fino a quel momento, più lunghi perfino dei minuti che passavano da quando la maestra cominciava a sfogliare i nomi sul registro fino a quando non decideva quale alunno volesse interrogare quel giorno.
Blaine non aveva sorriso. Non aveva neanche pianto, però, si era limitato a continuare a fissarlo con aria quasi inquisitoria, mentre Cooper sentiva i battiti del proprio cuore farsi più accelerati, come il ritmo dei propri respiri.
Alla fine, era stato lui il primo a cedere. Si era allontanato dalla culla, inspiegabilmente turbato da quanto accaduto, ed era corso via, rifiutandosi categoricamente di tornare mai più in quella stanza, o di ritrovarsi nuovamente in una situazione tale da potersi sentire così osservato dal suo fratellino minore.
Da quel giorno, il coniglio non si era più mosso dal fianco di Blaine. Blaine gli era cresciuto accanto, ed anche Cooper. Sette anni dopo, Blaine era ancora un bambino. Cooper, invece, non lo era più da un pezzo, ma certe cose non erano cambiate. Non era cambiata la mano di Blaine sempre stretta attorno alle orecchie ormai logore del peluche, non era cambiato il continuo fuggire via da Blaine di Cooper, soprattutto non era cambiato il modo in cui Blaine lo guardava, gli occhi bene aperti, l’espressione seria, come lo stesse studiando, o peggio ancora, giudicando.
Poi era successo che all’improvviso, ogni notte, Blaine aveva cominciato a scivolare fuori dal proprio lettino, uscire guardingo dalla propria cameretta ed affrontare il corridoio buio in passi svelti e spaventati, per poi intrufolarsi in camera di Cooper e scivolare sotto le coperte assieme a lui, il fedele coniglio sempre con sé.
La prima volta, Cooper se n’era accorto, ma non aveva avuto il coraggio di dire niente. Blaine era scivolato accanto a lui e si era raggomitolato contro la sua schiena, stringendo con un braccio il coniglio a sé e girandogli il braccio libero attorno alla vita. Cooper non aveva chiuso occhio, e la mattina successiva l’aveva sentito catapultarsi giù dal letto e tornare in camera propria ben prima che suonasse la sveglia.
La seconda volta, Cooper l’aveva aspettato. Si era messo a letto nella stessa posizione del giorno prima, ed aveva fissato la parete fino a quando non aveva sentito la porta aprirsi in uno scricchiolio appena udibile, e poi il suono dei passi di Blaine reso ovattato dalla moquette che ricopriva il pavimento. Il fruscio delle lenzuola che venivano sollevate, il cigolio del materasso mentre Blaine si sistemava accanto a lui, la sensazione momentanea di freddo dovuta al naso di plastica del coniglio premuto contro la schiena nuda.
La terza volta, non era più stato in grado di tacere. Quando Blaine s’era steso accanto a lui, premendosi contro la sua schiena, Cooper si era voltato lentamente, per evitare di fargli male, e nel buio l’aveva guardato negli occhi. Blaine aveva trattenuto il respiro, terrorizzato.
“Perché?”, aveva chiesto Cooper. Blaine aveva deglutito.
“Non stiamo mai insieme,” aveva risposto.
Per qualche motivo, era sembrata ad entrambi una motivazione sufficiente.
*
Era andata avanti senza che nessuno dei due sentisse più il bisogno di specificare perché, di porre un freno o di discutere la cosa. Blaine sarebbe comunque stato troppo piccolo per capire per quale motivo fosse sconveniente mettersi a dormire nel letto del proprio fratello maggiore, e quando Cooper si ritrovava da solo a riflettere, in realtà, ponendosi la stessa domanda, si sentiva un po’ confuso: non c’era niente di male a dividere il letto. Per quale motivo avrebbe dovuto sentirsi così turbato dal semplice fatto di dormire con suo fratello? Non stavano facendo niente di male. Non avrebbero mai potuto fare niente di male. Erano fratelli. E Blaine era ancora un bambino.
Ma Cooper avrebbe dovuto saperlo, avrebbe dovuto quantomeno sospettare che una situazione così non potesse che evolversi in maniera catastrofica. Era una sua responsabilità, era lui il fratello maggiore, era il più grande, e non c’era modo che, a quell’età, Blaine potesse essere pronto a distinguere giusto e sbagliato ad una prima occhiata. E lui avrebbe dovuto insegnarglielo, avrebbe dovuto fermarlo quando si era presentato il momento, avrebbe dovuto guardarlo negli occhi e dirgli no, e forse allora anche il loro rapporto sarebbe tornato normale, ma non l’ha fatto. Non l’ha fatto e non ci sono scusanti, per questo. Non ci sono giustificazioni che tengano, a volte Cooper ci pensa e sa che non ci sono neanche delle motivazioni sufficienti, non tanto per scusarlo, ma quantomeno per dargli una scappatoia. Sì, ho sbagliato, e non posso essere perdonato, ma l’ho fatto perché…
Non ci sono perché. Non ce ne sono mai stati. Cooper deve vivere con questa consapevolezza, ed è più facile farlo quando Blaine non c’è, è più facile farlo quando, anche se c’è, lui non fa che maltrattarlo.
Quella sera, però, no.
Era una notte silenziosa, lui sonnecchiava sdraiato su un fianco. Era nervoso, gli capitava spesso, sua madre era convinta che fosse una questione di carattere, lo chiamava “il mio piccolo porcospino”, perché per ogni minima cosa scattava a chiudersi a riccio, ed avvicinarglisi senza essere punti dai suoi aculei era pressoché impossibile. Cooper odiava quel soprannome, lo trovava ridicolo. E sapeva che non si trattava di una questione di carattere, non si era mai trattato di una questione di carattere, era sempre stata una questione di Blaine. Tutto, in ogni momento, era sempre stato una questione di Blaine.
Quella notte, sembrava che Blaine non dovesse presentarsi, ed era questo, sommato a tutto il resto, a rendere Cooper così nervoso. La preoccupazione per il non vederlo arrivare, sommata al fatto di essere perfettamente consapevole che non avrebbe dovuto volerlo lì, lo stavano mandando fuori di testa. Cooper era stato fuori di testa, a volte. Così arrabbiato con se stesso da non vedere niente, da non ragionare più. Non era stata una bella sensazione.
Conosceva un modo per calmarsi, ed era lasciarsi scivolare una mano oltre l’orlo dei boxer e toccarsi lentamente. Non erano le carezze in sé a rasserenarlo, neanche gli orgasmi veri e propri. Erano piuttosto una specie di piacevole effetto collaterale, e non erano quelli che Cooper cercava, quanto più tenersi impegnato con qualcosa di fisico, tangibile, che producesse un effetto immediato sul suo organismo, migliorandogli l’umore. Era questa l’unica cosa che gli interessava, anche quella notte, mentre accarezzandosi pigramente si voltava sulla schiena, e si accorgeva di suo fratello, un ginocchio puntato sul materasso, un piede penzolante a mezz’aria, il coniglio di peluche stretto al petto, gli occhi spalancati e pieni di paura e fissi su di lui.
Cooper aveva tirato fuori la mano dai pantaloni in un gesto secco, immediato, perfino violento, scattando a sedere.
- Blaine! – aveva quasi gridato.
- No! – aveva sibilato lui, saltando sul letto e premendogli una mano sulla bocca. Cooper l’aveva guardato fisso, il cuore gli batteva tanto forte da confonderlo. – Non ti arrabbiare. – aveva detto Blaine, e poi aveva afferrato la sua mano con la propria, riconducendola esattamente dove l’aveva trovata. – È tutto a posto. – aveva sussurrato, concentratissimo mentre guidava la mano di Cooper in una serie di carezze lente dall’alto verso il basso. – È tutto a posto.
Non era tutto a posto. Non era per niente tutto a posto, neanche lontanamente, aveva pensato Cooper, mentre la mano di suo fratello, una carezza dopo l’altra, si sostituiva alla propria, e il silenzio della stanza si gonfiava dei suoi ansiti e dei respiri incerti ed eccitati di Blaine, ed il coniglio di pezza, ignorato, scivolava a terra e sotto il letto, dove sarebbe stato dimenticato per anni, finché Cooper non l’avrebbe ritrovato di nuovo.
*
Tiene il coniglio sollevato in aria per le orecchie. Non riconosce quasi più la sua vecchia stanza, sono anni, ormai, che non la vede. I suoi genitori non sono mai stati contenti della sua decisione, quando è andato da loro vaneggiando di trasferirsi ad Hollywood il più presto possibile, e fare fortuna, in qualsiasi modo, suo padre si è arrabbiato, e sua madre ha pianto per ore.
Blaine, seduto sulla sedia a giocare ai videogiochi, non ha neanche sollevato lo sguardo.
Sono passati quasi dieci anni, da allora. Immerso nel silenzio, Cooper guarda il coniglio di pezza, logoro e impolverato, e vorrebbe lanciarlo dalla finestra, perché solo guardarlo gli dà la nausea.
- Cooper. – dice la voce di suo fratello alle sue spalle. È inattesa, per un attimo è perfino troppo. Cooper si volta di scatto, nascondendo il coniglio dietro la schiena. – Quando sei tornato?
Negli occhi di Blaine c’è sempre lo stesso sguardo. Cooper lo sa, c’è anche nei propri.
- Da qualche minuto. – risponde.
Blaine deglutisce a fatica. Resta sulla soglia per un sacco di tempo, Cooper non ha idea di cosa voglia fare o di cosa stia pensando, tutte le opzioni lo spaventano.
Poi, Blaine fa un paio di passi avanti. Entra in camera e si chiude la porta alle spalle.
Il coniglio di pezza cade a terra un’altra volta.
Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: Cooper/Blaine.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Underage, Incest, Onesided, Angst, What If?, (triplo) Drabble.
- "Non basta a far sparire il senso di colpa."
Note: Scritta per il primo round della Coppa delle Lande, che mi chiedeva di scrivere qualcosa che rappresentasse i miei interessi di fandom nel modo più palese. Ora, io naturalmente, invece di andare a rifugiarmi in qualche fandom/OTP storico, ho scelto l'Andersoncest perché dopo questo non potevo continuare ad ignorare il mio destino. A quel punto dovevo solo trovare un modo per renderlo qualcosa che fosse tipico di me, e... be'. L'incest, l'underage e lo slash erano lì ad attendermi. XD
(Precisazione fondamentale: questa storia è stata scritta sostanzialmente a partire solo ed esclusivamente dal filmato linkato, ed è perciò una what if? in tutto e per tutto, in quanto probabilmente gli eventi dell'episodio, che andrà in onda non prima di martedì, faranno presto a confutare la mia caratterizzazione in pieno, visto che RM si diverte a volermi male XD Ecco perché ci tenevo che venisse postata prima dell'episodio stesso, perché fosse chiaro che non era stata ispirata da quello nella sua interezza, ma solo da spoiler, snippet e preview.)
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
CUT ME OFF

Quando Cooper lo capisce, Blaine è ancora troppo piccolo perché la sola idea non sia già di per sé ancora più terrificante di quanto non sarebbe stata se fosse stato suo fratello e basta. Non è più un bambino, naturalmente, ha tredici anni e lo sguardo più intenso e doloroso che Cooper abbia mai visto in vita sua, anche se immagina di essere l’unico a vederlo. Forse perché vuole vederlo, perché sta cercando giustificazioni per qualsiasi cosa sia questo mostro che sembra artigliarlo dall’interno, scuotergli le viscere e rimescolargliele tutte ogni volta che gli posa gli occhi addosso.
Sa che una vera giustificazione non c’è, sa che probabilmente non esiste neanche un motivo – uno a parte avere palesemente qualcosa che non va, essere in qualche modo sbagliato, e sporco, e disgustoso, e orribile – per ciò che prova, ma è come se la sua mente ne avesse bisogno per non impazzire. Ha bisogno di aggrapparsi a qualcosa, e quel qualcosa, dal momento che non può fingere che Blaine non sia suo fratello, è fingere che sia almeno un po’ più grande, un po’ più maturo di quanto la sua età dovrebbe consentirgli.
Non basta a far sparire il senso di colpa.
Non basta allontanarsi da lui il più nettamente e improvvisamente possibile, perché lo strappo faccia male, insistendo nel ricucire i lembi della ferita ogni volta, per poi riaprirli con un taglio violento, ancora e ancora e ancora, perché non si rimargini mai. Non basta premere il dito contro la pelle che si rimette insieme a stento, perché la cicatrice resti e non scompaia più.
Non basta fingere di odiare Blaine, forzare Blaine ad odiare lui, non basta per spazzare via il grumo nero e sporco di voglia rabbiosa e sfrenata che gli mozza il respiro ogni volta che lo vede.
Smettere di vederlo, a quel punto, non è più solo la decisione più ovvia. È anche l’unica possibile.
Spin-off/seguito (What If?) di Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World.
Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: PG-13.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Underage.
- The story of Leo and Blaine's relationship through the years.
Note: Scritta per la sesta settimana del COW-T @ maridichallenge, Missione 1, prompt: anni.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
TIME IS ON MY SIDE

He doesn’t remember ever seeing Blaine before he was six years old. He’s sure it’s just because back then he was too young to remember, because it’s just impossible than Blaine never came to visit his dad before the wedding, and he’s pretty sure he once saw a picture in a family album where a younger Blaine was smiling awkwardly at the camera, holding in his arms one of the tiniest version of himself Leo had ever seen, but other than that he doesn’t really remember how it could feel being held by those arms, or being close to that man.

Blaine doesn’t really hold him, while they dance during the party after his parents’ wedding. He just holds Leo’s hands into his own – so much bigger than the kid’s – but still, Leo can’t help feeling slightly uncomfortable. He’s instantly ready to justify that feeling with the fact that this man nearly managed to ruin forever his parents’ life – and, consequentially, his own – therefore of course he feels awkward standing so close to him – not to mention dancing with him – but deep inside he already know there’s something more. He doesn’t know how to call it, but he knows it’s there.

Instinctively, he also already know that’s it’s not going to go away soon.

*

It’s almost disappeared, on the contrary, the next time he sees him. He’s just turned nine, and during the last year his dad finally got bored to work only half the time he could, and started searching for a way to dig his way back to the shiny stages of Broadway.

It’s been pretty easy for him, after all, considering he kept starring into big productions every now and then, even if he only did it for a couple of months before going back to the housewife lifestyle that he started to find so very thrilling since after the wedding.

His name is still pretty big, despite the very little efforts he did to try and stay on top of the showbusiness, so the very moment voices about his great comeback start to spread, everybody already want him, and he instantly gets all the invites to all the most exclusive dinners organized by the most important prominent figures of the upperclass New York society.

Which means frequent traveling to New York for both him and Dave, since God forbid Kurt ever showed himself around without his oh-so-gorgeous and devoted lifelong partner.

Leo would have nothing against the whole thing, if it didn’t end up involving him too, most of the time. His dads hate to live him back in Lima when they’re in New York, mostly because they like to roam the city with him during the day, which is something Leo loves to do too, and if it was only for this he would have nothing against going to New York every time his parents want to, or even just move there once and for all, but after all the good quality time they spend together during the day, there’s always night, which is when all those dinners take place.

Which means that Leo can’t go, because he’s too young to conversate with other guests but too old already to be showed around like a trophy as his dad used to do when he was just a toddler.

He can’t stay at the hotel alone, though, which is why dad always leaves him with Blaine. Which is, ultimately, the main reason why Leo hates these trips to New York so much.

He’s watching tv, now, but he’s not really paying attention to what John Travolta is singing in the very, very old movie Blaine put in the blu-ray player before he disappeared in his bedroom, because there’s a continuous murmuring coming out from said bedroom, and it keeps distracting him.

Blaine’s rehearsing in front of the ridiculously huge mirror covering half of his closet. He’s got to star in a new, apparently revolutionary play Leo doesn’t and doesn’t want to know nothing about, due to start in a couple of weeks, which is why, when Kurt showed up with the kid, Blaine almost shut the door on their faces. He ended up surrendering to the power of his father’s fluttering eyelashes, but he’s very nervous, and he didn’t waster any time before parking Leo in front of the tv, running to his bedroom to resume rehearsals from where he has left them when he heard the bell ring.

Leo is bored. He almost always is, it’s like a perpetual condition of existence for him, but it’s particularly hard to bear the boredom when he’s forced to stay in a place he doesn’t like, watching a movie so ancient he believes it was shoot way before Blaine himself was born – and Blaine is like a dinosaur, so it’s saying something – with a man he loathes murmuring like a madman in the other room. He hates his parents, the world and the whole universe.

He just wants to go home.

But he can’t, so he has to find a way to distract himself before boredom consumes and kills him.

He stands up from the couch, leaving the movie to play in the background, and walks to Blaine’s bedroom door. It’s half-opened, and he can take a peek of what’s happening inside, if he gets close enough to it. Which he does, obviously, because he’s just a kid, he’s curious, bored, and Blaine’s hiding from him.

That’s when Leo feels it coming back. That feeling he thought he had lost during the years they spent apart, that uneasiness, that numb sensation of confusion and unreasonable embarrassment that makes his cheeks flushed and his mouth dry, that awkward sense of helplessness in which he finds himself in need to look away, but ultimately he can’t, because deep inside him there’s something – a voice, a screaming need – that urges him to keep staring.

Blaine doesn’t even notice him, of course, lost in himself and who he’s pretending to be. He keeps looking at himself in the mirror, walking up and down in front of it, moving his hands in mid-air, and his voice never fades away.

Not while Leo’s listening, nor when he runs away and curls up on the couch, his heart beating unbelievably fast for apparently no reason whatsoever. He knows that Blaine’s voice, now, is nothing but a whisper behind an half-closed door, but he keeps hearing it echoing in his ears like a howling hurricane.

He lies down and wraps himself in a tight hug, closing his eyes shut and trying to carve the unpleasantness of this feeling into his memory, so he never forgets it, and always remembers to stay away from that man. For his own sake.

*

He can’t, however, because since his father and Blaine managed to tie back up the strings of their old relationship – once love, now turned into something safer and sweeter, a simple and natural friendship that makes them enjoy each other’s company more than ever – they can barely do without one another, for Leo’s and his father’s unhappiness. No Christmas can be celebrated without him, and of course the same goes for every birthday and every single important moment that may or may not call for a celebration.

Sometimes Kurt just wants him around, for reasons that Leo doesn’t even want to start to try and comprehend. Why would anybody want a person like this by their side? Blaine is smug, full of himself and vain, he’s got the worst sense of humour ever, always making suggestive jokes while everybody around him feel uncomfortable, and he has no respect for other people’s personal space.

Yet, unable to make his father understand how Blaine’s mere existence bothers him, three years later Leo is still forced to endure his presence wherever he’s around, as he has to do now that it’s Christmas time and of course his father couldn’t even think to have his Christmas party without his bff.

He stares at Blaine and he’s totally aware of the fact that he’s not trying in any way to hide how much he hates him. Everybody noticed already – it would be impossible not to, since he’s been looking at him like he was trying to kill him with his eyes since the moment he walked in – and everybody feels uncomfortable about it because, Leo can guess, they’re all wondering how is it even possible to be so aggressive against such a charming man like Blaine, but they’re all fools who just need a smile to fall under his spell, while Leo knows him just too well to fall for something similar.

And then Blaine turns to look at him and smiles like he doesn’t even have to pretend to do it wholeheartedly, and his smile is so warm that Leo feels ashamed, and for the first time he has to look down, his insides tied up in painful knots, his heart racing in his chest, the familiar thumping echoing through Leo’s whole body like the beat of a war drum.

He swears to himself next time he’ll be prepared. He is never going to avert his eyes again.

*

So when he’s fifteen and Blaine kisses him, he’s ready, for a change. He’s fully prepared to face the warmth pooling in his loins, and the irrational mix of anger and attraction that drags him towards this man since, apparently, the first time he met him.

Leo parts from him and Blaine’s lips curl into a dangerous smile. They’re wet, and Leo wants to kiss him right away again, but he doesn’t.

“So that’s what you wanted, after all,” Blaine says smugly, staring right into his eyes.

Leo doesn’t speak, but he nods. And when he does, he keeps his gaze locked with Blaine’s, and he doesn’t feel ashamed at all. Maybe he will in a moment or two, but not now. Now he just wants to kiss him again and again until he feels satisfied. And so he does.
Spin-off/seguito (What If?) di Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World.
Genere: Commedia, Erotico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: OC, Shota, Spin-Off, Lime.
- Kurt asked Blaine to take care of Leo while he's busy attending some party in NYC, and Blaine unwillingly complies. He doesn't know that the night's going to turn out to be a nightmare. And that the nightmare's going to turn out to be kind of a sweet dream.
Note: La mia badwrongness tocca nuove vette con una nuova discesa nelle profondità dell'underage XD Ci eravamo lasciati l'ultima volta alla fine del 2011 ponendo in situazioni sessualmente esplicite ragazzini di dodici anni, ci ritroviamo a pochi mesi dall'inizio del 2012 a porre in situazioni solo vagamente meno esplicite bambini di dieci "XD Mi sembra perfetto. Non so cosa mi aspetta nel 2013, un po' lo temo, ma d'altronde nello shota canonico le età sono ben più basse di queste. Io mi sto ancora tenendo sul leggero, la roba pesa è ben altra.
Scritta per la quinta settimana del COW-T @ maridichallenge, Missione 3, prompt: orsetto di peluche + rating NSFW. Orz.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
TEDDYGATE

Bored beyond limits, Blaine scrolls down his Twitter feed, searching for something interesting to look at while he stubbornly tries to ignore the ten years old son of his ex high school boyfriend soundly asleep on his three thousand dollars white leather Italian sofa.

Leo is snoring quietly, his small shoulders moving up and down with every breath he takes. Every now and then, he lets out a sigh deeper than the other, and sometimes that sigh becomes an uncertain sob that makes his whole little body shiver. He cried, before falling asleep. He probably thinks Blaine doesn’t know, but he does. He heard the little sobs and the heavy breaths he kept letting out while trying to make his crying as quiet as possible, and he even felt guilty about it, though he knows he basically has no fault for the fact that his fathers keep leaving the boy with him every time they have dinner or parties to attend while in New York.

Blaine doesn’t think Leo is an unloved child. On the contrary, he really believes Kurt and Dave shower him with love and affection, but still he’s an adopted child. He is, even though he’s been staying with them since the day he was born, he will probably never get over it, and he feels deeply betrayed and hurt when his fathers leave him with somebody else.

Especially if that somebody else is Blaine, which he hates and loathes from the very deep of his small chubby baby heart.

Blaine sighs, scrolling down the page some more. A guy he hardly remembers has just posted new photos of himself on Facebook, and thought his Twitter followers just couldn’t miss his beauty, which is probably why he decided to spam the gallery on his timeline. The Twitter preview of the photos show a well-built but kind of not really tall blond guy with clear issues on how to make expressions that won’t result ridiculous or hideous on camera.

Blaine makes a face and unfollows the guy. He’s got cute abs, but they’re not enough of a reason to keep such a douche on his feed. If he wanted his Twitter timeline to become his Facebook timeline, he would have had them connected.

Leo makes a little noise, turning on the couch. Now he’s facing Blaine, which turns to look at him to be sure he’s not going to fall and hit his face or anything worse. He’s clinging to that unbelievably huge teddy bear his father left with him a couple of hours ago. When Kurt took it out of the bag and handed it down to him, he made such a disgusted face that Blaine couldn’t help but laugh wholeheartedly looking at it, and he didn’t really seem in any way prone to use it in any way, but when he curled on the couch, stubbornly facing the back to not have to look at Blaine, he wanted the bear to be with him, which actually made Blaine smile tenderly.

Blaine doesn’t hate Leo, he never did. Leo is a cute, smart child, and he finds him funny, most of the time. The fact that Leo doesn’t understand that and thinks that, whenever Blaine is laughing around him, it’s because he’s laughing at him – which isn’t true – always made Blaine sad, but after all there’s nothing he can do about it, so he’s not going to lose any sleep over it.

He looks back at his Twitter feed, and spots Tay linking some YouPorn video about young, slim guys getting gangbanged in a stable or something. He’s tempted to open it and take a look, honestly, but then Leo makes another muffled sound and, sighing deeply, Blaine turns to him again. “What is the problem, kid?” he asks, frowning lightly. If he’s feeling sick, why doesn’t he just open his eyes and lets him know? He realizes the boy doesn’t want anything do to with him, but whimpering like that isn’t useful for anybody.

Leo doesn’t answer, anyway, and so Blaine is forced to stand up from his beloved ergonomic chair and sit on the couch next to his little body rolled up in a ball. “Kid?” he asks, but when he looks closer he realizes that Leo is still sleeping, and doesn’t seem to have woken up in the last half hour or something. He’s still breathing pretty slowly and deeply, and his eyes are shut closed, his long, curled eyelashes don’t even tremble for a moment.

“…alright,” he murmurs, “So what’s with the moaning? Am I hearing voices? Porn movies in my head? God, I haven’t been getting any in the last five days, that’s just unbelievable. How can I even be still alive?” Leo whimpers once more, his lips curling and then opening up in a half-annoyed, half-frustrated grimace, fidgeting nervously under his white and blue wool blanket. “How would you know, anyway… what is it even with you?” Blaine asks, frowning again as he places a hand on Leo’s tummy and strokes it lightly through the blanket, “You feeling sick?”

Leo lets out a whiny moan and swings his whole little body upwards, and that’s when Blaine notices he’s not really stroking the kid’s tummy, but the big, puffy butt of his old beloved teddy bear, around whose head Leo wrapped his arms, and to which he’s clinging desperately, his features getting more and more tense by any second.

“What’s the matter…?” Blaine asks, pulling the blanket away from Leo’s body, to see if there really is something wrong or if the kids is just moving and whining in his sleep like dogs do.

He’s kind of surprised to see one of the kid’s legs wrapped around the rounded body of the stuffed animal, so much that, at first, he’s not even able to give a meaning to what he’s looking at. Why would that leg be there in first place?

Then, Leo’s hips make the smallest movement, hitting the bear’s belly in a lazy, clumsy thrust, and a muffled moan escapes the kid’s now wet lips – he probably moistened them while Blaine wasn’t looking – and suddenly everything is incredibly and embarrassingly clear, and Blaine, much to his surprise, blushes violently, instantly taking his hand off the toy.

“Oh, no, kid,” Blaine instantly says, retrieving the blanket and throwing it on Leo, covering his whole body except for his head, and only because of a lucky coincidence, “This is so totally inappropriate, and you definitely shouldn’t be doing it. Now or ever, but especially not here with me on my very, very expensive couch. It’s, like, highly disrespectful towards me and the roof I so kindly offered you shelter under. You really should…” Leo makes another annoyed face, thrusting his hips up and whining because, without Blaine’s hand keeping the bear still and pressed against his body, he can’t grind against it as better as he did before, and Blaine stares at him, so shocked he can’t even speak for what seems like an eternity. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he exhales several seconds after, swallowing hard, “You really have got to be kidding me, boy.”

Leo whines again, lifting his other leg and wrapping that around the bear’s body too. The grip of his arms around the toy’s rounded head is ever tighter, but though he tries his best to rock his hips back and forth against the bear’s belly, he doesn’t seem to manage to satisfy himself in any way.

He lets out a liquid, whiny moan, and a little tear appears on the corner of his eye as he bites his lower lip with apparently true desperation.

Blaine blinks a couple of times, unable to breath. “I really can’t do that, kid,” he tries to decline what seems like a clear invitation coming straight from the boy’s needy body, “Like, I really can’t. I’m sure it’s a crime I could end up in jail for. No way.”

Leo whines once more, his skinny hips swinging and making the blanket fall on the ground, while the oversize hoodie he’s wearing curls on his rounded belly, showing the pale curve of his tummy as he uncomfortably pushes himself against the toy. “Stop insisting!” Blaine almost screams, covering his face with both his hands but conveniently leaving spots open between his fingers to take a peek, “I said I can’t! God almighty, stop doing that!”

But Leo doesn’t stop, and when his whining slowly starts to become a low, continuous cry, Blaine has to get a grip and face reality: the kid, for whatever reason he really doesn’t want to investigate now or ever, desperately needs to come. If he doesn’t, and he keeps crying like that, he’s probably going to wake up very soon, and if he realizes he has woken up because of that reason, and if he suspects that Blaine’s been watching the whole thing for the whole time, the few hours separating them from Kurt’s return will be hell.

Blaine definitely doesn’t want that. Between ending locked up in jail to become somebody’s Little Mary, and passing two or three hours with a crying and pouting Leo whining and making a fuss by his side, he would choose jail a hundred times, so he sighs, swallows and, eventually, gives up.

“Alright, kid, you’ve won,” he surrenders, placing a hand over the bear’s butt. At first, he doesn’t even push, but clearly the weight of the hand alone is already enough to make it more pleasant for Leo, whose face instantly lightens up as his hips starts to thrust a little faster. “…this is unbelievable,” he whispers, biting at his lower lip, his eyes glued to the kid as he finds himself mesmerized by his movements, “There must be something wrong inside my head.”

He doesn’t have the time to investigate the matter further, though, because after a while the weight of his hand alone is not enough anymore to keep up with Leo’s mounting excitement, and he’s forced to push the bear’s body down against Leo’s when he hears him let out a louder, almost reproachful moan. “Alright, alright!” he scoffs, annoyed by Leo’s neediness, “God, what a little spoiled child you are.”

He can swear to see a little smirk flick over Leo’s curled and partly open lips, at his words, but then it’s probably just a relieved smile for being finally able to get off. Blaine knows it, he felt the same smile bloom over his own lips countless times when, after being stuck with rehearsals or an important dinner with some producer, he could finally head home and then let himself go on the bed or under the shower and jerk off. “I feel you, kiddo,” he says with a sympathetic nod, but then e remembers he’s talking with a ten years old asleep and horny boy, and he shakes his head violently. “What am I even saying?!” he whines, looking down at the boy now happily rubbing himself against the bear. “God, could you at least be quick?” he asks, “Show some compassion!”

But, apparently, Leo has none, because it seems like he needs a century of thrusting before he even starts to approach his climax, or whatever it could be called talking about a kid his age. Blaine doesn’t even know how long he’s been keeping that stuffed animal well pressed against Leo’s crotch, when he finally notices the kid’s cheeks are starting to get all flushed, and his breaths are getting heavier. “Really?” Blaine mutters, his eyes growing bigger as he stares at the wild movements of Leo’s hips, “Are you really going to come in your pants like this? Like, can you even really come, at your age?” he asks, but Leo doesn’t answer. He starts moaning louder and louder, his little body arching backwards as his small, pink tongue flicks between his swollen lips – he’s been sucking at them the whole time, giving Blaine chills he wouldn’t even start to question – and then Blaine hears him hold his breath for what seems like an entire minute of oxygen deprivation, during which he starts to get really worried, at least enough to finally pull his damn hand away from the toy.

Then Leo releases the deepest, happiest and most satisfied sigh Blaine has ever heard in his entire life, and falls back against the pillows gathered in a confused pile behind his head, smiling blissfully.

Blaine looks at him for a couple of seconds, painfully aware of the tight knot his insides are twisted in, not to mention the scandalous hard-on pushing against the fabric of his jeans.

Less than a minute after, he’s up from the couch and running towards the bathroom.

*

Leo wakes up more than an hour later. It’s half past nine, and Blaine has heard his little stomach grumble for the past twenty minutes, so his awakening was way more than just predictable. Actually predictable enough for Blaine to already patch it up.

“I had the weirdest dream…” Leo says, but the light smile parting his lips doesn’t leave any doubt on how the word weird could just as well mean wonderful right now in Leo’s special dictionary. Blaine smirks, and Leo luckily doesn’t notice. He points his nose up in the air, though, and starts sniffing around like a dog. “What’s with the smell?” he ask.

Blaine moves away from his computer, smiling triumphantly. “I ordered pizza,” he says, and Leo’s face lightens up so suddenly it’s almost comical.

“Yay!” he screams, throwing his legs down of the couch and standing up, but when he takes a step towards the table and the incredibly messy and hardly edible pizza awaiting for him on it, he freezes on the spot, his eyes wide open in shock, his little fists clutched down his sides. He blushes quickly, looking down at his crotch and exhaling a relieved breath when he notices that the wetness he’s probably feeling between his legs at least spared him a stain on his jeans. “I… I think I’m gonna use the bathroom, first,” he says.

Blaine chuckles lightly. “You know the way,” he nods, as he watches Leo run away without even waiting for him to finish his sentence.

Then he turns back to his computer and sends a private message to Tay. “Call me in a couple of hours. You won’t believe what I’m going to tell you.”
Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: fem!Kurt/Blaine, fem!Kurt/Dave.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Switchgender, AU, Flashfic.
- "Kate conosce abbastanza la strada da sapere che non ci si può fidare della dolcezza e della gentilezza."
Note: Scritta per il Carnevale delle Lande su prompt Glee; genderswap!AU.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
FAKE IT

Kate conosce abbastanza la strada da sapere che non ci si può fidare della dolcezza e della gentilezza. Non sono altro che maschere che i clienti utilizzano per sentirsi un po’ meno peggio con se stessi. Essere dolci con una puttana è come trattare con affetto un vitello prima di portarlo al macello, così pensa Kate. È un gesto di carità, se così si può dire, uno sfoggio di candore tanto puro quanto inappropriato, perché in fin dei conti non si tratta che di una menzogna. In fin dei conti, nessuno mai resta al suo fianco. In fin dei conti, dopo venti minuti di sesso e un orgasmo raggiunto alla meno peggio, tornano tutti a casa, e lei rimane lì.
C’è un ragazzo, fra i suoi clienti fissi. Si chiama Blaine, o almeno così ha detto di chiamarsi, ed abita poco distante da casa sua, almeno a quanto dice. Studia alla vicina accademia di arti drammatiche, ed è solo, disperatamente solo. Fino a pochi mesi fa, l’unica compagnia che aveva era quella dei soldi che suo padre gli passava mensilmente. Dopodiché, quando spendere in vestiti, cibo ed uscite solitarie non gli è più bastato, ha cominciato a spendere per il sesso, ha cominciato a spendere per Kate, e non ha più smesso.
Blaine è gentile. Blaine la accarezza sempre con molto riguardo, dolce e rispettoso come lei gli ha insegnato ad essere a partire da quella prima volta in cui, rosso in viso e con un mucchio di banconote spiegazzate stretto in un pugno, si è presentato alla sua porta confessandole di essere ancora vergine.
Blaine è gentile, ma nonostante quello che lo aspetta a casa propria non manca mai di tornarci. Kate non gli ha mai chiesto di restare, ma è sicura che, se anche lo facesse, Blaine non accetterebbe. Tornerebbe a casa propria, al suo letto singolo, alla sua tv via cavo, al silenzio delle sue quattro mura, alla sua vita di tutti i giorni, una vita all’interno della quale Kate non è compresa.
Blaine è gentile, e di questa gentilezza Kate è grata, ma ogni carezza è una bugia, ed ogni volta che lo vede andare via Kate si morde l’interno di una guancia e preferirebbe che non l’avesse mai trattata con rispetto. Nel suo mondo, il prezzo del rispetto è una montagna di menzogne, e Kate preferirebbe evitare almeno quelle.
C’è un altro ragazzo, fra i suoi clienti fissi. Si chiama Dave, o almeno così ha detto di chiamarsi, ed abita dall’altra parte della città, almeno a quanto dice. Viene fino a qui perché, dove abita lui, nessuno sa che è solo come un cane, che non gli riesce di trovare una donna per la quale provi il minimo interesse sufficiente per mettere su un qualsiasi straccio di relazione. Dove vive, è rispettato. Lavora nel football a livello professionistico, anche se non ha voluto dire a Kate in quale veste, e lei non ha mai chiesto specificatamente perché tutto sommato non le interessa, e perché se i suoi clienti avessero bisogno di uno strizzacervelli, be’, se ne troverebbero uno, non verrebbero certo da lei.
Dave è stato solo per tutta la sua vita, tutte le relazioni che ha avuto sono state dei fallimenti, ed arrivato a quel punto oltre il quale se non avesse trovato una valvola di sfogo sarebbe sicuramente esploso, l’istinto di conservazione gli ha suggerito una scappatoia, e lui l’ha trovata in Kate.
Dave è spiccio. Le sue carezze non sono mai devote come quelle che Blaine le riserva, sono rudi, forti, le sue mani sono ruvide, le mani di un uomo con cui la vita non è stata tenera, e che pertanto non capisce per quale motivo dovrebbe esserlo lui con la vita.
Dave è spiccio e non ne fa mistero. È lì per venti minuti di consolazione, per venti minuti di illusione, per quei venti minuti in cui chiude gli occhi e si spinge dentro di lei e può credere, rassicurato dal suo calore e dai suoi sospiri, di non essere completamente solo al mondo.
Dave è spiccio, ed anche di questo Kate è grata, perché in questo mondo il disinteresse è una virtù. È l’unica verità spendibile in un mondo che sulla menzogna, sull’illusione di un attimo, pone le sue intere fondamenta. Quando Dave va via, salutando a stento, Kate non si risente, perché sa che, risparmiandosi di fingere, le sta facendo un favore. L’unico che può farle.
Ogni sera, rimasta sola, Kate fissa il soffitto della propria camera, inspira ed espira lentamente, si sente sfortunata ma viva, e sa che poteva andarle peggio. Non si mente mai, però. Non finge mai di sentirsi più felice di quanto in realtà non sia. È l’unico favore che può farsi, l’unica briciola di rispetto che può riservarsi senza smettere di essere onesta con se stessa. Dopotutto, almeno per il momento, è sufficiente.
Spin-off/seguito di Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World.
Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: OC, Slash, Angst, Flashfic.
- "Looking at Cody is impossibly hard."
Note: Scritta per il Carnevale delle Lande su prompt Adulterio.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
CALLETH YOU, COMETH I

Looking at Cody is impossibly hard. For a lot of reasons it has always been. Back then, the first time they met, Blaine couldn’t look at him because in the way Leo acted around him he could see the love they shared, and he was jealous of it. Then, when they met again in New York, looking at him was hard because of how much he looked like Leo, or better, how much Blaine wanted him to look like Leo, and how much their similarities hurt him.

Now it’s different. It’s different, and scary. Because it shouldn’t be happening. Not now, or ever.

They never managed to say goodbye to each other, that could be a reason, or at least, that’s what Blaine thinks as he helps him settle in the room he and Leo booked for him at the same hotel they booked room at for every other guest for the wedding. They never managed to say goodbye, so the brief thing they had in New York, the closeness they shared, the warmth they exchanged, all those kisses, and the hugs, and the sex, and— God, Blaine shouldn’t be thinking about this now, all that never managed to end. To find a closure of its own.

It’s been left hanging over their heads, and they thought they could leave it open like that because they didn’t think they would see each other ever again.

They were wrong.

“You… you sure you’ll be fine here on your own?” Blaine asks, leaving Cody’s heavy luggage beside his bed and then hiding both his hands in his pockets, both to prevent them from doing something he would surely regret, and because he wouldn’t know what to do with them now that they’re free.

“Sure,” Cody answers. He looks down, trying to hide behind the longer locks of straight black hair falling down his forehead and cheeks. He’s still so cute, he hasn’t changed a bit from the last time Blaine set his eyes on him. God, just looking at him now is making Blaine’s insides warm and tied up in a painful knot. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he whispers, clearly trying to get Blaine out of the room before something very bad happens.

That’s when Blaine feels it. The moment Cody walks closer, trying to push him out the room without even touching him, a familiar shock of electricity runs up and down his spine, and he knows that whatever happens right now, may he kiss Cody or not, may he touch him or not, may he fuck him or not, the damage is already done. The need is already there. The point, now, it’s only whether to satisfy it or not.

And he’s never been one to say no to his needs.
Spin-off/seguito di Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World.
Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: PG-13.
AVVERTIMENTI: OC, Slash, Angst, (triplo) Drabble.
- "While he looks at Cody – his elegant profile so clear against the night sky, his pale skin almost glowing in the dark, radiating from the lights of the street, though they seem so distant now – Blaine can’t help but think that what makes him so different from Leo is also what makes them so similar."
Note: Scritta per il Carnevale delle Lande su prompt Somiglianze.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
WHAT MAKES THEM DIFFERENT, MAKES THEM THE SAME

While he looks at Cody – his elegant profile so clear against the night sky, his pale skin almost glowing in the dark, radiating from the lights of the street, though they seem so distant now – Blaine can’t help but think that what makes him so different from Leo is also what makes them so similar. So painfully similar that he barely manages to look away from him.

Cody doesn’t know, he probably doesn’t even imagine, how good and at the same time how bad looking at him makes Blaine feel. It’s not just the fact that he and Leo share the same age, it’s not only that they’ve got similar eyes – shiny and blue and looking at the world with that sort of fragile strength that makes them shimmer like diamonds – or similar ways to talk, it’s not that they’re basically the same height and that, despite some minor differences, their bodies look the same. It’s not only that, it’s something deeper.

It’s what of Leo remains on Cody that makes them look so much alike. Every trace stuck on Cody’s skin, between his fingers, in the sweet smell of his hair, in the taste of his mouth.

Sometimes, especially when they’re alone and in silence, when Blaine can’t hear Cody talk and be painfully reminded that he is not the boy he keeps looking for in every man he uses and then throws away, Blaine can keep his eyes half-closed as he looks at him, and then their images overlap, they morph into the same person, and it gets confusing, because then Blaine doesn’t know anymore if he wants Cody for Cody or for how Cody makes him feel, but it feels good, too good to give up on it.

Blaine never can. He never could. He keeps looking at Cody, seeing Leo and wanting something else. But he never tells.

Cody, after all, already knows.
Spin-off/seguito di Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World.
Genere: Introspettivo, Erotico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lime, Underage, (triplo) Drabble.
- "He doesn’t like bites."
Note: Scritta per il Carnevale delle Lande su prompt Morsi.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
THE BEAST

He doesn’t like bites. He doesn’t like bites at all, but Blaine is so fond of them that he could never tell him to just stop with them. Of course he’s vocal with his disapproval, his moans are never pleased when Blaine starts torturing him biting him everywhere as he always do, but he just can’t manage to push him away.

After all, he can’t manage to push him away for a lot of reasons that should be more important than just stupid bites. Of course he can’t for just them.

“Ouch…” he whines, tilting his head a bit as he wraps his arms around Blaine’s shoulders, clinging to them, “Blaine, please…”

Blaine smiles against his skin, brushing his wet lips against the red marks he left over his neck, and then licking them fondly. It’s tickly, and Leo, pushed against the wall and lifted from the ground between Blaine’s strong arms, closes his legs around Blaine’s hips, rubbing himself against him.

“What is it?” the man asks, matching the movements of Leo’s hips with his own, “You want something in particular?”

“For you to stop screwing with me,” he answers in a loud moan, that turns a little huskier when Blaine closes his mouth around his neck and bites him once more, “God, can you please not?”

Blaine lets out the smallest chuckle, and Leo feels it climbing up his own spine in hot and cold shivers. “I like how you taste,” Blaine answers, his voice low, hypnotic, as he puts Leo back down on the ground, “I could eat you alive.”

Leo shivers once again, unsteady on his legs, both his hands lazily resting on Blaine’s shoulders as he watches him kneel. He swallows, unable to look away. “Then… you probably should,” he suggests, his voice shaking with embarrassment and fear.

Blaine’s smile turns wider, as he kneels closer. It looks scary, threatening, his teeth shine in the dark like the fangs of a predator.

Maybe that’s why he likes bites so much. And the fearful and excited shiver that, looking at him, shakes Leo like an earthquake, could be the reason why, after all, Leo never asks him to stop.
Spin-off/seguito di Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World.
Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: PG.
AVVERTIMENTI: Angst, Slash, What If?.
- "Your father feels guilty." "Not enough."
Note: Storia randomica che nessuno mai leggerà perché nessuno mai dovrà leggere, basata su un what if? di un what if? di una storia che non è ancora stata scritta u.u *cough* Omg, what is my life.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
SKYHIGH

Of all the things Timothy knows he’s never going to forgive his father for, the place where he lives now is probably the worst. He could maybe forgive him for cheating on Leo – though the fact he did it, like, three days before the wedding makes it even harder to bear, somehow – and he could maybe forgive him for keeping up this ridiculous relationship he’s carrying on with that fucking whore of his lover, but this place, this place is just the worst. And the fact that Timmy’s compelled to hang out here every weekend since his parents split is making it all the more horrible.

The apartment is inside the city centre, where all the shops and fancy restaurants are. It’s an attic in one of the tallest residential buildings of the block. There’s a huge window on the living room wall that looks to the commercial street. It’s huge, it almost eats up the whole wall, and you can see the whole city looking out of it. At night, with all the colorful, blinding lights of the city on, looking out that window is like looking at the world upside down. It’s like every single star fell down on the ground, leaving the sky empty, blank.

It’s a very fancy place to live in. Makes you feel high, so tall, on top of everything else. Makes you think you could just hold out a hand and grab the whole town.

It does feel like a place his father would love living it.

It doesn’t feel like home at all.

He remembers something of the attic in New York, where his father used to bring him when he had to stay in town longer, because of some show or just because he wanted to hang out there for a while, auditioning for something or just living the city life. He clearly remembers a younger, not more than three years old himself getting ready to leave the loft in Westerville to go and stay in New York for a month or so. He remembers a younger Blaine too, asking him if he’s sure he’s got everything he might need.

Now that he thinks about it, preparing a well done bag for a long period of time to spend far from home was probably one of the first things his father taught him how to do. He has had to move from a place to another a lot of times in his life, and he never forgot his tootbrush or his clean underwear. Not even a pair of socks.

The bag he filled with the things he and the twins could need for this weekend is still made, as usual. He didn’t take anything out. He opened it only to take out the pajamas for both himself and his siblings. He didn’t even have to take their toothbrushes, Blaine bought new ones for all of them. There’s a cup in the bathroom, made of transparent glass like everything else there, and inside there’s a red toothbrush for him, a blue toothbrush for Logan and a pink toothbrush for Harper. When he first entered that bathroom, a couple of months ago, to get ready for the night, that was the first and only thing that really made him realize that everything was over, that this was their father’s new place, that they – that he, mostly – had to deal with it.

There’s no point in unpacking. They never stay here for more than one night only. Saturday night, and that’s all. Sometimes they have Sunday lunch together, but it doesn’t happen that often. Actually, his father used to ask them to stay for lunch more often at the beginning, but Timmy kept answering him that they had things to do at home, or that they had to go at Kurt and Dave’s for lunch, and Blaine eventually stopped asking. Now, he asks Leo before. But anyway, it only happened a couple of times or so.

Timmy really hates this place. He hates to move, he hates to settle down someplace else – even if for one night only. He hates his room here. He hates the bed, the desk, even the Mac Blaine bought him. He never turned it on once since he has it. He’s not interested. He already has one at home. That’s the one he uses, where he keeps all his things, his games, his music, his tv show episodes and movies. There’s where he keeps all his favorite sites, there’s where all his cookies are saved, there’s where he never has to type a username or a password for the sites he’s registered to.

There’s nothing that could possibly interest him in this place. Not the stupid devices his father keeps giving him trying to buy back his love, not the time he can spend with him, nothing. He barely manages to sleep, when he’s in this house. That’s how much he hates it.

He sits on the floor in front of the window and looks out. If he doesn’t look down, if he only looks straight in front of himself, he feels like floating on air. Sometimes he does it, and he likes it, because there are flashes surfacing in his memory, flashes about himself with his father. When he still was small enough for Blaine to keep him in his arms. There was a window so very much similar to this, in one of the places his father used to hang out with Leo when they were both younger and had only been together for a few years. If he’s not mistaken, it was an hotel or something. While waiting for Leo to free himself from school, Blaine used to take him in his arms and bring him to the window, and pointing out buildings at him. “That’s the McDonald’s where I got you the Happy Meal you found that funny car with a face in, do you remember? That’s the park where you fell on the ground and hurt your knee while chasing the pidgeons. That’s the mall where you had that strawberry-flavored ice cream that fell on the ground, and for which you cried until I got you a new one.” Timmy remembers drifting away to the sound of his voice, opening his eyes wide and pressing his nose against the window. It felt like flying. His father’s voice alone could bring him anywhere, he didn’t even need wings.

He snaps out of it when he feels his cheeks wet. He’s crying again. He always ends up crying when he thinks about the past, and he’s not even ashamed of it, though he probably should.

He had everything, everything a kid could want or need. He had it all and now he’s got none. He lost everything and it was all his father’s fault. No one could ever blame him for crying about it.

“You’re awake,” somebody says in a whisper, and Timmy instantly turns around, focusing on Cody. He frowns automatically, clutching his hands around his knees. “Do you feel sick?” Cody asks, and Timmy turns around again, looking out the window.

“What do you care?” he asks back, harshly. He can feel he hurt Cody. He’s so easily crushed. It’s almost pointless to even try. A harsh word, a snarky remark, even just plain coldness is often enough to reduce him to tears. Timmy used to find it funny, but now he doesn’t anymore. He used to call him “my evil stepmother” purposedly, to make him feel rejected, and seeing that little spark of pain flick in Cody’s eyes used to make him feel good. But now it doesn’t anymore. Now it’s just pointless cruelty, something painful and selfish Timmy does just because he can, just because he’s got the power to.

“I was just worried for you,” Cody answers, lowering his eyes. Timmy hears him step forward and sit on the couch right behind him, looking out the window the same way he’s doing.

“Why’s that so?” he asks, “You barely know me.”

“You’re Blaine’s son,” Cody answers, uncertainly.

“So what?” Timmy snaps at him, “You feel compelled to love me and take care of me just because of this? Well, spare yourself and me: you don’t have to.”

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Cody says, his voice nothing but a whisper. Timmy focuses on the streets, his eyes follow the cars passing by until they disappear behind a corner or in the traffic lights. He wants Cody gone. He’s coping with the fact that he can’t have him gone forever, but he wants him gone for now. He wants to be alone with the lights and his memories and he doesn’t want to have to keep wiping his eyes so he won’t see him cry. He wants to cry more so much. Why doesn’t Cody let him free to do it?

“Did you want something?” he asks, irritated by Cody’s silence.

Cody sighs, standing up from the couch again. “Your father feels guilty.”

“Not enough,” Timmy answers.

Cody sighs again. “He loves you.”

Timmy’s eyes fill with tears once more. “Not enough,” he repeats. His voice is shaking.

“…I’m going to leave you alone, now,” Cody says, probably getting – at last – that he wants to be left on his own.

Timmy listens to his steps down the corridor, the door of his bedroom opening and then closing again, and he’s finally in silence, now. He stands up and moves closer to the window, placing a hand on the glass and sliding his fingers against it almost affectionately.

Then he rests his forehead against the cold glass, and when the lights start blurring it feels like flying again.
Scritta con Tabata.
Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico.
Pairing: Kurt/Dave.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: AU, Estabilished Relationship, Slash, Angst.
- After a zombie outbreak that reduced the world to a battlefield where only few human outposts are still standing, Kurt is bitten by a zombie and Dave does the best he can to keep him alive, with a little help from Blaine.
Note: Zombies! Could we say no to three wonderful arts showing a bitten, slowly transforming Kurt? No, because you don't say no to zombies. And to wonderful arts as well. First rule: Cardio. Second rule: The Double Tap. Third rule: Beware of Bathrooms. Fourth rule: Take your soon-to-be zombie boyfriend to the nearest friend's house and try to keep him alive as long as you can. And that's basically what happens in this story.
We really had fun writing it, even if the story is not funny at all. We wanted to write about a post Zombie Apocalypse scenario already, and the reverse bang gave us this opportunity. So, thanks to the reverse bang. And thanks, of course, to the talented Emily who drew the fan art we took inspiration from, you can see them in the story. Enjoy :)
~ reviews will be cherished, criticisms are welcomed, but please be gentle
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
ARE YOU THERE OR ARE YOU GONE

Everything started with a simple fever.

Then, it became a flu. The first case was in New York. It was followed two weeks after by the second one in Washington. And then the third one came, on the West Coast, in sunny California. News channels started reporting some vague information on a seasonal flu that now was confining people all over the United States in hospital wards. Reporters said it was just a variation of a weaker form of Spanish flu, for which the World Health Organization had a perfectly working vaccine. There was nothing to fear.

To a world that was scared to death by the H1N1 virus just six years before, it should have sounded like an alarming bell. Unfortunately it didn't.

When it turned out the first case has not been the first at all but the tenth – maybe even more – and that it has never been flu, but a mutation of the rabies virus that boiled your brain, it was too late for everyone.

By the time the first cases appeared in Canada and South America, closing the borders was completely useless.

At the beginning, the disease took two weeks to incubate. Subjects were highly feverish and in a strong state of confusion for days. They started to lose appetite and show signs of restlessness and exhaustion, followed by the quickly decay of their mental faculties. The end of it was a short state of coma, in which they fell during their sleep. After that, they would either die or wake up a few hours later with no knowledge of who they were and prey of such a madness, forcing them to attack, bite and eat other people like deranged animals.

Eventually, restraining them proved to be impossible. Subjects at the final stage of the disease had an unusual strength – probably adrenalin induced – and no self-preservation instinct, which means they would pursue their chasing even if beaten or wounded, and they were in no way affected by tranquillizer of any kind.

One bite was enough to be infected. So, the disease spread fast.

The governments of the world tried to contain the outbreak but acted too late and failed. Through airports the virus reached every state of America and then crossed the Ocean. Within a month Europe and Asia were already infected too. The world population was quickly reduced by 60%. But the mortality rate of the disease was actually very low. So, people who weren't healthy, unfortunately were hardly just dead.

Millions of diseased creatures started roaming the streets of the cities around the world, while the army evacuated as many people as possible. Sometimes it succeeded. Most of the time, it didn't.

Now, what's left of the human race lives in guarded places called oasis. Small communities of about fifty people, usually located in strategic facilities that are easy to defend or have a practical use, like small airports, hospitals, abandoned malls, schools. They were gathering points for evacuations. When those failed and there were nowhere else to evacuate to, they became homes for the people who remained.

A world state of war have been declared right after the collapse of the human race, six months after the outbreak. So, oasis all over the world are ruled by the army. They serve as shelters as much as headquarters for the military expeditions aimed at exterminate zombies, while ONU and other international organizations try to put back together a world in pieces.

A few makeshift labs in different parts of the world are trying to come up with a vaccine, but with no results as of yet. So, at the moment, the resolution depends totally on the army. The plan is to maintain the current number of healthy people, however low, and reduce the amount of zombies by incursions in the infected areas. Where possible, great cities have been bombed, sometimes even leveled. Everyone's desire to preserve the human culture and history was lost the very moment the risk of losing the human race itself became real.

As for the origin of the virus, speculations have been made.

Most people think the virus is the result of a very badly conducted experiment that got out of control in a lab near New York, where the patient zero was. However, a thorough investigation that would confirm such hypothesis can not be done, since right now there is no way to track down the movements of the virus or the possible labs involved. Lately, the recent discovery of cases in France, Japan and Australia contemporaneous to the one in New York and kept hidden from the governments of the respective countries, has fed a second line of thought supporting the idea that the outbreak has been the result of an attack by a still unidentified terrorist group. However, in default of any kind of claim, the experiment failure is still the main hypothesis.

Right now, people just try to survive another day.

*

Strangely enough, the new group arrives in the late afternoon.

Usually, the search and rescue squad leaves to reconnoiter at dawn and stops searching by three o'clock in the afternoon, weather they find something or not because patrolling for survivors in the dark is too dangerous. You have to be able to see zombies to shoot them dead for good.

In the beginning, when this was only a very big mess and nobody really knew what was going on, the squad would always come back with survivors. In time, they became fewer and fewer until there were no more survivors at all.

This is the first group that's been found in months.

They are six, four men and two women. The squad found them one mile north of Bellefontaine, in a city park not much bigger than the place they are now. They are malnourished, one of the men coughs like crazy and the youngest female has got a fever, but she says she is not infected.

According to what they say, they have been living in some hunting cabin, feeding on what they would find in the bushes nearby, too scared to go find something better in the empty shops of their abandoned city. They were a lot more. They lost five people in the past eight weeks.

Five people who didn't die.

As of yet, the group has not been allowed into the little community of survivors that has gathered in the tiny mall of Lima, Ohio. There is a strict routine newcomers have to undergo before they can cross the borders of the oasis. And even after that, nobody really feels safe around new faces until at least six months have passed. You can't never be too sure when just one bite turns you undead.

The six are confused and look around suspiciously as much as the people of the oasis look at them from behind the secure railing that marks off the place. It's like looking at wild animals at the zoo. If zoo still existed. Dave is there with everyone else, but it's not boredom that brought him there. He needs to speak with the squad commander, so he has to wait for the man's speech to end.

“You will be placed in quarantine for about three weeks,” the commander is saying, standing in front of the group of newcomers. He is embracing his shotgun and two of his men are aiming at the group. “This is how it goes. If you don't turn, then you will be free to stay. If you do, we will shot you in the head. We won't wait any more weeks. We won't wait for the disease to take its course until the final stage. Basically, we won't wait. At the first signs of the plague, we will put you down. We look at it as both a way to keep everybody as safe as possible and an act of mercy.”

After voting, the people of the community decided they would rather die when still holding their humanity than waiting to lose it day after day to the disease and turn into some flesh-eating monsters. Dave knows of this choice and he has actually voted for it, but he can understand the confusion and the horror on those people's face. It's because they come from outside, where all that counts are the people with you. If you are surrounded by zombies, you cling to all the human beings you have around and who were lucky enough to survive like you, no matter the relationship you have with one another.

You find strength in the humanity you still share.

But in oasis things are different, or at least they are here. People in Lima live in community but they are not a community at all. Every rule and every routine aims to keep the status quo. Everybody loves so much the outward safety of the oasis that tend to remove everything suspiciously dangerous before it can actually prove to be so. People here don't live hoping in a better place, but for the place they already have to stay as it is. Dave has already seen it happen too many times before. He and Kurt have experienced it on their on skin.

Burt was shot two minutes after a creature bit him. Kurt didn't even have the chance to say goodbye when his father still understood him. Dave was there, next to him, restraining him before he could go running to his dad and risk to be shot too. It was devastating.

At least, everybody was sure Burt has been bitten. Finn was put down two weeks after, on account of a confused state that was really suspicious, but never really proved to be the result of the disease. People were just scared of what it might have been.

“What about Candice?” The woman asks, holding the feverish younger one by the shoulder. “She is sick but not with the disease. It's just a common cold. She needs medicines.”

The commander looks at the girl, whose cheeks are flushed. She trembles and coughs every now and then. She really seems just normally sick. Besides, everybody always does. “If she gets through the incubation period, we will give her something. But not now,” he says. “Antibiotics slow down the disease. They would alter the result of these three weeks.”

“What if she gets worse?” One of the man cuts in. “You would let her die of flu when you can cure her?”

The commander doesn't even flinch. “It's three weeks, sir. Or the woods again.”

The man and the woman huddle around the girl who coughs again. None of them speaks again, so the commander nods to his men and starts leading the group toward a small, squat building made of concrete, a few feet away from the bigger structure of the mall. “If you make it,” he says, opening the door so they can go inside “in three weeks, you will be given a safe place to sleep inside the mall, a job, protection and access to a radio frequency to try and see if your family and friends – if you have any left – are safe and sound in some other oasis. Until then, you will stay here.”

One after the other, the six newcomers enter the quarantine building. It is an old warehouse, big enough to contain three or even four times their number. But aside from some makeshift beds and a supply of food, there is nothing else in there. They might as well die of boredom before the incubation period ends.

When everyone is inside, the commander looks seriously at them through the door. “This is your last chance,” he says, holding the door. “If anyone of you has been bitten, say it now. Or you will be closed in here with them until the quarantine ends. And by then, you will be all as good as dead.”

He is looking at the young girl, who hides herself behind the woman. “Nobody's infected,” the woman says, angrily.

The commander shrugs. “I just hope you are not lying,” he says, and then he bolts the door. He and the soldiers start to head back to where the other people are. Everybody is leaving, there is nothing to see anymore. Dave waits for him to dismiss his men and then approaches him.

“Commander, can I have a word?”

The man looks at him for a moment, as if to recognize him and then nods quickly, his expression as cold as stone. “Tell me you bring good news, kid,” he says. “'cause all I have seen coming all day is shit.”

Dave starts walking with him down the road that would bring them back to the mall. “Something bad happened, sir?” He asks politely, crossing his arms behind his back.

“Not bad, just something,” the man answers. “Something happening is already bad enough.”

David understands he is talking about the new group they found in Bellefontaine. “Do you think they might be infected, sir? They seemed okay to me. Except for the girl.”

“Would you tell me your sister is infected if you needed a place to stay?” Dave stays silent. The commander sighs and pats him on his shoulder. “My point exactly. So, what's that you wanted to talk about? If you want to enter the squad, again, it's two weeks since the last time you asked. You are still too young.”

“No, it's not that, sir,” he says. Then he looks around to make sure nobody is listening. “Did you see Kurt on your way back?”

The commander frowns. “I haven't seen him all day. Wasn't he supposed to be out on the fields?”

“Yes,” Dave nods. “He was. I left him there this morning. But it's been almost ten hours, now. I'm starting to worry. He always takes the wrong turn. I'm afraid he got lost, or something.”

The commander remains silent for the longest time. “Kurt works inside the oasis borders, isn't he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, you have nothing to worry about. Borders are safe. He would never be so stupid as going out on his own, am I right?” The man continues, looking at him straight into his eyes. “He will be back by the curfew. And if he's not, we will look for him tomorrow. Alright?”

“Sure, sir.”

Dave watches him leave and follows him with his eyes as he goes back to the darkening silhouette of the mall. Evening is approaching and Dave doesn't believe a single word the commander said. What he read on his face was neither calm nor the belief that Kurt is okay.

The commander already thinks the worst, as he usually does.

Dave can only hope Kurt really got lost during the afternoon and wait for him to show up at the noise of the hurricane siren set on the roof of the main building. It rings every day for ten minutes at five o'clock. People are supposed to get inside the borders of the oasis during this period time. If they don't, they stay outside, with all of the related undesired consequences.

Unfortunately, the siren comes and goes and there is no trace of Kurt. Dave waits for him on the border for ten minutes after the noise stopped, right next to the soldier who is going to mount guard tonight. The sun sets and he has to acknowledge the fact that Kurt is out there and that he is probably in danger. He meets the commander's eyes for a brief moment.

For the man, his boyfriend is already dead.

“Me and the rescue squad will look for him first thing in the morning. I'm sure he got lost and he hid somewhere safe,” the commander says. His words sound reassuring, but his hand on Dave's shoulder invites him to be strong, which is something Dave is not willing to do at all, for the moment. You only are strong when there is something to pull through. But Kurt is okay.

He nods to the commander, though. He doesn't want him to think he has something in mind, because he actually does.

*

Going out is easier than he has thought.

There are just two soldiers along the perimeter. The commander has no men to spare and they all have to rest at night to be ready the morning after. Night shifts are very short and soldiers change continuously, so everybody gets to sleep but the borders are covered the whole night through.

Dave knows the routine because he has been studying it for months, planning as he was to enter the squad.

The oasis is a circle. Each guard walks half of it. They meet at the center of every semi-circle every forty-five minutes, for four times. Then, two other soldiers come to take their place. So once every hour, half of the perimeter is clear. Maybe not long enough to get inside the oasis if you are a brainless creature only driven by hunger, but enough for him to climb the metallic net and jump over it.

He is all dressed up in black, which makes him feel totally stupid, but apparently action heroes in movies are right. Black clothes work just fine when you need to hide in the shadows, and they are many tonight since it's crescent moon.

He waits for the guards meeting to happen, then slips the other way. It takes him at least five minutes to find the right place to jump over the net and land on the green grass outside. Only when he feels the cold metal of the net against his back he realizes that there is nothing protecting him here. Last time he was dangerously close to a zombie was almost a year ago, during the evacuation; when the army almost failed it.
The van in which he and ten other people were traveling to get to the oasis had to stop because the street was blocked by cars of people who had tried to exit the city by themselves. Most of them had died, and their cars were now stopping them from using the highway.

Zombies showed up all of a sudden, literally out of nowhere.

One or two of them just threw themselves against the half open window of the van on his side. If he closes his eyes, he can still see their putrescent claws trying to grab him and smell the stink coming from their rotting wounds. They say you can tell how long a zombie has been dead by its smell. Like you need a more specific time-of-death evaluation beyond the simple fact that what it's clearly a corpse is wondering about and wants to eat you.

Dave understands the need to find normalcy in the hell they are living in now. Analyzing everything, giving order to something that lacks of it helps people to cope with the walking dead and stuff, but sometimes things get too far. He doesn't care about smelling the dead to guess when they died. Finding a cure, that would return everything to normality.

He looks around and sees nothing but the vast expanse of the country around Lima. The mall is outside the city – or what's left of it – and that is what makes it a perfect shelter. Cities are good places to find supplies but they are also dangerous since the majority of deaths happened there and usually dead people just stay where they are – this at least hasn't changed – even if there is nothing left to eat or pray on. Also, cities are harder to defend, especially when you can't enclose just one portion of it without having the zombie colony of the whole neighborhood surrounding you night and day.

After their group has settled in the mall, the army has pulled a net all around it, creating the oasis. A smaller building has been used as a warehouse to stock supplies and then another one has been needed to keep people in quarantine. The place quickly became a tiny city with places to go and things to attend to. A small portion of land that has not been covered in concrete like what once was the mall parking lot has been recently prepared to try and grow some vegetables and wheat. The chance of being rescued and brought to a bigger and better supplied place somewhere in the country has got thinner and thinner every day, especially because there aren't places like that on Earth anymore. So their little colony might as well start to be all-sufficient.

Kurt has been assigned to the fields two weeks ago. He is not happy about it, but he has no other choice. Everybody needs to do something to contribute to the maintenance of the oasis and it's the commander the one deciding the tasks. Dave is basically a drudge. He helps whoever needs an extra pair of hands. It's a tiring job, especially because there is always something to take care of in a place like this. He would love to work in the fields, instead. It would be so much more relaxing.

Anyway, Kurt spends all day taking care of the delicate seeds they have planted recently, preparing new soil and building a greenhouse, so they will be able to grow something during winter. He should have been there today too, so Dave decides to start looking for him there. The fields are inside the net, but quiet far from the mall and you can't see them from it. This is not very safe. According to the commander's orders, nothing can be done out of sight-range from the mall. But they had to make an exception for the fields, because of the concrete everywhere else. So, it takes Dave almost twenty minutes to get there, given that he has to avoid the guards too.

The fields are silent and a little spooky too. Tomatoes are slowly growing and the shadows of their lines extend towards him like long, slim fingers making him shiver. He never got really used to all this silence. When hell hasn't broken loose yet, his house was in the town center and he would fall asleep at the whirring of cars passing by. Silence in the streets has slowly became the first sign of the disaster and he has grown afraid of it. The first nights at the oasis, he has slept with his mp3 player continuously turned on because the lack of sounds around him would make him imagine those creatures crawling just outside the windows.

He looks around, hoping to spot Kurt as quickly as possible, so they can be back home before dawn. He is not sure they will be able to go back in without being noticed and the idea of ending locked up in the quarantine warehouse with some possible infected strangers doesn't make him jump for joy, but this is a problem he will face only when he actually has Kurt with him.

Dave starts walking around, first checking the fields and then quickly moving toward the greenhouse, which is only half finished. Sometimes he murmurs Kurt’s name softly, but he doesn't hope it will help. He just needs to hear someone's voice. The greenhouse is made of wood and some old plastic sheets. They're trying to find some more during recons but, apparently, plastic is a luxury now and it's not easy to find.

Luckily, the door is not bolted. He opens it and quickly gets inside. The moon shines through the many holes in the roof so he can see quite clearly. The place is almost empty, except for some tables and a couple of plants that are too delicate to be left outside during the night. Having four walls around makes him feel safe enough as to call Kurt aloud but no one answers.

He doesn't know what keeps him inside the greenhouse. Why he doesn't turn around and go looking for Kurt somewhere else. He just keeps walking toward the end of the room where all the tools lockers are. He moves slowly, calling Kurt every now and then. Maybe his brain has already registered the sound moments before he actually hears it, but there's a soft sniffing somewhere in there.

“Kurt?”

The sniffing stops, but he has heard it. He reaches the first locker and stays close to it. He tries to calculate the chances that there is actually a zombie behind it. But they don't cry or hide. They just growl and scream.

“Who's there?” He asks again. “Kurt, is that you? It's Dave.”

This is when the sniffing starts again and from the little sob that comes right after, Dave just knows it's Kurt. He turns around the locker with a quick movement to win over his fear to end up face to face with some undead and for a moment he just stands there, staring at an empty wall. He needs to look down at the next sob to spot Kurt curled up on the floor.

The weight on his chest disappears almost immediately. He doesn't know what he would have done if he had to go back to the mall alone. “It's okay,” he says softly, even smiling a little. He squats next to him and strokes his hair ever so gently. “I am here now.”

Kurt says nothing. He just stands there, hugging his legs and looking down at his shoes covered in dirt. Some time ago, he wouldn't let it happen, but now he's got just one pair of shoes and planting vegetables doesn't exactly help in keeping them clean. Sometimes it is in the smallest details that you really see how the things around you changed.

“Why are you here?” Dave asks. “Didn't you hear the siren?”

Kurt nods slowly and sniffs. “Dave, I don't think you should be here, right now. You really should go back to the Mall. They will be looking for you.”

“Nobody knows I'm out,” Dave smiles proudly. “And I will think of a way for us both to sneak back in. Don't worry, we're gonna be fine.”

Kurt stares into nothing for the longest moment. He moves his lips but he makes no sound and it takes him quite some time to find the words. Enough time to make Dave worry. “I can't go back there.”

“Of course you can,” he says uncomfortably. Kurt's behavior is giving him the chills. “We just need to figure out–“

“I've been bitten.”

Those words make no sense to Dave. It is the red, swollen mark on Kurt's neck that gives them a meaning. The bite is undoubtedly human, 2 inches long, uneven and already turning purple at the edges. The skin has been torn apart, probably when Kurt has tried to escape. Dave grabs Kurt by his shoulder, careful not to touch the wound on his nape. He tries desperately to imagine a possibility where Kurt's wound has not been infected, but of course this is not possible. Every wound does. Especially one like this, so deep Dave can see the muscle. It must have bled a lot.

“How did it happen?”

Kurt takes his time to work around the strong dizziness he's been feeling since he's got bitten. His head spins and the wound is pounding ferociously. “I was working in the field,” he says. “I was digging the soil to plant those cauliflower seeds we found last week. It literally came out of nowhere. I... I don't know. There must be a hole in the fence, but I didn't see it. I just had the time to stand up and it grabbed me. I couldn't...”

Kurt stammers and then shuts up. There is not much else to say. The creature has grabbed him and then bit him. Sometimes they are so strong, you can't yank free no matter what you do. They have the same strength of those dogs that once they have sunk their fangs in you, you can't make them open their mouth unless you knock them down.

“Where is it, now? Is it in the oasis?” Dave asks.

Kurt shakes his head, his eyes fixed on the floor. “I killed it,” he says. “Good timing mine, hm? I thought about the hoe in my fucking hand when it was too late.” Kurt's voice comes out in a growl as he throws something he has been holding in his hand. The handle of the hoe hits the door of another locker, making an incredibly loud and tinkling sound. “This place was supposed to be safe. It was supposed to keep us alive.”

Dave hugs Kurt as he starts to cry and places a kiss on the top of his head. Kurt turns around and hides his face in Dave's chest, sobbing so hard, Dave feels his heart clench. “Everything is going to be alright,” he murmurs over and over in his hair.


Probably not. But right now, it feels like they can use every bit of hope they can get.

*

They manage to sneak back into the borders of the oasis easier than Dave thought. He guides Kurt down the same road he took to find him, and watches out for the soldiers patrolling the borders to pass through the wire net unnoticed.

Sneaking inside the actual mall is harder – the building hardly has any open spot, every exit is locked at night and they have to pass through a broken window, risking to be seen or heard and obviously to be wounded by the shards of glass still sticking out of the wooden window frame – but they manage to do that too, and Dave allows himself to breathe in and out again only when they’re safe in their room.

What they call “home” now, was once a small clothes shop. Every time somebody new arrives at the oasis and manages to pass the quarantine and become part of the community, one of the old shops gets cleaned up, its windows get covered with paper for some privacy and the room gets arranged as a dorm, with a couple of beds (or only mattresses, when beds can’t be found) and a drawer for clothes and underwear.

Kurt moved in with Dave after Burt’s death, and had been living with him ever since. He barely remembers the room he used to live in with his dad anymore. Everything surrounding the confusing days he passed through before and after Burt’s death seems blurred, and most of the time Kurt just doesn’t want to remember, and prays to forget.

He prays even now, sitting on the bed in a corner of the room, while Dave quickly fills an old bag with their clothes in silence. God, make me forget, he begs, looking at his boyfriend moving back and forth from the drawer to the bag on the ground and then back to the drawer, I know we’re not exactly in good terms, but please, just make me forget everything, and I swear, I swear…

“Kurt, stop it,” Dave says, and Kurt has to lift his gaze up on him without finishing his vow. Dave is looking at him with his eyes filled with tears, fists clenched around the fabric of an old checkered shirt he just rolled into a ball to make it fit better inside the bag, “If you keep crying like this, they’re gonna hear us.”

Kurt touches his own face – his cheeks are burning hot – and feels the tears under his fingertips. He really was crying. He didn’t notice.

“I’m sorry,” he says, swallowing his sadness with all the pain torturing him, “I don’t feel well.”

“I know,” Dave nods, sitting beside him and letting the shirt unfold on his lap as he holds one of Kurt’s hands between his, playing with his fingers to distract them both, “It’s going to get better, believe me. Once I’m finished with this,” he says, nodding at the bag still half empty on the floor, “I’m gonna sneak into the pharmacy and fetch some antibiotics. Then, I’m gonna clean up this mess on your neck, and we will be set.”

Kurt looks at him, resisting the urge to cry again. “Set for what?” he asks, “What are we gonna do, Dave? Fuck… I should just fucking kill myself,” he looks away, trying to free his hand from Dave’s hold, “I have no right to put you in this position. I don’t want to—”

“Would you just shut up?” Dave asks, and he doesn’t even sound angry, or frustrated. Just incredibly sad. He keeps holding Kurt’s hand, almost clinging to it as he keeps talking slowly. “I don’t want you to die.”

“It’s gonna happen, anyway,” Kurt says harshly, wiping away new tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

“I don’t care,” Dave insists, “I don’t want you to die. Not now, not like this. We were supposed to be happy.”

“We were never supposed to be happy, Dave,” Kurt shakes his head, “The fact alone that we fell in love with each other when the world was already fucked is enough to say that we were only supposed to end bad,” he looks away, biting at his lower lip as he tries to stop new tears from coming, “I honestly can’t imagine an ending more appropriate than this, actually.”

“Kurt, for Christ’s sake,” Dave almost moans in pain, tugging at Kurt’s hand to force the boy to look back up at him, “I don’t care about any of this shit. We were supposed to be happy because we fucking love each other, and that’s enough to hope for some fucking happiness.”

Kurt doesn’t answer, because all he would like to do now is to ask Dave where he lived up to now. If he noticed that people have died, that they keep dying, that they are dying even in this very moment, and that they will keep dying no matter what they do, or think, or how hard they try not to see.

“I don’t care if it’s impossible for you to survive,” Dave talks in whispers, playing with Kurt’s fingers again, “I wanna try, anyway. But I can’t, if we stay here. So we’ve got to go.”

Kurt tries to calm down, taming the wave of rage mounting in his chest with every sting of pain that makes the wound on his neck burn. “Where?” he asks in a low voice, leaning over Dave and resting his burning forehead against his shoulder, trying to find some refreshment against the mildly warm fabric of his t-shirt.

Dave takes a deep breath, searching for Kurt’s eyes. He thought about it for the whole time while they were walking back to the mall, and he only knows one other person, beside him, who wouldn’t be able to kill Kurt on the spot after he knew he had been bitten. “Blaine,” he answers in a weary sigh, holding Kurt’s hand.

Kurt backs off a little, shaking his head. “No, Dave,” he whines, “We can’t. I’m already putting you in danger, and that’s enough. We can’t drag Blaine into this. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“It’s our only hope,” Dave insists with a sigh, “He lives alone, he has a house of his own, he’s not subject to the rules of an oasis. And he loves you, Kurt, almost as much as I do. He’s going to help us. We have to go there.”

Kurt lets out a soft sob, covering both his eyes with his hands. “This is so unfair,” he murmurs, shaking his head, but he can’t say he’s really surprised about it. After all, life often is.

*

Dave tries to be as quick as he can, though he has to move carefully, because he told Kurt to wait for him outside, near the parking lot reserved to the jeeps used by the army. He had to give his boyfriend something to do, because he knew that, if he left him alone to wait for him in their room, he would have gone out of his mind. Kurt is too nervous, too scared and too sad to think straight. Dave understands him, it’s not like he himself wouldn’t find more comfort in just letting himself go and cry his heart out until it remains nothing of it, but he has to keep his mind clear. He has to think. He’s got too many things to do.

The pharmacy door’s lock opens with a soft click, and Dave holds his breath as he opens the glass door and sneaks inside. The pharmacy is dark and silent, and Dave walks between the stands searching for everything that could be useful, trying not to lose too much time deciding if he should take something or not, and how much he should take of it. The pharmacy’s not patrolled, usually, but it’s located in a very central spot of the mall, and it’s almost four in the morning. Soon, the first people are going to wake up and start walking around the building, and Dave can’t risk to be seen.

Plus, they can’t steal a car with the sun up in the sky. They have to do it now, and they have to do it quick.

Dave grabs some antibiotics, a couple of rollerbandage, disinfectant and some band-aids, he puts it all in a plastic bag and then moves to the fast-food they use as a kitchen and a dining hall. There’s not much that can be eaten without cooking it first, but he manages to grab some bread, assorted fruit and a couple of bottles of water. That should be enough for their trip – he puts everything in another plastic bag and then walks away.

When he manages to pass through the broken window and reach the parking lot, it’s already half past four. The sun won’t be up for another hour or so, but he still has to medicate Kurt and then find a way to leave the oasis, so he doesn’t have time to spare.

“Kurt?” he calls out softly, wandering through the labyrinth made of all the parked cars, “Where are you?”

“I’m here,” Kurt answers, leaning out of one of the cars’ windows and waving slowly. He’s shivering all over.

Dave approaches him walking faster, and kisses him on his forehead. It’s burning. “You chose this?” he asks, nodding to the car.

Kurt shrugs, looking away. “I was cold, I waited outside as long as I could, but then I just had to get in. I just chose the closest car.”

Dave nods, looking at Kurt as he moves from the driver’s seat to the passenger’s one, and only then he throws the plastic bags inside the car, and jumps to gets in through the glassless window. “Here, take one of this,” he says, reaching for one of the plastic bags and retrieving the antibiotics, “For your fever. And then take your shirt off.”

Kurt swallows a pill with a sip of water, chocking a bit. “I can hardly swallow,” he says, massaging his throat with his open hand, “It hurts.”

“Be strong,” Dave encourages him, brushing his cheek with his index finger. “Now, come on, take that shirt off and let me take a look at the wound.”

Kurt nods and puts the remaining pills and water away, slowly unbuttoning his shirt. He looks down at his own hands, feeling more ashamed and embarrassed than he did when he and Dave had sex for the first time. It was a hot night, months ago. They had drank some beer to gather enough courage, and when Dave had asked Kurt to take his shirt off he did it with hungry, shiny eyes.

Now, he asks for the same thing, but his eyes are dull, only sadness filling them. The look that Kurt used to long for is already gone, washed away by tears.

Kurt folds the shirt and puts it away on the backseat, and then moves closer to Dave, showing his neck. The wound is swollen, bright red around the little cuts made by the teeth of the zombie who bit him. The circular area surrounding them is purple, almost black around the edges. It looks bad. And it smells even worse, when Dave bends over to lightly sniff at it.

He sighs, parting from Kurt to fetch one of the plastic bags. He retrieves the bandage and the disinfectant and kisses Kurt on his forehead, trying to reassure him. “Now this is going to burn,” he warns him, pouring some disinfectant on a square of folded bandage and starting to clean Kurt’s wound out. The boy hisses, clutching his fists around the fabric of Dave’s t-shirt and holding onto it. “I’m sorry,” Dave says, paying more attention to what he’s doing, trying not to hurt him too much.

Kurt shakes his head, breathing slowly in and out. “It’s okay.”

It doesn’t take much, anyway. There’s only so much Dave can do, a couple of pills and some disinfectant can’t do any miracle, and Dave knows it. He knows there are ways to slow down the change, he knows the cleaning the wound every day helps, as well as taking antibiotics and eating simple, healthy food, but he also knows it’s going to happen, anyway. Kurt will die, and then undie, and there’s nothing he can do to stop the process.

He covers the wound with a bandage and fixes it up to Kurt’s skin with a couple of band-aids, and then parts from him with a sigh, retrieving an apple from the plastic bag in the backseat. “Eat,” he says, passing the fruit to Kurt.

He instantly makes a face, backing off a little. “I’m not hungry,” he answers, shaking his head, but Dave insists, holding one of his hands between his fingers and forcing him to take the apple.

“You’ve got to eat,” he insists, firmly but gently making Kurt’s fingers close around the rounded fruit, “It’s gonna keep you strong. And alive. Please, Kurt,” he says, and he’s got tears in his eyes, and Kurt can’t really say no to that.

He sighs, taking a bite of the apple and settling better on his seat. He can already see the sun lightening up the sky from behind the mountains on the horizon. The light of a new dawn never scared him that much.

He’s so concentrated in watching the sun slowly coming up and eating his forcefed breakfast that he only notice Dave started the engine when the car is already moving. He turns to his boyfriend, eyes filled with surprise as curiosity shakes away the bad taste the apple has on his tongue. “You started it,” he says in a low voice, blinking and swallowing another bit of the apple, “How?”

Dave grins, shrugging. “I made it work,” he answers, “When things started to get really ugly, down in the city, before I arrived to the oasis, I lost my father soon. That much you already know,” he explains, as Kurt nods, easily remembering how sad and weary Dave was the day he arrived at the mall, alone, “I had to learn how to survive, someway. My neighborhood wasn’t safe, so I ran, and when I couldn’t run anymore, well…” he shrugs again, barely smiling at the memory of his first clumsy attempts to make cars work like he always saw in the movies. It actually took some time for him to understand he could start engines that way, but he couldn’t do it if he kept making random wires contact. He had to find the right ones.

“You still surprise me,” Kurt comments with a small, weary smile on his dry lips, “I thought nothing in the world could anymore.”

Dave turns to him, chuckling softly. “You surprise me too,” he says, mocking him a little, “You managed to eat your apple.”

Kurt looks down to the applecore lying on his palm and smiles, but he can’t help tears from falling. “Yeah, so it seems,” he says, his voice unsteady as he sobs softly.

Dave holds out a hand to him, brushing his cheek, and Kurt leans on it with a soft sigh, closing his eyes. “You’re strong,” Dave tells him, and Kurt can hear in his voice he really believes it, “You’re gonna make it.”

It’s a lie. But Kurt needs something to believe in, and this lie sounds so painfully sweet to him he has no other choice than to blindly believe it too.

*

Dave has been driving since the break of dawn at a very high speed to put as much distance as possible between them and the mall. By his reckoning, it is going to take the search and rescue squad at least a couple of hours to realize they are both gone. First, someone has to report Dave's missing too and before doing it, they have to search for him in every possible place, because the last thing the squad needs are false alarms. Sure, the commander knows Kurt has gone missing and so he is probably going to put two and two together and understand Dave has gone after him but even with that, Dave hopes they have enough head start to reach Blaine's house.

They are not going to be safe there, especially if Dave's wrong and Blaine doesn't want to take care of Kurt together with him. But since Dave is pretty sure he will, then at least they will have a place to stay, somewhere to hide Kurt while the disease takes its course. Dave is aware this is desperate. There is no way out from the disease and the sooner he will cope with that the better. Still, he wants to give Kurt a chance; even if it is just the chance to live a little longer. He wants to keep his death at bay as long as possible. Nobody really knows how long a sick person can be kept alive and self-aware before the deterioration calls for a killing. Maybe they will be able to keep Kurt with them long enough for some doctors somewhere to find a cure. Who knows, it can even happen.

Kurt is dozing on and off from sleep. Sometimes he leans on the window and just drifts off for a few minutes, sometimes Dave turns his head to look at him and finds him looking sadly at the street beyond the windshield. His temperature is still too high. Dave knows this is not good. If the pills don't work, Kurt must sweat it off. Another reason why they need to get to Blaine's as soon as possible. Taking Kurt away from an all in all healthy place won't make him any good.

“How do you feel?” He asks him, smiling a little.

Kurt feels Dave's eyes upon him, but he doesn't turn his head. “Like someone who is going to die soon.”

Dave tightens his grip on the wheel and tries to stay calm. Kurt always reacts angrily or sarcastically to things he doesn't like, and this is the worst of them. So he can allow him a little anger, as long as he copes with his efforts to keep him alive. “Whatever is going to happen, it won't happen any time soon,” he says.

Kurt stays quiet for a moment and then he just smiles a little, but it is not a happy smile. Actually, it's the saddest thing Dave has ever seen. “I appreciate that.”

“Appreciate what?”

“That you never say that I am not gonna die,” Kurt answers. “That would be patronizing me, and it just wouldn't work.”

Dave doesn't want to answer to that. Since the moment he found him, he has calibrated the things to say and how to say them. He knows it would be foolish to tell him everything is going to be alright, because it won't and they both are aware of that. However, he hates telling him lies as much as the truth, because things said aloud become suddenly too real to handle. So, instead of focusing on the worst part, that is the future awaiting them, he is determined to stick with the things they can do to avoid it as long as possible.

“I think we are getting close,” he says, changing the subject all together. “His house should be around here, I guess.”

“I don't know,” Kurt shows the first sign of real interest, sitting up straight to give a better look to the countryside. “How far are we from Worthington?”

“We just passed it,” Dave says. “That was actually one of the few roadsigns still standing.”

“Then, it must be around here. Whenever I drove to his house, I would always look for Worthington, so I'd know I didn't get lost.”

That was the past. A long lost one, where a zombie outbreak was really just the biggest fear of a bunch of characters in a horror movie. Back then, Kurt's biggest problem was how to win Nationals and had Rachel shut up about it. His whole world revolved around the show choir rehearsals, French tests and a hipster, talented boyfriend, with whom he was proudly fighting the sexual orientation prejudice in his school.

Kurt and Blaine were a couple for a little more than year, then things started to change between them, and they slowly grew out of each other in a very safe and rather not painful way. One day they had just stopped being in love with each other and gone back to be just friends. Back then, Dave was nowhere to be seen.

He and Kurt met again a few months after Kurt and Blaine broke up, about the same time the patient zero was found. That's why Kurt says they were doomed from the beginning

It wasn't love at first sight.

Actually, it wasn't for Kurt. Dave had loved him for most of his years at McKinley, so when he saw him again after being away in another school for almost a year, he wasn't surprised to find himself still madly in love with him like the first day. Kurt was simply marvelous – quite unbearable sometimes, but still very charming – and now that he had worked out his own issues and coped with the fact that he was indeed gay, Dave could afford himself the luxury to be in love without feeling guilty, which led to him being friends with Kurt as a way to know him better. Something he hadn't be able to do when he was still struggling with his own sexuality.

Their love has come slowly, one baby step at the time while the world was heading towards its end. Sometimes when he thinks about it, Dave finds it incredible romantic. Like they were getting together no matter what. They survived both their families' death, the hunger and the fear, the knowledge of them being now completely alone in this world and forced to live on their own. At some point, it has appeared like nothing could stop them. Like they were ready to survive everything.

It makes him cringe now, knowing it's not everything, after all.

As he looks at Kurt, who is now busy trying to make out the silhouette of Blaine's house, Dave thinks about their first real kiss. It always makes him smile because there is nothing sweet about it. In fact, they were arguing badly over something really stupid. They were both stressed for a lot of other things too – something you can somehow expect from two teens caught up in the middle of a zombie apocalypse – and Dave was also very attracted to Kurt's lips curling. So, what happened was that they screamed at each other for the longest time, until Dave got fed up with Kurt's nonsense and kissed him, pushing him into the wall behind. When they parted, he was expecting a kick in the balls at least and was prepared for it. But Kurt just stared into his eyes very angrily for a moment, and then pulled him down by grabbing his hair.

They never stopped since then.

If he tries to remember what was the argument about, Dave can't quite recall. But he bets it was football. They always fight about football, since Kurt finds it one of the things the world can do without now, while Dave strongly agree with the line of thoughts of the search and rescue squad that uses sport as a way to blow off some steam at the end of the day. He plays with them every once in a while. Or at least, he did.

“Kurt?” He says, wondering if this could be a good way to make conversation. “Do you remember what we were arguing about right before our first kiss at the oasis?”

Kurt doesn't answer. He just calls his name. “Dave...”

“I can't remember. It was football, wasn't it?”

“Dave!”

Dave finally turns to him and finds him holding his head against the windows of the jeep. “What?”

“Stop the car.”

“Did you find the house?” Dave asks, looking around. But there is nothing around here. Just the desolate outline of a countryside that was already as unadorned as it is now.

“Just stop the car! Please.”

That is when Dave hears the desperate tone in his voice and hits the brakes. The car has barely the time to stop moving that Kurt opens the door and just lets himself roll out of it, like he has not enough strength to stand up and get down properly. He falls on his knees and throws up, making the most hideous sound Dave has ever heard.

“Kurt! Kurt, are you okay?” Dave runs around the car and kneels next to him, holding his head as he bends over again and vomits something black, gelatinous and bloody that doesn't look like what he just ate at all and for this reason it is so much more worrying. Dave is not a doctor, but he knew the disease as much as everyone else, so he can tell it's too soon for Kurt's internal organs to be shutting down; but it's the infection nonetheless and probably the very first reaction to the shock of the bite, aside from the fever. Something that must be taken seriously.

He has hoped it would start at Blaine's house.

With every retch comes the sound again. It's like whatever stuff Kurt is pushing out of his body is making a hell of a mess along his throat to keep coming. Kurt can't keep it down, but the effort of throwing it up is giving him pain. The sobs that cut his breath every in between retches are enough proof of that.


When he finally calms down enough to sit down on the burning tar of the road, Dave opens his arms and Kurt immediately crawls into them, hiding himself in his embrace.

“It's okay, babe. It's over,” Dave says, trying to sooth him as the sobs become hiccups and then tears.

Kurt's feverish body is shivering against his own and he can't do anything but holding him closer, hoping it is enough, for the moment.

*

Blaine has lost both his parents during the outbreak. He doesn’t even know how it happened, he just knows they were on the missing person list that the general in command of the Dalton oasis has read to all the living and healthy people assembled in the hall of the school the day it was finally possible to count and identify who made it there and who didn’t.

His parents didn’t.

After a month of being considered missing, the army usually took you for dead and stopped searching for you. They would take down the photos and the names from the wall showing missing people so to remind to both soldiers and civilians who could still be found during patrols outside the oasis’ perimeter, to replace that information with the ones regarding the newly missed people, and if one of the photos was of somebody you held dear to your heart, you just had to accept it.

Missing people almost never came back.

Blaine has lived with this knowledge since the first day, so he already knew what to do: he had to leave the oasis and come back home, to take back into his life the only thing that remained of his family.

And he has done it.

When he sees the jeep approaching down the dirt road that connects the highway with his house, he can’t help but frown, worried, as he leans against the shovel he was using to cover his garden with fertilizer. His two cows have been generous with him, and even if they hadn’t he would have had to use whatever they could give to him, since he run out of chemical fertilizer more than six months ago and he needs his garden to grow vegetables fast.

It’s one of the army’s cars, and he’s annoyed to see it as always: first of all, he doesn’t like to be distracted while he’s working in his garden. The food serves not only for him, but also for the other families still living here in the countries in their old farms. Sometimes, when they can’t live only on what they’re producing, Blaine helps them, because his garden, his cows and the chickens are healthy, and he’s alone. He sometimes has food to spare, and he does it willingly.

He always thought that this farm was nothing more than one of the countless, silly obsessions of his father, one of the most hated by his mother, also, but after he lost them both he knew there was no other place he could accept to live. He’s been living here for more than a year now, and he has no intention to come back to the oasis, despite what the soldiers that every now and then come visiting him – both to rest during their long trips from an oasis to another and to check on him – tell him. This is his house. This is where he chose to live. His survival begins and ends with this place. If he loses the farm, he can just as well die.

That’s why he walks towards the street wearing his best annoyed face, still holding the shovel in one hand, ready to use it. He already had to, in the past, when a group of soldiers – probably judging him out of his mind – tried to force him to come back.

He understands something’s off when he tries to see the uniforms the men must be wearing, and fails. They’re wearing normal clothes and that can be easily seen even from the distance still parting them, so they can’t be soldiers.

Then, why are they driving that jeep? Why are they driving at all, actually, and unescorted, moreover?

“What…” he starts asking, protecting his eyes from the sunlight with his free hand, but he stops abruptly when the jeep’s finally close enough to recognize who’s driving it.

It’s Dave. And there’s Kurt by his side.

When Blaine sees them, his heart instantly starts to beat faster. They shouldn’t be here, they shouldn’t even be traveling, they should be safe in their oasis, working and living their life behind the protected borders of the mall. The last time he heard from them, through a letter that the soldiers had delivered to him during one of their visits, they seemed happy, ready to move on with their lives or what was left of them.

They just shouldn’t be here now, that’s all Blaine manages to think when the car stops on the driveway and Dave comes out of it in a quick jump.

“Dave!” he calls out for him, and if he didn’t already suspect that what had brought them here couldn’t be anything but something bad, the tense, worried expression on his friend’s face would have made it clear in just one look. “What happened?”

Dave comes closer to him and grabs him by his shoulders, squeezing a little. “Blaine, I need to talk to you,” he says in a whisper.

Blaine tries to look past his shoulders, to see what Kurt’s up to. He lifts himself up on his tiptoes, but Dave’s hands on his shoulders bring him down again. “What’s happening, Dave?” Blaine insists, now looking at him with a sort of desperate anxiety in his eyes, “Why are you here?”

Dave bites at his lower lip, trying to find the right words to tell him. There’s no such a thing, though, and Dave knows that, as much as he can keep searching for them, he will never succeed, so he’s ready to just bluntly tell his friend what happened, when he hears a strangled noise from behind his back.

He turns around, and Kurt’s climbing down the jeep, his body shaking violently, his legs unsteady. “Dave,” he calls out, his voice barely managing to escape his inflamed throat, “I can’t…”

He doesn’t manage to tell what he can’t do anymore, because he falls on the ground unconscious, the burning red mark on his neck perfectly visible even from where Dave and Blaine stand.

And there’s no need for explanations anymore.

*

When Kurt starts to wake up again, Blaine and Dave are talking. He can hear their voices, but they sound so distant he couldn’t get a word not even if he wanted to.

Right now, he doesn’t want to, anyway. He can’t open his eyes, his eyelids seem so heavy he could just as well be dead, for what he knows.

The mere thought is enough to trigger him into remembering how he felt right before he fainted. He doesn’t know how long he has slept, it feels like ages, but the feeling is still so strong it could only be a couple of minutes.

He couldn’t bring himself to breath. Something so simple, something that he has always done automatically for his entire life, and all of a sudden he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t even remember how, or believe that up to that moment he had done it without even thinking about it.

His chest wouldn’t move. The air wouldn’t pass through his nose and mouth. His lungs just wouldn’t pull it in.

It seems over now – he’s breathing regularly, he can feel it, he hears himself do it – but it was terrifying.

Kurt realizes he never saw anybody change into an undead, so he doesn’t really know what it’s like. Back at the oasis, nobody asked, mainly because nobody wanted to know, and secondly because to every unnecessary question the commander answered always in the same way: you don’t need to know, so why should I tell you?

He actually agreed with the commander’s reasons. They were all terrified enough already without knowing the details. But now that he’s in this situation, well, he misses the details the most. He wants to know what’s going to happen to him, how’s the changing going to be, how it’s going to feel. If he’s gonna feel the pain, if stopping to breathe will be as hard and painful as it felt before.

Because if it is, if it’s gonna be this hard, Kurt’s not sure he wants to go through this. He’s not sure he doesn’t want to take the easy way and just leave painlessly and gracefully while he still can.

“I can’t believe it happened,” Blaine says. Kurt still can’t open his eyes, but at least he’s starting to focus enough to understand what they’re talking about, “How are you feeling?”

“What kind of a question is it, Blaine?” Dave answers, sighing sadly, “I’m broken. Fuck… I don’t even know what to do. I don’t know why I came here, I don’t know what I’m hoping for. I just needed to take him to a safe place, you know?”

Kurt finally manages to open his eyes, at least a bit. In the darkness of the room, Blaine and Dave can’t see him, but since they’re sitting beside the candlelight he can see them.

Blaine nods, but his voice is sad and low when he speaks. “You know, though, that there’s no such a thing as a safe place when you’ve been bitten. Eventually…”

“I don’t wanna hear anything about it, okay?” Dave interrupts him, waving a hand in mid air and shaking his head, “I just can’t bring myself to think about it. Whatever it’s going to happen, I swear, I’m gonna take it like a man, but right now… it’s still too soon.”

Blaine holds out a hand and pats him on his shoulder, trying to reassure him. “I understand,” he nods, forcing a little smile, “I do, really. I’m gonna help you. As much as I can, I’m gonna help you both.”

Dave looks at him, and in the dim light of the candle Kurt can see tears trembling in his eyes. “Do you mean we can stay?”

Blaine nods again, and Kurt sees one of the tears in Dave’s eyes roll free down his cheek. He instantly turns around, not to show Blaine he’s crying, but Blaine says “ow, man, come on, you know you can feel free to cry with me around, it’s okay,” and the next thing Kurt sees is his boyfriend turning around and leaning against Blaine’s shoulder, crying his heart out while he tries to keep his voice low, so not to disturb his sleep.

Kurt wants to cry too, but he’s got no shoulders to cry on right now. And since Dave’s trying so hard not to wake him up, he think he should at least reward his efforts going back to sleep again, so that they’re not in vain.

Not these too, at least.

*

They settle down, somehow. Blaine gives them a room – his parents’ old room, since he doesn’t use it anyway – and offers them discretion and protection.

Some days are good. Some days, Kurt feels better. He wakes up and comes out of the bed and helps them to take care of the house, the garden and the animals. And he laughs and jokes, and if it wasn’t for the bandages to change, the pills to swallow and the sporadic indispositions, Dave wouldn’t even remember he was bitten.

When he’s not sick, Kurt’s just like his old Kurt. He’s witty and snarky and he can talk for hours about how much he hates zombies for killing Vivienne Westwood. “Really,” he says, “I could forgive them everything, but not that! Just look at what I’m forced to wear,” he comments, pointing a finger against the simple t-shirt and anonymous jeans he brought with himself from the mall.

When he’s not sick, Kurt’s still funny and always smiling. He still answers like his old self. He’s still able to make a face and a disgusted noise when Blaine cooks lion’s meat for dinner – a lot of animals set themselves free from every zoo in the world soon after the outbreak, now they can be found roaming freely almost everywhere, the world divided equally between the zombies and them – and tell him “I can’t believe it, Blaine, you just killed Simba, how can you live with this?”, and then laugh when Blaine answers “I don’t care, he killed half of my chickens, he deserved it.”

When he’s not sick, Kurt still recognizes Dave, and still talks to him like he cares about him. About them. They still sleep together, they hug. Kurt asks for kisses and Dave covers him in them, on his forehead, on his cheeks, on his temples, wherever he can safely reach. Then Kurt cries because he wants more and he can’t have it, and Dave wants to cry too because he wants just the same thing and he can’t have it either, but he doesn’t. Dave never cries, not in front of Kurt, anyway. Especially when Kurt’s not sick. Kurt doesn’t have to see him sad. He doesn’t need it. The only thing Kurt needs is to be told that everything’s gonna be alright, that he’s gonna have all the help and support he needs. And this, as long as they’re together, is never gonna change.

When Kurt’s not sick, everything’s easier. Dave can still imagine, pretend, that things are just like they were a month ago.

But then, some days are not so good at all. Days in which Kurt wakes up and his eyes are empty. Days when Dave can’t sleep, he lies there beside his boyfriend listening to the feeble sound of his breath getting weaker and weaker, and then disappear, and then start again, leaving him in tear because Kurt didn’t even notice.

This would probably be the worst thing of them all, if finding a worst thing among the others was actually possible. That sometimes Kurt doesn’t even notice. That he’s changing so violently, and there are days in which he’s not even aware of it. Days in which he kneels on the floor and keeps throwing up blood and rotten insides for hours, and then, after he finished, he just stands up and lies down on the bed, and his eyes are just as cold and empty as they were before.

There are days – horrible, horrible days – in which he growls and shakes and snarls so much they can’t keep him in the house, because somebody could hear him. Those days are the worst. The days in which Blaine, with his eyes filled with tears and with shaking hands, grabs the keys of the basement and leads them there. And Dave has to chain Kurt to the wall and stay away from him, guarding him like a rabid dog from the distance, to prevent him from setting himself free and bite everything on his way.

There are days that are so hard to pull through, that Dave wishes he had the guts to just kill Kurt.

Days like this.

Kurt started bleeding in the middle of the night, and he hasn’t stop up to now. He has bled from his nose and gums and ears and eyes for hours. His fingers are rotting one after the another. They keep them wrapped in bandages soaked in disinfectant, but it’s not enough. Nothing’s ever enough.

They started bleeding too and Dave had to unfold them to check on them. Kurt didn’t want to look, and he made the right choice. They’re starting to come off his hand. Swallowing all his tears, Dave could onl fold them up in new bandages, without telling him anything.

They didn’t have to bring him to the basement, today. Kurt was himself. He was just falling apart.

Now, he’s sleeping. They had to give him something to help him, because he kept murmuring that his insides were giving him hell, and after he took the pill he fell asleep almost instantly, drained from the day of suffering.

Dave walks in the kitchen and lets himself go on one of the chairs surrounding the table. Sitting right in front of him, Blaine is meddling with the radio, searching through the frequencies to find the right one.

“How’s he?” he asks, concentrating on the little numbers appearing on the led.

Dave shrugs, resting his head over his crossed arms on the table. “Asleep. Finally.”

“And how are you?” Blaine asks, this time looking at him with that spark of compassion in his eyes that Dave’s starting to love and hate at the same time.

“Fine,” he answers. Blaine knows it’s a lie, anyway. “You didn’t find it yet?”

“Almost there,” Blaine says, and soon after that the buzzing coming from the radio starts to turn into words. They both listen closely, in perfect silence.

“To whoever still lives and listens out there, this is the seventy-second bulletin from Toronto oasis,” a pause, some buzzing, Blaine meddles with the knob to set the frequency better and, in a couple of seconds, the metallic voice coming from the device is filling the silent air of the kitchen again. “The alive population has decreased of another 2.5% in the last seven days. Paris, Shizuoka and New Delhi are lost. The last oasis fell on Monday, Thursday and a couple of hours ago, as far as we know. The British Museum oasis in London is out of food. If there’s a nearby oasis that is getting this message: they need supplies now.”

Dave sighs, covering his face with both his hands and rubbing it to keep himself from burst into tears. “Why do you even listen to this shit?” he asks, “It’s always bad news.”

Blaine shushes him softly, waving a hand in mid-air. The voice starts talking again. “The fifth clinical trial for the cure has ended yesterday. The result was a failure. The cure isn’t working yet. I repeat: the fifth clinical trial for the cure has ended yesterday, and the result was a failure. The cure isn’t working yet.” The man speaking takes a couple of seconds of silence, holding his breath. “God…” he says after a while, “We’re almost there. It doesn’t work, but it will. Just… hold on. Whoever you are, wherever you’re lost… hold on.”

The communication is cut off right after, and the voice fades away to make room for the low, regular buzzing of the radio.

“Yeah,” Dave snorts, standing up and turning the radio off with a frustrated slap, “Yeah, that was definitely worth listening,” he says, leaving the kitchen and walking upstairs.

Blaine sighs, putting the radio away and then sitting back on the chair, rubbing his eyes and then resting his chin on his palm as he looks at the dark night outside the window.

They have to hold on. If Dave can’t, Blaine’s going to have to do it for him too.

*

When the soldiers come is past lunchtime. Dave and Blaine have spent good part of the morning tending to Kurt, who's not having a good day at all. He has woken up feeling sick already and thrown up the little he had for dinner the night before. Since then, he has been restless and nervous like never before. Everything seems to bother him a great deal, resulting in fits of rage or tears, depending on how much pain is involved.

Dave had really hoped there would not be any visitors today because they are the last thing Kurt need right now, but of course the soldiers' jeep shows up behind the hill like it has done for the past six weeks.

Since the Lima Oasis found out Dave and Kurt were missing, not a day has passed without the soldiers coming over to ask Blaine if he has seen anything. Dave doesn't know if it's because they suspect something or if they are just sure he is going to see them sooner or later.

When it happens, Dave and Kurt have to go in the basement, and be as quite as possible until the patrol squad goes away. Dave is so sick and tired of doing this. He wonders why the command has decided to grow a heart just now and keeps looking for them instead of giving up right away like he has always done for every missing person since the colony's institution.

“They're coming. You better get going,” Blaine says, watching from behind the curtains of the kitchen's window. He takes the shovel next to the door to give them the impression he has something to do and he can't waste too much time with them. “I'll try to keep them out of the house. You just keep quiet.”

Kurt is sitting on a chair and he shivers badly. “I don't wanna go downstairs,” he says. He's nervously passing his fingers through his hair and every time he does, a lock of it comes away.

Dave quickly crosses the room and put a little canvas hat on Kurt's head, both to stop him from tearing at his hair and not to see his scalp quickly revealing underneath it. Sometimes he feels the only one worrying about things like these and he doesn't know if this is a good thing or not. “I know, honey. But it won't be long, I promise.”

“We just got out from there,” he protests.

Last time they got in the basement was yesterday. Dave closes his eyes and tries to bear the wave of sadness that clings to his heart and squeezes it at the thought that Kurt is confusing the events, now. He has been suspecting it all along, because Kurt is having problems keeping track of time lately, but he had just hoped it was the pain confusing him, not his mind losing its way in the disease.

“It wont' be long, babe. I swear,” he repeats. He gently grabs his wrist and takes him toward the door that leads to the basement. Eventually, Kurt obeys and follows him. As they close the door, they hear the jeep stop and Blaine greet the soldiers in the most cheerful way he manages to pull out.

The basement welcomes them with nothing but foul air and cold drafts. They brought in there some furniture from one of the upstairs rooms that nobody uses, but it is not enough to make this place cozy.

Kurt walks around and he hugs himself, his eyes glued to the floor to avoid looking at the chain on the walls and at the stains on the floor, each marking one of his previous attacks.

Dave leans on the door and listens. He can tell Blaine is on the porch, casually leaning against one of the columns to block the entrance of the house. He hears him pointing out to the soldiers what a beautiful day it is and that they haven't seen any zombie today. They actually never see zombies around here. The house is too deep in the country for the nearest city's zombies to venture there.

“Dave, I'm sick,” Kurt murmurs, hugging himself more. His teeth are chattering and he feels awfully tired. The simple act of walking is wearing him out but he doesn't wanna stop moving because he is not sure he will be able to stand up again if he just sit down for a moment. “I'm really sick.”

The soldiers are talking too much. Ten minutes have passed and they are still here. Dave didn't hear the main door open again and their voices are muffled, so they are still outside, but he doesn't like them being around for so long. He turns to see Kurt walking around restlessly and swinging his head a little obsessively, which is always a bad sign. “Why don't you go over there and sit on the couch,” he suggests, whispering. “You can take a nap, so time will pass more quickly.”

“I am sick,” Kurt repeats. He doesn't really speak, though. He just murmurs the first one or two words, then goes on mumbling the rest of the sentence, if there is any. Dave knows what it means when Kurt starts doing that and he can't really let it happen now.

“Oh God, no.” Dave goes down the stairs as quickly but silently as he can. “Listen, babe, listen to me.”

Kurt turns to him, following the sound of his voice but when he looks at him, his eyes are empty. Dave can see the light in them dimming by the second. “Something is not right,” he says, completely lost in whatever time or place is in his mind. “I feel strange.”

“I know you do, but listen. Listen to me, Kurt, please. Just, focus on me. ” Dave takes him by his shoulders and gently forces him to turn. He tries to keep eye contact with him, but Kurt always looks away, his head hanging like it is too heavy for him to keep it up. “Kurt, I know it's hard but please, just look at me. Do that for me, okay? Just fight it back a little longer. As soon as they're gone, I will let you rest. I promise you.”

Kurt whines, giving up on words all together. He just stands there, barely moving except for the constant swinging. These are the worst moments because suddenly he looks exactly like one of those creatures, even though he has been talking and moving just the moment before. His brain just turns off for a while, sometimes several minutes at a time, and the periods are getting longer and longer. It makes Dave's heart hurt so much seeing him like that.

He brings himself to hug him and strokes his skinny back and pretends to ignore the feeling of his spine getting more and more distinct every day. Dave is ashamed and he hates himself for thinking this, but Kurt is starting to gross him out, let alone scare him. His body is deteriorating, there aren't other words to say it, which means Kurt is not only falling a part but he smells too. What it has been only a vague foul odor around his neck, it is now expanding to the rest of him and it is as bad as it can be. It would remind Dave what is going on, even if it weren't so painfully clear. Sometimes a voice in the back of his head tells him this must be the limit, that the disease will not let him go further without getting dangerous for him too. But he just shuts it down and keeps going.

“Everything is going to be alright,” Dave says, looking at the door above them, swinging back and forth together with him, so at least he can pretend this is something they are doing on purpose. “Just hang in there a little longer. Blaine is sending them away.”

But Blaine is not. Actually, he goes back inside and asks the soldiers if he can offer them something to drink and he does that in a loud, clear voice, going on forever about homemade orange juice to make sure Dave can hear him an know what is going on.

“Shit. Why can't they just leave?” He whispers.

Dave is about to gently move Kurt to the couch when he suddenly becomes aware of the humming sound he is making. It is actually a low growl, coming from the back of Kurt's throat and giving him the chills. “Please, Kurt, not now. Please, just—”

But it is useless. For the moment, he is gone.

Kurt snaps at him, growling louder. His eyes focus on him but they are empty. Dave is quick at grabbing both his wrists before he can jump at his neck and bite. At this point, it's fear more than caring that helps him restraining Kurt quickly. The chains are fastened about six feet from the ground and hang from there keeping Kurt from moving more than three feet away from the wall. Kurt doesn't understand it, anyway. He keeps pulling and pulling like if he is not even chained. Whatever force governs his mind right now, it only tells him to walk toward Dave. And he will until his body eventually shuts down and he falls asleep.


Hopefully or not – he doesn't even know anymore – Kurt will wake up himself again.

Dave passes a hand over his face. He feels tired as if he hasn't slept for ages. He knows Kurt is making too much noise right now and that if the soldiers hear him, they will come downstairs and put him down. But he doesn't know what to do and maybe, just maybe, a tiny part of him desperately wants to give up. If it happens like this, it is not too bad. It is not, is it?

Kurt's growls seem to grow louder and louder. They will come, he just knows they will, and then it will be over. He closes his eyes and covers his ears, realizing he doesn't want to see or hear what is about to happen. How bad is it that he won't do anything to stop them, but he has not the guts to watch?

Nonetheless, when they touch his shoulder, he springs on his feet and yells.

“Wait! Don't hurt him!”

Blaine smiles sadly at him. “Don't worry,” he murmurs. “They are gone.”

It takes Dave a few moments to realize what's going on. He stares blankly at Blaine's face and then looks around and sees Kurt hanging from the chains. He passed out. “What...?”

“You were zoning out, I guess.”

Dave rubs his eyes and tries to pull himself together again. “It's been a tough one.”

“I know.” Blaine sighs and then sits next to him on the couch. They stare into nothing for the longest moment, both avoiding Kurt's slouched figure. “Dave, I don't know how to say this, but... We really need to do something. We can't keep going on like this. It is not fair for anyone.”

Dave nods, slowly. His mouth opens and closes a few times before he can actually say something. “For a moment today, I thought I was ready to... you know,” he swallows hard. He can't even say the word, how can he go through with it? “But I'm not, Blaine. I look at him and I see what little is left of him in there. But at least it's something and it's still there and I can't let it go.”

He starts crying and Blaine holds him close, trying to soothe him. Dave hasn't cried much since they've been here. All his tension and sadness was just bound to explode sooner or later.

“I know it's going to happen,” Dave says after a while, sniffing. “And I know it's going to happen soon. But as long as he will open his eyes and recognize me, I will never have the strength to do it.”

Blaine strokes his hair and sighs. “You know, there is still something we could try.”

Dave looks up confusedly. “What do you mean?”

Blaine has been thinking this for days now but he hasn't said a word because he didn't want to give Dave false hopes. “We can't stay here anymore,” he says, staring at him. “Kurt is not getting any better and every time the soldiers come, we risk a little more. If he goes on like this, in a week or two his conscious periods will be less than the raging ones. And if it happens, you know the next step is the coma.”

The mere word brings back tears to Dave's eyes. “There is nothing we can do about it. Medicines don't work on him anymore.”

“We can't do anything. But maybe other people can,” Blaine says. “In a couple of days we can be in Canada. The radio says their vaccine is almost working. Maybe it can't turn people back, but it can make them better.”

Dave doesn't answer and, for the longest moment, they both stay quiet.

“If we pack now, we can leave in the morning,” Dave says eventually, clearing up his throat. “Kurt should be awake by then.”

“We take the jeep, so he can lie in the back seats,” Blaine nods, sharing his disenchanted tone of voice as they both stare at the door of the basement without seeing it. “And we can take turn driving, so we won't need to stop.”

Dave just nods. They really can try.

*

Dave puts the last suitcase on the jeep and slams the trunk closed.

He walks around the car to reach the passenger's seat. Kurt's feeling well today and he even manages to smile under the peak of his cap, shading his face from the burning sun. Dave even smiles back and pushes his nose with the tip of his finger to tease him. “Alright, we can go,” he says and Blaine nods, starting the engine.

At the sound of Kurt's voice asking for some music to listen to for once, everything seems suddenly so very possible. And it doesn't matter if it's probably not.

They just need to believe so.
Scritta con Tabata.
Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico.
Pairing: Kurt/Dave.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: AU, Estabilished Relationship, Lemon, Mpreg, Slash, Religious Topics.
- In an alternate Alchemy-based universe, Dave and Kurt struggle to have a baby of their own against the will of the Gods, even though this could lead to terrible consequences.
Note: Ah, notes! We hate notes and we also always say that we hate them. Please, bear with us.
So, this story is huge. No doubts on that. We know. But we couldn't do otherwise because of reasons.
Now, it will probably take quite some time to read it – if you want to (and we would be so happy if you did) – but we promise we did our very best to make it interesting. We love it, so hopefully some of this love just poured into it and made it lovable for real.
~ reviews will be cherished, criticisms are welcomed, but please be gentle
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
A BEAUTIFUL SUNSET MISTAKEN FOR DAWN
PART I

The waiting room was small and clean but so unadorned it gave away its true nature. The legal alchemical facilities were warm, luxury environments, not at all unlike those beauty salons where people went to enjoy some relaxing time, being given massages and experiencing colorful and warm bath in those chromotherapy rooms that were the last trend in beauty care.

There were very few maladies that alchemy could not cure – all of them being rare, almost naturally extinguished diseases that only still remained in filthy places like the Dump – so people weren't scared to go to the hospitals anymore because nothing could really kill them. Therefore, health facilities had become friendly places; each diagnostic room was finely decorated, there were real cafeterias inside the buildings and waiting rooms came with all comforts and sometimes shops too, exams and operation rooms where considered along the same lines as said shops, so that hospitals had become parts of malls where people could hang out like in any other places.

That was the reason why that waiting room was so strikingly different.

Its bare walls and very few ornaments, its small size and hidden location spoke of poverty and urgency, of a place quickly set up and ready to be quickly dismantled if needed. It was a place that was there in that moment but hadn't been there the day before and whose next location would not be revealed until the very last moment.

It had taken Kurt nearly a month to find this one. The alchemist was very secretive about it and she only spoke through ciphered messages on the city's walls. Kurt had had to find out how to contact an outlaw alchemist – that kind of knowledge wasn't exactly on the newspapers – then learn their secret language and follow one of them throughout the city slums and out of the city walls as she left messages for the people who needed her to understand. It hadn't been easy and, with Dave being busy with work, Kurt had had to do all the research on his own, so it had been long too.

Now, he and his husband were sitting in the little waiting room of an illegal alchemist's lab together with ten other people who were asking, like them, for things legal alchemy was forbidden by law to give them or were too poor to afford a real alchemist in a real facility. Like the woman whose baby had been crying non stop since the moment they arrived. The baby couldn't be more than five or six months old and judging by his flushed cheeks and lucid eyes he was feverish.

Sitting next to Kurt, Dave was trying not to stare at all those poor and suffering people, among whom he could easily pick out the few coming straight from the Dump. He had never been there himself but he knew how people looked liked in that part of the city. They were usually skinny – almost famished – boys and girls, with tired eyes always covered in old traces of ordinary make up and a generally sick appearance. Exactly like the girl sitting in front of him right now. She had long and dirty blond hair and she was shivering badly under an old, gray blanket. Her boyfriend held her hand and tried to soothe her by whispering nonsense to her ear.

Dave searched for Kurt's hand too and held it lovingly, looking at the way their fingers entwined. “Are you nervous?” He asked.

Kurt took his hand and played with his fingers nervously; a fair enough answer to his husband's question. “I am,” he said, looking down. “I have so many questions, and none of this is even guaranteed!”

Dave circled Kurt's shoulders with his strong arm, holding him closer but not too much, as to not be inappropriate. Public displays of affection were allowed only if limited to hugs and holding hands; kisses – of every nature – were not forbidden, but still frowned upon and strongly discouraged. “Everything is going to be alright. We are only going to do it if it's safe for you and if results are sure to come,” he tried to reassure him. “I am not putting your life in any danger, especially if these two conditions are not fulfilled.”

Kurt immediately shook his head. “That’s not what I’m worried about at all,” he said. “I know this is right, but I was stupidly expecting something different, and that made me wonder what else I'm expecting that will turn out completely different.”

He had been dreaming about this day for a very long time, now. In each one of his dreams, they were waiting for a doctor in a far away but beautiful clinic, along with other people like them. Instead, this place was gray and sad, and somehow these gloomy surroundings affected Kurt's mood, as he felt like the place where they were going to conceive their baby was supposed to be completely different. But again, he knew very well the place and method didn't matter. The only thing that counted was their will to have a child and they weren't lacking that.

“So you were actually expecting something,” Dave let out a nervous chuckle. “I didn't know what to expect before, and I don't know what to expect now. But seeing you so scared is scaring me, too. I know you said this is right, but you do know we can still go away, don't you?”

Kurt turned to him, his eyes slightly darker than before. “We have no other choice, Dave,” he murmured, looking around to see if someone was listening but everyone was minding their own business, too busy with their problems to care about Kurt's. “You know that. This is the only chance we have.”

“We could still, you know, adopt. It would be less dangerous and... I don't know.” Dave hugged him some more and rubbed his arm, while the baby started crying again. “This place is making me feel uncomfortable.”

“I want my own baby,” Kurt looked down to their hands, the ghost of hundreds of previous conversations between them lingering in his mind. “I thought you agreed with me on this.”

“I do! I do, Kurt, you know I do,” Dave answered, quickly. “I'm just worried for you, for us. And I don't know if this is the right choice, but you know I'm with you, whatever you decide.”

Kurt sighed and tried to calm down. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, after all; even if a small part of himself was screaming in fear, the other – much bigger and way more stubborn – was going to do as it wanted, no matter the risks. Kurt had always been ruled by his own heart. And his heart wanted this baby more than anything he had ever wanted.

“I know this place feels weird and it makes me uncomfortable too, but they say she is good and that she has helped many people! I want to stay and at least talk to her.” He stopped because the baby's crying was turning louder and louder and two people started coughing at the same time, neither of them seemed feeling very well. Kurt met the eyes of the child's mother, who was busy cradling her baby. In them he saw the same kind of desperate hope he had seen in his own, looking at himself in the mirror lately. “I want to take this chance if she can give it to us, no matter how nervous I am. Or how scared. This is the only thing I want, Dave.”

Dave gave him a little smile and lightly patted Kurt on his small and fragile shoulder. “Alright, then. Let's just hope she receives us soon.”

As if summoned by Dave's words, the alchemist opened the unlabeled door that led to her laboratory, seeing a very old and fragile-looking lady out. She was a very beautiful Latino woman, with slightly dark skin and beautiful but cold and distant eyes which burned like fire under the red hood of the cape she wore. She didn't smile to the old lady but still the woman smiled kindly to her in return, like she was very happy and satisfied.

Santana Lopez was once one of the best alchemists of the city but some time before she had done something that she shouldn't have and she had been banished not only from the order, but from the city as well.

The truth behind her banishment was littered with rumors, so much that Kurt had only learned half of it, because the people she was helping now and loved her were very reluctant to speak about it and for everyone else, she was as good as dead. The only piece of information he had managed to scrape was that she had been involved in male pregnancy; one of the worst sin against Gods, which also happened to be the very reason he had been so determined to find her.

He had never met her in person, though. And Kurt was finding out that she was younger and way more beautiful than he had expected her to be. Her past and her work had suggested she was one of those old wrinkled women who had tried her luck at the end of her life and career, but the Santana Lopez he was looking at now was nowhere near her thirty and didn't have the look for the job at all, which made him – and probably Dave too – more nervous than he was already.

He didn't have the time to consider how or if this had changed his heart about the whole matter, because the alchemist glanced over the room and her gaze landed on him and Dave who were the next in line.

“Come inside,” she ordered, and then went back in her laboratory, without waiting for them. The door closed behind her, yet another barrier you had to be willing to pass if you wanted to see her.

Everybody had looked up when she had opened the door, but nobody dared to speak to her. So, Kurt and Dave stood up to follow her in utter silence, which was the clearest sign of the great reverence everybody had for her. Dave had experienced the same kind of silence only in presence of Priests.

Dave was very nervous because that woman scared him a lot. Not only because, as any other alchemist, she was probably capable of things he could not even begin to explain, but also because she was so much stronger than the women – and compared to Kurt, also the men – he was used to see and deal with in the City; modest and fragile creatures, lacking that fierceness she introduced herself with. She also dressed differently from other women he knew. Her pants were clearly manly, as it was the shirt she wore under her long red cape which seemed more for concealing herself when she walked down the streets than a symbol of her position, like it was for a normal alchemist.

Her firm behavior and her cold eyes did very little to make him feel comfortable, when they entered the laboratory. She was surrounded by a scary and powerful aura that could just have been charisma but, with the little Dave knew about alchemy, could just as well have been mere black magic. “Good evening, Miss Lopez,” he greeted her politely, anyway. He looked around to find a chair where Kurt could sit but, finding none, he gently led him in a corner and stood there next to him, trying to comfort him out of the same awkwardness he was feeling.

“You can just call me Santana,” she said offhandedly, turning her back to them as she was busy cleaning something she supposedly used to help the old lady before, in a little steel sink. “We do without surnames and titles down here. We are all a bunch of common names.”

Dave cleared his throat, as Kurt searched for his hand again and let his husband speak as the protocol bound him to do in public, even though he was the one concerning the whole process they came to ask for. “We are very grateful that you accepted to receive us today, Miss Santana,” Dave said, with a little bow of his head, while Kurt was doing the same next to him. “It really means a lot to us.”

“Yes, I guessed as much,” she said, nodding vaguely. Then, she turned around, drying her hands on a rag and weighed the two of them up carefully. None of them had thought to dress any less elegant than usual, so they looked quite out of place in her laboratory. “You know, the temple of the Priests is right behind the corner, comfortably inside the city walls,” she continued, an half annoyed half patronizing smile curling her lips just slightly. “Or if you are not religious, which is not so uncommon nowadays, I can give you the address of one or two alchemical labs more suitable for people of your kind.”

Dave frowned. “We already know where the nearest temple is, and we're perfectly aware of numerous alchemists' addresses in the whole city,” he said, curtly. “We came to you, though, because our request is of a kind that calls for your particular intervention.”

She slowly raised an eyebrow and looked at him, totally unimpressed. “Then, what kind of 'particular' intervention brings a young upper-class couple like you to my door?” She asked, putting the rag away and leaning against the sink. “Do you need drugs? More gold? I must inform you that contrarily to what someone might have told you, I - or any other alchemist for that matter - can't bring loved ones, human or pets, back to life. At least not without a considerable amount of time, money and only to give back to you a pathetic, idiotic copy of what you lost.”

Dave frowned even more, struggling to keep his composure. He wasn't known to be a staid man. He raged easily for the smallest thing. And now, on top of all his nervousness, tension and fear, this woman was being highly inappropriate and kind of unnerving. “We're not here for this, thank you,” she said. “We came to ask
for... a change. We heard you're the right person for that.”

At these words, Santana's smile faded and her gaze turned distant and cold again as it was a few moments before. She sensed that they were there for something big, but she had to be careful because the agents where everywhere, and with elections due in a couple of months both candidates were eager for some good arrest. For what she knew, those two could mean trouble.

“Yes, I perform changes,” she said as she reached a long table in the center of the room. It was crowded with alembics and little bowls full of all kind of ingredients, that she carefully moved aside to make room for a big, old-looking book. “What kind of change do you need? Skin color, hair color? I can even change the color of your eyes, it is not that hard,” she continued, flipping through the pages and making a list of all perfectly legal alchemical processes.

“No,” Dave started shaking his head before she could even finish. “It's not something so simple. And, honestly, if it was for such a trivial matter we would have asked some chemicals to a regular alchemist. We wouldn't have bothered to come here, with all the risks that a situation like this implies for us. So, please, just listen. We know you can do what we're asking for.”

Santana sighed. Usually agents lacked in desperation, while these men had plenty in their eyes. Plus, while the big one could have been an officer, the other one surely wasn't; with his delicate features and his worried expression, he seemed more suitable to rule a house than work for the government. It couldn't hurt to at least let them speak. It didn't mean she was also going to say yes.

She closed her book and nodded, her hands inside her sleeves. “I'm listening.”

Kurt cleared his throat, looking down as he spoke. “I'd like for you to change me, to...” he dared to look up at her “to change my body so I can bear a child of my own.”

Santana's eyes turned even colder and more distant at the sole mention of that. She turned around quickly and resumed cleaning and moving around things that didn't need to be moved at all. “What you ask is not within the common lines of the recognized alchemy,” she said nervously and annoyed. “I assume you know what it means.”

She actually didn't. Nobody ever knew what it meant or what they were even asking for. Nobody understood the extent of the crime it represented. Changing a male body so that it was fit to bear a child was a magnificent alchemical process, the proof that men and nature – that men and Gods, in her opinion – could work together and create something, create life. And yet the Priests considered it a sin, something to punish. According to her, that was only because they couldn't do the same with their prayers.

She had lost a career over her convictions. She didn't want to lose anything else, if it wasn't worth it.

“That's why we're here!” Dave said. He was starting to get really upset. This woman didn't understand anything. Or she pretended to, which was even worse.

Kurt placed a hand on Dave's in order to keep him quiet and keep talking calmly. “Actually, we don't know exactly what it means,” he explained. “We heard you're the right person to ask to, but we don't know what it will take. So that's why we're here, now. We'd like to ask you a couple of questions, to see if this can work for us. And then we're going to decide on what to do.”

Santana didn't like the bigger man. Or at least, she didn't like his way to bark at her every time she didn't answer exactly what he wanted to hear. Even though she could relate to his way of reacting, because she would probably do the same if the roles were reversed.

Anyway, she had said she would have listened, so she was going to. But first, they needed to be told this was going to be no piece of cake. She had known too many rich people who were persuaded that alchemy was fairy tale magic, able to accomplish everything they could imagine, with no more consequences than a sprinkle of fairy dust over their precious satin dresses, to let them go on without saying a word about it.

“Before you ask me anything, know this,” she said, looking seriously at them. “What you want from me is not only against the law of Gods, but also extremely dangerous for a few reasons you might understand and for a lot more you don't, even if you should. It is not certain and not abiding. Given that, ask your questions.”

Kurt moistened his lips and opened his mouth to ask something, but Dave was faster. “Is it going to be dangerous for Kurt or the baby? Are they going to risk their lives or suffer? Is the baby going to...” he searched for the right words “to be fine?”

That was not even remotely the point, but she was expecting those kind of questions. People always wanted to know if they were going to suffer; as if suffering was the worst that could happen. “As far as your husband is concerned, the risk for him only depends on the medical assistance he will have after the process. Men are not supposed to give birth, so during his pregnancy he might experience ugly discomforts that won't be fatal to him if treated right,” she explained as clearly as she possibly could. “The baby, however is a different matter. Usually everything goes well, but it's an unstable process which sometimes leads to unstable results.”

Dave instantly shut up because what he wanted to say now was that if there was even the remote possibility that the child was going to have problems, then the risk wasn't worth it. But he knew how much it meant for Kurt and that the choice ultimately depended on him. So, he kept his mouth closed and waited.

Kurt nodded, assimilating the information. “I want to know what is the process going to take practically,” he asked furthermore. “What will you have to do to me? How does it all work?”

Santana appreciated that the man wanted to know all the details and she was determined not to hold back on anything, no matter how unpleasant. What she wasn't sure about it was that he or his husband could handle the information. “I will make a concoction that will help your body relax and give up all the possible restrains that would hamper the intervention,” she answered. “Then I will perform the alchemy on you. In order to create something – which is to say an uterus to contain the baby – you will have to give up something else. The process will settle itself with my help, but this basically means that all your internal organs will be redistributed, removed when possible, dislocated, changed to fit in a smaller space. Everything will be back to normal after you give birth.”

Dave opened his eyes wide. He was terrified. “This seems painful,” he cringed. “What does it mean he will have to give up something else? What will he lose?”

Santana shook her head. “We cannot say, at the moment. But the human body is prone to adapt to survive,” she explained, pointing at the anatomical graph hanging on the wall behind her. “So whatever he loses, he won't need it to survive and if he does, what remains will be modified to bear the new condition. I'm here to make sure of that.”

Dave didn't like it at all and he felt in no way reassured, but once again, it wasn't his call. Kurt nodded again. If he was reconsidering, he didn't show. “I see,” he said, thinking about it thoroughly. “What is the ritual consisting in? What will you have to do to get the process done?”

“I won't need to cut you open, if this is what you are afraid of,” Santana said, with barely the hint of a smile on her cherry-red lips. “In fact, I won't touch you at all. It will be the energy of the process to get in contact with your own energy and work with it, which will result in your body to mutate. What you'd have drunk before will help you bear the pain.”

“So, he's going to drink something, and then what?” Dave finally cut in, unable to stay quiet any longer. “Am I going to be by his side? Will we do it here? We need to know everything. I won't let you do anything if I don't know exactly every single step of the process.”

Kurt looked at him. “Dave, please.”

“No, I want to know,” he insisted, stubbornly. “I need to know.”

Santana was totally unaffected by Dave's nervousness. She actually didn't care much. As an alchemist – for such she still considered herself – she wasn't compelled to show empathy to her clients unless she was working in a medical facility. But she wasn't and she had actually never had.

“We would do it in here or somewhere else, that depends on how much time will pass until our next meeting,” she answered. “If you want, you can stay with him, but you won't be allowed to touch him because your energy would interfere with his. The process will last from half an hour to one hour and half and I can only start it. Once it is started, it can't be stopped. After that you will have a very short window of time to get him pregnant before the process, unstable as it is, goes reverse for good.”

Kurt opened his eyes wide and blushed furiously because he had never heard someone talking so shamelessly about such a private matter. Let alone a complete stranger. Dave was shocked too. He didn't blush like his husband did, but he was quite outraged. “What-- what do you mean? How much time will we have?”

Santana shook her head for what it felt like the millionth time, completely blind to their widen eyes. “Again, I don't know exactly. It's different for everyone, but you will want to do it as quickly as you can. It's probably better if you take a room around here. Not the perfect place to make a baby, I agree. But time plays an important role in this.”

“A-- a room?!” Kurt was really shocked now. He covered his mouth with both his hands and looked at her almost horrified. Inns in that part of the city were no places for them; just filthy appendixes of all the brothels crowding the Dump nearby. He was not going to conceive his baby there.

Dave caught his discomfort and shared it with him. “Why don't you leave this to us? Thanks.” He inhaled and exhaled, and then he tried to lead the conversation elsewhere. “How much will it cost? We are aware the services you offer are not cheap.”

“And this one in particular is not cheap at all,” she confirmed. “Considering the risks with the Priests and the results, plus all the materials I will need, it's gonna cost you one hundred thousand.”

“One-one hundred thousands?!” Dave's eyes grew even wider and he turned pale. “We don't have all that money! It's... it's too much!”

Kurt bit his inner cheek, panic striking him more strongly now than it had before when Santana was telling him how his body was going to change. Money seemed a way bigger problem now that he knew the exact amount of them they will need. Being the one who managed the house, he knew very well their financial situation and they didn't have so much money. He actually wouldn't know how to collect it all, Dave's job being their only mean of support. Even using what they had cached over the years, they couldn't withdraw such a conspicuous amount from their bank accounts without declaring the reason for it. Lying wouldn't have worked either, because rumors would have easily spread.

“How much did you think it would cost?” Santana asked, half surprised half annoyed by their naivety. “We are talking about making him able to do something nature hadn't originally planned him to do. Things like these don't come for free.”

“Not for free, but not for a fortune either,” Dave said. “There's no way we can afford it at this price. I'm sure there must be a way to make things a little less expensive.”

“Please, Miss,” Kurt cut in, on the verge of tears. “We want this to happen. We want this chance. You may be right when you say that the Gods didn't plan for me to be able to get pregnant. But maybe, if they really didn't want this at all, they wouldn't even made people like you able to provide a service that makes male pregnancy possible. If you could consider taking a step toward us, maybe lowering the price a little, we could consider taking a step toward you and try to gather as much money as we can. Please.”

Santana was not in any way moved by his tears, but she had a soft spot when it came to the Gods wanting her to do what she did, which was exactly what she herself thought. Alchemy existed because Gods made it possible, so thinking about part of it as illegal or unnatural had no sense whatsoever for her.

“Alright. I can lower the price to sixty thousand, which is hardly more than half the price and I barely get something out of it.”

Sixty thousand were not in any way more affordable than one hundred, but they were something less, at least. It was a hope Kurt was going to cling to as much as he could. He instantly smiled, the tears in his eyes turning from sadness to joy. “Thanks. That's really kind and generous of you.” He felt the need to hold her hand in gratitude but somehow she didn't seem the kind of person who would have allowed him that. “We appreciate it a lot, really.”

Dave didn't say anything. He had no idea where Kurt thought he could find sixty thousands dollars. He averted his eyes and just held Kurt's hand when his husband searched for his.

“I will get what is needed,” the alchemist nodded. “And as soon as you have the money, we can proceed.”

After that, there wasn't much left to say. Santana saw them to the door, as she had done with the old lady and soon they were out in the warm air of June.

*

By the time they reached the house it was past midnight.

They had to go to the alchemist after sunset, to avoid the risk to be seen or recognized by someone they knew. They even took their second carriage, the old one they never used anymore and was always parked in the garage. The driver was surprised, but well trained enough not to ask questions. He was an old, wise man who had worked all his life for Kurt's family and had been part of Kurt's dowry when he had married Dave. He had no interest in ruining his masters' life.

Dave opened the door for Kurt and they walked inside. The house was dark and quiet, the few servants who worked for them had gone to bed already and the only sound they could hear was the peaceful, almost soothing buzzing of the communication system coming from the media room.

The house was beautiful, and way bigger than Dave's job would have allowed. It had belonged to the Karofsky family for generations, and passed from father to first born over the years. Kurt had come to live there during his engagement period with Dave, as the tradition wanted. Dave's parents had lived with them after the marriage for five years before they both died within a month of each other.

It was a two stored house with one of those traditional big foyer that were so rare in more recent houses and a little but lovely backyard where Kurt was growing red roses. But it had too many rooms for the two of them alone. It was time for them to have children.

Dave helped his husband out of his coat and put it carefully on the hanger by the door. He was pretty sad and discouraged for the talk they had with the alchemist, who made it all seem harder to accomplish - not to mention expensive – than what they had originally thought. He was expecting the process to be quite complicated and he was ready to make all the sacrifices that would have been needed. But the price she asked was too high. Now, he felt like they didn't stand a chance and he was worried that Kurt could take it badly. He had put so much in it.

Instead, Kurt was so madly in love with the idea of having a baby of his own that he would not let anything discourage him, as crazy and complicated as it could be. They hadn't spoken on their way back, and he waited for them to be inside the house before breaking the silence.

“We should start thinking about what we need to do, now.”

Dave sighed deeply. He saw it coming. He took off his coat, putting it with his husband's and then unbuttoned the first buttons of the neck-high shirt he was wearing. “Which would be? I'm telling you, Kurt, I'm not sure this is actually something we can do at all. I don't want you to get too much emotionally invested.”

Kurt looked up at him, instantly worried. “What do you mean? Of course we can. She said it is possible.”

“She also said we need an amount of money that we don't have right now, Kurt. And I don't know how we could find it. We could use our savings, but you know that every withdraw must be justified to the bank,” Dave said, sighing again as he sat down on his favorite armchair near the fireplace. “...Then I don't like what she said about you changing inside.”

“I need to, in order to bear our child. I know the idea is upsetting,” he stroke his tummy, thoughtfully, “but it makes sense if you think about that. The baby will need space.”

Dave looked at Kurt's hand drawing circles on his tummy and swallowed. He realized he had never really thought about how it would work in practice. The idea of internal organs moving was upsetting enough as it was, but a baby actually being inside Kurt for nine months was suddenly even weirder.

“I know, but she made it seems painful.“ He looked at him with sadness in his eyes. “I don't want you to feel any pain. I don't even know how you are supposed to give birth after I... you know.”

“I suppose they will do what they do when women have troubles giving birth.”

Dave shivered from head to toes and tried to take the thought out of his mind. Even with the generally clean and almost never invasive use of alchemy in medicine, C-section were still pretty bloody affairs. “Alright, then, we have to keep... we've got to keep our minds on the task. Be focused,” he said. “Maybe I could ask for a loan. I mean, outside the banks circuit.”

“I don't think that is a good idea. Those kind of deals are really dangerous.” Kurt shook his head as he went to the drinks cupboard and poured himself something to drink. “We can't take that risk with a baby on the way.”

Dave frowned a little. “I can handle it. I promised I'd take care of you and our family. It's not that hard. I'll ask for a loan and then I'll keep for myself a bit of the business' profits. In six or eight months we will be set.”

“What if something goes wrong with the business? All kind of things can happen,” Kurt went to sit next to him on the couch and lifted his legs, so he could put his feet on his husband's lap. Dave started massaging them right away. “It's better if we don't have debts of any kind. Maybe we can sell this house and live in the summer house.”

What he called summer house was actually a little building, not much bigger than a cabin, Dave's father had used when he'd go fishing during week ends. It was not far from the city and they went there for a week or two every summer so Kurt could sunbath and Dave could take over his father's hobby, but still run back to his office in a couple of hours if he needed to. However, the summer house was not meant to be lived in for real. It didn't even have a proper kitchen.

Dave made a face. “In the summer house?” He asked. “That's too small and basically on the seaside, outside the city walls. You can't really live there, with a baby to booth. Please, be serious. There must be another way, Kurt. Somebody we could ask, something we could do...”

Kurt stayed quiet for a while, lost in thoughts. Then, after a few moments, he reached out to the coffee table for one of the many phone receivers that were scattered all around the house. He turned it on and opened to the phonebook, quickly browsing through it. “Maybe there is someone.”

Dave raised his eyes on him and arched an eyebrow, moving his hands up Kurt's legs to massaging his ankles. “Who? Someone you know?”

“You know him too.” Kurt smiled, finding the name he was looking for. He checked on line the number he had to see if it was still the same. It was. He looked up at Dave. “What about Blaine?”

Dave frowned even more. He never liked the guy. “What? What about him?”

The number was connected to Blaine's personal profile on every social network and to his business' site. Kurt quickly browsed through them. He hadn't seen Blaine for months now, but nothing seemed changed in his life. “He buys and sells stuff all the time!” Kurt answered. “He is an art dealer. Some of the things my dad left me are really valuable. We can see if he can buy them for a good price.”

Dave got instantly grumpy. He even stopped massaging him, which was the ultimate sign of his annoyance. “I don't like that guy. I never did,” he grumbled, hardly resisting the urge to cross his arms on his chest and be completely pouting. “He was always hovering around you, even after we married. We don't need to bring him in this.”

Also, Dave didn't want to bring him into that and let Blaine know Kurt wanted something he could not provide. The man was rich behind what it should have been legal and the last thing Dave wanted was to give him the chance to take his fat wallet out of his fancy, expensive pocket and make Kurt dreams come true.

Kurt and Blaine had gone to school together when they were younger. They used to sing together in the choir of their neighbor temple and hang around with the same people, even if Kurt was one year older than Blaine. By the time Kurt was allowed to meet his assigned husband, at fifteen, the two of them lost touch with each other until Kurt's wedding, to which Blaine was invited.

Since then, Blaine had come visiting once every two or three months. A courtesy Dave could easily do without.

They had been very close during their childhood and a small part of their teen years too. So, even though they somehow grew out of their friendship as it was before, they still cared for each other a lot. Too much, according to Dave who was madly jealous of the charming way Blaine had with Kurt.

However, Kurt didn't take Dave's worries seriously. Mainly because it had never been that way with him and Blaine. “Blaine Anderson and I are just friends, Dave. You know that already.”

Dave had heard him saying that a million times already and of course he believed that, because Kurt had never given him reasons not to, but still Blaine's name made his hands tingle. “Of course I know, but still I don't like him,” he said. “And most of all, I don't like what he became after he lost his fiancée. Losing him made him reckless.”

Gods had not been very good with Blaine, whose assigned husband had died at the age of thirteen, before they could even met. According to the tradition, only the Priests could assign one person to another, which meant you could not marry anyone else, unless the Priests found it for you.

That never happened for Blaine, who had been alone since then.

Kurt put on a very sympathetic face, like every time he thought about Blaine's situation. “You should be more understanding,” he scolded him. “His fiancée's death was hard on him. He never really recovered. As a matter of fact, we should see him more often, instead of letting all these months pass between visits. Plus, he really can help us with this.”

Dave didn't look too convinced. “I don't know, Kurt. I don't think we can trust him. It's not...” He looked for the best way to say it, since Kurt was already glaring at him. “You know, with all the rumors about where he goes and who he meets, I don't think he matches the criteria of discretion we're searching for, in this particular situation.”

“Blaine would never say a word.” Kurt gave him a little smile. “And then, it would be just a matter of days, until after we have the right amount of money. Once I'm pregnant, people can even talk, if they want to. Nobody will be able to do anything about it.”

Dave sighed and pondered the whole matter. Blaine was famous for a lot of unfortunate reasons, but most of all he was famous for how rich he was and how convenient his deals were for both parts involved. So Dave guessed that, if they really had to sell something, he was the best choice. “What were you thinking about selling?”

Kurt had been thinking about it since the very moment Blaine had come into his mind. His family wasn't rich but there were a few old and precious items that had belonged to his father and were now part of his inheritance. One in particular was very unique. Kurt felt sad at the thought of parting from it, but he was willing to do it for his child. “My father's Book,” he answered, in a low voice. “It's the most valuable of my possessions.”

Dave looked at him, shocked. “Are you serious? It's... It's our Creation Book. It was your father's. You love that book. It's the book we would have given to our child, if it was the case.”

The Creation Book was a strong and essential part of the tradition. It contained the story of how the Gods, after seeing the human race suffering for love, had decided to find the perfect match for every soul, bringing harmony and peace in the lives of all. Every man and woman who wanted to live by the Gods, followed the lessons the book contained.

Each family had his own copy, traditionally brought as part of their dowry by the wife or, in case of a same sex marriage, by the submissive element of a couple, which was chosen by the Priests between two babies at the moment of their assignation. Being a submissive - differentiation that only existed in a same sex marriage - meant taking upon himself all those assignments traditionally more related to women, like the house care and a more motherly role toward children.

For what they symbolized, Creation Books had always to be very valuable and precious pieces of art. And having belonged to his father, Kurt held his own particularly dear.

“Well, we are giving it away so our child can come into this world,” Kurt said. “It's an act of love toward him or her as well.”

Dave sighed and brushed his face with both his hands, smiling lightly. “You have already decided, haven't you?” He asked as he looked at him, already knowing what Kurt was going to answer because he knew him too well not to.

Kurt looked straight into his eyes. “I really want this, Dave. And I think we can do it.”

Dave let out a little chuckle. He was lucky to love Kurt for his stubbornness among other things, or they would have been arguing their entire life. But he liked too much the light in Kurt's eyes every time he strongly believed in something. He patted his knees with his hands and nodded. “Alright, then. Let's do this,” he said, dragging him into his arms. “But it's better if you don't call him now. It's almost two in the morning, not a good time to call art dealers. Or anyone for that matter.”

Kurt made a little noise of happiness. “I'm calling him first thing in the morning.”

Dave kissed him sweetly on the top of his head. “It's good to see you so happy.”

Kurt beamed as he look at their reflection in the lucid surface of the glass coffee table. In nine months they were going to be even happier.


to be continued...

Spin-off/seguito (What If?) di Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World.
Genere: Erotico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Future!Fic, What If?, Slash, Lemon, Underage, PWP, OC.
- "Do you really want to fight? I know better ways to pass time."
Note: Ignorate questa storia, plz. XD Scritta per il prompt #76 della mia tabellina per la Maritombola ("L'abitudine rende sopportabili anche le cose più spaventose." (Esopo)) @ maridichallenge.
A parte queste informazioni di servizio, probabilmente non vi ritroverete mai a voler leggere una cosa del genere, a meno che non stiate cercando del porno underage fra ragazzini palesemente troppo piccoli e uomini di vent'anni più grandi... XD Nel caso conosciate Glee e vogliate leggerla, fate riferimento alla fic che io e la Tab abbiamo scritto qualche tempo fa, Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World. Il ragazzino, qui, è Leo. Blaine lo conoscete già, e questa è una fic che racconta un loro possibile incontro in una what if? della trama originaria che ancora voi non conoscete, ma che io ho accennato qui e là in una serie di fic tipo Nothing Compares To You, Tell Me Love Isn't True (It's Just Something That We Do) e Temptation.
Nel caso invece non conosciate niente di tutto ciò e foste qui solo, appunto, per il porno underage, be'... avete la mia comprensione. Proseguite pure. XD
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
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Blaine doesn’t feel guilty, obviously. Why should he? Leo’s the only one who should, and since he doesn’t – not in the slightest, to be accurate – being grounded is the least he could expect. Next time, if he’s smart, he’ll think twice before hiding a dead snake inside Blaine’s luggage. What was that supposed to mean, anyway? What’s with the dead snake, something like the cut-off head of a horse or something? When did the kid turn into such a little criminal, exactly? What was Blaine looking at while it was happening?

“Having fun?” he asks Leo, walking in the library where the kid’s been confined to do his summer homework as a punishment.

The boy turns to him, eyes filled with rage and frustration. Outside, the sun in shining, the sea is the color of the most beautiful blue ever seen and kids of every age are playing soccer. Yet, Leonard’s forced to stay inside the huge but nonetheless boring villa his parents rented for the couple of weeks they’re going to spend in Sardinia as a holiday, and all because he’s been mean towards him. No wonder he hates him now. “What are you doing here?” he spits out, closing his fist around the pencil he was holding carelessly just a second ago.

“Just checking on you,” Blaine answers with a light smile, “I was feeling kind of guilty, you know?” he adds, shrugging a little while he tries to hide the amused chuckle that ultimately manages to escape his lips anyway.

“You’re such a liar,” Leo snorts, pushing the tip of his pencil so hard against the notebook it gets broken. “God, I hate you so much,” he sighs, retrieving his pencil sharpener from the pencil case on the desk. “Why are you here?” he asks again, “Or better, why can’t you be already gone?”

“Your fathers invited me to pass the summer break with you, you know that,” Blaine answers, smiling gently as he walks around him, trying to take a peek at his notebook and smirking, amused, when he sees Leonard cover the pages with both his hands, “It would be rude of me to just go away without a reason.”

“Ok, first of all, it weren’t my dads who invited you,” Leo points out, closing the notebook in a nervous, fast gesture, “It was just one of them. Stop pretending my dads love you, only daddy does. Dad and I still hate you like the first day. That said,” he proceeds, nodding slowly as if to compliment himself for the way he’s carrying on the conversation, “though I think me hating you is enough of a reason to just get lost, I wasn’t implying that you should go back to wherever the hell you belong and possibly die there. I was just asking why you should be here. With me. Right now. Since it’s all your fault.”

“You sure are your father’s son, aren’t you?” Blaine chuckles again, sitting on the chair right next to the one Leo’s using, “Since you’re so good at twisting arguments, tell me, why is this my fault? You’re the one who put that snake in my stuff.”

“I did it because I don’t want you around,” Leo answers, still looking at him like he’s doing him a favor by explaining such an obvious thing.

“So that was what, exactly? A message? Run for your life or you’re going to end up just like this snake?”

Leo suddenly opens his eyes wide, blinking a couple of times. “No,” he says, “I just found it under a rock while I was exploring the cliff. I thought it was ugly enough, maybe it could scare you away or something.”

Blaine can’t help but laugh a little, trying to hide against his own hand because he knows that laughing would only make Leo angrier. He’s just a kid, after all, he tells himself, shaking his head as Leo pouts and frowns, clearly outraged by how hilarious Blaine finds him. “What?” Leo asks, crossing his arms over his chest, “What’s so funny?”

“You are,” Blaine answers lightheartedly, kind of amused, almost anticipating Leonard’s angry reaction. The boy jumps on his feet, fists clenched down his sides, and looks at him with such fury in his eyes that, for a moment, Blaine thinks he’s so similar to Karofsky – though they’re not even biologically related – it’s almost scary.

“Don’t you dare making fun of me,” the boy almost growls, moving threateningly towards him. Blaine relaxes against the back of his chair, looking back at him with a calm smile curling his lips. He can feel Leo’s anger crackling in the air, giving him the goosebumps. He knows he shouldn’t be so thrilled about it, but he can’t help it. It’s always been like this between Leonard and him, he just likes to torment him and sometimes Leo makes it so easier for him that Blaine can’t help but think the child likes to be tormented just as well.

“You think you could scare me away with just that?” he asks with a smirk, looking right into Leonard’s eyes, “What do you think I’m made of? I’m tougher than that.”

“You’re nothing but an annoying asshole,” Leo spits out, his fists shaking nervously.

“Oh, you shouldn’t talk like that!” Blaine says, pretending to be really outraged and shocked by his language, “Where did you learn that word? What would your parents say if I told them about it?”

Leonard’s fists shake even more, Blaine can feel the boy just wants to hit him, and he knows that the only reason he doesn’t is that he still feels too much of a child to compete with an adult like that. If he just had a couple of years more, they would probably be already fighting. Blaine kind of finds himself confused by the fact that he couldn’t say he wouldn’t like it, after all. “Stop,” Leo hisses, moving one step more towards him, “Just stop it. Go away. I don’t want you here.”

“That’s too bad,” Blaine chuckles, shaking his head, “Because I’m enjoying it. I don’t want to leave.”

Leonard lifts a hand and Blaine grins. The very moment the boy tries to slap him, the man grabs him by his wrist, keeping him still. He squeezes enough to make Leo whine in pain as he tries to free himself from his grip. “Let me go!”

“Do you really want to fight?” Blaine asks, keeping his fingers well tight around Leo’s wrist, “I know better ways to pass time.”

Leo growls, forcefully shaking his arm. “I know your fucking ways,” he spits out, blushing a little, though Blaine couldn’t say if out of rage or just embarrassment, “Get your hands off me!”

“My ways?” Blaine asks, his grin growing bigger, “And what would my ways be?”

“I saw the boys you hang out with!” Leo almost screams – he’s got tears in his eyes, though he’s not exactly crying – pulling away from him in a desperate attempt to force Blaine to let him go, “I know how you pass your time with them!”

Blaine almost scoffs out an half bitter, half amused laughter, staring at Leonard with disbelief in his eyes. “Do you think I would touch you?” he asks, mocking him, “You’re nothing but a kid, Leo, you don’t interest me in the slightest. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Leonard blushes so violently that Blaine feels him shake between his fingers, like the sudden rush of blood to his head made him temporarily unable to stand on his feet. He holds onto him stronger, for the first time more because he wants to help him keeping his balance, than just because he wants to hold him captive.

“I’m not disappointed!” Leonard screams, big tears falling down his face, and Blaine considers himself lucky for being alone in the house with him, “Let me go, you fucking pervert! You suck and I hate you and if you don’t let me go right now I’ll fucking scream so much that our neighbors will call the cops!”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Blaine rolls his eyes, tightening his grip around the boy’s wrist and pulling him closer, “Don’t you ever shut that trap?” he asks, close enough to see new tears forming in the corners of Leo’s eyes. There’s fear and sadness and anger and embarrassment, but there’s something more in those tears, something screaming for Blaine to notice.

It’s frustration. Leo’s cheeks are flushed, his breath is heavy, the temperature of his body is increasing, and it’s all because of… Blaine’s not sure about it. But it’s getting stronger with every second, and when Blaine gets what’s going to happen – because he wants it to happen, and he’s not even remotely ready to face the consequences of a similar thought – he’s not strong enough to stop it. He just pulls Leo closer and presses his closed lips against the boy’s similarly closed ones, kissing him softly.

He should’ve known it. The tension between Leonard and him was growing too strong not to notice. They have kept colliding against one another since the boy was only six, and for a man not used to talk with words anymore – a man like Blaine, a man that based every single relationship he had in the last twenty years solely on sex – this was just bound to happen. Mixed with the fact that Leo only reacts violently – both physically and verbally – to everything happening to him, Blaine has to admit a clash like that was just a matter of time.

But then it’s only a kiss. Just brushing lips, nothing more. He could expect that, he should’ve seen it coming.

What he could never expect was for Leo to part his lips and start biting and licking at his to make them open, asking for something more. Something that Blaine’s not sure he can give right now to a kid his age.

He moves away abruptly, searching for Leo’s eyes, ready to scold him without hesitation, but Leo’s hands run to his shirt, they close in fists around his collar and shake him a little, keeping him close. “Don’t you dare run away now, you coward asshole,” he hisses on Blaine’s lips, too embarrassed to sit on his lap but not enough to restrain himself from settling between Blaine’s parted legs, brushing unconsciously against him.

Blaine follows the trace of the electric shock running through his whole body when Leo’s hips collide against his, and his eyes darken, as he stops pulling away. A dirty smirk finds its way to his lips as he concedes himself a light chuckle watching Leo’s cheeks getting flushed again. “Hear, hear,” he says, his hands covering Leo’s, still clutched around his collar, “What is it that you’re asking for now, Leo?”

The boy frowns angrily, staring in his eyes with the newfound courage coming from his frustration. “Whatever you can give,” he answers, and he doesn’t even blush, “But I’m not sure it would be enough.”

Blaine chuckles, his hand sliding down Leo’s back and then pushing on his ass, to make him rock back and forth against him. The kid’s hard, Blaine can feel it even through the fabric of his jeans. He’s been a twelve years old himself, a couple of ice ages ago, and he remembers how confusing these years can be for a boy. He remembers waking up sticky and unsatisfied, not knowing why or what to do to stop the uncomfortableness. “You can’t take all I can give,” he warns him as Leonard slowly loses control over his own body, starting to move faster and confusedly, “I’m a grown up man, and you’re nothing but a boy.”

“Try me,” the boy answers in a breathless moan, his fists closing even more around the fabric of Blaine’s shirt, in a desperate attempt to keep himself steady.

“I definitely will,” Blaine grins, his eyes half-closed as he leans over to kiss Leonard again, this time with his lips already parted. Leo hiccups, startled by the feeling of wetness against his dry lips, but when he feels Blaine’s tongue searching for his own he gives in almost instantly. Blaine feels the boy’s hands loosening their hold around his collar and move up his neck, uncertain on what to do next. He smiles against Leo’s lips, using his free hand to guide the boy’s ones, and when Leonard opens his eyes again he finds himself hugging Blaine around his neck, his fingers unconsciously playing with the long curls covering the man’s nape.

“So what now?” the boy asks, averting his eyes and trying to look as angered as he was before, though Blaine knows he isn’t anymore.

“Let’s see,” Blaine smiles, letting his hands slide down Leo’s sides through his t-shirt, “Why don’t we take this off, for a start?”

Leonard blushes, his little body shaking. “You do that, if you want to.”

Blaine holds the hem of the boy’s t-shirt between his fingers and slowly pulls it up, uncovering the kid’s still rounded and childish belly, with that small outie navel that he instantly wants to kiss and lick, and then, when Leonard lifts his arms like the good kid he is, Blaine takes the t-shirt off completely, leaving him half-naked. He looks at him as the boy holds himself in an embarrassed hug, looking away. “Do you feel ashamed?” Blaine asks. Leonard nods, sincerely. “Why’s that so?” Blaine asks again, and Leonard turns to him, cheeks flushed and shiny eyes.

“Because I know what we’re doing, and it’s embarrassing,” he answers. “Nobody has ever seen me naked before.”

“Your parents did,” Blaine mocks him, letting his index finger slide over Leo’s forearms and then slip behind one of his hands clutching around his elbow, making him free himself.

“It’s not the same,” Leonard angrily answers, letting Blaine free to do whatever he wants as long as he doesn’t find it dangerous.

“You shouldn’t feel ashamed, anyway,” Blaine shrugs, leaning over and wrapping his arms around Leo’s waist again, pulling him closer and speaking on his chest, “If you like it, then it’s right,” he says reassuringly, nibbling at one of Leo’s nipples.

The boy shivers under his touch, closing his eyes and unconsciously arching his back to offer himself better at Blaine’s ministrations. “You’re such a liar…” he moans, a hand clutching at Blaine’s nape, pulling him closer, “Even I know that not everything pleasant is also right. And I’m only a child. You’re an adult, you should know too.”

“Well, I don’t,” Blaine smiles, licking Leonard’s now hardened and oversensitive nipple as he unbuttons and unzips the boy’s jeans, letting them fall down his slim thighs, “That’s why I can do what I’m doing right now with not much guilt. I like it. So it’s alright.”

“You’re a pervert,” Leo moans harder, his hips rocking even if he’s got nothing to rub against, making him frustrated, “You should end up in jail.”

“I’m a pervert?” Blaine chuckles, placing a hand over the bulge filling Leo’s underpants, “And what about you, throwing yourself to a man more than twice your age?”

“Shut up,” Leonard protests, blushing furiously as he gracelessly slams a hand against Blaine’s mouth, to keep it shut. He stays like that for a couple of seconds, looking into Blaine’s eyes as the man places a small kiss on his palm, still covering his lips. “Kiss me,” the boy asks in a faint whisper, offering his lips, his eyes already closed.

Blaine does as he’s asked to, kissing the boy as he kneels in front of him. When they part, Leonard looks at him like he couldn’t figure out what he wants to do for his life, and Blaine smiles, amused by his puzzled eyes. He bends over him, licking his way down the boy’s belly and to his navel, pressing a wet kiss over it before starting to play in and out of it with his tongue.

Leo lets out a sudden, almost surprised moan, almost backing off. “It tickles,” he whines halfheartedly, trying to calm down.

Blaine chuckles, kissing his belly. “But it’s good, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Leo whines again, this time pushing his tummy against Blaine’s lips, inviting him to go on, “It feels funny.”

“Let me simplify the question for you,” Blaine answers, closing his eyes as he slides down Leo’s tummy one wet kiss after another, “Do you want me to stop?”

Leo looks down at him, holding his breath. Blaine frees the boy of his underpants, letting them fall down to his ankles, and then just stays there, inches away from his hard-on, and Leonard doesn’t think he’s ever going to breathe again anymore. He shakes his head, too embarrassed to say it aloud, but Blaine gets it anyway, and the second after Leonard has to arch against the desk behind him, throwing his head back as he tries to hold back a scream while Blaine takes it all in his mouth, sucking at it gently.

“Please…” Leo whines confusedly, holding onto Blaine’s shoulders, tugging at his shirt to try and keep himself steady even though his legs are shaking violently, “No more… Feels funny…” he moans, big tears already forming on the corners of his eyes. It doesn’t really feel funny, it kind of feels so good it almost hurts, so good it’s almost unbearable, that’s the truth, but he could never tell Blaine. He would just smile smugly and mock him, and Leonard couldn’t take it, not now that he feels so fragile and exposed.

“I can feel you like it,” Blaine talks in whispers over Leonard’s hot and wet skin, licking him up and down his length, “It’s alright, let yourself go. I won’t tell anybody, I promise. You’re safe with me.”

“I’m not,” Leo whines again, closing his eyes so hard that tears start to fall, “I’m scared. I like it, but I’m scared,” he almost cries, sobbing softly.

Blaine looks up at him, parting from his cock and placing a last kiss on its head, before standing up on his feet again, bending over Leo right after. He brushes the boy’s cheeks with both his hands, wiping his tears away with his thumbs. “Now look at me,” he says in a low voice, smiling reassuringly when Leonard opens his eyes again, “I won’t tell anybody, and I will make it good for you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But it is going to hurt, no matter how hard you try, isn’t it?” Leo asks in a breathless sob, clutching his hands around Blaine’s shirt again.

Blaine smiles a little, placing a kiss on the boy’s forehead, and then another one on his salty lips. “I promise it’s going to be worth it. Do you trust me?”

“Not at all,” Leonard sighs, leaning against him as if he couldn’t stand on his own anymore, “But I want you to do it anyway. Maybe you’re right and I’m a pervert too.”

Blaine laughs briefly, holding him in a little hug and then kneeling in front of him once more. “Let’s make a pact,” he says, “I won’t call you a pervert if you stop calling me that too.”

Leonard frowns and pouts a little, crossing his arms over his chest. He doesn’t seem to agree, but he gives in, eventually. “Okay,” he answers, bending over to kiss Blaine on his lips lightly, as if to seal the promise.

Blaine smiles against his lips and, when they part, his smile turns a little dirtier, as he slowly unbuttons and takes off his shirt, shuddering inside because of Leo’s hungry eyes locked on him as his shoulders, his chest and his tummy get uncovered. “Turn around,” he says, after he let his shirt fall on the ground beside him.

Leonard arches an eyebrow, looking down at him. “What for?” he asks, his voice shaking with fear.

“Because,” Blaine chuckles, placing a kiss on his tummy and then holding him by his hips, physically turning him around, so that he faces the desk, “I need you like this to make it better.”

“I don’t understand…” Leo mutters, frowning a little but letting Blaine move him as he likes.

Blaine helps him lift his right leg and put it on the table, exposing him to his eyes. “It’s alright,” he whispers, placing small, wet kisses along the crease between his buttocks, “You’re going to like it.”

Leonard gets rigid all of a sudden, starting to breathe heavily. “No,” he whines, trying to get away from Blaine’s grasp, “No, I got what you wanna do and I don’t want you to do it!”

“And why don’t you?” Blaine asks with a faint chuckle, keeping his fingers locked around the boy’s hips.

“Because it’s dirty, and embarrassing, and it’s not— I don’t—” he tries, but he doesn’t manage to finish his sentence, because while he’s still babbling Blaine moves forward and tentatively licks his opening, and that alone is almost enough for Leo to release himself on the desk, all over his homework notebooks.

He arches forward, leaning on the table and unconsciously exposing himself even more as he moans and whines, shaking all over his body. “Blaine,” he calls out for the man, swinging his hips, “It feels too awkward, please, stop.”

But Blaine doesn’t stop, he’s not even remotely thinking about it. He places a hand on Leo’s back, stroking it slowly up and down, as if trying to calm him like he would do with a crying baby – which Leo ultimately is. He keeps licking him slowly, waiting for him to get used to it, feeling his own excitement grow with every suffocated, breathless “Blaine” slipping between Leonard’s swollen, wet lips.

Only when he hears Leo’s moaning turning from simple discomfort to something dirtier, something that could easily be described as pleasure, he dares to do something more. He holds the boy firmly by his hips and pushes his tongue inside his already slick opening, breaking him open a little. Leonard is so caught up in what he’s feeling that he hardly has any shame anymore, and keeps rocking his hips, meeting Blaine’s tongue’s thrusts as he moans incessantly, his voice growing louder and louder with every second.

“Blaine,” the boy calls out, trying to turn his head to look at him. Blaine stops licking him to make the task easier for Leo, meeting his eyes and smiling encouragingly. Leo’s cheeks are flushed and his breath is heavy, his hands clutched in fists as his small shoulders shiver with the waves of pleasure coming from Blaine’s ministrations. “Please,” he just says, and he doesn’t need to say nothing more.

Blaine stands up on his feet and unbuttons his jeans, taking them off. Leonard’s eyes grow bigger as he gets undressed, and he lets out a squeal of pure shock when he lays his eyes on Blaine’s full erected cock. “Oh, my God,” he cries out, grasping at the table, “It’s— no, Blaine, no way, you can’t do that.”

“What are you talking about?” the man chuckles, amused, his hands on his hips, showing off a little.

“That thing!” Leo whines, hiding his face behind his hands, “It’s too big. It can’t possibly fit. You’re gonna break me. It’s gonna hurt too much, I don’t want it. Please, it’s ugly and I don’t like it.”

“You just don’t know it,” Blaine smiles reassuringly, holding one of Leo’s small hands between his fingers and placing a little kiss on its back, like a prince or something. “Here, touch it,” he suggests, guiding Leo’s hands down from his chest to his abs.

Leonard follows the lines of his well-defined muscles, swallowing hard. When his fingertips brush against the hot, already wet with pre-cum head of Blaine’s cock, he opens his eyes wide as he sees it twitch. “It’s alive!” he almost screams, withdrawing his hand and holding it close to his chest.

“It very well is!” Blaine answers, laughing again, “It would have been so disappointing if it wasn’t.”

“This is scary,” Leonard admits, nibbling at his lower lip. “Nothing bad could happen if I just touched it, though, am I right?” he asks, looking up at Blaine with eyes filled with hope.

Blaine has to hold back another laughter because he knows that, if he laughed now, Leonard would feel mocked and probably get really angry. “I’m pretty sure the world’s not going to end only because you touched my cock, kid,” he answers with an amused smile, leaning against the table with both his hands, trapping Leonard between his arms. “So?”

“So shut up,” Leo answers, pouting a little. He lifts himself on his tiptoes to reach Blaine’s lips and kiss him, while he holds out a hand towards his cock and touches it lightly, brushing it with his fingertips up and down his length and daring to hold it in his fist only when Blaine decides to kiss him deeper. He gets so lost in the kiss that he barely knows what he’s doing anymore; so, when he wraps his fingers around Blaine’s hard-on and starts to stroke him up and down, mimicking the same gestures he does to himself when he wakes up hard and needy after some wet dream, he doesn’t even notice. It’s almost normal.

He does notice, though, when Blaine starts to moan between his lips. He parts from the man, looking at him confusedly, as if he couldn’t tell why he should be making such noises, and when he sees Blaine’s eyes clouded with hunger and pleasure he’s almost scared away by the strength of the need he sees in that gaze. He’s almost sure Blaine’s going to break him. He is because he knows he’s too young to be having sex, and he is because he knows Blaine’s too big to fit, and too hard to be borne, and too aroused to be controlled.

But he wants him inside his body so much he wouldn’t even know where to start to express it aloud. It’s something inexplicable, even though he knows it’s going to be painful, he wants this to hurt, he wants this to leave a trace, a permanent trace inside him. In his memory.

He wants it to be unforgettable. For them both. So that whenever Blaine looks back, he can think about him and… Leonard doesn’t even know. It feels almost stupid, now that he thinks about it, because he doesn’t even care for this man, probably, and for the most of the time he just wants him gone when he’s around, and he wants him not to come around ever again when he’s already away, so this makes no sense at all.

But the smell of his body, the salty taste of his lips, the way Blaine’s looking at him, all this makes him shiver, it makes his legs unsteady, it makes his insides tie up in a knot. And it hurts, and it’s gorgeous. And he wants it, he wants it all.

He turns around between Blaine’s arms, bending over the desk again, offering himself. “Try not to…” he starts in a whisper, “I mean, you know.”

Blaine leans over him, placing a little kiss over the boy’s nape, between his dark curls damp with sweat, and nods as he speaks over his skin. “I know,” he smiles, pushing a finger inside Leo’s already open and slick opening.

The boy instantly tightens around him, whining a little. “It doesn’t fit,” he moans, closing his eyes.

Blaine kisses him on his neck again, and pushes deeper. “It’s just my finger,” he says, brushing the tip of his nose up and down Leo’s shoulder.

Leo whines louder. “It’s never going to work,” he sobs, scared, covering his face with both his hands.

Blaine smiles, twisting and turning his fingers to dig some more space inside of Leo’s body, carefully brushing against that secret spot that makes Leo whine in pleasure just like every other boy and man, and when Leo’s moans start dripping pleasure like they were before, Blaine withdraws his fingers, and replaces them with himself.

Leonard opens his eyes wide as he chokes on his own breath and tries to escape from Blaine’s grip, his fingers scratching the desk. “No!” he screams breathlessly, “No, Blaine, please, it hurts!”

“It’s alright, kid, it’s alright,” Blaine holds him in a sweet hug, moving only every now and then, not to break him. He cuddles the boy tenderly, almost cradling him as Leo starts to sob quietly. “I know it hurts, but I promise it’s going to be good soon.”

“How soon?” the boy asks, his voice breaking with every hard breath.

“Soon,” Blaine repeats, cradling him some more as he pushes a little forward, feeling him open all around himself. Leo lets out another half scream, but this time he doesn’t try and clutch his hands around the table’s side, he just grabs Blaine’s forearm and holds onto it, brushing his thumbs over the man skin, trying to distract himself and at the same time let Blaine know he’s not going to give up.

“You promise?” he sobs again, big tears rolling down his flushed cheeks, and Blaine nods, whispering senseless reassurances in his ear. Leonard nods after every word, the majority of whom he doesn’t even understand. Blaine tells him to breathe in and out and so he does, Blaine tells him to relax and so he does, Blaine tells him to bend over and so he does, Blaine tells him to let himself go and so he does, and he cries, and he sobs, and every time Blaine thrusts in it burns like hell, but somehow everything starts to change when Blaine wraps his hand around his cock and strokes it fast, way faster than he’s thrusting in.

“Feeling better, now?” Blaine asks sweetly, as he keeps stroking him. Leonard nods, so breathless he couldn’t talk even if he wanted. Luckily, he doesn’t want to. He just wants to listen to Blaine’s voice as the man keeps whispering things to him. “You feel so good,” Blaine says, moving faster inside him, “You’re so tight. So hot. This is the best sex of my life,” he moans, and Leo knows this is probably a lie, because all Blaine ever says it usually is, but this time, he wants to believe it. He wants to believe it feels special, for Blaine, because it’s special for him.

He comes suddenly, he doesn’t even see it coming. Blaine hits some spot, or his hand around his cock becomes too much pleasant to hold back anymore, and he comes with a violent shiver and a deep moan, leaving a sticky trail all over his own tummy. Blaine keeps thrusting inside of him for another couple of seconds, and then he comes too, pushing himself deeper than he ever did and filling Leo up with his own orgasm.

Leo can feel it. He can feel everything. It’s unbearably pleasant for a moment, and then it becomes too much, and he starts wiggling to set himself free of Blaine’s hold, trying to part from the presence inside his body, now just painful and unwanted.

Blaine instantly gets what’s going on and slips out of the boy’s body, smiling sweetly when he hears him sigh with obvious relief.

“It hurts so much,” Leo whines, turning around to face Blaine again and trying to lean on the desk because he’s so tired he doesn’t want to stand anymore, “Really, it’s burning a lot.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Blaine smiles once more, placing a little dry kiss on the boy’s forehead and then kneeling in front of him again. “You made a mess, here.”

“Yeah, guess whose fault is it,” Leo replies, annoyed, hitting Blaine on his forehead with his fingertips. Blaine chuckles and places another little kiss on his belly, before starting to clean him up of his come, licking it away from his salty, still sweaty skin. Leo opens his eyes and his mouth wide, covering half his face with both his hands. “What are you doing?!” he almost squeals, too shocked to even try and get away, “Eww, this is disgusting!”

“Is it?” Blaine asks in a light chuckle, standing up again, “I kind of like it, honestly.”

“That makes you disgusting too, then,” Leo states, shrugging carelessly as he looks again. He’s blushing. Blaine notices it, and kisses him sweetly on his cheek.

“Are you going to be alright, all alone by yourself for the rest of the afternoon?” he asks, combing Leo’s wild curls behind one of his ears.

The boy nods, smiling calmly. “I’ve got a lot of homework left to do,” he reassures him, as he watches him retrieve his clothes and putting them back on.

By the time Blaine lifts his eyes again, Leonard’s doing just the same, moving clumsily and making a face because of the pain stinging when he doesn’t move carefully. “Then I’ll see you later, I guess,” he tries, moistening his lips.

Leonard chuckles, amused, and since it’s the first time Blaine hears him laugh like that, it’s also the first time he has the chance to notice how much he likes this sound. “Get lost, already,” Leo says, and Blaine chuckles too, leaving the room right after.

*

Despite the laughter and the peaceful way they parted after what happened, Blaine and Leo haven’t talked in two days. Blaine’s not mad about it, he knows how embarrassed Leo must feel, to say the least. He knows because he’s feeling just like that too, and plus he had to deal with Dave and Kurt and with their kindness bearing over his shoulders the guilt for what he did to their only child.

It hasn’t been an easy weekend, and Blaine’s well intentioned to shrug it off his shoulders by living a little. He’s planning on going out, tonight. Maybe disco and then some cute guy. Or maybe just the disco and then back home to sleep, or whatever his desires tell him to do.

Right now, he’s sunbathing on the beach, listening to the sea rumbling and to people laughing while seagulls scream flying around over his head. The sun is hot and the cool breeze coming from the sea caresses his barely sweaty skin making him shiver with pleasure every now and then.

He’s not please, though, when he gets splashed with freezing cold, salty water all over his body. He almost chokes on his own breath, opening his eyes wide and jumping up from his chair, looking around with his heart beating furiously in his chest.

Leonard is laughing so hard he’s bending in half.

“Oh, really?” Blaine snorts, disappointed, crossing his arms over his chest, “Are you having fun?” he asks bitterly.

“Yes!” Leo answers sincerely, wiping away a little tear from the corner of his eyes. “How you doin’?” he asks, smirking lightly.

Blaine arches an eyebrow, looking at him. “Fine,” he answers, “What about you? Still hurting?”

Leo shakes his head, kind of proudly. “It seems I heal fast,” he comments with a light chuckle, “So…” he tries right after, pretending not to be interested, “What are you doing tonight?”

Blaine opens his eyes wide, a faint smile curling his lips. “…are you serious?” he asks, skeptical.

Leo chuckles again, shrugging. “Dad and daddy are out for dinner,” he explains, barely able to restrain his smile to grow any bigger, “Something romantic, dad said, it could take a while. So I thought I could ask if you, you know, already had something to do.”

Blaine laughs, shaking his head. “You know, I was just thinking about spending the night home,” he lies, and he doesn’t even feel guilty about it.

Leo smiles even more, almost jumping on his feet. “Perfect,” he says, eventually managing to calm down and pretend he’s not fired up as he truly is, “Then I’ll see you later.”

Blaine nods, watching him run away, out of the beach and down the street, towards the house. He already feels itchy, and he can’t wait to scratch the feeling away.
Genere: Commedia, Romantico.
Pairing: Kurt/Dave, Kurt/Blaine, Kurt/Finn (accennato), Finn/Rachel, Finn/Quinn, Blaine/Jeremiah, Rachel/Jesse, Burt/Sue (WTF).
Rating: R/NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: AU, Crossdressing, Slash, Crack, OOC.
- Sono ormai più di cent'anni che nel feudo di Lima, governato dalla nobile casata degli Hummel ormai da generazioni, non nasce più una bambina. Il popolo ha ormai escluso tutte le ipotesi più allarmanti - infertilità? Com'è possibile, dal momento che le donne continuano a partorire figli maschi? Tare genetiche? Com'è possibile, dal momento che perfino le donne straniere, una volta entrate nel territorio, sembrano incapaci di partorire femmine? - ma una resta ancora in piedi, ed è l'ipotesi alla quale credono fermamente il principe Blaine Anderson, il suo fedele amico il principe Jesse St. James e il gruppo di consiglieri della Dalton, rinomata scuola in quel di Westerville, capitale del regno: potrebbe trattarsi della maledizione di una strega, ed è per questo che una spedizione composta dal principe e dal proprio seguito si reca a Lima, intenzionata a prendere alloggio alla dimora degli Hummel e investigare più approfonditamente sulla faccenda.
La cosa, come spesso accade, non sarà che l'inizio di una serie di incredibili eventi che porteranno le vite di tutti i personaggi in gioco a cambiare irrimediabilmente per sempre.
Note: Allora, questa storia era tipo nata per chiudersi nel giro di una decina di pagine, giuro XD Doveva essere una roba abbastanza breve, del tutto crack, e solo Kurtofsky. Poi non so cosa è cambiato nella mia testa (qualcosa di brutto, indubbiamente), ed ho finito per infilarci qualsiasi cosa, tra le quali otto milioni di pairing e, soprattutto, UNA TRAMA. Le trame, come tutti sapete, sono le nostre nemiche. Noi le odiamo. Sì? Boh. Comunque questa storia non ne aveva bisogno, e infatti appena è arrivata BUM! ventordici milioni di parole. Dolore.
Insomma, tutto ciò per dire: non leggete questa storia. Mai.
Nota a magine: Sarpe appartiene alla Lokex XDDDDDD Non ho saputo resistere.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
«Io ho… ho solo bisogno di più tempo. Più tempo, capisci? Per vedere dove mi porteranno i miei studi.»
La ragazza sorrise, stringendosi nelle spalle. «Sei ancora giovane» rispose, «Hai tutto il tempo che ti serve.»
«No, non è così» scosse il capo lui, avvicinandosi a lei e stringendo le sue mani pallide e sottili fra le proprie, «La mia scienza è già parecchio avanti rispetto a quella degli altri scienziati di questo paese, ma— non è sufficiente. Non mi serve solo qualche anno in più, non sto parlando di un paio di decenni, sto parlando di… tempo. Tempo vero. Quel tempo che quando lo guardi sembra infinito, quel tempo che ce n’è sempre abbastanza. Quel tempo lì serve a me.»
Rossa in viso, la ragazza deglutì, senza allontanarsi di un passo, ed anzi, ricambiando la stretta delle sue mani con le proprie. «Cent’anni? Duecento?» deglutì ancora. I suoi occhi scintillavano. Dalle sue dita partivano tenui raggi di luce che illuminavano la radura come stelle. La superficie del lago, resa nera come la pece dalla notte inoltrata, sembrava un cielo d’estate. «Io posso darteli» annuì, «Ma tu devi promettere.»
Lui non si allontanò. Avrebbe promesso la luna a chiunque, se solo gli avessero dato abbastanza anni per imparare a raggiungerla e catturarla in una gabbia. «Dimmi cosa devo promettere, e lo prometterò.»
«Prometti…» sussurrò la ragazza, avvicinandosi a lui e bisbigliando al suo orecchio. Lui spalancò gli occhi e, nell’ascoltare la sua voce gentile e ciò che diceva, si lasciò sfuggire una risatina divertita. Non poteva essere che uno sciocco gioco, lei non poteva aiutarlo. Ma lui le avrebbe comunque promesso ciò che voleva, per ringraziarla di averlo ascoltato ed aver provato ad illuderlo che un modo per sconfiggere il tempo esistesse davvero.
Chinandosi sulle sue labbra e sfiorandole in un bacio lievissimo, promise.

Partì l’indomani. Non la rivide più.


WHERE TIME STANDS STILL

Erano ormai più di cento anni che nel Principato non nascevano bambine. A quanto pareva, non si trattava di una questione di infertilità – le schiave straniere che sovente venivano prese ad oggetto dei favori dei signorotti del paese partorivano spesso e volentieri, ma solo maschi – quanto più di semplice sfortuna, o, come credevano altri, compresi i componenti del Consiglio della Dalton, che nella capitale del principato, Westerville, si occupavano di servire il principe Blaine facendo uso di tutta la loro cultura e saggezza, di una maledizione, gettata sul Principato da qualche malvagia fattucchiera o da un principe di un altro paese, geloso delle ampie ricchezze che anche a quel tempo, nonostante la carenza di figlie femmine, continuavano a benedire il Principato.
Mentre gli alchimisti della capitale cercavano di risolvere il problema, preparando unguenti e pozioni da somministrare alle schiave nella speranza che potessero riprendere a partorire figlie femmine, e mentre ogni sei mesi da Westerville partivano spedizioni nelle foreste circostanti il Principato nella speranza di trovare l’antro della malvagia strega che si riteneva responsabile di questa incresciosa situazione, nelle campagne e nei piccoli villaggi circostanti la capitale la vita aveva continuato a svolgersi tranquillamente, priva di preoccupazioni eccessive.
Lord Burt Hummel, ad esempio, che governava con amore e giustizia il piccolo villaggio di Lima, era convinto che tutte le teorie del Consiglio non fossero altro che baggianate. Lui, da sempre seguace delle teorie razionaliste dei colti studiosi dell’Accademia McKinley, orgoglio e vanto del villaggio, era più propenso a credere che si trattasse di una semplice – improbabile, ma non del tutto impossibile – flessione delle nascite, come ogni tanto se ne vedevano in quella regione, specie nei periodi di magra o di carestia. Certo, sarebbe stato molto più semplice e probabile che le nascite calassero tutte, maschili o femminili che fossero, ma si poteva forse condannare il caso per avere azzerato le nascite delle bambine soltanto? Naturalmente no. Prima o poi le femmine avrebbero ricominciato a nascere, e tutto si sarebbe messo a posto da sé.
Fino a quel momento, però, ci si sarebbe dovuti arrangiare, ed era secondo questo principio che Lord Hummel aveva deciso di educare il suo secondogenito, il signorino Kurt. Le schiave, infatti, andavano bene per placare gli appetiti sessuali dei giovani signorotti del paese e della campagna, certo, e potevano andare bene perfino per generare i loro eredi, ma di sicuro non potevano essere presentate a corte, non potevano entrare a far parte della società e tantomeno potevano entrare a far parte delle famiglie nobiliari che reggevano i vari villaggi, o tantomeno la Capitale. No, solo una donna di sangue blu avrebbe potuto occupare il posto che ad una donna di sangue blu era destinato. E se tali donne scarseggiavano, be’, era con ciò che si aveva a disposizione che si doveva lavorare.
Kurt era sempre stato un fanciullo molto delicato ed elegante, e perciò Burt non invidiava affatto tutti i signori dei paesi circostanti che, saputo della sua geniale idea, avevano provato a replicare coi loro figlioli quanto lui aveva fatto col proprio. La sola immagine di tutti quei monelli sporchi di fango e cioccolato, ripuliti e risistemati e ficcati a forza in un casto abito da donzella, lo divertiva oltremodo. Con Kurt, invece, era stato tutto molto più semplice, quasi non c’era stato nemmeno bisogno di forzarlo ad indossare la gonna. Kurt l’aveva fatto di propria spontanea iniziativa, così come sempre era accaduto anche quando aveva cominciato ad interessarsi alle femminee arti del canto, del cucito e dell’educata e lieve conversazione che a tutte le donzelle del suo rango era appropriata, e che lui, pur non essendo una donzella, era in grado di padroneggiare splendidamente.
In breve tempo, la voce che il secondogenito di Lord Hummel aveva assunto il ruolo della donzella di casa aveva fatto il giro del Principato, ed ovunque avevano cominciato a verificarsi casi analoghi, ma Kurt, nella sua virginea e pallida perfezione, restava l’esempio migliore che si potesse trovare in tutto il paese, un fiore di rara bellezza che tutti i villaggi limitrofi invidiavano a Lima, ben consapevoli di non avere nessuna speranza di riuscire a dare alla luce un giorno un bambino che fosse abbastanza bello e delicato da provare anche solo ad imitare le meraviglie di cui il signorino Kurt sembrava custode per volere di Dio in persona.
Con una tale luce a risplendere dal cortile e dalle finestre della villa in campagna di Lord Hummel, non c’era da stupirsi che, contrariamente a quanto accadeva in tutto il resto del Principato, ove i villaggi erano ormai diventati luoghi tristi dove altrettanti tristi caricature di giovani ragazze in boccio vagavano tristemente per le strade rattristando l’occhio già triste dei viandanti che tristemente si trovavano a passare per quei tristi luoghi, Lima rappresentasse se non meta di pellegrinaggio comunque un luogo allegro sul quale fermarsi per un po’ di ristoro, soprattutto per chi viaggiava a cavallo da giorni ed aveva ancora davanti a sé molta strada da percorrere.
Quando, quel giorno, Lord Hummel – impegnato ad intrattenersi con uno dei suoi pochi vezzi, quello di calare le braccia fino ai gomiti nei meccanismi di certe macchine a olio e a vapore che amava progettare e costruire – vide il giovane garzone Sam correre lungo il viale principale che conduceva al cortile della propria villa, scalzo come sempre ma sporco di terra e polvere più di quanto non l’avesse mai visto, immediatamente gli andò incontro, rallegrato dalla possibilità che il ragazzo portasse con sé notizie di un qualche diversivo che fosse in viaggio verso di loro dalla Capitale, per distrarsi un po’ dalla calura asfissiante con lui l’inizio della primavera li stava flagellando, e che provocava a tutti gli abitanti della tenuta un fastidio che neanche la presenza di Kurt riusciva a lenire.
- Ordunque, ragazzo! – lo fermò, poggiando le mani ancora sporche d’olio e grasso sulle sue spalle, mentre attorno a loro s’andava via via formando un crocchio di persone sempre più ampio, composto dal fattore Puck, dal medico di corte Artie, dalla cuoca Mercedes, dalla maestra di canto Rachel, dai due camerieri di origine orientale Mike e Tina e dalle due dame di compagnia di Kurt, Brittany e Santana, - Placati e doma il tuo affanno, e racconta al tuo padrone cosa ti spinge a correre così a perdifiato per i nostri bei campi, quando dovresti essere giù al villaggio ad occuparti delle spese per la famiglia tutta.
- Mio signore, - esordì Sam con entusiasmo, cercando di respirare normalmente, - stavo appunto recandomi al villaggio con le mie sporte vuote, per comprare i cibi e le bevande che mi avevate ordinato di procurarmi al mercato, quando all’improvviso di fronte a me vidi giungere un gruppo di nobiluomini a cavallo!
- Nobiluomini a cavallo! – ripeté Burt, sorridendo compiaciuto, - Viaggiatori? Principi dei paesi vicini? Granduchi e visconti diretti al mare e costretti a passare per Lima per un po’ di ristoro?
- Meglio, mio signore! – riprese Sam, quasi saltando sul posto mentre il suo pubblico rumoreggiava, educatamente raggruppato a qualche centimetro da Burt, che ancora lo teneva per le spalle, - Inizialmente mi era sembrato di non riuscire a riconoscere chi guidasse il molto onorevole drappello di gentiluomini, ma quando essi mi si sono avvicinati abbastanza non ho più avuto scuse, e d’altronde non so come sia possibile non riconoscere il regale portamento, la fiera chioma riccia e corvina e gli splendidi occhi del nostro sovrano, il principe Blaine!
- Cosa? – quasi gridò Burt, al colmo della gioia, mentre la folla si apriva in un urlo di festa, - Stai forse dicendo che sua maestà il principe sta per giungere in questa casa?
- È a meno di mezz’ora di viaggio, mio signore! – rispose Sam, indicando la strada, - I nobiluomini si sono fermati a far ristorare i cavalli sulle rive del lago a pochi chilometri da qui, ed io ho cercato di correre il più velocemente possibile per avvertirvi!
- Ed il tuo sforzo sarà premiato. – annuì Burt, battendogli un paio di pacche sulle spalle. – Puck, libera il ragazzo dai suoi pesi. – ordinò, - Di quanti uomini stiamo parlando? – chiese quindi, mentre Puck obbediva e sollevava le sporte che Sam ancora trascinava, strisciandole al suolo.
- Una decina, mio signore. – rispose subito Sam, con un lieve cenno del capo, - Oltre al nostro principe ho riconosciuto i suoi fedeli compagni, Lord Wesley Montgomery, Lord David Thompson e Lord Thad Harwood, ed essi sono accompagnati da un aitante biondo signore che non ho mai visto prima, ma di sicuro dev’essere un principe, tanto fiera e regale è la sua figura!
- Sentito, Tina, Mike? – disse Burt, voltandosi a guardare i due camerieri che, trascinati dai festeggiamenti degli altri, si affrettarono a ricomporsi e profondersi in ampi cenni del capo in direzione del loro signore per dimostrare di aver riacquistato il controllo su loro stessi, - Preparate le camere, arieggiate la villa, disponete tutto per l’arrivo dei nostri graditi ospiti, e Brittany, Santana? – chiamò, cercando con gli occhi le due dame nella folla. Esse mossero un passo avanti agli altri per farsi notare, inchinandosi di fronte a lui. – Correte ad avvertire Kurt. – disse quindi Burt, sorridendo con orgoglio, - Che sia pronto per l’arrivo di sua maestà.
Brittany e Santana annuirono e sorrisero, per poi sollevare le gonne e correre celermente verso casa, alla ricerca di Kurt. Mentre tutta la servitù riprendeva l’usuale attività, Burt si deterse le mani su un panno pulito e restò in mezzo al viale, accanto al proprio marchingegno, a scrutare l’orizzonte, tendendo l’orecchio per essere pronto a captare il più lieve segnale che potesse suggerire l’avvicinarsi di una mandria di cavalli al galoppo. La giornata si apprestava a diventare molto più interessante, e in molti sensi. D’altronde, era risaputo che il principe stesse cercando moglie, ed era altrettanto ovvio che non avrebbe potuto sposare una serva. E se le donne scarseggiavano, pensò Burt con un sorriso soddisfatto, be’, era con ciò che si aveva a disposizione che si doveva lavorare.
*
Finn e Kurt erano nati da due madri diverse, ma ciò non era mai stato d’impedimento per l’affetto genuinamente fraterno che li legava. Finn aveva sempre ammirato Kurt per la sua bellezza, la sua educazione e la sua delicatezza. Lui che fin da piccolo non aveva voluto altro che andare in guerra, girare il mondo e servire la propria patria – e che poi era stato doppiamente deluso dal proprio destino, che non solo lo legava per sempre ai possedimenti paterni e che perciò avrebbe fatto di lui un proprietario terriero prima che un soldato, ma che per giunta aveva gettato il Principato nella più noiosa e lunga pace che si fosse mai vista in quel Paese, proprio in corrispondenza con la sua adolescenza e quella che dunque avrebbe potuto essere la sua prima chiamata alle armi – trovava incredibilmente divertente quel fratellino-barra-sorellina che, data la giovane età di entrambi, non aveva mai visto abbigliato come un maschietto, ma sempre e solo come una femminuccia. Fin da piccolo, infatti, Kurt era stato educato come una donzella, e trattato parimenti, e perciò era stato per Finn incredibilmente facile perdere di vista la realtà per la quale, sotto quelle soavi stoffe da donna, si nascondeva un corpo da uomo.
Kurt era per Finn niente più e niente meno che una sorella da ammirare, coccolare e adorare devotamente. Una delicata ragazza da proteggere ed alla quale stare accanto per poter meglio godere della sua bellezza, della gentilezza dei suoi gesti e della delicatezza della sua persona. Entrambi amavano trascorrere del tempo insieme, cavalcare ai margini della foresta o attorno allo splendido lago che si trovava a qualche chilometro di distanza dalla villa, ma dal momento che non sempre era possibile concedersi questa divertente attività spesso ripiegavano sulla lettura. Quasi ogni pomeriggio, che fosse estate o inverno, Finn prendeva dalla biblioteca paterna un volume di quegli splendidi poemi epici sull’amore e sulla guerra la cui lettura sovente colorava del rosso acceso delle rose in primavera le guance di Kurt, e ne declamava qualche pagina al fratello, restando seduto al suo fianco e reggendo il libro con una mano e le sue pallide dita sottili con l’altra.
Erano impegnati in questa piacevole attività anche quando Brittany e Santana irruppero a disturbare la loro quiete, quel giorno. L’eroe del poema stava dedicando alla propria dama un sonetto di intenso ardore e vivida emozione, e Finn stava divertendosi oltremodo nell’osservare la pelle quasi trasparente di Kurt avvampare sulle gote e sul collo, preda dell’imbarazzo che le parole tanto ardite del cavaliere lo costringevano a provare, quando le due dame fecero il loro ingresso nella stanza.
- Brittany, Santana. – si affrettò a sorridere Kurt, alzandosi in piedi ed andando loro incontro, nascondendo il proprio rossore dietro ai veli che scendevano giù dal suo capo, - Quali nuove? Ho sentito del trambusto, giù in cortile.
- Ciò vuol forse dire che non mi stavate ascoltando, fratello? – rise Finn, alzandosi in piedi ed affiancandosi a lui solo per vedere se le sue parole lo mettevano ulteriormente in imbarazzo, cosa che puntualmente accadde.
- Ma cosa dite, fratello? – mormorò Kurt, nascondendosi pudicamente dietro al velo, - Ho solo sentito dei rumori. Ordunque, Santana, Brittany, ditemi.
- Buone nuove, invero, signorino Kurt. – iniziò Santana con un inchino, lasciando poi la parola a Brittany. La quale sorrise con evidente soddisfazione, si profuse a propria volta in un elegante inchino e dunque parlò.
- Sam, il nostro garzone, si è evidentemente innamorato di sua maestà il principe. – disse. Se la camera non fosse stata spoglia e spartana, come ad una donzella di campagna quale Kurt avrebbe dovuto essere si addiceva, quadri sarebbero caduti dalle pareti, e piatti sarebbero piovuti dal cielo fracassandosi al suolo.
- Co-Come…? – balbettò Kurt, incerto.
- Non badatele, signorino Kurt. – sospirò Santana, sollevando gli occhi al cielo, - Conoscete Brittany, d’altronde.
- Come sarebbe a dire? – domandò la ragazza, vagamente offesa, - E tutto quel parlare di portamento regale, fieri capelli corvini e splendidi occhi?
- Era solo un modo per annunciare l’arrivo della sua graziosa maestà, Britt. – le spiegò Santana, con un altro sospiro arreso, ed appena ebbe pronunciato quelle parole fu evidente, dalla diversa tensione dell’aria, che qualcosa in Kurt era cambiato. Le due donne e Finn si voltarono immediatamente a guardarlo, per notare che, al colmo dello stupore, aveva lasciato ricadere i lunghi veli lungo i fianchi appena sottolineati dal vestito a gonna retta e priva di fronzoli che indossava. Le sue guance s’erano colorate di un rosa vivido e fanciullesco, e i suoi occhi chiari brillavano d’emozione. Finn aggrottò le sopracciglia, decisamente poco compiaciuto.
- Sua maestà… è qui? – esalò Kurt in un sospiro sognante, e le sue due dame di compagnia sorrisero, annuendo in segno di conferma.
- Arriverà in una manciata di minuti. – precisò Santana.
- Si stava abbeverando al lago coi suoi cavalli e i suoi affascinanti cortigiani. – aggiunse Brittany, fornendo particolari che nessuno sentiva il bisogno di conoscere.
- …sì. – annuì Kurt, e poi si rivolse a Finn, poggiando delicatamente entrambe le mani sul suo avambraccio e guardandolo con dolcezza, - Fratello, vi dispiacerebbe lasciarmi, adesso? Vorrei cambiarmi d’abito, per essere pronto per il momento in cui incontrerò sua maestà.
- Sì, naturalmente. – annuì Finn, sporgendosi a lasciare un lieve bacio sulla pallida fronte del fratello minore, - Ma non agghindatevi troppo. – lo rimproverò scherzosamente, agitandogli un dito davanti al viso, - Non sono ancora pronto a perdervi in favore di uno sciocco, impomatato principe a cavallo.
- Fratello! – sbottò Kurt, gonfiando le guance, mentre Brittany e Santana ridevano civettuole, affiancandolo, - Non siate offensivo nei confronti di sua maestà! Vi prego, provate ad essere gentile! Sapete bene quanto ammiro la sua regale persona!
- Come potrei non saperlo bene? A stento conversate d’altro! – rise Finn, esalando un sospiro paziente e premendo lievemente la punta del dito contro la punta del naso del fratello, - Ma basta ridere e scherzare, adesso vi lascio. Tornerò a prendervi per scortarvi in cortile quando il principe sarà giunto. A dopo. – sorrise, salutandolo con un cenno della mano e lasciandolo solo con le sue dame per lavarsi e cambiarsi d’abito.
*
- Lord Hummel! – sorrise entusiasta il principe Blaine, scapicollandosi giù da cavallo e rischiando di rotolare per terra sulle sue gambe di modeste dimensioni mentre si precipitava con esagerata veemenza verso il padrone della tenuta, - Quale immenso piacere conoscervi, finalmente! La mia balia non faceva che raccontarmi delle vostre avventure, per farmi addormentare la sera! La leggenda del vostro destriero meccanico su quattro ruote, col quale potevate attraversare l’intera regione in meno di mezza giornata di viaggio, era la mia preferita, da piccolo!
- Tutte leggende, appunto, mio principe. – rise Burt, porgendogli la mano e stringendola vigorosamente, - I miei macchinari non sono giunti che ai confini di Lima, né tantomeno io ho mai osato spingermi oltre. Troppo poco affidabili, e di indubbio poco interesse per la vostra persona.
- Scommetto che invece mi interesseranno tantissimo. – insistette Blaine, mentre anche i suoi compagni scendevano a terra, lasciando la cura delle loro cavalcature ad un ragazzotto piuttosto tozzo, robusto, dall’espressione cupa e con due piccoli occhi sfuggenti sul volto a conferirgli un’aria sgradevolmente furtiva e scontrosa. – Vorrò vederle, anzi, tutte quante.
- Ed io ve le mostrerò con piacere. – annuì Burt, lanciando un’occhiata al porticato e notando con un sorriso l’arrivo ormai prossimo di Kurt, avvolto nel suo più ricco e sontuoso vestito, cavallerescamente scortato da Finn in alta uniforme. – Ma temo che dovrò sbrigarmi a mostrarvele, o rischio che, paragonate a quanto altro di bello hanno da offrirvi le mie modeste terre, voi le troviate ancor più banali di quanto esse già non siano.
Blaine inarcò un sopracciglio, in un primo momento incerto su quanto Lord Hummel stesse cercando di dirgli, ma quando, seguendo il suo sguardo, incontrò la snella e quasi evanescente figura di Kurt al braccio del proprio fratello maggiore, ogni parola si spense nel fondo della sua gola, ed i suoi occhi non poterono che fissarsi su di lui, mentre lo osservava avvicinarsi con movenze lente ed eleganti, seguito dalle sue due dame di compagnia.
- Principe Blaine, è un onore avervi in casa nostra. – disse immediatamente Finn, abbandonando il braccio del fratello per tributargli il saluto militare, prima di tornare a sorreggere Kurt come egli avesse bisogno di un appiglio per non cadere.
- Mio principe, - intervenne Burt, avvicinandosi ai suoi due figli, - lasciate che vi presenti i miei due gioielli più preziosi: il mio primogenito Finn, e… non so se avete mai sentito parlare del mio secondogenito, Kurt.
Blaine, il respiro sospeso e gli occhi brillanti di genuina meraviglia, si avvicinò a Kurt, inginocchiandosi al suo cospetto ed aspettando che lui gli porgesse la mano per stringerla fra le proprie dita, sfiorandone appena il dorso con le labbra in un bacio rispettoso e casto.
- Avrei dovuto essere sordo per non sentirne parlare. – confessò sollevandosi in piedi, mentre Kurt distoglieva pudicamente lo sguardo, - Siete davvero incantevole come si racconta. Ed… è un piacere conoscere anche voi, Finn. – aggiunse, cercando di riprendere padronanza del proprio raziocinio e salutando il giovane signore di quelle terre con un cenno del capo, - Della vostra intelligenza si parla in termini molto lusinghieri, alla mia corte. Spero di poter passare molto tempo in vostra compagnia.
- La speranza è ricambiata, mio principe. – rispose Finn con un sorriso spavaldo, aggiungendo mentalmente che più tempo Blaine avrebbe passato con lui, meno gliene sarebbe rimasto per portar via suo fratello Kurt.
- Sono contento di sentirvelo dire. – annuì Blaine, con un sorriso che parve a Finn sinceramente entusiasta. – Ora, Lord Hummel, - riprese, voltandosi verso Burt, - mi rincresce chiedervi un tale favore così all’improvviso, ma io e la mia modesta compagnia siamo in viaggio ormai da parecchi giorni, ed ancora parecchia strada ci separa dalla Foresta Nera, ove siamo diretti. Posso contare sulla vostra ospitalità, per qualche giorno? Il tempo necessario per rifocillarci, ritemprare i nostri spiriti e prepararci a ripartire?
- Mio signore, vi prego, - gli sorrise Burt, incoraggiante, - considerate la mia umile dimora come fosse casa vostra, per tutto il tempo che riterrete opportuno o che vi piacerà fermarvi.
Blaine sorrise entusiasta, annuendo e sporgendosi ad abbracciare Burt col calore usualmente riservato ad una persona amata e conosciuta da lungo tempo.
- Burt, permettetemi di chiamarvi per nome come un amico, e concedetemi il privilegio di fare voi lo stesso con me. – disse, stringendogli la mano, - E lasciate anche che vi presenti il mio seguito, ho portato con me solo i miei amici più fidati.
- Mio signore, sarei davvero un suddito indegno se non conoscessi già di fama gli esimi componenti del vostro consiglio. Lord Montgomery, Lord Thompson, Lord Hardwood, è un piacere avervi con noi. – li salutò con un educato cenno del capo. – Mi è invece ignoto il giovane signore dai capelli biondi che vi accompagna, Blaine.
- Oh, come ho potuto dimenticare di presentarvelo immediatamente! – sbottò il principe, sollevando gli occhi al cielo, esasperato dalla propria stessa distrazione, - Si tratta di Jesse St. James, stimato principe di Carmel e mio caro amico. – disse, poggiandogli una mano sulla spalla. Rachel, in piedi in mezzo al resto della servitù alla spalle di Lord Hummel, non poté fare a meno di concedersi un tremito emozionato nel sentire il nome di quel lontano paese, e tale tremito non sfuggì agli occhi di Finn, fermo a pochi metri da lei ed ancora immobile accanto al proprio fratello.
- È un piacere fare la vostra conoscenza, principe. – disse Burt, porgendo la mano per una stretta vigorosa anche a Jesse, - E sarà mio onore ospitare voi e il vostro seguito in casa mia. Posso chiedere alle vostre maestà qual è il motivo del vostro viaggio? – chiese quindi, tornando a rivolgersi a Blaine, il quale sembrò gonfiarsi, orgoglioso come un galletto, prima di rispondere.
- Fonti certe hanno parlato della presenza di una strega nella Foresta Nera, ai confini dei vostri possedimenti, Burt. – spiegò, - Avendo già il mio amico Jesse liberato il proprio principato dalla malvagia strega che teneva sotto scacco la popolazione privandola dell’acqua, ho chiesto il suo aiuto per sconfiggere la megera che priva noi della gioia di avere figlie femmine di sangue nostro da crescere.
- Una strega, mio signore? – chiese Burt, inarcando un sopracciglio mentre Kurt, al suo fianco, non riusciva a trattenere una risatina, che cercò invano di nascondere dietro il dorso della mano.
- Noto dello scetticismo nella vostra domanda. – sorrise Blaine, - E nella splendida risata del vostro altrettanto splendido secondogenito. – aggiunse divertito, voltandosi a guardare Kurt, - Davvero credete che l’ipotesi di una strega sia così improbabile?
- Mio signore, - disse Kurt, risolvendosi a parlare con la massima serenità, la voce dolce, femminea e soave, dopo un breve ma elegante cenno di scuse, - non lasciate che la mia posizione vi tragga in errore. Sono stato educato come una dama, ma sono stato anche istruito come un ragazzo. Streghe e fattucchiere, qui a Lima, nella capitale del razionalismo, sono sempre viste come un’ipotesi improbabile, al pari di tutte le altre creature di cui sovente leggo nei miei libri. Il mio cuore palpita al pensiero di un’avventura vissuta fra cavalieri dalle armature scintillanti, draghi sputafuoco e perfide streghe, ma la mia mente è salda, e mi impedisce di credere a simili storie.
Blaine rise, grandemente divertito, nell’allungare una mano a stringere nuovamente le dita pallide di Kurt, portandole alle labbra in un gesto delicato e rispettoso.
- Sarete una compagnia incredibilmente piacevole, mio caro Kurt. – commentò.
- Ma non prendetevi gioco delle mie parole, maestà. – lo avvertì lui, gli occhi brillanti e pieni di scintillante e battagliero orgoglio, - Il mio aspetto potrà forse ingannarvi, ma la mia lingua non è avvezza a cortesie che sarebbero unicamente formali. Mostrate di rispettarmi, ed io mostrerò uguale rispetto per voi.
La presa delle dita di Blaine attorno a quelle di Kurt si fece più stretta, mentre i suoi occhi ricambiavano con ardore l’intensità dello sguardo del ragazzo.
- Sono assolutamente sincero. – ribadì seriamente, pur senza rinunciare all’ombra di sorriso che gli piegava le labbra, - Siete meraviglioso, ed i giorni che passerò al vostro fianco saranno indubbiamente i più belli della mia vita.
Kurt si ritrasse con un sorriso divertito, stringendosi pudicamente nelle spalle.
- Grazie, mio principe. I vostri complimenti riempiono il mio cuore di orgoglio. Ma temo sia il caso che io mi ritiri, per stasera. – si voltò con grazia, cercando lo sguardo di Finn, - Fratello, vi sarebbe di troppo disturbo riaccompagnarmi alle mie stanze?
- Non saprei immaginare un’incombenza più piacevole di questa, fratello caro. – rispose Finn, sorridendogli teneramente. Blaine li osservò andare via, affrettandosi a prendere le mani di Burt non appena li vide scomparire.
- Vostro figlio, Burt, è un fiore di rara bellezza. – disse, la voce scossa da un fremito di viva emozione, - Ma avremo modo di discuterne ampiamente in futuro. – aggiunse con imbarazzo, come temesse di essersi spinto troppo oltre. – Ora, vi sarei grato se mostraste al mio stalliere dove sistemare i cavalli per la notte. E dopo, sarò contento di unirmi alla vostra famiglia per cena.
*
Kurt preferì cenare nelle proprie stanze, circondato dalle proprie dame di compagnia e dal resto della servitù, al quale era da sempre molto affezionato. Finn sarebbe stato felice di potersi fermare a desinare in sua compagnia, ma gli obblighi della propria carica lo costrinsero a cenare con suo padre e gli ospiti, sedendo alla destra del principe. Blaine non fece altro che parlare della propria missione e di quanto meraviglioso fosse ai suoi occhi il secondogenito del suo squisito ospite, ed i suoi argomenti di conversazione si erano poi ridotti al solo Kurt quando egli stesso, nel dopocena, vedendo approssimarsi l’ora del riposo, era apparso nel grande cortile che era stato addobbato per la cena, per augurare a tutti la buonanotte e per obbedire all’ordine del proprio padre, che gli aveva chiesto di fermarsi a cantare per gli ospiti prima di ritirarsi.
La sua voce, così elegante e ferma, aveva stregato il principe fino a costringerlo ad una mezz’ora di quieto silenzio, di cui Finn fu molto grato, ma che poi s’interruppe bruscamente quando appunto egli riprese a cantare le lodi della perfezione di Kurt, aggiungendo qua e là accenni vari a quanto la sua corte, a Westerville, avrebbe potuto trarre beneficio dalla presenza di una tale meravigliosa creatura.
- Ma ditemi, piuttosto, principe, - lo interruppe ad un certo punto Finn, ben disposto perfino a sopportare altre due ore di delirio su streghe, pozioni e malefici, pur di non dover più sentire nominare il proprio fratello come se già il principe fosse certo di poterlo sposare entro l’anno, - se davvero doveste imbattervi in questa tanto temuta strega, come la uccidereste?
- Ammetto di non essere granché ferrato, sull’argomento. – disse Blaine, con evidente imbarazzo, stringendosi nelle spalle, - È per questo che ho chiesto consiglio al principe Jesse. Lui sa già come fare, ed essendo il suo principato spesso stato vittima degli incantesimi di qualche vecchia maliarda, e provenendo dunque egli da un’antica e stimata stirpe di cacciatori di streghe, sarà più che felice di rispondere ad ogni vostra domanda.
Finn si rivolse dunque all’ospite, e così fece tutto il resto della tavolata, composta non solo dagli abitanti della casa, ma anche da alcuni importanti vassalli di Lord Hummel, ai quali, poco dopo l’arrivo del principe, erano stati inviati dei messi, poiché fossero avvisati della necessità di presenziare a cena col sovrano quella sera stessa.
- Contrariamente alle credenze popolari, - cominciò Jesse, accavallando le gambe e stendendosi più comodamente contro lo schienale della propria sedia, - le streghe non possono essere uccise col fuoco. Fortunatamente, non viviamo più in un periodo di oscurantismo religioso, come sicuramente voi dotti abitanti di Lima sarete contenti di sentirmi dire. – affermò con un sorriso, - No, io compatisco le povere donne che in epoche antiche sono morte arse vive sui roghi della Santa Madre Chiesa, - disse, sottolineando l’appellativo con un ghigno sardonico, - poiché esse erano tutte innocenti. Le vere streghe non possono essere bruciate perché cospargono costantemente la loro pelle di un unguento che le rende resistenti alle fiamme. E questo non perché abbiano paura degli esseri umani e degli sciocchi metodi che in passato hanno usato per cercare di ucciderle, ma perché durante i Sabba è il fuoco stesso dell’Inferno a lambirle, e da quello loro hanno ormai imparato a proteggersi. Se le fiamme di Lucifero non le feriscono, mi spiegate in che modo potrebbero ferirle quelle degli uomini?
- State dunque dicendo che non c’è modo di uccidere una semplice donna? – interloquì Burt, inarcando un sopracciglio, dubbioso, - Signore, voi vi burlate di noi. Vivere in campagna, lontano dai fasti della Capitale, è forse sinonimo d’ignoranza, per vostra maestà?
- Non oserei mai. – si affrettò a dire Jesse, sollevando entrambe le mani, - E d’altronde non ho detto che niente può ucciderle, solo che il fuoco non può farlo. I miei alchimisti hanno sviluppato la formula di un liquido altamente corrosivo, che abbiamo chiamato acido, dal latino acidus. È in grado di sciogliere in pochi minuti un intero corpo umano, se concentrato.
Finn, così come gran parte degli ospiti, trasalì al solo udire quelle parole.
- Ciò di cui parlate con tanta leggerezza è… è raccapricciante. – disse, deglutendo a fatica.
- Forse. – annuì Jesse, giungendo le mani in grembo, - Ma siamo uomini di mondo, e la morte non ci spaventa. Dico bene?
- Non saprei dire, signore. – rispose Finn, con evidente astio, - Ho viaggiato poco e tengo ancora in grande considerazione la vita delle persone. Forse non sono un uomo così di mondo come credete voi.
Burt tossicchiò appena, lanciando al figlio un’occhiata, come a chiedergli silenziosamente di placare il suo spirito ribelle.
- E come avreste intenzione di catturare una donna che non ha paura nemmeno del fuoco? – domandò, per riportare la conversazione su argomenti più lievi, - Il vostro… come l’avete chiamato? Acido, sì. Il vostro acido può ucciderla, ma se è un liquido non sarà poi così difficile da evitare. E le streghe, secondo le leggende, sanno volare.
Jesse annuì, pensieroso.
- In effetti, esiste un solo momento in cui le streghe perdono tutti i loro poteri. Ed è imparando a sfruttare quel singolo momento che io e i miei avi abbiamo imparato a catturarle. – sorrise compiaciuto, tirando le labbra in una smorfia quasi terrificante mentre portava alle labbra il proprio calice per un sorso di vino. – Esse sono completamente indifese nella mezz’ora successiva all’amplesso. – rivelò con un certo divertimento, mentre i commensali accoglievano la notizia chi borbottando, chi spalancando gli occhi in segno di stupore e chi – specialmente i più giovani – arrossendo vividamente.
- State dicendo che è così che le catturate? – esalò Finn, sconvolto. Suo padre cercò di fermarlo con un’altra occhiata, ma lui, totalmente concentrato sull’espressione sottilmente divertita di Jesse, non la vide, o se la vide, la ignorò. – Approfittate di loro e poi, nel momento in cui sono più vulnerabili, le catturate e le sciogliete nell’acido?
- Andiamo, - sbuffò Jesse, gesticolando vago, - è di una strega, che stiamo parlando.
- Ma è ancora un essere umano! – quasi urlò Finn, scattando in piedi, oltraggiato. – Sempre che esista. – aggiunse, abbassando il tiro e cercando di riprendere il controllo schiarendosi brevemente la voce. – Chiedo perdono, - disse, chinando il capo in segno di scuse, - sono molto stanco e non mi sono accorto di quanto sgarbatamente mi stessi ponendo nei vostri confronti. Col vostro permesso, padre, - disse, rivolgendosi a Burt, - mi ritirerei per la notte.
Burt annuì, allungandosi a poggiare brevemente una mano sulla sua, prima di lasciarlo andare.
- Chiedo scusa anch’io, - disse l’uomo, quando il figlio fu sparito oltre il porticato e all’interno della villa, - Finn sa essere molto appassionato, quando discute di argomenti che per qualche motivo lo toccano.
- Quello delle streghe è un argomento che lo tocca? – buttò lì Jesse con noncuranza, guadagnandosi un’occhiata infastidita da parte di Burt.
- Credo che a toccarlo fosse più che altro lo scarso rispetto che la vostra maestà dimostra per la vita umana, principe. – precisò Burt, forzandosi a sorridere con aria non troppo irritata.
- Via, via. – cercò di placare gli animi Blaine, frapponendosi fra i due con un sorriso meno stentato e più aperto, - Burt, non avete alcun motivo di scusarvi, e neanche vostro figlio. È normale reagire così di fronte ad abitudini così palesemente diverse dalle proprie. Domani io stesso mi occuperò di parlare con lui, per riportarlo verso più miti consigli, e sono sicuro che l’acidità nelle parole del mio caro amico Jesse derivi dalla grande stanchezza da cui solo una sana notte di sonno potrà guarirci.
Burt si alzò in piedi, allargando le braccia in un gesto di rinnovata amicizia e sorridendo più serenamente.
- Lasciate dunque che sia la mia casa a guarirvi dal vostro male. – disse, - Seguite pure i servi che vi sono stati assegnati. Essi vi condurranno alle vostre stanze. Vi auguro un sonno sereno, amici cari.
- E la stessa cosa auguriamo noi a voi, Burt. – sorrise Blaine, alzandosi a propria volta in piedi ed obbligando pertanto il resto dei commensali a fare lo stesso, - A domani, e grazie ancora.
*
Il giorno dopo, Kurt si alzò di buon mattino, cosa per lui decisamente inusuale. Gli era stato insegnato che una brava ragazza, una signorina di buona famiglia, non avrebbe mai dovuto dormire oltre l’orario in cui il sole avesse invaso appieno il pavimento lastricato del cortile di fronte alla casa, ma sovente a lui capitava di dormire anche ben oltre quell’ora, fino a dopo mezzogiorno. Sapeva bene che avrebbe dovuto darsi maggiormente da fare per incarnare meglio l’ideale della donzella cortese che a suo padre – e a tutti gli uomini del principato – tanto mancava, ma non era nato femmina, e c’erano vezzi del proprio essere indiscutibilmente maschio che faticava a scrollarsi di dosso.
Quel giorno, però, l’eccitazione per la presenza di sua maestà il principe e del suo seguito fra le mura della sua casa era tale da impedirgli di restare a poltrire fra le lenzuola profumate ancora a lungo. Spalancò gli occhi che non dovevano essere neanche passate le otto, e saltò immediatamente in piedi. Ancora avvolto nella propria ampia e comoda camicia da notte, chiamò Santana e Brittany perché gli preparassero un bagno e lo aiutassero a vestirsi.
- Come mai sveglio così di buon’ora, signorino Kurt? – domandò Santana, mentre la testa di Brittany ciondolava per il sonno, nonostante la ragazza cercasse di tenersi sveglia sniffando le piccole sfere di sali da bagno che poi lanciava nell’acqua bollente, osservandole disciogliersi e rilasciare il loro dolce profumo.
- Ho intenzione di andare a fare una passeggiata a cavallo. – rispose lui, aspettando che Santana gli facesse cenno di poter entrare dopo aver tastato la temperatura dell’acqua ed essersi assicurata che fosse sufficientemente tiepida, - C’è un prato meraviglioso che si estende per un paio di decine di metri attorno al lago. In questa stagione è sempre pieno di fiori. Voglio raccoglierne un po’ e intrecciare ghirlande da regalare ai nostri ospiti.
- Soprattutto a sua maestà il principe, mh? – lo prese in giro Santana, inumidendo la spugna per poi passargliela sulle spalle pallide, appena ricoperte di efelidi. Kurt ridacchiò, nascondendo il volto dietro le mani mentre si scuoteva tutto, schizzando un po’ d’acqua fuori dalla vasca.
- Cosa dici, Santana? – rispose, - Non vorrai insinuare che io abbia dell’interesse nei confronti del principe Blaine?
- Insinuarlo? – rise la donna, inarcando un sopracciglio.
- Che gioco è? – sbadigliò Brittany, spargendo un altro po’ di sali nell’acqua, - Indovina chi dice bugie? Voglio partecipare anch’io. Mmh, l’altroieri ho giocato a volano con il gatto e ho perso. Allora, Tana? Chi mente, io o il signorino Kurt?
Kurt e Santana si voltarono a guardarla con aria un po’ incuriosita e un po’ genuinamente sgomenta.
- …Britt, lascia perdere. – le consigliò Santana, occupandosi di sciacquare via il sapone dalla pelle di Kurt ed alzandosi poi in piedi per recuperare degli asciugamani nei quali potesse avvolgersi uscendo dall’acqua.
Le due dame prepararono per lui un vestito adatto alle sue intenzioni, e Kurt indossò il proprio completo da cavallerizza per la prima volta da quando la primavera era finalmente tornata a baciare i campi del villaggio di Lima dopo i rigori dell’inverno appena trascorso. Si ammirò allo specchio e sorrise compiaciuto, mentre recuperava il frustino ed indossava un paio di calzature appropriate. Lasciò detto che sarebbe tornato per pranzo, ed uscì di corsa.
Il cortile era animato e pieno di persone. La servitù stava stendendo il bucato rimasto tutta la notte a mollo in acqua perché potesse pulirsi, e si stava premurando di farlo in fretta, perché per ora di pranzo lo spazio antistante il porticato fosse libero ed in ordine, di modo da poter sistemare lì i tavoli per accogliere tutti gli ospiti che sarebbero giunti per dividere il pasto con sua maestà. Al contempo, Puck e la sua squadra di garzoni si stavano muovendo attivamente per cominciare a raccogliere in enormi sacchi di iuta le provviste che poi sarebbero state consegnate al principe e alla sua compagnia perché potessero fungere da sostentamento per quanto rimaneva loro del viaggio verso la Foresta Nera.
Kurt salutò tutti con raggianti sorrisi ed educati cenni del capo, ma non si trattenne a chiacchierare con nessuno, troppo emozionato dall’idea di andar per campi a raccogliere fiori per il suo principe per potere anche solo pensare a fermarsi più del necessario. Raggiunse celermente la stalla, aspettandosi di trovare Gaga, la sua splendida cavalla bianca, legata come al solito nell’usuale cubicolo che da sempre le era assegnato in una stalla che era per lo più quasi sempre vuota, e fece un passetto indietro, stupito, quando invece vide molti più cavalli di quelli che si sarebbe aspettato legati un po’ ovunque per tutto l’enorme stanzone. Ci mise in effetti qualche secondo a ricordare che, oltre al principe, era presente anche una nutrita compagnia di gentiluomini giunta nelle loro terre a cavallo, e che per quei destrieri un posto s’era pur dovuto trovare. Gaga era stata quasi sicuramente spostata in un punto più riparato delle stalle, lontana da tutti quegli splendidi stalloni purosangue per i quali avrebbe rappresentato solo una tentazione.
Si mosse furtivamente, più che altro perché non sapeva con esattezza dove Gaga fosse stata spostata, e doverla cercare con gli occhi gli impediva di stare attento a dove metteva i piedi, ma concentrato com’era nella ricerca della propria cavalla non percepì il lieve rumore che gli si avvicinava da un fianco, e fece perciò un considerevole salto indietro, condito da un urlo di notevole potenza, quando uno sconosciuto gli si parò di fronte all’improvviso, puntandogli un forcone a pochi centimetri dal naso.
- Ah. – disse l’uomo, abbassando il forcone appena l’ebbe riconosciuto, - Siete voi.
- Vorrei poter dire lo stesso, signore, - rispose Kurt, stringendosi nelle spalle e posandosi una mano sul petto che si alzava e si abbassava velocemente al ritmo del proprio respiro affannoso, - ma temo di non conoscervi, e vi sarei grato se poteste identificarvi.
- Sono lo stalliere del principe. – disse quello, lanciando il forcone a pochi centimetri da Kurt e costringendolo ad un altro saltello spaventato per evitarlo. – Non vi avrebbe colpito. Fate sempre tutte queste scene?
- Come… come osate?! – sbottò Kurt, oltraggiato, avvampando d’imbarazzo, - Portatemi rispetto, signore! Io non vi conosco!
- Be’, nemmeno io so molto più del vostro nome e di quello che siete. Anche se non potrei dirlo con certezza. – aggiunse malignamente, lanciandogli un’occhiata vagamente disgustata che sembrò spogliarlo nudo per spiare cosa ci fosse sotto ai suoi vestiti, un’occhiata talmente penetrante che Kurt sentì quasi il bisogno di stringersi in un abbraccio per cercare di ripararsi da quell’incredibile sfoggio di impertinenza.
- Quanto avete appena detto è estremamente maleducato, signore. Anche se non potrei dirlo con certezza. Se siate un signore o meno, intendo. – ribatté Kurt, acido. L’uomo non cadde nella trappola della provocazione che Kurt gli aveva teso, e scrollò le spalle con alterigia.
- Nel paese dal quale provengo, gli uomini non indossano la gonna. Non si comportano da signorine e non civettano con altri uomini come se fosse normale farlo. – spiegò freddamente, avvicinandosi alla sua Gaga ed accarezzandole il muso con una sorta di intenerita compassione che Kurt non poté fare a meno di trovare irritante.
- Be’, questo paese non è quello da cui provenite voi, evidentemente. – sbottò, - Perché se foste di queste parti sapreste bene per quale motivo mi comporto così. Ed allontanatevi dalla mia cavalla!
- È vostra? – chiese l’uomo, inarcando un sopracciglio proprio come non potesse credere alle proprie orecchie, - In ogni caso, conosco bene la situazione in cui versa questo principato. Ma ciò non rende il vostro comportamento meno disgustoso. – commentò, fermandosi davanti a lui e scrutandolo con fastidio evidente, quasi non riuscisse nemmeno a sopportare la sua vista.
- Voi siete… siete senza dubbio il più sgradevole uomo che abbia mai incontrato! – strillò Kurt, inviperito, - Sellate immediatamente la mia cavalla e poi sparite!
- C’è qualche problema? – disse qualcuno alle loro spalle, e Kurt si sentì saltare il cuore in gola mentre riconosceva la voce del principe e si voltava frettolosamente verso di lui.
- …no, mio signore. – rispose lo stalliere per entrambi, allontanandosi per recuperare la sella di Gaga e sistemargliela sul dorso.
- No? No?! – esclamò Kurt con veemenza, le mani sui fianchi, voltandosi a guardarlo, - Non siete solo sgradevole e maleducato, siete anche un vigliacco. E puzzate! – lo offese, tendendo la mano, - Le redini. – ordinò furioso. L’uomo non lo degnò neanche di uno sguardo mentre gliele porgeva. Kurt sbuffò offeso, dirigendosi a passo marziale verso l’uscita delle stalle. – Perdonatemi, maestà, ma il vostro servo mi ha messo di malumore. Penso che andrò, adesso.
- A-Aspettate! – disse Blaine, tendendo una mano verso di lui e soffiando deluso nel vedere che non rispondeva al suo invito, preferendo saltare a cavallo e partire al galoppo verso la campagna, - Dave! – ordinò, voltandosi verso lo stalliere, - Sella Pavarotti.
- Sì, mio signore. – annuì l’uomo, trattenendo un borbottio contrariato. Nonostante fosse lui il motivo per il quale in quel momento si trovava lì, solo al mondo e lontano dal suo paese, aveva sempre stimato molto il sovrano, e non riusciva a capire come uno come lui, uno che avrebbe potuto semplicemente cambiare la legge che impediva a sovrani e nobiluomini di sposare le schiave, preferisse invece correre dietro a quel mostro in gonnella piuttosto che trovarsi una donna vera e creare con lei una famiglia. A lui, le donne non erano mai interessate, ma quello scherzo della natura non era né una donna, né un uomo. Era solo disgustoso.
Obbedì nondimeno all’ordine del proprio padrone, e fu così che, pochi minuti dopo, a cavallo del suo Pavarotti, Blaine riuscì a raggiungere Kurt.
- Cavalcate come un uomo. – rise, affiancandolo.
- Faccio molte cose come un uomo. – rispose rudemente Kurt, ancora infastidito dall’incontro di poco prima.
- Vi prego, non lasciate che qualunque cosa possa avervi turbato prima rovini questi momenti che possiamo passare insieme senza che intorno ci sia qualcuno a disturbarci. – lo implorò, accelerando il passo del proprio cavallo per potergli tagliare la strada ed obbligarlo a fermarsi. Kurt lo fissò, gli occhi fiammeggianti di rabbia, le redini strette fra le dita. – Qualunque cosa il mio stalliere possa aver detto per offendervi, lasciate che io possa fare ammenda in sua vece. Concedetemi l’onore di scusarmi al suo posto.
Kurt sospirò, ordinando al proprio cavallo di affiancarsi a quello del principe.
- Non dovete scusarvi, - lo rassicurò con un mezzo sorriso, - il comportamento del vostro servo non è una vostra responsabilità. Ma perdonerò volentieri tutto ciò che vorrete, se verrete a cavallo con me.
Blaine sorrise, mentre entrambi partivano al trotto verso il lago.
- Torno a sentirmi in difetto, - confessò con un sorriso, seguendo il cavallo di Kurt e restando qualche centimetro indietro in segno di rispetto, - il piacere della vostra compagnia è tutto mio, mentre io temo di non essere in grado di fornirne una altrettanto ammirevole.
- Non dite sciocchezze, principe, la modestia non si addice a un uomo del vostro lignaggio. – sorrise Kurt, indicandogli la strada che girava attorno al lago, - Così come non si addice al mio. Quell’uomo, piuttosto, il vostro stalliere. Come potete sopportare un individuo tanto ripugnante nel vostro seguito?
- Ripugnante? – rise Blaine, - Davvero lo trovate così disgustoso?
- A dir poco, mio signore. – annuì Kurt, le labbra che si piegavano in una smorfia inorridita al solo riportare alla mente gli avvenimenti di pochi minuti prima.
Blaine rise ancora, cominciando ad adocchiare gli splendidi campi ricchi di fiori che riempivano i prati poco oltre la curva più ampia del lago.
- Nessuno conosce i cavalli meglio di Dave. – rispose, - L’ho conosciuto durante una delle mie campagne militari. Quella da cui proviene è una terra selvaggia. Lì gli uomini vestono di pelle di camoscio e vivono in tende dello stesso materiale, rette da pezzi di legno che ricavano a mani nude dai pochi alberi che crescono nelle vicinanze. Perdonate i suoi modi un po’ scontrosi, semplicemente non è avvezzo alla vita di corte.
- Be’, potrebbe pure imparare come ci si comporta davanti a una signora. – sbuffò Kurt, fermando il cavallo a pochi metri dalla riva del lago e scendendo di sella in un gesto fluido ed elegante. Blaine rise un’altra volta, imitandolo e conducendo Pavarotti ad abbeverarsi.
- Siete una persona ben strana, Kurt. – commentò, ma la sua voce, per quanto divertita, non nascondeva la minima traccia di sgradevole sarcasmo. Sembrava più genuinamente curiosa e a tratti perfino vagamente ammirata. – Sempre pronto a nascondervi dietro un velo quando ne sentite il bisogno, ma altrettanto pronto a ribadire che siete un uomo quando vi conviene di più.
- E d’altronde, - sorrise malizioso Kurt, chinandosi sulla riva per inumidirsi una mano e rinfrescarsi il viso e il collo, - non è forse questa la parte migliore della mia bizzarra condizione? Trarre il massimo vantaggio dalle situazioni contingenti è una caratteristica che accomuna uomini e donne in egual misura, mio signore. Ed io, modestia a parte, in questo sono maestro.
- Voi siete maestro in molte cose, Kurt. – rise Blaine, estremamente compiaciuto, - Più vi conosco e più mi convinco che la vostra presenza sarebbe indispensabile alla mia corte nella Capitale. Continuo a chiedermi come abbia fatto a vivere senza di voi fino ad ora. – sorrise, sedendosi nell’erba accanto a lui ed osservandolo raccogliere moltitudini di fiori variopinti per intrecciarli fra loro in un’allegra ghirlanda.
- Adesso mi state adulando. – sorrise Kurt, abbassando pudicamente lo sguardo, - Ed il vostro passo si sta facendo anche incredibilmente frettoloso, mio principe. Sono un suddito fedele e non potrei mai dirvi di no, qualsiasi fossero le vostre richieste nei miei confronti, - disse, sottolineando le ultime parole con un’occhiata lanciata da sotto le lunghe ciglia ricurve, - ma vi pregherei di aspettare ancora, prima di lanciarvi in proposte per le quali magari potreste cambiare idea conoscendomi meglio.
- Bello, arguto, beneducato e anche saggio! – constatò Blaine, sollevando entrambe le mani in segno di resa, - Avete almeno un difetto?
- Certo, mio signore. – ridacchiò Kurt, terminando di intrecciare la ghirlanda e poggiandola come una corona sul capo del principe, - Ne ho parecchi. Li scoprirete tutti, se vorrete intrattenervi ancora in mia compagnia.
- E vorrò. – annuì lui, sorridendo incoraggiante, per poi inspirare a pieni polmoni l’aria fresca che, portata dal venticello profumato della campagna, spazzava il prato e la superficie del lago, - Che meraviglia queste giornate di primavera.
- Già. – annuì Kurt, lasciando scorrere gli occhi sui lineamenti così deliziosamente rilassati del volto del principe, - Le adoro anch’io. Figuratevi, - mentì senza neanche arrossire, - mi sveglio sempre di buon mattino apposta per concedermi una cavalcata qui nei dintorni.
- Davvero? – chiese il principe, tornando a guardarlo, - Ho un’idea! Voglio cavalcare con voi. Voglio che usiate uno dei miei cavalli, che vediate quanto veloci possono correre!
- Uno dei vostri cavalli? – arrossì Kurt, battendo le mani e tendendosi tutto per l’emozione, - Sarebbe meraviglioso! Non ho mai cavalcato uno stallone!
- Non avevo dubbi al riguardo. – rise Blaine, - Domattina, andate da Dave. Sarà perfetto per insegnarvi a montare uno stallone senza difficoltà. È un ottimo domatore.
- Oh, principe, vi prego! – sbuffò Kurt, gonfiando le guance, - Non costringetemi a passare del tempo con quell’orribile individuo!
- Via, via! – ridacchiò Blaine, alzandosi in piedi e porgendo a Kurt una mano per aiutarlo a fare lo stesso, - Parlerò personalmente con lui e vi prometto che non oserà più mancarvi di rispetto. Da qui a tre giorni sarete perfettamente in grado di montare uno dei miei cavalli migliori, ed allora mi porterete in giro e mi mostrerete questa splendida campagna. E tutti i vostri difetti.
Controvoglia, ma nascondendo la propria delusione dietro un educato sorriso, Kurt annuì e si produsse in un breve inchino rispettoso, prima di salire nuovamente in groppa a Gaga.
- Sta bene, mio signore. – lo salutò, - Vi precedo alla villa. Possiate passare una piacevole mattinata.
Nell’osservarlo andar via, Blaine pensò che se anche il resto della giornata fosse stato orribile e disgustoso, il tempo che aveva passato con Kurt sarebbe comunque stato sufficiente per non notarlo nemmeno, e dopo un paio di minuti in accorata contemplazione del cavallo bianco che, allontanandosi, diventava sempre più piccolo, montò Pavarotti e partì in ricognizione per ispezionare i primi chilometri della strada che, quando sarebbe ripartito assieme alla propria compagnia, l’avrebbe condotto fino alla Foresta Nera.
*
- Non mi fido di quel tipo. – disse Finn, lasciando scorrere una mano fra i capelli scuri di Rachel, - È… è terrificante.
- Voi non vi fidate mai di nessuno, mio signore. – rise Rachel, rigirandosi nel suo abbraccio e guardandolo dall’alto, - Sono tutti troppo pericolosi, tutti troppo sfuggenti, e tutti sempre troppo interessati a vostro fratello. Sbaglio?
- Rachel… - si lagnò lui, afferrando uno dei morbidi cuscini che adornavano il letto e schiacciandoselo sul viso, - Quante volte ti ho detto di non darmi del voi? Quantomeno in queste situazioni!
- Spesso, mio signore. – rise ancora lei, stringendosi nelle spalle ed appoggiandosi al suo petto, - Almeno tante volte quante quelle in cui vi ho risposto che è impossibile, per me, smettere di farlo. Restate sempre il mio padrone.
- Un padrone con cui vai a letto. – precisò lui, lanciandole un’occhiata un po’ infastidita, - Davvero, è disturbante.
- Sapete cosa disturba me? – ribatté la ragazza, per nulla intimorita dal suo tono, - Vedere con quanto sussiego possiate parlare con vostro fratello, e quanto poco invece siate capace di usarne con la sottoscritta.
- Ma lui è mio fratello! – sbottò Finn, come se proprio non riuscisse a vedere dove stesse il problema. – Piuttosto, a proposito di cose disturbanti… - riprese, aggrottando le sopracciglia con estrema serietà, - non credere che mi sia sfuggita quella mossetta, ieri.
Rachel spalancò i grandi occhi castani, piegando appena il capo per lanciargli un’occhiata incuriosita.
- Non capisco di cosa stiate parlando, mio signore. – rispose, stringendosi nelle spalle.
- Sì che lo capisci. – insistette lui, sollevandosi a sedere fra i cuscini ed incrociando le braccia sul petto, - Quando il principe Blaine ha presentato quel Jesse, hai tremato. Ti ho vista. Non dirmi che ti piace, potrei morirne. È un individuo orribile.
- Ma cosa state dicendo… - borbottò Rachel, vaga, mettendosi a propria volta a sedere e coprendosi pudicamente con il lenzuolo mentre allungava una mano verso la propria sottana, appoggiata sullo schienale di una seggiola lì vicino, - Semplicemente mi ha turbato sentire che è il principe di Carmel. È da lì che provengo.
Finn spalancò gli occhi, seguendola nel movimento e trattenendo una delle sue mani fra le proprie in una carezza dolce.
- Davvero? – le chiese, cercando di tirarla nuovamente verso di sé, - Non parli mai delle tue origini.
- Perché non c’è molto da dire. – rispose lei, stringendosi nelle spalle e provando a resistere solo per un paio di secondi prima di sciogliere i muscoli e lasciare che Finn la traesse di nuovo a sé, sistemandosela addosso, - Mia madre è morta quando io non ero che una bambina, e un padre non l’avevo mai avuto. Non c’era modo per me di sostenermi da sola. Persi la casa e finii a vivere per la strada. Lì venni raccolta da due uomini che mi ripulirono, mi nutrirono e mi portarono con loro. Avevano uno spettacolo itinerante, mi diedero lezioni di canto e fecero di me ciò che sono oggi. – si concesse un breve sorriso nel raccontare di coloro i quali aveva sempre considerato come i suoi veri genitori, e poi sospirò profondamente, riprendendo il racconto. – Alla loro morte, lo spettacolo itinerante chiuse, tutti gli artisti di dispersero, ed io, che mi ero fatta una certa fama nel principato, come ben sapete sono stata assunta da vostro padre. Fine della poco interessante storia della mia vita.
- Non è affatto poco interessante. – la contraddisse Finn, con molta serietà. – Hai viaggiato, hai visto il paese. Sei stata in un sacco di luoghi. Hai imparato tanto, e sei diventata una splendida donna forte e indipendente. Che poi sono i motivi per cui mi piaci così tanto. – sorrise appena, riprendendo ad accarezzarle i capelli. – Ti invidio molto.
- Perché sono una splendida donna forte e indipendente? – rise Rachel, prendendolo un po’ in giro, e Finn rise a propria volta, pizzicandole delicatamente una spalla.
- Hai capito perfettamente cosa intendevo. – la rimproverò bonariamente, e lei si sollevò appena per sfiorargli le labbra in un bacio asciutto e casto.
- Sì, l’ho capito. E penso che dovreste dire a vostro padre che volete viaggiare anche voi, fare nuove esperienze. Ci sarà tempo per prendere in mano il feudo ed occuparsi degli affari di famiglia. Prima dovete diventare un vero uomo.
- E come faccio? – sbuffò Finn, piegando indietro il capo e scrutando il soffitto con aria risentita, - Non posso mica lasciare Kurt qui da solo. Chi si occuperebbe di lui?
- Non saprei. – rise Rachel, - Tutto il resto del mondo?
- Non sarebbe la stessa cosa. – insistette Finn, aggrottando le sopracciglia, - E smettila di prendermi in giro. Non posso andarmene prima che Kurt si sia sposato.
- Allora siete fortunato. – ridacchiò la ragazza, approfittando del suo momento di distrazione per alzarsi finalmente in piedi e cominciare a rivestirsi, - Sembra che non dovrete aspettare poi molto.
*
Il giorno seguente, tutto l’entusiasmo che aveva convinto Kurt della possibilità di sopportare svariate ore di lezione di equitazione con lo stalliere del principe per poi essere pronto a cavalcare con quest’ultimo per i lussureggianti campi del feudo di suo padre, sembrava completamente svanito. Certo, l’idea riusciva comunque a far fiorire un sorriso sulle sue labbra, ma il fatto di dover tollerare quell’orribile essere lo atterriva. Era semplicemente troppo. Non era abituato ad essere trattato con tanto evidente disprezzo, era fastidioso e faceva male. Non gli piaceva affatto.
Eppure, si disse, spianando pieghe invisibili sull’elegante ma sobrio tessuto del suo completo da cavallerizza, se voleva ottenere la felicità avrebbe anche dovuto imparare a soffrire mentre combatteva per guadagnarsela. Lo stalliere andava sopportato con coraggio e determinazione, e nel giro di un paio di giorni non sarebbe rimasto di lui che un orribile ricordo.
- Eccomi qui. – disse, entrando nella stalla e piantando entrambe le mani sui fianchi in una posa al contempo sfrontata e rigida, - Sua maestà mi ha detto che avrebbe parlato con voi per avvertirvi del mio arrivo e di quelli che sono i suoi piani per me.
L’uomo, intento a strigliare Pavarotti con attenzione ed un perfetto misto di delicatezza e forza, inizialmente sembrò non volerlo degnare di un’occhiata.
- Sedetevi lì. – disse, indicando un paio di balle di fieno accatastate in un angolo, - Non ho ancora finito di lavorare.
Kurt, oltraggiato, irrigidì le braccia lungo i fianchi e strinse i pugni.
- Come osate?! – strillò, - Sono qui apposta per prendere lezioni da voi! Il principe mi aveva detto—
- Il principe vi ha detto che io mi sarei occupato della vostra educazione equestre, sì, ne sono consapevole. – disse l’uomo, lanciandogli una breve occhiata infuocata per poi tornare a dedicare tutta la propria attenzione al cavallo placido e sereno sotto le sue mani, - Ma, vedete, le mie mansioni vengono prima di questo, visto che sono il motivo per cui il principe mi tiene con sé. Penserò a voi quando avrò terminato.
- Questo è del tutto inaccettabile! – strillò ancora Kurt, facendosi avanti e avvicinandosi a lui con aria che avrebbe voluto essere minacciosa e terribile, - Mai nessuno ha osato comportarsi così con me! Mai! In casa mia, per di più! Voi siete un bruto, un maleducato, un rifiuto, un—
- Sono uno stalliere, signore. – lo interruppe Dave, posando la spazzola sullo sgabello che aveva a fianco per poi voltarsi verso di lui, afferrarlo per le spalle e sollevarlo di peso, depositandolo pochi istanti dopo senza la minima delicatezza sulle balle di fieno che gli aveva indicato poco prima. – Lasciate dunque che mi occupi prima delle mie mansioni, e successivamente potrò prendermi cura anche di voi.
- Io sono… sono sconvolto! – balbettò Kurt, restando seduto sul fieno più perché troppo pietrificato per muoversi ancora, che perché volesse realmente farlo, - E— E non ho assolutamente alcun bisogno che un— un uomo orribile, deprecabile!, quale voi siete, si prenda cura di me. – concluse, trovando finalmente la forza per alzarsi in piedi. – Sono perfettamente in grado di andare a cavallo. – disse, - Prenderò uno degli stalloni di sua maestà e farò pratica da solo.
- Prego? – domandò Dave, lanciandogli un’occhiata quasi divertita da sotto le sopracciglia esageratamente inarcate. Aveva ripreso in mano la spazzola ed era già tornato a strigliare Pavarotti, ma s’interruppe apposta per osservare Kurt mentre, impettito e furioso, attraversava la stalla e si avvicinava ai giacigli dei vari cavalli.
- Limitatevi a dirmi quale posso prendere. – rispose il ragazzo, cercando di mostrarsi deciso mentre osservava gli enormi destrieri senza sapere quale scegliere, - Farò da me.
- Vi farete solo male. – lo avvertì Dave, - E il principe sarà in collera con me, per questo.
- Be’, mi sembra la cosa migliore in assoluto, allora! – insistette Kurt. – Ditemi quale cavallo posso prendere, signore. Mi occuperò da me della mia stessa istruzione. Non ho bisogno dell’aiuto di nessuno, tantomeno del vostro.
- D’accordo, d’accordo. – rispose l’altro, già annoiato dal litigio, sollevando entrambe le braccia, - Prendete Sarpedonte. È quello lì. – disse, indicando uno splendido stallone dal lucente pelo castano con una piccola macchia bianca sulla fronte, - Ma state attento, o cadrete.
- Non cadrò affatto. – tagliò corto il ragazzo, accompagnando il cavallo già sellato verso il piazzale. Notò che Dave continuava ad osservarlo per tutto il tempo, pur rimanendo accanto a Pavarotti e strigliandolo lentamente, anche mentre lui posava il piede sulla staffa e faceva forza per issarsi in sella.
Dove riuscì a restare per il tempo massimo di un paio di respiri. Dovette spronare il cavallo tirandogli una tallonata nel punto sbagliato – d’altronde, la forma che aveva fra le gambe era completamente diversa da quella della sua Gaga, e avrebbe avuto bisogno di un tempo decisamente maggiore per prendere adeguatamente le misure, ma sarebbe morto prima di doverlo ammettere – perché quello, con un nitrito di dolore, prima s’impennò e poi s’inarcò all’improvviso, disarcionandolo con la facilità con cui si sarebbe disarcionato un qualunque principiante.
Kurt gettò un grido, cercando di raggomitolarsi a palla per esporre la minor quantità di ossa possibile alle sicure fratture che lo avrebbero funestato quando avesse toccato terra, e poi serrò gli occhi, terrorizzato. Riaprendoli solo quando il suo corpo si adagiò con incredibile naturalezza fra un paio di possenti braccia che lo sostenevano da dietro le spalle e da sotto le ginocchia, tenendolo ben lontano dal pavimento, a più di un metro e mezzo da terra.
- Ve l’avevo detto che sareste caduto. – disse Dave, fissandolo con una certa preoccupata severità, tenendolo ben stretto, al punto di affondare quasi le dita nella carne tenera delle sue cosce attraverso il tessuto leggero dei pantaloni che indossava. Kurt arrossì profondamente: il calore delle sue mani e l’odore della sua pelle, non del tutto spiacevole come aveva ipotizzato all’inizio, lo confusero per qualche secondo, prima che la sua mente riuscisse a sgombrarsi da pensieri inattesi e molesti abbastanza da permettergli di replicare.
- La-Lasciatemi andare immediatamente! – strillò, tempestando di pugni il petto ampio dello stalliere, il quale gli lanciò un’occhiata estremamente infastidita e poi ritirò all’improvviso entrambe le braccia, lasciandolo rovinare a terra in mezzo alla fanghiglia con un urlo stridulo. – Come avete osato?! – gridò Kurt, sconvolto e oltraggiato oltremisura, fissando l’uomo dal basso prima di aggrapparsi alle redini di Pavarotti per tirarsi su.
- Mi avete detto voi di lasciarvi andare. – ribatté Dave, aggrottando le sopracciglia.
- Ma non certo di lasciarmi cadere per terra! – obiettò il ragazzo, stringendo i pugni lungo i fianchi, - Non avete un briciolo di educazione!
- Ah, davvero? – protestò lui, - Sarei io il maleducato? Vi ho appena salvato la vita, e voi non vi siete nemmeno degnato di ringraziarmi.
- Ha! Mi avreste dunque salvato la vita?! – rise Kurt, sarcastico, - Non avete un briciolo di educazione, ma in compenso siete così teatrale da farmi pensare che la vostra via non dovesse essere quella dei cavalli, bensì quella del palcoscenico! – incrociò le braccia sul petto, producendosi in uno sbuffo divertito, - Stavo solo per cadere a terra, mi sarei preso al massimo una stupida storta! Niente che non possa sopportare!
- Vi sareste spezzato l’osso del collo, sciocco ingrato privo della benché minima prudenza che non siete altro! – sbottò a quel punto lo stalliere, e mentre le labbra di Kurt si schiudevano disegnando una o perfetta, sintomo di profondissimo stupore, aggiunse: - E quanto alla teatralità, credo che per quanto io possa essere bravo a riguardo voi non abbiate alcun rivale nel campo. È evidente da quanto bene riuscite a imitare le femmine pur essendo solo un patetico scherzo della natura ancora incerto sulla possibilità di portare una sottana o un paio di pantaloni. – concluse con un’occhiata disgustata.
Il rumore dello schiaffo risuonò per tutta la stalla, mettendo in agitazione i cavalli per un istante. Poi si esaurì in un soffio di vento, ed allora anche le bestie tornarono placide, così come l’aria tornò a farsi silenziosa.
- Siete… siete un essere spregevole e disgustoso. – disse Kurt, la voce rotta dal pianto e gli occhi pieni di lacrime, - Non siete neanche un essere umano, e io non voglio vedervi mai più. – concluse, prima che la voce lo abbandonasse del tutto, girando su se stesso e fuggendo dalla stalla col volto fra le mani.
Dave, la guancia ancora in fiamme ma troppo orgoglioso per massaggiarla con una mano, abbassò lo sguardo e, una volta solo, ricondusse Sarpedonte al proprio posto e riprese a strigliare Pavarotti.
*
- Kurt! – lo chiamò Finn, sconvolto, vedendolo sfrecciare di fronte a sé sotto il porticato e su per le scale, - Kurt, cos’è successo?!
- Niente! – rispose lui, piangendo a dirotto e cercando di raggiungere la propria camera il più in fretta possibile, per potercisi nascondere dentro, - Niente, lasciatemi in pace! Vi prego! – singhiozzò, cercando di tirar su l’ampia mezza gonna aperta davanti che scendeva giù dal corpetto abbottonato che indossava, e il cui strascico era tanto lungo da sfiorare il pavimento ad ogni passo.
- Neanche per idea! – insistette suo fratello, saltando i gradini a due a due e riuscendo ad afferrarlo per il polso poco prima che riuscisse effettivamente a chiudersi alle spalle la porta della propria camera da letto. Lo costrinse a voltarsi verso di sé, e per poco non si sentì mancare il respiro nell’osservare il suo viso, generalmente così bello, pallido e dolce, stravolto dal pianto, dall’irritazione e dal nervosismo. – Mio Dio, cosa vi è capitato?
Kurt si liberò dalla sua stretta con uno strattone deciso, incredibilmente mascolino, per poi nascondersi dietro le proprie stesse mani in un gesto, invece, tanto femmineo da sciogliere il cuore. Nell’avvicinarglisi e chinarsi verso di lui, come volesse proteggerlo dagli occhi indiscreti del mondo, Finn pensò che era forse questa la cosa più bella di suo fratello, in assoluto. Non la splendida voce, non i modi cortesi e raffinati, non la tagliente ironia che sovente amava usare per tenere a bada i numerosi pretendenti che, pur non essendo degni della sua persona, spesso avevano provato a conquistarlo, no. La capacità così speciale e studiata e al contempo così incredibilmente naturale che aveva di sintetizzare in sé l’uomo e la donna, come fosse nato apposta per rappresentare da solo il punto d’incontro perfetto fra i due generi.
- Non voglio parlarne qui. – singhiozzò Kurt, scuotendo il capo da dietro le mani umide di pianto, - Entriamo in camera.
Finn lo seguì docilmente, sedendosi assieme a lui sulla sponda del letto e prendendo le sue mani fra le proprie, massaggiandole delicatamente per aiutarlo a calmarsi e riprendere fiato.
- Raccontatemi. – disse, - Ridurrò a pezzi con la mia stessa spada chiunque vi abbia fatto questo.
- No! – singhiozzò immediatamente Kurt, stringendo la presa sulle mani del fratello e sporgendosi verso di lui in un’implorazione accorata, - Vi scongiuro! Non dovrete dire a nessuno quello che vi racconterò! Mi sono macchiato di ridicolo e… Dio, dovrei chiudermi in convento e mai più vedere la luce del sole! – piagnucolò, tornando a nascondersi dietro le proprie mani.
Finn sorrise intenerito, allungando le braccia verso di lui e stringendoselo al petto, cullandolo dolcemente.
- Per quanto possiate assomigliare ad una donzella, fratello, dubito che trovereste adeguato spazio fra le monache di clausura. – gli ricordò, accarezzandogli i capelli.
- Un monastero benedettino, dunque! – propose Kurt, - Lì potrei vivere in pace, espiando le mie colpe e cessando di mettere in ridicolo il buon nome della mia famiglia!
- Temo che, col vostro aspetto, - rise Finn, dondolandolo ancora un po’, - indurreste in tentazione anche il più santo degli uomini.
- Sono dunque costretto a vivere nell’empietà! – disse quindi Kurt con aria tragica, allontanandosi da lui per poggiare il dorso di una mano contro la fronte, gettando indietro il capo. Finn rise ancora, cercando di non mostrargli quanto lo trovasse ridicolo in quel momento, e riprese ad accarezzargli una mano, sorridendo incoraggiante.
- Fratello, spiegatemi cos’è accaduto. Sono certo che niente di tanto grave può essere successo, tale da giustificare il desiderio di privare il mondo della vostra così gradita presenza. – disse, invitandolo a parlare.
Kurt sospirò, incurvando le spalle come un bambino sopraffatto dalla vergogna.
- Mi sono comportato in maniera ostinata e avventata, ed ho rischiato di farmi molto male cadendo da uno dei cavalli di sua maestà. – raccontò, restio ad aggiungere i dettagli per quanto riguardava quell’orribile stalliere, - E ora non potrò mai più tornare in quella stalla, né imparare a cavalcare uno stallone, né accompagnare in groppa ad uno splendido purosangue il nostro principe in una gita per i campi del feudo! – concluse, scoppiando nuovamente in lacrime, le spalle magre e strette continuamente scosse dai singhiozzi.
- Oh, via, via, fratello! – cercò di consolarlo Finn, accarezzandogli il viso e il collo, - Innanzitutto, ditemi: vi siete forse fatto male? È per questo che piangete così incontrollabilmente? Sentite dolore da qualche parte?
- Solo al centro del petto, caro fratello, solo al centro del petto! – rispose Kurt con estrema drammaticità, giungendo le mani all’altezza del cuore, - Tutto è perduto. Non potrò mai più sposare il principe Blaine, né tantomeno sollevare i miei occhi su di lui, s’è per questo.
- Fratello, adesso state proprio esagerando! – disse Finn, cercando di riportarlo a più miti consigli utilizzando un tono di voce vagamente più severo, - Qualsiasi cosa possa essere successa, niente a parte la vostra ostinazione vi impedisce di tornare in quella stalla e riprendere le vostre lezioni d’equitazione. Avete fatto una brutta figura, d’accordo, - ammise il giovane, annuendo con decisione, - ma non vi siete macchiato di alcun peccato mortale, e sua maestà il principe, ne sono sicuro, non sentirà alcun bisogno di privarsi della vostra compagnia solo perché, un po’ avventatamente, siete caduto da cavallo. – Kurt incassò la testa nelle spalle, cessando di piangere e serrando le labbra fino a ridurle ad una linea sottilissima, abbassando vergognosamente lo sguardo. Finn sospirò, accarezzandogli una guancia ancora calda e arrossata dal pianto, ed addolcendo il proprio tono di voce per rassicurarlo. – Suvvia, siete tanto più bello quando sorridete. Per parte mia, posso promettervi che non dirò mai a nessuno quanto mi avete raccontato. Ma voi, per parte vostra, dovrete promettermi che tornerete in quella stalla, e non abbandonerete le lezioni solo per uno sciocco capriccio infantile.
Kurt tornò a guardarlo, vagamente in imbarazzo, le mani giunte in grembo.
- Fratello, queste vostre parole vogliono forse lasciarmi intendere che, nel caso il principe decidesse davvero di chiedere la mia mano, voi non avreste nulla in contrario? – domandò timidamente, in un filo di voce.
Finn levò un’occhiata supplice al cielo, allargando le braccia ai lati del corpo.
- Non smetterò mai di soffrire perché non posso avervi e al contempo non voglio lasciarvi andare. – ammise in un sospiro, scuotendo il capo, - È il triste destino di tutti i fratelli. – concluse con un sorriso, tornando a guardarlo.
Kurt non riuscì proprio a trattenere un gridolino emozionato mentre, per ringraziarlo della sua benedizione e del suo aiuto, gli prometteva che sarebbe tornato in quella stalla entro quella sera stessa, e stavolta non si sarebbe lasciato scoraggiare da niente. E da nessuno, aggiunse mentalmente. Ma questo, al fratello, non lo disse.
*
Cercò di mantenersi austero e serio mentre, approfittando del favore delle tenebre, usciva di soppiatto dalla casa e si dirigeva speditamente verso la stalla. Il cortile sul retro era ancora illuminato, e tutta la servitù sembrava intrattenersi in qualche piacevole gioco mentre aspettava di concludere tutte le mansioni della giornata per ritirarsi a propria volta a dormire, come già suo padre, suo fratello e tutti gli ospiti avevano fatto un’ora dopo la conclusione della cena.
Usualmente, Kurt avrebbe seguito il suono di quelle voci e di quelle risate per unirsi agli scherzi della servitù, ma quel giorno, totalmente concentrato sul proprio obiettivo, ignorò quei festosi richiami e, giunto alle porte della stalla, si schiarì la voce, pronto a mettere in chiaro le cose con quell’orribile stalliere una volta per tutte.
Il fiato, però, assieme a tutte quelle battagliere intenzioni, gli morì in gola quando vide lo stalliere scomodamente sistemato su una sedia bassa, lievemente reclinata all’indietro – per consentirgli di appoggiare il capo contro lo stipite della porta – ed aiutata a restare in equilibrio sui due piedi posteriori dal fatto che le gambe dell’uomo erano stese in avanti a puntellarsi sopra una balla di fieno utilizzata a mo’ di poggiapiedi ma troppo cedevole per ottemperare adeguatamente al proprio scopo.
Doveva essere una posizione ben fastidiosa.
- È qui che dormite? – mormorò incerto, e l’uomo aprì dapprima solo un occhio, lanciandogli un’occhiata sommaria per poi tornare a richiuderlo, cercando di sistemarsi più comodamente.
- Vi interessa? – domandò, stringendosi nelle spalle.
- Credevo che per tutti gli ospiti fossero state approntate delle stanze. – disse Kurt, la voce venata da una sottile quanto apparentemente autentica vena di dispiacere.
- Così è, infatti. – annuì Dave, gli occhi ancora chiusi, - Ma il mio compito è restare coi cavalli. Inoltre, mi trovo molto più a mio agio in compagnia delle bestie, che non degli esseri umani.
- Questo perché le similitudini fra voi sono evidenti. – ribatté Kurt, inarcando un sopracciglio, incapace di trattenere il commento acido. - …scusatemi. – mormorò quindi, abbassando lo sguardo, - Sono stato scortese.
- Ma avete detto la verità. – disse con sicurezza Dave, rassegnandosi finalmente ad aprire gli occhi ed alzandosi in piedi, raggiungendolo dove si trovava. – Sono grato al principe perché è stato merito suo se la mia vita è stata salva, ma ciò non vuol dire che la compagnia sua, o quella del suo seguito, o quella di uno qualsiasi degli abitanti di questo principato mi piaccia.
Kurt abbassò lievemente lo sguardo, sentendosi ingiustificatamente in colpa.
- Posso chiedervi cosa vi è successo? Perché siete diventato lo stalliere di sua maestà?
Dave si voltò, allontanandosi da lui di qualche passo e lanciando un’occhiata ai cavalli sonnecchianti dentro la stalla. Sembrava facesse fatica a trovare le parole, anche se il suo viso non lasciava trasparire alcun segno di difficoltà o disagio.
- Il mio popolo è stato sterminato. – disse quindi, - Nella regione da cui provengo, le lotte fratricide fra tribù sono all’ordine del giorno. La mia tribù, quella dei Quapaw, e la tribù vicina, quella degli Yakonan, erano da anni impegnate in una di queste guerre. Il vostro principato – disse, lanciando a Kurt un’occhiata brevissima, come intendesse caricarlo di una parte della colpa di ciò che era successo, nonostante sapesse benissimo di non poterlo fare, - voleva ampliare i confini dei propri possedimenti, e dal momento che era il mio popolo quello con un territorio più ricco e più vicino a quello della Capitale, hanno fornito agli Yakonan un aiuto sufficiente per sterminarci tutti. – sospirò, passandosi brevemente una mano sulla fronte e fra i capelli. – Io sono l’unico superstite. Il principe Blaine, mentre constatava lo stato del nostro villaggio dopo la fine delle ostilità, diede ordine di curare i feriti, ma erano tutti troppo gravi per sopravvivere. Solo io ce l’ho fatta, e dal momento che ero rimasto solo il principe mi ha preso con sé.
Kurt deglutì, avvicinandoglisi impercettibilmente, come se all’improvviso si sentisse profondamente inadeguato anche solo per stargli accanto.
- Io non avevo idea… - mormorò, - Per la verità non so molto di quello che accade oltre i confini del principato. In realtà, - si concesse un imbarazzato colpo di tosse, distogliendo lo sguardo, - non mi sono mai mosso da questa villa. Mi… mi dispiace molto per le vostre perdite. Ma ciò non vuol dire che il vostro comportamento nei miei confronti sia stato giustificabile! – disse, riprendendo immediatamente colore e stringendosi nelle spalle. Dave si voltò a guardarlo, i suoi occhi erano scuri e freddi.
- È vero. – ammise, - Ma voi siete stato sciocco e imprudente. Nonostante io avessi cercato di fermarvi. Avreste potuto farvi molto male.
- Sì, lo so, lo so. – sospirò Kurt, gesticolando con aria annoiata, - È per questo che sono venuto qui, stasera. Per chiedervi scusa, auspicando che ad un mio primo passo nella vostra direzione possa seguire un vostro passo verso di me.
Dave lo guardò a lungo, la luce della luna che si rifletteva sulla sua pelle candida rendendola se possibile ancora più pallida, giocando fra le pieghe della lunga veste in raso e pizzo che indossava, e che copriva fluidamente il busto flessuoso, la vita sottile e le lunghe gambe le cui forme non erano che appena intuibili sotto tutta quella stoffa. Era bello, contestare il punto sarebbe stato come rifiutarsi di ammettere l’esistenza del calore del sole nonostante lo si sentisse sulla pelle. C’era ancora qualcosa di profondamente sbagliato nell’osservare un uomo abbigliato in tal modo e costretto a comportarsi come una donna, contrariamente alla propria natura, ma per qualche motivo la luce azzurrognola della notte ed i suoi chiaroscuri gli permettevano di osservarlo senza sentirsene eccessivamente disturbato.
Mosse un passo nella sua direzione, esattamente come Kurt gli chiedeva di fare, e gli strinse una mano. Non come avrebbe fatto con una dama, per sollevarla fino alle labbra e posare un bacio sulla pelle pur così liscia e invitante del dorso, ma per scuoterla con vigore, come avrebbe fatto con un qualunque uomo.
Per qualche motivo, s’era aspettato che Kurt saltasse in aria e si ritraesse di fronte a quel contatto così rude, ma ciò non avvenne. Il ragazzo sorrise, ricambiando la stretta, e Dave continuò a stringere, ricambiando il sorriso.
*
Fu con un certo stupore che Rachel, entrando in camera di Kurt l’indomani mattina, lo trovò già sveglio e pronto. Indossava abiti eleganti ma comodi, un’ampia gonna che sembrava perfetta per favorire lunghe passeggiate per territori non propriamente semplici da attraversare, come se il signorino si preparasse a scalare le colline o qualcosa del genere. La sola idea era esilarante, al punto che fu più quello a farla ridere che non il trovare Kurt già in piedi davanti ai suoi spartiti e pronto per la lezione di solfeggio, cosa che, già da sola, in un altro momento l’avrebbe costretta a piegarsi in due dalle risate.
Le sue due dame di compagnia, nel cogliere questo suo moto d’ilarità, non riuscirono a loro volta a trattenere il proprio, e in breve Kurt si ritrovò circondato all’improvviso da donne ridacchianti per motivi che a lui sfuggivano completamente.
- Cosa vi prende? – domandò, incuriosito e un po’ indispettito da quella che, da qualunque lato provasse a guardarla, non sembrava molto diversa da una presa in giro, - Perché ridete?
- È insolito vedervi già in piedi prima di mezzogiorno, signorino Kurt. – rispose Rachel, posando i libri di musica e la bacchetta sulla scrivania e stringendosi nelle spalle, - Usualmente riuscite a vestirvi solo appena in tempo per il pranzo.
- Ho deciso di dare inizio a una nuova era della mia vita. – rispose Kurt, piegando il capo verso l’alto ed incrociando le braccia sul petto in uno sbuffo polemico, - Un’era in cui mi sveglierò di buon mattino e mi godrò la bontà dell’aria di campagna e—
- E potrete passare più tempo col vostro adorato principe, naturalmente. – ridacchiò Santana, abbozzando un inchino ironico.
- Santana! – la rimproverò Kurt, oltraggiato, arrossendo. – Per tua informazione, il principe sarà impegnato per i prossimi giorni assieme alla propria compagnia e a mio fratello nel perlustrare i territori attraverso i quali passa la strada per la Foresta Nera! Partirà prima di pranzo, lasciando qui solo il suo stalliere, ed è con lui che passerò la giornata. Egli è stato incaricato di mostrarmi come si monta uno stallone, così che poi io possa farlo in presenza di sua maestà!
Le tre donne lo fissarono per qualche secondo, spalancando occhi e bocca, e quando ripresero a ridere, perfino più forte di prima, Kurt arrossì ancor più violentemente.
- Siete… siete terribili! – si lamentò, coprendosi il volto con le mani.
- Perdonateci, signorino Kurt. – disse Rachel, cercando di darsi un contegno e recuperando la bacchetta dalla scrivania, - È dunque con lo stalliere di sua maestà che passerete la giornata? E non vi pare che gli abiti che indossate siano poco adatti all’equitazione?
Kurt sbuffò, stringendosi nelle spalle.
- Il mio completo da cavallerizza s’è sporcato di fango, ieri, e non è ancora pronto. Questa gonna dovrebbe andare bene… - disse, sollevandola appena, - È ampia, dovrebbe scivolare bene anche quando sarò in sella.
- Oh, che scivoli bene è indubbio. – ridacchiò Brittany, divertita, - Se volete attirare l’attenzione del giovane stalliere, sarà perfetta.
- Che— Che cosa? – sussultò Kurt, arrossendo un’altra volta, - Ma cosa dici, Brittany! È per il principe che faccio tutto ciò, ricordatevelo! Solo per lui!
- Io lo trovo… - intervenne Santana, prendendosi qualche secondo per cercare bene la parola adatta, anche se nessuno aveva chiesto la sua opinione in merito, - scialbo. Ecco, sì. Intendiamoci, - riprese, come mettendo le mani avanti, - è un principe, è fascinoso, a suo modo, è perfino bello, se lo si guarda dalla giusta prospettiva—
- Se lo si guarda dalla giusta prospettiva?! – la interruppe Kurt, posandosi una mano sul cuore in un gesto di sincero sconvolgimento, - E quale prospettiva sarebbe, quella sbagliata? Perché, da qualunque prospettiva io lo guardi, egli è ai miei occhi un esempio di perfezione! La sua bellezza non conosce confini, la sua eleganza innata è indiscussa, il suo fascino è intrepido e toccante pur senza mai eccedere in volgarità gratuite, e—
- Sì, sarà. – sospirò Santana, già annoiata dalla dichiarazione, - Ma a me piace di più lo stalliere. – concluse, scoppiando a ridere maliziosamente mentre Rachel e Brittany le facevano coro per qualche secondo.
- Santana, non parlare così. – la rimbrottò quindi Rachel, nonostante fosse evidente dal suo tono giocoso che non intendeva rimproverarla sul serio, - Sai bene quanto fini e sensibili siano le orecchie del signorino Kurt. Potrebbe turbarsi.
- Io non mi turbo affatto! – sbottò lui, stendendo le braccia lungo i fianchi e piegandosi in avanti come un bimbo pronto a pestare i piedi se non vedrà esaudito all’istante il suo ennesimo capriccio, - Sono perfettamente conscio di quanto una figura ben piantata ed un paio di possenti braccia possano turbare gli sciocchi umori di una donna, ma io sono ben altro! Io sono una dama, ed in quanto tale destinato ad avere ben più di un semplice stalliere, come compagno di tutta una vita! E mi stupisco di voi, - concluse, lanciando occhiate severe alle tre donne che lo circondavano, - che pure siete state educate a ricercare sempre la finezza e il garbo! Guardate come vi confondono un… un paio di muscoli!
- Ben più di un paio, se posso permettermi, signorino Kurt. – precisò Santana in una risata compiaciuta, per nulla turbata dal rimprovero del suo padroncino.
- Via, via. – sorrise Rachel, cercando di placare gli animi ed introducendosi nel discorso prima che Kurt potesse partire con un’altra scarica di rimproveri, - Se può consolarvi, signorino Kurt, lo stalliere non è nemmeno il mio tipo. Ed ho idea che stia cominciando a farsi tardi, per cui sarebbe proprio il caso che cominciassimo la lezione.
- E invece non cominceremo proprio un bel niente. – rispose Kurt, sedendosi di scatto sul letto ed incassando la testa nelle spalle mentre tornava a incrociare le braccia sul petto in una posa così ostinatamente infantile da muovere quasi i cuori alla tenerezza. – È tardi, come hai detto, e fra meno di mezz’ora dovremo accomiatarci da sua maestà, visto che lui e la sua compagnia staranno lontani almeno per un paio di giorni, ed io devo ancora finire di prepararmi. Inoltre, il vostro sciocco chiacchiericcio mi ha messo di malumore. – aggiunse, non risparmiandosi di lanciare un’altra occhiataccia a Santana, la quale, conoscendolo, non si sognò nemmeno di offendersi a riguardo. – Riprenderemo regolarmente le lezioni da domani, Rachel, ma ricordami di congedare prima le mie due dame da compagnia, quando arriverai.
Rachel faticò a trattenere un sorriso, lanciando un’occhiata d’intesa alle due dame ed inchinandosi subito dopo, per poi salutare il signorino Kurt ed abbandonare la stanza. Stava per ritirarsi in camera propria, per indossare un abito più formale che fosse consono al momento in cui si sarebbero tutti ritrovati in cortile per salutare il principe in partenza, quando appoggiato alla parete, a pochi centimetri dalla porta, trovò il principe di Carmel, inequivocabilmente atteggiato come fosse in attesa di qualcuno.
- Maestà. – lo salutò con un inchino, fermandosi di fronte a lui, - Vi siete forse perso?
- Al contrario. – sorrise lui, allontanandosi dalla parete con uno scatto di reni, - Trovare la vostra camera non è stato affatto semplice. Sono tutte uguali. Se non avessi saputo che siete l’insegnante di musica del giovane Hummel, e non avessi perciò notato immediatamente il pianoforte in questa camera, non avrei mai potuto indovinare che era la vostra.
- Perdonatemi, maestà, - disse lei, producendosi in un altro inchino ma faticando a nascondere l’espressione accigliata che le era naturalmente affiorata sul viso nel sentirlo parlare, - ma non penso sia stato molto cortese da parte vostra sbirciare in camera di una dama, fosse pure per trovarla. Inoltre, non riesco a capire per quale motivo desideraste vedermi.
- Cortese? – sorrise Jesse, girandole attorno con aria quasi predatoria, pur senza mai permettersi di avvicinarsi troppo a lei, - La cortesia non è che un’inutile posa, una menzogna, un comportamento artefatto. I metodi sussiegosi di questa regione mi nauseano, e non capisco come una come te, - la stuzzicò, sottolineando quell’appellativo con soddisfazione, - una col mio stesso sangue, possa trovarsi bene in mezzo a tutti questi damerini.
Rachel gli sollevò addosso un’occhiata raggelata, lasciando andare la gonna e indietreggiando appena.
- Come avete fatto a—
- A capire che venivi anche tu da Carmel? – completò per lei, sorridendole con sicurezza, - Ma l’ho visto subito. Te l’ho sentito addosso. I tuoi lineamenti, la forma dei tuoi occhi, perfino il profumo della tua pelle… - si avvicinò impercettibilmente, non abbastanza da invadere il suo spazio vitale ma decisamente a sufficienza da imporre il proprio profumo così virile e penetrante su di lei, - Le donne di Carmel sono fra le più belle di tutta la nostra grande nazione. Ed io sono in viaggio ormai da mesi. Vederne una ha riempito il mio cuore di gioia.
- I-Io trovo tutto ciò molto sconveniente, maestà. – cercò di fermarlo lei, indietreggiando ancora fino a schiacciarsi contro la porta, - E vi sarei molto grata se poteste smetterla di comportarvi così, e riprendeste a darmi del voi, come i costumi di questo paese impongono.
Jesse si allontanò, sollevando entrambe le mani in un gesto di resa, pur senza mai rinunciare a quel sorriso così spavaldo e irritante.
- Come volete, Rachel. – disse annuendo, - Ma avremo modo di ridiscutere la questione, quando sarò tornato dalla perlustrazione col principe Blaine. – concluse, prima di voltarle le spalle ed attraversare il corridoio in pochi passi, diretto al cortile.
Il respiro affannoso ed una mano sul petto, Rachel rimase e lungo sulla porta, prima di convincersi a muoversi e rientrare in camera.
*
- Conterò i giorni per il vostro ritorno, maestà. – sorrise Kurt, porgendo al principe una ghirlanda di fiori che aveva intrecciato quella mattina in fretta e furia dopo essere corso al prato di nascosto per coglierli, - Questa villa non sarà la stessa, senza la vostra presenza.
- Io non sarò lo stesso, senza voi al mio fianco. – rispose Blaine, trattenendo una delle sue mani fra le proprie e premendosela sul petto all’altezza del cuore, mentre Finn, completamente ignorato dal fratello e già a cavallo, incrociava le braccia sul petto, sbuffando e distogliendo lo sguardo, irritato. – La vostra assenza lascerà in me un vuoto incolmabile. In ogni momento, il mio pensiero sarà rivolto a voi. Spero possiate sentirlo. E a tale proposito, - schioccò le dita, e Sam si fece avanti, trafelato e sporco di polvere come al solito, portando con sé quella che si sarebbe detta una gabbia per uccelli coperta da un telo, - questo è un piccolo presente, perché non vi dimentichiate di me mentre sono via.
Kurt sollevò il telo, scoprendo una gabbia d’oro finemente decorata che conteneva un piccolo canarino dal petto giallo.
- Oh, cielo, maestà! – esclamò commosso, - È così carino!
- La sua voce non sarà bella come la vostra, - proseguì Blaine, tornando a stringergli una mano e portandosela alle labbra, - ma dal momento in cui ieri mi si è posato spontaneamente su una spalla, rallegrandomi col suo gentile canto, ho pensato che doveva essere vostro.
- Maestà, il dono che mi fate va ben oltre il semplice valore di quest’uccello. – ringraziò Kurt con un inchino, - Lo chiamerò Pavarotti, come il vostro splendido cavallo. E se mai c’era ancora una minuscola possibilità che la mia mente ed il mio cuore potessero allontanarsi per un istante dal pensiero della vostra persona, da adesso in poi il suo canto impedirà che ciò possa mai accadere.
Blaine sorrise, gli occhi brillanti di affetto, e dopo un ultimo bacio posato sulle delicate dita di Kurt si issò in sella, spronando il cavallo al galoppo lungo il sentiero che portava verso i prati aperti e, più avanti, alla foresta. Il gruppo dei gentiluomini al suo seguito partì immediatamente dopo di lui, e ben presto il cortile fu di nuovo sgombro, e tutta la servitù riprese con le normali attività. Kurt ordinò a Sam di portare il piccolo Pavarotti in camera sua e poggiare la gabbietta sul davanzale della finestra, assicurandola al telaio perché non ci fosse il rischio che qualche improvviso colpo di vento la rovesciasse o, peggio, la facesse precipitare di sotto, e poi, sorridendo sereno e gioviale, si incamminò verso la stalla.
Al suo arrivo, Dave stava finendo di preparare Sarpedonte per lui. Restando un po’ in disparte, certo che lo stalliere non lo avrebbe visto, giacché ogni volta che si trovava in compagnia dei cavalli sembrava sempre non avere occhi per nient’altro, si prese qualche secondo per osservarlo, notando con quanta cura ed attenzione assicurasse la sella alla schiena dell’animale, stringendo bene le cinghie sotto il suo ventre e concludendo ogni operazione con una pacca o una carezza sul collo della bestia, come ci tenesse a rassicurarlo passo passo del fatto che ogni cosa stava andando per il verso giusto.
- Sembrate amare molto i cavalli. – commentò, avanzando all’interno della stalla mentre sollevava appena la lunga gonna sulle caviglie magre, per evitare che potesse sporcarsi o sdrucirsi strisciando sulle assi del pavimento. – Intendo, indipendentemente dal fatto che preferiate la loro compagnia a quella umana. Scommetto che li amavate anche da prima che vi accadesse tutto quello che mi avete raccontato.
Lo stalliere non sollevò lo sguardo dal cavallo, ma sorrise appena, dando modo a Kurt di capire che l’aveva sentito. Afferrò una spazzola da una delle tasche del grembiule da lavoro che indossava, e prese a pettinare con cura la criniera dell’animale, accarezzandola con le dita per verificare che non rimanessero nodi dove la spazzola era già passata.
- È vero. – ammise, mentre Kurt si sedeva di propria iniziativa su una delle balle di fieno accatastate in un angolo, per osservarlo lavorare, - Mio padre Paul possedeva una mandria di splendidi cavalli che allevavamo per renderli perfetti cavalli da corsa o da carrozza. Ho passato tutta la mia infanzia in compagnia di questi animali, e man mano che crescevo è diventato normale, per me, prendermene cura.
- Di certo, - commentò Kurt, - trattate loro con molta più delicatezza di quanta ne usiate per i vostri simili.
Dave si voltò a guardarlo, accigliato, ma stese immediatamente le sopracciglia, rilassandosi, quando notò il sorriso quasi intenerito che gli piegava le labbra.
- Dunque avete smesso di considerarmi una bestia? – chiese quindi, con un mezzo sorriso divertito, - Dalle vostre ultime parole, sembra quasi che abbiate deciso di accogliermi fra gli esseri umani.
- Mi pare che vi stiate meritando il posto, dopotutto. – ridacchiò Kurt, stringendosi nelle spalle e fingendo una serietà che in quel momento non gli apparteneva affatto. – Allora, - disse poi, saltando in piedi e battendo le mani davanti al viso con emozione palese, - quando potrò cominciare a cavalcare? Non vedo l’ora!
Dave gli lanciò un’occhiata critica, studiando il suo abbigliamento dalla testa ai piedi.
- Dove sono finiti i vostri pantaloni? – domandò severamente, e Kurt si strinse nelle spalle, vagamente in imbarazzo.
- Purtroppo, gli unici che posseggo sono quelli del completo da cavallerizza, e non sono ancora pronti. Dopo la caduta di ieri si sono sporcati. – sospirò. Dave schiuse le labbra e batté un paio di volte le palpebre.
- Intendete salire a cavallo con la gonna? – chiese con aria incredula, puntandolo con un dito.
- Non è carino indicare. – borbottò Kurt, gonfiando le guance e appendendo le mani ai fianchi, e lo stupì non poco notare la punta di imbarazzo con la quale immediatamente Dave abbassò la mano, pur continuando a fissarlo sgomento. – So che non è il più appropriato degli abbigliamenti—
- Non solo non è il più appropriato, ma non è affatto appropriato. – precisò Dave, quasi rimproverandolo. – Avete idea di cosa succederebbe se per caso l’orlo della gonna restasse impigliato fra il vostro piede e la staffa? Rischiereste di cadere.
- Be’, non c’è problema! – ribatté Kurt, incoraggiante, - La gonna è molto ampia, mi lascerà libero di muovermi, e posso sempre tirarla su! – disse, chinandosi appena per stringere fra le mani l’orlo dell’abito, sollevandolo fin sotto ai fianchi. Dave distolse immediatamente lo sguardo, tornando a pettinare con foga la criniera di Sarpedonte. – Dave, per l’amor del cielo! – sbottò Kurt, sconvolto, - Sono pur sempre un ragazzo! Potete per un attimo dimenticare che indosso un abito femminile? Non mi sembra il momento adatto per perdersi in sciocchi, infantili ed inutili imbarazzi!
- Sarebbe più facile per me dimenticare che indossate una gonna, se voi semplicemente non la indossaste! – ribatté lo stalliere, posando la spazzola e voltandosi verso di lui mentre allargava le braccia ai lati del corpo in un gesto arreso.
- D’accordo! – replicò il ragazzo, allargando a propria volta le braccia e lasciando ricadere la gonna a terra, per poi correre subito con le dita alla fascia di stoffa che gli stringeva l’abito in vita, - Posso toglierla! Resterò in biancheria!
- Cosa?! – strillò Dave, allarmato, muovendosi celermente verso di lui e poggiandogli entrambe le mani sui fianchi per fermarlo, - Ma siete impazzito? Cosa penserebbero gli altri se vi vedessero?
Kurt smise di armeggiare con la fascia, facendosi educatamente indietro per interrompere il contatto con le sue mani senza per questo dovergli sgarbatamente chiedere di allontanarle dai suoi fianchi, e rifletté per qualche secondo.
- In effetti, avete ragione. – annuì, - Ma posso condurvi in un posto in cui nessuno ci vedrebbe. È un grande prato nelle vicinanze del lago. Lì avremo al contempo tutto lo spazio e tutto il riserbo che ci serve.
Dave si lasciò ricadere le braccia lungo i fianchi, incurvando le spalle.
- Siete proprio deciso a cavalcare in mutande, dunque. – constatò, atterrito. Kurt annuì con entusiasmo, afferrando Sarpedonte per le redini e cominciando a condurlo verso l’uscita della stalla.
- Andiamo? – domandò, sorridendo gentilmente. A Dave non rimase che seguirlo attraverso il cortile, adesso silenzioso, per favorire l’ora di riposo pomeridiano che Lord Hummel amava concedersi durante i pomeriggi così afosi, e poi lungo il sentiero che, dalla villa, si dipanava attraverso la campagna, fino al lago.
Il prato di cui Kurt gli aveva parlato era in effetti grande abbastanza da fornire loro spazio a sufficienza per tutti gli esercizi, e l’erba, così alta e soffice, già da sola rappresentava una buona superficie morbida sulla quale Kurt, atterrando, non si sarebbe fatto troppo male, anche nel caso gli fosse capitato di sfuggire alle sue braccia.
- È davvero un bel posto. – commentò guardandosi intorno, affascinato dalle moltitudini di colori diversi che macchiavano il prato, come schizzi di tempera su una tela, - Nel mio paese non c’erano molti prati come questo. Era una terra piuttosto arida.
- Qui tutta la campagna è così. – annuì Kurt, con aria sognante, - Anche se – aggiunse, stringendosi nelle spalle ed arrossendo appena, - ammetto di non essere molto bravo a godermela. Mi sveglio sempre tardi, al mattino, e per il momento in cui sono pronto l’aria è sempre troppo calda per spingermi a passeggiare fino a qui. I miei abiti non mi consentono spostamenti troppo lunghi, sono faticosi da portare.
- Immagino. – rise Dave, chinandosi ad accarezzare il collo di Sarpedonte mentre quest’ultimo si piegava sulla superficie del lago per abbeverarsi. – In effetti, danno l’idea di ingolfarvi parecchio.
- Già. – ridacchiò Kurt, - Per questo l’idea di togliere la gonna non mi urta più di tanto. – ammise, correndo velocemente con le mani alla fascia di seta per svolgerla, trattenendola fra le mani per piegarla ordinatamente ed appoggiarla nell’erba poco distante prima di sciogliere il fiocco che assicurava la gonna ai suoi fianchi magri, e sfilarla in un unico gesto.
Dave voltò repentinamente il capo, col rischio di farsi venire un gran torcicollo, mentre Kurt ripiegava anche la gonna e la appoggiava accanto alla fascia.
- Insomma! – protestò il ragazzo quando, voltandosi nella sua direzione, lo vide intento a fissare con interesse quasi maniacale le increspature dell’acqua attorno al muso di Sarpedonte, - Mi sembrava che la questione del mio sesso fosse risolta!
- Perdonatemi, ma voi indossate biancheria intima femminile! – sbottò Dave, indicando con un cenno vago i mutandoni di pizzo che coprivano le cosce di Kurt fino al ginocchio, - Questa cosa è davvero disorientante.
- Quanta pazienza. – sospirò Kurt, lanciando al cielo un’occhiata supplice, - Posso chiedervi, per piacere, di mettere da parte i vostri ridicoli pregiudizi, almeno finché saremo forzati a passare del tempo insieme? Vi prometto che, quando sarò pronto a cavalcare uno stallone da solo, non vedrete più le mie sottane neanche da lontano. Va bene?
Dave sospirò a propria volta, immergendo una mano in acqua e passandosela sul viso per rinfrescarsi.
- D’accordo. – disse quindi, - Andiamo, Sarpedonte. – ordinò al cavallo, conducendolo verso Kurt. – Salite. E tenete a mente che un cavallo come questo vi obbliga a tenere le gambe al contempo ben aperte e ben salde. Non cercate di partire subito al galoppo, prendetevi il vostro tempo per ambientarvi, prima.
Kurt annuì coscienziosamente, piantando entrambe le mani sulla sella e puntando il piede nella staffa per salire in groppa a Sarpedonte. Una volta su, inspirò ed espirò, guardando per bene il paesaggio attorno a sé. Il cavallo era altissimo, e gli permetteva di scrutare le cime degli alberi della foresta in lontananza fin dove cominciavano a inerpicarsi lungo l’aspro pendio delle montagne.
- Adesso? – domandò, tornando a guardare Dave e stringendo le redini fra le dita.
- Adesso – disse Dave, accarezzando il muso del cavallo per poi afferrarlo saldamente per il morso, - proveremo a fare qualche passo. Non è necessario che lo sproniate voi, vi condurrò io. Voi cercate semplicemente di tenervi in equilibrio.
- Come sarebbe a dire cercate di tenervi in equilibrio? – borbottò Kurt, aggrottando le sopracciglia, mentre Sarpedonte iniziava a passeggiare lentamente, - So perfettamente come tenermi in equilibrio in sella, signore! Per vostra informazione, vado a cavallo da quando avevo dieci anni, e— ah! – strillò, mentre la veemenza con la quale aveva cominciato a discutere prendeva il sopravvento sul suo autocontrollo, portandolo a mollare la presa delle gambe attorno al corpo del cavallo e scivolare lateralmente lungo la sella, aiutato anche dal tessuto liscio e troppo leggero della sua biancheria.
- Attento. – lo rimbrottò Dave, mollando immediatamente il morso di Sarpedonte per precipitarsi al suo fianco ed impedirgli di rovinare a terra, aiutandolo a scendere dalla sella e rimettersi in piedi saldo sulle proprie gambe. – Quante volte devo dirvi che una cavalcatura come questa è profondamente differente da quelle alle quali siete abituato? Siete così cocciuto!
- Non ci riuscirò mai. – piagnucolò Kurt, accarezzando lievemente un fianco a Sarpedonte per poi allontanarsi da lui e lasciarsi ricadere sgraziatamente nell’erba a pochi passi dalla riva fangosa del lago. – Basta, ci rinuncio. Sono stanco! – si lamentò, rannicchiandosi su se stesso e fissando l’orizzonte con aria triste.
- E siete anche pigro. – borbottò Dave, conducendo il cavallo a riva e legandolo ad un albero lì di fianco, per poi andare a sedersi accanto a Kurt, - Raccogliete in voi proprio tutti i difetti di entrambi i sessi, complimenti.
- In molti mi hanno detto che invece in me convivono solo i pregi di maschi e femmine. – sbottò Kurt, voltandosi a guardarlo con aria vagamente irritata, per poi sospirare stancamente. – Non voglio litigare, Dave, non offendetemi.
- Vi stavo solo prendendo un po’ in giro. – rise piano l’uomo, sistemandosi meglio nell’erba. – Posso chiedervi perché lo fate?
- Perché faccio cosa? – chiese Kurt, voltandosi a guardarlo con aria genuinamente perplessa.
- Tutto questo. – rispose Dave, accennando alla sua intera figura con un cenno del capo, - Perché vi vestite da donna, perché vi comportate come una donna, soprattutto perché accettate che altri uomini vi trattino come se voi foste veramente una donna? Non è umiliante? Per me lo sarebbe. – concluse con una scrollatina di spalle.
- Be’, voi sareste inguardabile, con una gonna. – notò Kurt con una mezza risata. – Comunque, - riprese in una nota più seria, - qualcuno doveva pur farlo, suppongo. Non è facile vivere in un paese in cui non nascono figlie femmine. Io sono sempre stato piuttosto delicato, e per la verità non mi sono mai interessato a tutte quelle cose che invece facevano impazzire mio fratello Finn, perciò non mi sono mai ribellato al modo in cui venivo educato.
- Avreste potuto rifiutarvi. – disse Dave, scrutandolo con interesse, e Kurt sorrise, guardando il lago.
- Ma a me piaceva. – rispose, - Questi vestiti, i modi, il canto, il ruolo che ho all’interno della famiglia… a me piace. Lo trovate così assurdo?
- Per la verità, sì. – ammise lui, abbassando lo sguardo e sentendosi in qualche modo stranamente in difetto.
- Allora il problema non è perché io lo faccia, - gli sorrise Kurt, - quanto più il fatto che voi non riusciate ad accettare che a me possa piacere farlo. E non vi sembra questo perfino più assurdo?
- Che intendete? – domandò Dave, inarcando un sopracciglio con aria scettica. Kurt prese tempo, giocando con qualche filo d’erba, e notò lo sguardo interessato con cui Dave seguiva il movimento lento e aggraziato delle sue dita. Sembrava che quell’uomo non riuscisse proprio a capacitarsi dell’esistenza in vita di una creatura come lui. Era esilarante, se si metteva da parte quanto offensive potessero essere a volte le sue parole.
- Intendo – si decise a rispondere, finalmente, - che io trovo molto più assurdo che voi, che non avete mai indossato una gonna, possiate contestare il mio piacere nell’indossarne una, piuttosto che il fatto che a me possa effettivamente piacere comportarmi come una donna. Non potrete mai sapere perché mi piace, semplicemente perché non potrete mai provarlo sulla vostra pelle. Dovreste semplicemente accettarlo, e basta.
Dave sembrò riflettere seriamente sulla questione, gli occhi distanti persi sulla superficie del lago, e poi annuì brevemente.
- Sì, forse. – ammise, - Mi sembra ancora una cosa completamente incomprensibile, ma è probabile che io abbia ancora molto da imparare.
Kurt sorrise ancora, sporgendosi appena verso di lui.
- Avrete bisogno di essere educato. – propose, ed al solo sentire le sue parole Dave, che si era appena voltato a guardarlo, dovette chinare nuovamente il capo, e Kurt fu non poco stupito dall’osservare quel lieve rossore che, improvvisamente, prese a colorargli le guance. – Cosa vi prende? – domandò quindi, incerto, - Vi sentite poco bene?
Dave si voltò a guardarlo come non potesse credere alle proprie orecchie.
- Alle volte siete veramente un maschio. – constatò allibito, - Non vi rendete proprio conto.
Kurt sbatté le lunghe ciglia un paio di volte, disorientato.
- Non comprendo. – ammise perplesso. Dave sospirò, alzandosi in piedi e tendendogli una mano per aiutarlo a fare lo stesso.
- Lasciate perdere. – cercò di sorridergli, - Ora andiamo, s’è fatto tardi. Vi riaccompagno a casa.
Kurt annuì, ancora confuso dalle sue parole, ma accettò l’aiuto di buon grado, alzandosi in piedi e finendo poi per afflosciarsi sul petto di Dave non appena ebbe provato a star dritto, mugolando un lieve “oh” in parte sorpreso e in parte addolorato al quale lo stalliere rispose con un’occhiata talmente preoccupata da far sembrare che temesse per la propria stessa vita.
- Accidenti… - mormorò Kurt, reggendosi alle spalle forti dell’uomo mentre sollevava un piede da terra.
- Cos’avete? – domandò lui, cercando contemporaneamente di sorreggerlo e di sporgersi oltre la sua spalla per dare un’occhiata al piede.
- Devo essermi storto una caviglia, prima. – borbottò il ragazzo, infastidito. – Non credo di riuscire a camminare.
- Queste cose capitano perché siete uno sconsiderato. – lo rimproverò aspramente Dave, aggrottando le sopracciglia. – Coraggio, montate in groppa a Sarpedonte.
- Cosa? No! – sbottò Kurt, incrociando le braccia sul petto e cadendo immediatamente seduto per terra non appena si rese conto che la caviglia non lo reggeva affatto, - Io non ci salgo più, là sopra!
- Oh, per favore, niente capricci, adesso! – sbuffò Dave, roteando gli occhi e recuperandolo da terra, afferrandolo per le spalle e tirandolo su di peso per poi condurlo senza la minima grazia verso il cavallo. – Appoggiatevi a lui. – ordinò fermo, e Kurt, pur piegando le labbra in una smorfia altamente contrariata, obbedì, osservandolo allontanarsi verso la sua gonna e la sua fascia per recuperarli da terra. – Permettetemi di rivestirvi. – chiese rispettosamente, attendendo un suo cenno di intesa per avvolgergli la gonna attorno ai fianchi e stringere poi il tutto con la fascia in vita. Kurt si lasciò maneggiare senza protestare, stupito dalla delicatezza di quelle mani così grandi, callose e tozze ma inaspettatamente gentili.
- Siete… molto dolce. – commentò stupito, mentre Dave lo guardava incerto. – Mi avete appena trattato come fossi uno dei vostri cavalli. – spiegò, - Non so se questo dovrebbe turbarmi, in effetti. – aggiunse con tono un po’ sconcertato, inumidendosi le labbra.
- Basta sciocchezze. – tagliò corto Dave, distogliendo lo sguardo. – Adesso non muovetevi. – disse, stringendogli le mani in vita e sollevandolo senza il minimo sforzo fino a consentirgli di accomodarsi in sella per traverso, per poi puntare un piede nella staffa e salire in groppa al cavallo subito dietro di lui. – Aggrappatevi a me. – ordinò.
- Mi sembra parecchio sconveniente. – protestò Kurt, arrossendo a causa della sua improvvisa vicinanza.
- A me sembrerebbe molto più sconveniente se cadeste di nuovo, magari completando l’opera e facendovi male anche all’altra caviglia. – replicò Dave, serissimo. – Stringetevi a me, o non ci muoveremo mai.
- E va bene, d’accordo! – concesse Kurt con un sospiro esasperato, appoggiandosi nuovamente al petto di Dave e stringendo fra le dita il tessuto della casacca che indossava. – Non vi si può fare un complimento che subito me lo ricacciate in gola. – borbottò, mentre Dave spronava il cavallo a ripartire alla volta della villa.
- Scommetto che se fosse stato il principe Blaine, a chiedervi di stringervi a lui, non avreste protestato così tanto. – disse Dave, incapace di trattenere l’acidità nella voce, mentre Kurt si voltava a fissarlo con sgomento palese, - E non vi sarebbe importato di quanto fosse sconveniente.
- Come osate?! – scattò offeso, tirandogli un lieve pugno contro il petto, - Se avete intenzione di litigare, sappiate che non ne ho alcuna voglia! Smettetela subito!
- La smetto, la smetto. – sbuffò lui, lanciando il cavallo al galoppo per fare più in fretta.
- Siete terribile. – insistette Kurt, prendendo a fissare ostinatamente la strada accidentata che sfilava veloce sotto di loro, ma appoggiandosi comunque a lui per ridurre al minimo il rischio di cadere. – Mi ero trovato così bene, fino a poco fa. Non capisco che vi è preso.
- Mi siete preso voi, ecco che mi è preso! – ribatté Dave, stringendo la presa sulle redini e sospirando sollevato alla vista della villa in fondo alla strada.
- E cosa vorreste dire, con ciò?! – sbottò Kurt, tornando a guardarlo con aria allucinata.
- Voglio dire che siete una persona assurda, non si sa mai cosa aspettarsi da voi e… e siete insopportabile! – quasi strillò, fermando il cavallo in mezzo al cortile e scendendo in un gesto così repentino da rischiare di far perdere nuovamente l’equilibrio a Kurt. – Aspettate qui, vado a chiamare qualcuno che possa portarvi in camera vostra. – disse rudemente, distogliendo lo sguardo dalla sua figura.
- Ma dove andate, dove andate! – roteò gli occhi il ragazzo, sbuffando esasperato, - Mi avete portato fino a qui, portatemi anche in camera. Datemi una mano e smettetela di fare lo scontroso, piuttosto. Siete incredibile! – si lagnò, porgendogli una mano in un gesto inequivocabile. Dave sospirò stancamente, ma prese la sua mano nella propria e si preparò ad accoglierlo quando lui scivolò fluidamente giù dalla sella, atterrando morbido fra le sue braccia.
- E portarvi in braccio in camera vostra com’è? – gli chiese ironico mentre, tenendolo saldamente stretto al petto, attraversava il cortile, entrava in casa e poi imboccava le scale per il piano di sopra, - Sconveniente?
- Voi siete la persona più noiosa del mondo, ne siete consapevole? – gli fece presente Kurt, scuotendo il capo e incrociando le braccia sul petto, - Non è né sconveniente, né nient’altro, è solo necessario. – spiegò, cercando di riportare il tono della propria voce su una nota meno stridula e indisponente. – Ora, se vi è possibile, vorreste per piacere tornare ad essere la piacevolissima persona che siete stato fino a un momento fa? O volete continuare a comportarvi così finché non vi odierò senza speranza?
Già giunto di fronte alla porta di camera sua, Dave non poté che sospirare, arreso.
- Voi mi stancate in modi incomprensibili. – ammise, aspettando che fosse Kurt a sporgersi per aprire la porta e poi conducendolo all’interno, - Siete proprio faticoso, e non invidio affatto il povero principe Blaine che sarà costretto a sopportarvi per tutto il resto della vostra vita. – concluse, richiudendosi la porta alle spalle con un calcio.
- Possa Iddio concedermene una abbastanza lunga da venire ogni sera a tirarvi i piedi nel letto mentre dormite, se la mia povera porta sarà stata danneggiata dal vostro sgarbato scarpone! – strillò Kurt, agitandosi fra le sue braccia mentre Dave gli urlava di stare buono, - E comunque, non preoccupatevi per la mia futura vita matrimoniale, sono convinto che sarà rosea e splendente!
- Bene! – sbottò lo stalliere, lasciandolo ricadere sul proprio letto.
- Bene! – gli fece eco Kurt, sollevandosi a sedere sul materasso e fissandolo irritato, - Ora vi siete sfogato? La smettete o no?!
- Tacete, santi numi! – gridò Dave, fuori di sé dalla frustrazione, e non fu che un attimo prima che si sporgesse verso di lui e, stringendogli il viso fra le mani, appoggiasse le proprie labbra contro le sue, con una foga un po’ goffa, ma talmente infuocata da ricoprire la pelle di Kurt di brividi bollenti.
Era il suo primo bacio.
- …cosa. – annaspò sconvolto, quando Dave si fu allontanato da lui. Lo fissò con occhi enormi e persi, in parte spaventato, in parte confuso, come aspettandosi automaticamente da lui una risposta plausibile che spiegasse quel gesto apparentemente così assurdo.
- …perdonatemi. – deglutì Dave, lasciandolo andare e rimettendosi dritto. – Non so cosa mi è preso. Non avrei dovuto.
- No che non avreste dovuto! – strillò Kurt, gli occhi pieni di lacrime, - Era— Era la prima volta che qualcuno— che—
- Ho chiesto scusa! – lo interruppe Dave, innervosito dal suo melodrammatico balbettio, - E, in ogni caso, suppongo di essere stato appena nuovamente retrocesso assieme a tutte le altre bestie, per cui non pensateci. Sarà come se un cane vi avesse leccato il viso.
- Quest’immagine è agghiacciante e oh, santo cielo, voi mi avete baciato! – continuò a strillare Kurt, sconvolto, rannicchiandosi in un angolino del letto come avesse paura che Dave potesse nuovamente saltargli addosso, nonostante fosse abbastanza chiaro che non l’avrebbe fatto. – Siete un bruto! Un— un— non ho parole per descrivervi!
- Ecco, perfetto, allora non cercatele neanche. – sospirò l’uomo, passandosi una mano sul viso e cercando di calmarsi. – Vado via, adesso. Fate finta che niente di tutto questo sia mai accaduto. Ad insegnarvi come si cavalca uno stallone ci penserà il principe al suo ritorno. Mi sembra la cosa più giusta.
- Dave. – lo chiamò Kurt, osservandolo dargli le spalle per uscire, - Dave! Non osate abbandonare questa stanza prima che io vi abbia dato il permesso di farlo! – strillò, stringendo il copriletto fra le dita con foga, come se questo potesse in qualche modo contribuire a trattenere anche lo stalliere.
Non servì, comunque.
*
Erano ormai parecchie ore che Blaine e il suo seguito erano in viaggio. Per evitare di perdere tempo inutilmente, non si erano fermati a riposare, se non per una breve sosta nei pressi di un corso d’acqua, giusto per far abbeverare i cavalli, prima di riprendere la corsa verso la foresta. Nelle sue perlustrazioni solitarie dei giorni precedenti, Blaine aveva visto che era possibile arrivare fin lì in qualche ora, tenendo i cavalli al galoppo ad un ritmo serrato, ed era stato proprio questo l’ordine che aveva impartito e che aveva permesso al suo gruppo di trovarsi già all’imboccatura della valle nel fondo della quale la foresta cresceva forte e rigogliosa, nutrita dall’umidità e dal sole del mattino prima che l’abbraccio della montagna sulla quale poi s’inerpicava la proteggesse dal calore infuocato del sole di mezzogiorno, mantenendola nell’ombra fino all’alba successiva.
Fatta eccezione per la foresta stessa, la valle sembrava del tutto inanimata. Fra gli alberi, la fauna doveva senz’altro essere viva e varia, dovevano sicuramente esserci molte specie di uccelli, parecchi roditori, chissà, forse perfino qualche volpe e qualche lupo, ma nulla sembrava vivo al di fuori del cerchio degli alberi più esterni, sulla tavola di pietra piattissima e levigata sulla quale loro si trovavano.
- Questo posto mi mette i brividi. – commentò Finn, che aveva approfittato dell’occasione per uscire un po’ dai confini del villaggio ma si sentiva ancora offeso dalla scarsa considerazione che Kurt aveva dimostrato per lui, dimenticando completamente di salutarlo, preso com’era dal desiderio di salutare il principe. Il suo umore non aveva avuto alcun motivo di rallegrarsi, sia a causa delle faticose ore trascorse al galoppo, sia a causa della compagnia, che da quando aveva discusso animatamente col principe Jesse durante la cena di qualche sera prima aveva cessato quasi del tutto di essere piacevole.
- Non preoccupatevi, Finn. – lo rassicurò Blaine con un sorriso, avvicinandoglisi al trotto, - Non avete niente da temere. Il principe Jesse lo sentirebbe, se ci fosse una strega nei dintorni.
- E infatti una strega c’è. – disse l’uomo, passando loro accanto senza degnarli di uno sguardo, scrutando intensamente il folto della foresta nel suo punto più oscuro e misterioso, - Non nelle immediate vicinanze, però, no. – proseguì, fermandosi a qualche metro dal punto in cui il sentiero si insinuava fra le radici degli alberi, fino a scomparire. – Nelle profondità di questa foresta, nondimeno, una strega vive di sicuro. Ed è anche alquanto potete, se i miei sensi non mi ingannano.
- I vostri sensi? – domandò Finn, sprezzante, - Per favore. La cartomante zingara che leggeva i tarocchi per gioco a me e a mio fratello quando eravamo bambini era più credibile di voi! Quantomeno, lei usava degli strumenti per giustificare le proprie percezioni! Voi, invece? Cos’è, l’aria intorno ad una strega puzza? – aggiunse in tono canzonatorio, prendendolo in giro. Jesse non raccolse la provocazione, e nemmeno si voltò a guardarlo, prendendo a passeggiare a cavallo attorno al limitare della foresta, come seguendo una linea curva immaginaria che lo conducesse attorno alla macchia verde per tutto il suo perimetro.
- Dal momento che me lo chiedete, signore, - rispose con tono apparentemente disinteressato, - sì. Puzza, ed è più pesante. Impregnata di magia. Non potete sentirla perché non ne avete le capacità, ma ciò non toglie che sia così.
- Provengo da una famiglia di studiosi, principe Jesse. – insistette Finn, accigliandosi, - Il fondatore di Lima, sir William McKinley, era lo scienziato più rinomato del paese. Io non credo a ciò che non posso toccare con mano, non mi lascio abbindolare da niente che non sia scientificamente provato e palese sotto i miei occhi.
Lord Montgomery si voltò immediatamente a cercare con lo sguardo la figura del principe, per chiedergli silenziosamente di porre fine a quell’alterco prima che potesse degenerare, e ben presto la sua mossa fu ripetuta anche dagli altri due membri del Consiglio della Dalton, ma il principe era così preso dall’ammirazione quasi sognante con la quale stava osservando la foresta e i suoi dintorni che del litigio non sembrava curarsi per niente. Lord Montgomery sospirò pesantemente: che sovrano sarebbe mai stato, quel ragazzo, se avesse continuato a farsi distrarre così facilmente da qualsiasi cosa, si trattasse di una coccinella su una foglia o di un giovanotto in gonnella?
Fortunatamente, Jesse non sembrava particolarmente interessato a mettersi a litigare in quel momento. Anzi, tutte le sue forze sembravano concentrate nel fare in modo che quella spedizione potesse durare per il minor tempo possibile. Sembrava, per motivi che nessuno comprendeva appieno, incredibilmente impaziente di tornare a Lima quanto prima.
- Maestà, - disse quindi, fermando repentinamente il cavallo e voltandosi verso Blaine, così sensibile alla sua parola, che reputava eminente e degna di ascolto, da concedergli immediatamente tutta la propria attenzione, - avrò bisogno di tornare alla villa di Lord Hummel, e da lì far partire un messo che possa recarsi a Carmel per portarmi alcuni volumi, e naturalmente per condurre a me i miei alchimisti.
- Ah, perfetto. – sospirò Finn, roteando gli occhi, - Ora la mia casa dovrà per forza diventare la base operativa di questa scempiaggine. Tutto ciò è ridicolo.
- Finn, vi prego, abbiate fiducia nel principe Jesse come ne avete in me. – tagliò corto Blaine con un sorriso, e Finn gli avrebbe volentieri risposto che in realtà si fidava di Jesse esattamente tanto quanto si fidava di lui, e cioè molto poco, ma trattenne la lingua e si limitò ad annuire cupo, supponendo che se già la compagnia non l’aveva in simpatia per il trattamento sprezzante che riservava al principe di Carmel, le cose non avrebbero potuto che peggiorare se si fosse rivolto nello stesso modo anche a Blaine. – Bene! – riprese il principe, spronando il cavallo ad avanzare, - Giriamo attorno alla foresta e cerchiamo un pozzo o uno specchio d’acqua nelle vicinanze del quale accamparci, sia mai durante la notte abbia luogo qualche strano evento. Ripartiremo domani in mattinata.
- Sissignore. – risposero in coro i tre componenti del Consiglio, spronando immediatamente i cavalli al seguito di quello del principe e di quello di Jesse, che gli si affiancò quasi subito. Finn rimase indietro di qualche metro: non aveva alcuna fretta di raggiungere gli altri, e supponeva che, se avessero trovato il posto adatto per accamparsi, prima o poi l’avrebbe visto anche lui, pur senza lanciarsi al galoppo come se dovesse assaltare una diligenza. Che modo era, quello, di cavalcare? Come se ogni volta che si saliva a cavallo si dovesse per forza scapicollarsi verso l’obbiettivo, quando sarebbe stato indubbiamente più sicuro e meno faticoso procedere con calma.
Per tale motivo, quando gli altri intravidero i resti del villaggio indiano distrutto, lui fu l’ultimo a notarli. Sapeva che gli indiani al confine coi possedimenti del principato stavano lentamente guadagnando terreno, spostandosi verso territori più verdeggianti e spingendosi talvolta fino a stabilirsi in luoghi particolarmente pericolosi, come quella valle, ma non aveva nessuna notizia di un villaggio eretto proprio di fianco alla foresta.
- C’è qualcosa di molto strano, qui. – mormorò, raggiungendo Blaine e Jesse in testa alla compagnia, - È tutto bruciato.
- Sicuramente opera della strega. – annuì Blaine, per poi voltarsi subito dopo a lanciare un’occhiata a Jesse, in cerca di un suo segno di approvazione. Il principe di Carmel, però, non gliene concesse alcuno: si limitò a continuare a cavalcare in silenzio fra le tende bruciate, l’odore acre del legno carbonizzato ad infastidirgli le narici, e il fumo ad annebbiargli la vista.
- Maestà, - lo richiamò quindi Lord Thompson, ritornando verso di lui dopo essere andato in ricognizione verso est fino ai confini del piccolo agglomerato di tende ormai devastato, - ci sono dei superstiti.
Immediatamente, tutto il manipolo di uomini si mosse nella direzione indicata dal cavaliere, e quando giunsero al luogo nel quale l’uomo li aveva condotti – una piccola capanna, molto più piccola delle altre, e forse proprio per questo scampata quasi interamente al disastro – videro due ragazzi sporchi di cenere rannicchiati in un angolo, stretti l’uno all’altra, spaventati come conigli dopo uno sparo. Si assomigliavano incredibilmente – entrambi biondi, entrambi dagli occhi chiari, sebbene di due sfumature di colori differenti, entrambi alti e longilinei, dai lineamenti eleganti e affascinanti, entrambi di pelle chiara e liscia – tanto da sembrare fratelli. Finn e Blaine scesero immediatamente dalle loro cavalcature, avvicinandoli come guidati da una forza misteriosa.
- Maestà? – chiamò Lord Thompson, stupito da quel comportamento, ma Jesse lo zittì con un gesto.
- È tutto a posto. – disse, e poi, con più convinzione, voltandosi verso l’uomo, aggiunse: - Non vedete che sono feriti? Correte immediatamente ad avvisare Harwood e Montgomery, dite loro di raggiungerci.
- Sì, signore. – annuì il cavaliere, partendo subito al galoppo. Indietreggiando lievemente, Jesse rimase ad osservare la scena mentre Blaine si chinava sul ragazzo, controllando che stesse bene per porgergli la mano, e Finn faceva lo stesso con la ragazza, sostenendola da sotto le ascelle per aiutarla a risollevarsi in piedi.
- Cosa è successo qui? – chiese il principe, rivolgendosi al ragazzo, ma prima che questi potesse rispondergli la ragazza scoppiò a piangere, e tenendosi la testa fra le mani cominciò a lamentarsi.
- Brucia… brucia tutto… - mugolò insensatamente, gli occhi fissi nel vuoto ma pieni di lacrime, - È tutto bruciato… - singhiozzò un’ultima volta, prima di svenire fra le braccia di Finn, che dovette faticare non poco per prenderla al volo e caricarsela in braccio.
Il ragazzo le fu subito accanto, accarezzandole brevemente il volto e il collo per verificare che fosse ancora viva, prima di rivolgersi al principe.
- Voi siete la giovane maestà di Westerville, è così? – domandò. Blaine annuì. – Non sappiamo esattamente cosa è successo. – proseguì il ragazzo, - Mi chiamo Jeremiah. Io e mia sorella Quinn eravamo nella nostra tenda, quando è scoppiato l’incendio. Ci siamo salvati per miracolo. – raccontò, la voce tremante e incerta. – Non è rimasto niente.
Proprio in quel momento, giunsero finalmente i tre lord del Consiglio della Dalton. Mentre Finn risaliva a cavallo, portando con sé la giovane, Jesse si voltò verso di loro per interrogarli.
- Superstiti? – chiese, il tono di chi sa già cosa aspettarsi in risposta.
- Nessuno. – disse infatti Lord Harwood, scuotendo il capo, - Solo cadaveri carbonizzati.
Jeremiah abbassò lo sguardo, stringendo i pugni lungo i fianchi. Blaine lo notò, ed allungò una mano a sfiorare quel pugno così serrato, che al solo percepire quel lieve tocco sembrò sciogliersi appena.
- Venite con noi. – disse il principe con un sorriso, - Avete bisogno di cure, e non potete restare qui. Vostra sorella andrà col mio fidato amico, il giovane primogenito del signore di queste terre. Voi, invece, salirete a cavallo con me.
Il ragazzo sorrise ed annuì, ringraziando a bassa voce. Blaine risalì in sella, ed aspettò che il giovane indiano l’avesse raggiunto, prima di dare l’ordine di lasciar perdere l’idea di accamparsi lì per la notte e fare immediatamente ritorno a Lima.
*
Nel folto della foresta, in una baracca di legno apparentemente abbandonata, una donna restava seduta sulla propria sedia a dondolo, in attesa, alzandosi solo ogni tanto per controllare lo stato dell’intruglio che stava cuocendo in un enorme calderone in un angolo della stanza.
Si alzò di scatto, repentinamente, quando un giovane folletto biondo con un paio di occhiali tondi sul naso saltò sul davanzale della finestra, ridacchiando entusiasta.
- Ah, sei tu, Becky. – disse la strega, rilassandosi. – È andato tutto bene?
- Tutto come avevate previsto. – annuì il folletto, scuotendo il caschetto biondo in un’altra risatina divertita.
Avvolta nel suo mantello di acetato rosso, la strega tornò a sedersi, e sorrise.
*
Santana e Brittany lo trovarono in lacrime. Le vesti scomposte, il volto arrossato, piegato su se stesso come certi fiori che chinano il capo per meglio sopportare il peso delle nevicate in inverno, Kurt piangeva ad alta voce, inconsolabile, esprimendosi solo in mugolii e gemiti privi del benché minimo senso.
- Mio Dio. – esalò Santana, sconvolta da una tale visione, - Signorino Kurt, cosa vi è successo?
Non era inusuale cogliere il giovane in atteggiamenti drammatici o esageratamente disperati, a volte anche per delle facezie, ma di certo era una novità che il ragazzo si permettesse di dare sfogo a tanto dolore in maniera così sguaiata e priva di pudore, come se ormai non gl’importasse più di mantenere la compostezza.
- Vi sentite male? – domandò Brittany, sedendosi sulla sponda del letto e accarezzandogli i capelli, - Avete le vostre cose?
- Brittany! – sbottò Santana, sollevando gli occhi al cielo, - È un maschio!
- Perché, loro non ce le hanno? – domandò la ragazza, spostandole addosso un paio d’occhi smarriti e vuoti mentre Santana sospirava profondamente, scuoteva il capo e poi si sedeva accanto a Kurt, dall’altro lato del letto, prendendo a propria volta ad accarezzargli i capelli, la nuca, le spalle e la schiena.
- Signorino Kurt, coraggio, - disse dolcemente, cullandolo con la propria voce bassa e quell’accento ispanico che più volte Kurt aveva detto di trovare delizioso, - dite alla vostra Tana cos’è successo. Vi sentite male?
Kurt sollevò lo sguardo. Aveva gli occhi arrossati e continuava a piangere, grosse lacrime scendevano rotolando lungo le sue guance piene come goccioloni di pioggia.
- È… è tutto perduto. – mugolò, abbattendosi nuovamente sul materasso e nascondendo il volto sugli avambracci.
- Oh, per la miseria, signorino Kurt! – borbottò Santana, battendo qualche pacca d’incoraggiamento sulle spalle del ragazzo, ora scosse da singhiozzi perfino più violenti, - Cosa può mai essere successo?
- La mia purezza… - si lamentò Kurt, la voce ridotta a un fiato sottilissimo, - è ormai perduta, non sono più degno di vivere in questa casa. Prenderò i voti, mi trasferirò in un monastero e lì vivrò nell’ascesi e nella privazione finché i miei peccati non saranno mondati.
Le due dame si lanciarono un’occhiata incerta, e poi Brittany si chinò nuovamente sul proprio padroncino, riprovando a consolarlo.
- Signorino Kurt, perché dovreste voler vivere nell’ascesso? È doloroso e secerne liquido puzzolente. – disse con una mezza smorfia.
- Britt, sta’ zitta. – tagliò corto Santana, per poi afferrare delicatamente Kurt per le spalle e rimetterlo dritto, - Signorino Kurt, qualsiasi cosa possa essere successo, sono sicura che potremo trovare una soluzione adeguata per risolvere il problema. Dovete soltanto confidarvi.
- Giammai! – strillò istericamente Kurt, coprendosi il volto con le mani, giacché Santana, tenendolo ben saldo per le spalle, gli impediva di accasciarsi nuovamente fra le lenzuola e lì restare fino a morire di consunzione, - No, Santana, no! – insistette, - Porterò il mio orribile segreto nella tomba, coi resti delle mie mortali spoglie. Mai nessuno saprà a quale disonore ho costretto questa famiglia, mai nessuno vedrà quanto orribile il mio peccato sia stato. Morirò impuro, e nessuno saprà mai perché. – concluse, lanciando una teatrale occhiata di disperazione a Pavarotti, rinchiuso nella sua gabbietta, che approfittò di quel primo momento di silenzio per accennare un paio di note del proprio canto. Al solo sentirle, Kurt si sciolse nuovamente in singhiozzi, perfino più rumorosi e violenti di prima, e il povero uccellino tornò a lisciarsi le penne in silenzio.
Santana e Brittany si guardarono dubbiose un’altra volta, ma quando la bionda aprì la bocca per parlare Santana le impedì di farlo, parlando a propria volta.
- Signorino Kurt, ascoltatemi. – disse con tono soave e materno, sorridendo dolcemente un attimo prima che tutti i suoi lineamenti mutassero, rendendola improvvisamente più simile a un demone infernale che all’angelica dama di compagnia che era stata fino a pochi secondi prima, - Adesso basta piagnucolare, siete isterico e ridicolo. – lo rimproverò, schiaffeggiandolo violentemente e mandandolo a rovesciarsi sul letto mentre Brittany, strillando spaventata, lo prendeva per le spalle. – Madre de Dios, siete una piaga! – lo rimproverò, mentre Kurt, stretto fra le braccia di Brittany, la fissava con occhi enormi carichi di sconcerto, - Adesso voi vi mettete in piedi, vi ripulite, vi risistemate e poi andate a trovare vostro padre, e discutete con lui di qualsiasi sia questo problema che vi affligge. Se sarà sua opinione che dobbiate trascorrere la vostra intera vita in convento, io per prima mi occuperò di cucirvi un saio che esalti le vostre forme, e vorrò io stessa a chiudervi nella vostra cella a doppia mandata per poi gettare via la chiave. Ma se invece vostro padre riterrà questo problema una sciocchezza, o comunque qualcosa di risolvibile senza avviarvi verso l’abito talare… - concluse con aria minacciosa, assottigliando i grandi occhi scuri e tendendo le labbra rosse e piene in una smorfia terrificante, - non voglio più sentirvi parlare di convento ed altre simili sciocchezze. Mai più!
- S-Santana! – provò a richiamarla Kurt in un balbettio sconvolto, ma la donna non gli permise di farlo.
- Shush! – sbuffò interrompendolo, - Basa storie, basta lagne da bambino viziato, basta lacrime, soprattutto. – stabilì, alzandosi in piedi e poi afferrandolo per entrambe le mani per tirarlo su di peso, un attimo prima di tornare a sorridergli conciliante. – Forza, vi aiuto a rimettervi in sesto.
Pur controvoglia, Kurt abbassò lo sguardo ed annuì, troppo esausto dalle lunghe ore di pianto per insistere e farsi lasciare in pace. Seguì Santana fino alla toeletta, sedendosi sullo sgabello imbottito e lasciando che fossero lei e Brittany a prendersi cura di lui, sciacquargli il viso, coprire l’innaturale rossore delle guance con un po’ di cipria per lasciare che trasparisse solo quel lieve colorito rosato più accentuato sulle gote che contribuiva a dargli quell’aria da ragazzina che tutti amavano tanto, e poi rimetterlo perfino in piedi, dopo averlo aiutato a cambiarsi d’abito, indossando qualcosa di più leggero per evitare che il calore di quell’afosa giornata di primavera lo innervosisse troppo, impedendogli di rilassarsi.
Il dolore alla caviglia, notò Kurt mentre, lentamente, scendeva le scale per andare a trovare suo padre in quello che lui per primo si fregiava di chiamare “il suo laboratorio segreto” – non senza un certo divertimento – era quasi del tutto passato, non ne rimaneva che un’eco lievissima che lo infastidiva, sì, ma non tanto per il dolore in sé, quanto più perché ogni volta che sentiva pizzicare una lieve fitta da qualche parte attorno all’attaccatura del piede non poteva fare a meno di ripensare allo stalliere di sua maestà, alle mani grandi e forti che l’avevano rivestito, alla voce che, con preoccupata fermezza, l’aveva tanto rimproverato, e alle sue labbra calde e asciutte premute contro le proprie.
Arrossì improvvisamente, e quando se ne accorse scosse il capo con decisione, strizzando gli occhi, nel tentativo di liberare la mente da quei pensieri molesti. Dopo aver parlato con suo padre, sarebbe corso immediatamente in camera propria, e lì, sul davanzale della finestra, si sarebbe seduto, e sarebbe rimasto immobile a leggere una delle storie che tanto gli piacevano, in cui principi affascinanti e coraggiosi salvavano principesse tristi e bellissime dal loro infausto destino. Pavarotti avrebbe cantato in sottofondo e il suo pensiero sarebbe immediatamente corso al principe Blaine, intento a perlustrare il limitare della Foresta Nera assieme al suo seguito, e tutto sarebbe stato di nuovo semplice e bello.
Suo padre era, come al solito in quei pomeriggi in cui era privo di incombenze ufficiali e poteva dedicarsi solo a se stesso e al proprio piacere, sepolto per più di metà sotto uno dei suoi complessi macchinari sempre sporchi e borbottanti. Sdraiato su una piattaforma su un lato della quale aveva montato quattro piccole rotelle, in modo che fungesse da carrello e potesse aiutarlo a muoversi più agevolmente anche quando era disteso sulla schiena, stava nascosto fin quasi alla vita, al punto che di lui si vedeva solo la parte di corpo dalla cintola in giù. Stava martellando qualcosa con una certa veemenza, e da qualche parte un qualche marchingegno a vapore stava sbuffando come una teiera pronta ad esplodere, e a causa di tutto questo trambusto inizialmente neanche riuscì a sentire la voce di Kurt che, sottilissima, lo chiamava.
- Padre! – disse quindi Kurt, spazientito, irrigidendo le braccia lungo i fianchi e picchiettando per terra con un tacco, - Venite fuori di lì, una buona volta!
- Cosa? – biascicò Burt, scivolando sul suo carrellino fino a mostrarsi completamente agli occhi del figlio. Indossava un’ampia casacca da lavoro sdrucita e sporca d’olio, e due enormi guanti di pelle rovinati sulle dita che sembravano ingolfarlo nei movimenti, più che aiutarlo a compierli. Reggeva un martello in una mano ed un paio di bulloni nell’altra, e stringeva tra i denti una chiave inglese come un corsaro avrebbe fatto col proprio fido coltello durante un assalto a una nave mercantile. La restante metà del suo viso era coperta da un paio di occhiali giganteschi sui quali erano montati, al posto di lenti normali, due spesse lenti d’ingrandimento che rendevano i suoi occhi innaturalmente grandi e infantili. Si sfilò la chiave inglese dalle labbra, allungando un piede a tirare un calcio ad una leva che, spostandosi, zittì il marchingegno che produceva quell’orribile rumore di vapore che sfiata, riportando finalmente il silenzio nell’officina. – Kurt? Che succede?
Il ragazzo emise un sospiro rassegnato, afferrando uno sgabello basso da un angolo della stanza e trascinandolo vicino al carrello del padre, mentre questi si sollevava a sedere, e poi si sedette a propria volta, piegando le lunghe gambe e risistemandosi la gonna sulle ginocchia prima di parlare.
- Padre, - cominciò malinconicamente, - io… voi sapete che io non potrei mai continuare a vivere, se sapessi di essere una delusione, per voi.
- Una delusione? Per me? – sbottò Burt, incredulo, sistemandosi gli occhiali sul naso, - Kurt, ma cosa mai ti salta in mente? Sai bene di essere il mio vanto e la mia gioia! Mai nessun padre fu più fortunato di me ad avere un figlio devoto e bello come te!
- Sì, ma… - insistette Kurt, risollevando lo sguardo, - …potreste togliervi dalla faccia quella roba?! – strillò, incrociando le braccia sul petto, - Siete ridicolo, non riesco nemmeno a guardarvi! – Burt rise, sfilandosi gli occhiali dal naso mentre Kurt sospirava ancora, scuotendo il capo. – Quello che intendo dire, - riprese il ragazzo, incurvando le spalle e tornando a fissare il pavimento, incapace di sostenere il benevolo sguardo paterno, - è che voi mi avete sempre detto che sarei riuscito ad essere felice solo quando un principe avesse chiesto la mia mano, portandomi con sé nel suo castello e costruendo con me una famiglia… ed io… io ci ho sempre creduto, ed ero felice di crederci, ma ora mi chiedo, padre, se io non riuscissi a portare a termine questa missione, vi deluderei? – disse tutto in un fiato, chiudendo gli occhi come in attesa della propria meritata punizione.
Burt lo fissò accigliato per qualche secondo, le labbra dischiuse, come non riuscisse bene a decidersi su cosa fosse opportuno dirgli.
- Kurt, - cominciò poi, con tono paziente, - qualunque cosa io ti abbia detto per indirizzarti verso una certa strada, l’ho fatta perché credevo fosse quella giusta per te, non certo per mio tornaconto personale.
- Lo so, padre! – si affrettò a precisare Kurt, sollevando repentinamente lo sguardo, ferito in prima persona dal fraintendimento, - Non ho mai pensato che voleste niente di meno che il mio bene!
- E dunque, - riprese Burt, - perché parli della tua vita come di una missione? Non ti ho mai chiesto di diventare un principe consorte perché quella doveva essere la tua missione. Sono solo convinto che tu sia tanto meraviglioso da meritare il meglio, e dunque cosa può esistere di meglio di un principe, della Capitale, della corona?
Già, si disse Kurt, tornando a guardare il pavimento e sentendo le lacrime pungere sotto le ciglia, cosa poteva esserci di meglio?
- Ma se io non riuscissi a sposare il principe Blaine, o comunque un principe… - insistette, la voce ridotta nuovamente a un rantolo prossimo a rompersi in singhiozzi, - voi sareste deluso da me, padre? Smettereste di amarmi?
Burt rise appena, quasi intenerito da quella domanda.
- Non ti ho mai sentito dire così tante sciocchezze tutte assieme, Kurt. – lo rassicurò, sporgendosi ad accarezzargli una guancia. I guanti che ancora indossava erano ruvidi ed unti, ma Kurt non se ne sentì infastidito mentre un minuscolo sorriso nasceva anche sulle sue labbra. – Sarò felice chiunque sia la persona che tu deciderai di sposare, tesoro mio. Sarò felice anche se deciderai di non sposare nessuno, anzi, forse allora sarò perfino più felice, perché vorrà dire che potrò tenerti per sempre con me. – rise appena, allungandosi a stringerlo per le spalle per tirarselo contro ed abbracciarlo con calore. – Ed ora basta cupi pensieri, figlio mio. – proseguì, allontanandosi abbastanza perché Kurt potesse vederlo sorridere incoraggiante, - Torna in camera tua e riposa. Nella serata di domani, i nostri ospiti saranno di ritorno, e si dovrà provvedere a sollevarli dalla loro stanchezza. Canterai per noi, vero, figliolo? Canterai per me?
Kurt annuì, sorridendo fiducioso.
- Sì, padre. – promise stringendogli una mano, prima di alzarsi in piedi. – Cercate di non farvi male mentre lavorate a questo… questo coso. – si raccomandò, indicando il macchinario con un vago cenno del capo. Suo padre rise divertito, tornando a stendersi sul proprio carrello per poi scomparire sotto la macchina subito dopo. Kurt inspirò a pieni polmoni l’aria pura della primavera, uscendo nuovamente in cortile. Col peso che l’aveva oppresso ormai sollevato dal petto, perfino respirare era più facile e piacevole.
Attraversò il piazzale con un sorriso sempre più grande sulle labbra, accennando perfino qualche passo di danza quando fu sicuro che nessuno avrebbe potuto vederlo, ma tutta l’ilarità e la leggerezza di spirito che aveva sentito si dissolsero in un baleno quando i suoi occhi, scivolando distrattamente sulla stalla, scorsero attraverso l’uscio aperto la figura di Dave, intento a strigliare i cavalli e prepararli per la notte.
Poteva ignorarlo quanto voleva, ma il problema sarebbe rimasto. E, se non fosse stato capace di affrontarlo di petto, si sarebbe ripresentato, e forse sarebbe addirittura peggiorato. Doveva parlare con quell’uomo, capire per quale motivo il suo comportamento fosse così lunatico, capire cosa gli fosse passato per la testa quando l’aveva baciato. Soprattutto, doveva capire se il lieve calore che sentiva al bassoventre ogni volta che ripensava alle sue mani, alle sue labbra, al petto forte al quale si era appoggiato tornando verso la villa a cavallo con lui, era davvero provocato dalla sua presenza, o se per caso era possibile imputarlo a qualche sciocco colpo di calore, o qualche altra irrilevante ragione.
Entrò cercando di non fare rumore, guardandosi intorno con aria circospetta. Dave, nonostante tutte le sue precauzioni, lo notò subito.
- Credevo che non voleste più vedermi. – disse, senza sollevare gli occhi da Sarpedonte, e Kurt si mosse a disagio, spostando il peso del corpo da un piede all’altro per non pesare troppo sulla caviglia che, adesso che si trovava di nuovo vicino a lui, aveva ripreso a dolere, come se quell’uomo avesse il potere di gestire non solo i suoi stati d’animo, ma perfino le sue sensazioni fisiche.
- Lo credevo anch’io. – ammise, deglutendo forzatamente, - Ero molto scosso.
- Vi ho già detto che mi dispiace. – replicò Dave, aggrottando le sopracciglia con un certo fastidio.
- Sì, lo so. – cercò di sorridere Kurt, stringendosi nelle spalle, - Non è per questo che sono qui.
Dave sospirò, mettendo via la pezza bagnata con la quale stava ripulendo Sarpedonte e avvicinandoglisi di qualche passo. L’espressione sul suo viso era addolorata, quasi contrita, ed al solo vederla a Kurt sembrò di sentire una tenaglia chiuderglisi di scatto sul cuore. Non aveva mai provato una sensazione simile.
- …la vostra vista mi è insopportabile. – gemette Dave, irrigidendo le braccia lungo i fianchi, quasi temesse di poterne perdere il controllo. Kurt si morse un labbro, ferito da quelle parole così aspre.
- Io non vi capisco, signore. – disse in un sussurro, gli occhi che si riempivano velocemente di lacrime, - Perché siete così crudele con me? Non vi capisco proprio.
- Non è necessario che voi capiate. – ribatté Dave, distogliendo lo sguardo, - Vi prego, ditemi perché siete venuto, e poi andate via.
- Non posso! – insistette Kurt, andandogli incontro e cercando i suoi occhi coi propri, - Se sono venuto qui è proprio per capire! Non posso andarmene finché non mi sarà tutto chiaro.
- Be’, allora temo di dovervi dare una delusione, - rispose Dave, - non posso chiarirvi niente, se non c’è niente che sia chiaro a me per primo.
- Voi state mentendo. – sbottò Kurt, continuando a inseguire i suoi occhi sfuggenti, - Perché mi avete baciato?
- Lasciatemi in pace! – strillò lo stalliere, voltandogli le spalle.
- No! – continuò Kurt, girandogli attorno ed afferrandogli i polsi con entrambe le mani, - Perché mi avete baciato, per zittirmi? Per umiliarmi? Per— non lo so, per macchiare il mio onore, di modo che non potessi più avvicinarmi a sua maestà, né tantomeno coltivare la speranza di poterlo un giorno sposare?
- Oh, buon Dio! – esalò Dave, cercando di liberarsi dalla stretta delle sue mani scrollando violentemente i polsi, senza però ottenere i risultati sperati, - Non mi interessa niente della vostra storia col principe Blaine! Per quel che mi riguarda, potete sposarlo e andare a vivere con lui dove vorrete!
- E allora perché?! – ripeté Kurt, spalancando gli occhi, - Perché avreste dovuto farlo, se vi disgusto così tanto?! Se neanche riuscite a tollerare la mia vista, tale è il ribrezzo che vi provoco?! Perché?!
Dave trattenne il respiro così a lungo da diventare rosso in viso, e Kurt ebbe la chiara impressione che stesse contando fino a dieci per provare ad impedirsi di fare qualcosa di cui si sarebbe certamente pentito.
Contare non dovette essere sufficiente, però, perché alla fine Dave si sporse in avanti e, dopo essersi liberato della prigione delle sue mani con un altro strattone, lo afferrò per le spalle, tenendolo fermo mentre si chinava su di lui e copriva nuovamente le sue labbra con le proprie, stavolta senza fermarsi al solo contatto delle labbra.
Kurt gemette, stupito dalla sensazione umida della lingua dello stalliere che s’insinuava fra le sue labbra alla ricerca della sua, e spalancò gli occhi, incapace di porre un freno a quanto stava accadendo e lasciandosi condurre da Dave quando lui lo sospinse verso la parete in legno della stalla, per allontanarsi dallo spicchio di luce che la porta aperta proiettava all’interno dell’edificio.
Il buio sembrò accoglierli in un abbraccio confortante, e solo quando gli parve di non riuscire più a riconoscere i contorni delle cose Kurt si concesse di rilassarsi, sciogliersi fra le braccia dell’uomo che lo stringeva e piegare appena il capo, schiudendo le labbra con più sicurezza mentre la lingua di Dave accarezzava la sua e le sue mani scivolavano lungo le sue braccia, fermandosi sui suoi fianchi e stringendoli con forza fra le dita.
Kurt gemette ancora, e quel flebile suono sembrò come dar fuoco ad una miccia. Dave si spinse repentinamente in avanti, schiacciando il proprio bacino contro il suo, e Kurt spalancò gli occhi nel percepire distintamente qualcosa di rigido premuto contro l’interno della coscia. Mugolò e si dibatté, cercando di allontanare lo stalliere, ma lui non gli diede tregua, serrando con più forza le labbra sulle sue e le mani attorno alla sua vita, ma rallentando il ritmo delle carezze della propria lingua e sfiorandogli a tratti i fianchi con i polpastrelli callosi dei pollici, approfittando dei centimetri di pelle lasciati scoperti dalla casacca il cui orlo, con tutto quel dimenarsi e quello strattonarsi, era uscito dalla fascia legata in vita.
Kurt smise di agitarsi, placato da quei gesti così dolci e lenti, e tornò a chiudere le palpebre, riprendendo a baciare Dave con dolcezza mentre le sue mani, quasi sospinte dal vento o da una forza soprannaturale, risalivano lungo le sue braccia forti, fermandosi sulle spalle ampie sotto la pelle delle quali Kurt, accennando una pressione appena percettibile con le punte delle dita, riusciva a sentire tutti i muscoli piegarsi e tendersi ad ogni movimento.
Si allontanò da lui per riprendere fiato solo quando Dave gliene concesse la possibilità, ed in realtà già un paio di secondi dopo avrebbe voluto che Dave tornasse a farsi avanti, tale era il bisogno che le sue labbra sentivano di provare di nuovo quel calore, e tale era il bisogno che la sua lingua sentiva di assaggiare di nuovo il suo sapore. Era lì lì per metter via gli imbarazzi e le esitazioni, aveva già stretto con più vigore le braccia attorno al collo dell’altro uomo e stava per sollevarsi sulle punte dei piedi per raggiungere agevolmente le sue labbra una seconda volta, quando la voce di Sam, affannata e carica di fretta, spezzò il silenzio del tramonto ormai quasi del tutto tramutatosi in sera.
- Il principe! – annunciò, correndo a perdifiato per tutto il cortile, mentre le galline chiocciavano e frullavano le ali spaventate attorno ai suoi piedi scalzi, spostandosi goffamente nel tentativo di sfuggire alla sua travolgente furia, - Il principe è di ritorno! E porta con sé due nuovi ospiti!
Quel trambusto fu sufficiente per rompere l’incantesimo. Dave si ritrasse con la fretta di una bestia ferita, e Kurt, spaventato da quei movimenti così repentini e imbarazzato oltre ogni limite, si rannicchiò il più possibile contro al muro, pregando di riuscire a sparire nel buio.
Il principe era di ritorno. E lui aveva appena baciato volontariamente un altro uomo.
*
Il principe Blaine sembrava preso in faccende ben più importanti di lui, e pertanto si limitò a salutarlo educatamente ma un po’ freddamente, un attimo prima di chiamare a gran voce suo padre, che accorse di fretta dall’officina nella quale era ancora rinchiuso, le braccia ancora sporche di grasso e olio fino ai gomiti.
- Principe Blaine! – lo salutò, vagamente inquieto, - Non vi aspettavamo prima di domani.
Blaine annuì, indicando la ragazza che Finn teneva stretta fra le braccia e si rifiutava di consegnare ai vari cavalieri che si offrivano di reggerla mentre lui scendeva da cavallo.
- Stavamo perlustrando il limitare della Foresta Nera, - raccontò, - quando ci siamo imbattuti in un villaggio indiano quasi interamente ridotto in cenere. Loro due, - disse, accennando nuovamente alla ragazza e poi allo splendido giovane che, fiero e dritto, era in piedi al suo fianco, - sono gli unici superstiti. Si chiamano Quinn e Jeremiah. So che disturbo già fin troppo fastidiosamente la vostra quiete anche da solo, - chiese con aria afflitta, - ma Burt, posso abusare ancora della vostra pazienza e chiedervi di ospitare anche questi due giovani, finché non si saranno rimessi e non sia stato possibile decidere del loro destino?
Burt lanciò un’occhiata perplessa ai due sconosciuti, ma non seppe resistere allo sguardo fiero ma provato del giovane, né all’espressione stanca e addolorata che la ragazza manteneva intatta nonostante fosse ancora svenuta, ed annuì.
- Se avete deciso di tenerli con voi, principe Blaine, io li tratterò con lo stesso riguardo con cui tratto la Vostra Maestà. – assicurò con un breve inchino. Blaine gli rivolse un sorriso colmo di gratitudine, stringendo le sue mani fra le proprie, incurante di quanto fossero sporche.
- Siete l’amico più caro che possiedo. – disse commosso, e si limitò ad un altro semplice cenno del capo in direzione di Kurt, passandogli davanti, quando Burt lo pregò di seguire Artie nel suo laboratorio, portando i due ospiti con sé, sperando che il medico potesse fare qualcosa per aiutarli.
In un qualsiasi altro momento, Kurt si sarebbe offeso per quella palese mancanza di attenzione, o si sarebbe preoccupato per ciò che un simile disinteresse avrebbe potuto implicare, ma in quel momento la distanza posta dal principe fra se stesso e lui non fece altro che rincuorarlo e farlo sentire protetto. Non gli interessava molto di tutto il trambusto che stava accadendo, e d’altronde era abbastanza certo che nessuna stupida strega si nascondesse nel folto di quella foresta talmente intricata e ricca di bestie feroci da rendere impossibile la vita per chiunque, e men che meno lo intrigava l’idea di avere altri nuovi ospiti alla villa, visto che quella di ospitare i viandanti era ormai una consuetudine, ma dopo quello che era successo nella stalla non sarebbe riuscito a reggere lo sguardo di sua maestà se fosse stato appassionato e ardente com’era stato prima della partenza, e perciò fu silenziosamente grato a quel cumulo di sciocchezze e leggende e casualità coinvolgenti villaggi indiani rasi al suolo da forze misteriose, perché permettevano alla mente ed al cuore del principe di intrattenersi abbastanza da non avere attenzione in più sufficiente da poterne dedicare anche a lui.
- Kurt? – lo chiamò suo padre, avvicinandosi a lui e guardandolo con una certa apprensione dopo aver osservato il proprio figlio maggiore scomparire assieme al seguito del principe alle spalle del medico della villa, - Figliolo, è tutto a posto? Sei incredibilmente pallido.
- Io… - mormorò lui in risposta, passandosi una mano sulla fronte e su una guancia, trovando la prima scottante e la seconda gelida in modo decisamente innaturale. Tutta la sua pelle era coperta da una sottile patina di sudore freddo, e si sentiva come stesse lì lì per svenire. - …no, credo di non sentirmi bene, padre. – deglutì, socchiudendo gli occhi.
Burt gli si avvicinò ulteriormente, sorreggendolo per le spalle.
- È successo forse qualcosa? – domandò con evidente preoccupazione, ma Kurt si affrettò a scuotere il capo, negando decisamente.
- Credo di essere solo un po’ stanco. – mentì, cercando di reggersi sulle proprie gambe, - Non vi offenderete, padre, se mi ritiro nelle mie stanze, per oggi, vero? – chiese con aria supplice, sollevando gli occhi umidi e arrossati nei suoi.
- Naturalmente no. – lo rassicurò Burt, abbracciandolo stretto per qualche secondo, - Vuoi che ti faccia portare la cena in camera, come al solito?
- No, vi prego. – scosse il capo Kurt, avviandosi verso il portico, - Date ordine di non disturbarmi. Preferisco riposare fino a domattina.
Non attese di vedere suo padre annuire a quella richiesta: sapeva già che la sua volontà sarebbe stata rispettata. Suo padre non lo aveva mai viziato troppo; anzi, se pure – potendosi permettere di trattarlo come una figlia – si era concesso di lasciargli passare qualche capriccio quando era ancora un bambino, non aveva mai perso di vista la sua vera natura, ed aveva pertanto sempre tenuto presente il fatto che, in quanto maschietto, necessitasse per essere educato di una dose di rigore molto maggiore di quella che si sarebbe riservata usualmente ad una femminuccia, per sua natura più incline ad obbedire agli ordini paterni. Ciononostante, pur essendo sempre stato un padre severo, era sempre stato anche un padre buono e giusto, premuroso e comprensivo quando non addirittura accondiscendente, e non aveva mai fatto mancare a Kurt niente di ciò di cui aveva bisogno, fosse del sostegno, del semplice affetto o anche la possibilità di mandare all’aria le etichette e quello che il suo ruolo avrebbe preteso da lui, per concedergli di prendersi un po’ di tempo per se stesso.
Entrando in camera propria ed abbandonandosi per qualche secondo di spalle contro la porta, Kurt inspirò ed espirò profondamente, ringraziando suo padre per essere com’era, dal momento che un altro padre probabilmente non gli avrebbe mai permesso di sparire prima di cena, senza neanche passare a salutare gli ospiti prima di andare a dormire, specialmente dal momento che si trattava di ospiti così importanti. Gli dispiaceva sapere perfettamente che suo padre avrebbe passato le prossime ore a scusarsi per la sua assenza inventando malori ben più gravi di un moto di stanchezza per giustificarla, e se gli fosse stato possibile l’avrebbe di certo sollevato da un’incombenza simile, ma la sola idea di vedere tutta quella gente ed incontrare anche solo per sbaglio lo sguardo del principe era per lui già troppo per poter essere tollerata.
Si scostò a fatica dalla porta, muovendosi verso il letto in un paio di passi zoppicanti. La caviglia faceva adesso perfino più male di quanto non avesse fatto quando era quasi caduto da cavallo – e solo il pensiero di quel momento bastò a riportare in superficie il calore delle braccia di Dave strette attorno al suo corpo, l’odore forte, così maschile e prepotente, che si emanava dal suo petto, e Kurt chiuse gli occhi, lasciandosi scivolare lentamente sul materasso.
Continuò a tenerli chiusi mentre il canto sottile e melodioso di Pavarotti si diffondeva nel silenzio perfetto della sua camera, e nonostante volesse con tutte le sue forze urlargli di stare zitto, di smetterla di ricordargli l’enormità del suo crimine annegando il suo cuore in un oceano di dolci rimpianti, non lo fece. Rimase immobile, e così com’era, in qualche minuto, si addormentò.
*
Aprì gli occhi nel silenzio della notte, non avrebbe saputo dire quante ore dopo. La luna era alta nel cielo, perfettamente inquadrata dalla cornice della sua finestra, bella come un dipinto. Pavarotti, tutto rannicchiato su se stesso, con la testolina rotonda incassata fra le ali e schiacciata contro il petto paffuto e morbido, riposava placidamente, come avrebbe voluto continuare a fare anche lui.
Mugolò insoddisfatto, cercando di capire cosa l’avesse svegliato. Aveva soltanto la sensazione di aver percepito qualcosa, un disturbo insistente e aritmico, che gli aveva impedito di continuare a dormire. Fu solo quando riuscì finalmente a mettere per bene a fuoco tutto l’ambiente che lo circondava che si rese conto che qualcuno stava bussando alla sua finestra. Il che era impossibile, a meno che chiunque stava bussando non fosse dotato di ali.
Si alzò lentamente, avvicinandosi al vetro un passo dopo l’altro, e gli saltò il cuore in gola quando vide che l’uomo in equilibrio sul suo davanzale altri non era che Dave.
- Oh, mio Dio! – esalò, portando entrambe le mani al viso in un gesto sconcertato, - Ma cosa ci fate lì?!
- Aprite! – disse Dave, la voce attutita dallo spessore del vetro, continuando a bussare piano.
- Oh, cielo! – continuò a sospirare lui, confuso e improvvisamente accaldato, - Oh, per carità, ma cosa vi è saltato in testa?! Avreste potuto cadere di sotto e morire! – sfilò il ferro e spalancò le imposte, allungandosi ad afferrare immediatamente l’uomo per le spalle perché non perdesse l’equilibrio, e premurandosi di trascinarlo all’interno della stanza il più in fretta possibile. – Voi siete pazzo! – aggiunse per sovrapprezzo quando Dave fu al sicuro, seduto sul pavimento di camera sua, col fiatone e lo sguardo perso di chi in prima persona non si capacita di cosa sia riuscito a fare.
- Voi… voi mi dovete una spiegazione. – disse quindi l’uomo, ritrovando una parvenza di compostezza ed alzandosi in piedi per fronteggiare Kurt da una posizione più favorevole. Gli puntò un dito contro, mentre Pavarotti, disturbato dal chiacchiericcio, sollevava il capino piumato, guardandosi intorno con aria smarrita. – Cosa è successo in quella stalla?
Kurt spalancò gli occhi, sconvolto.
- Cosa?! – quasi strillò, ricordando solo in ritardo di dover stare attento al volume della propria voce, - Voi mi avete baciato! – aggiunse in un sibilo astioso, piantandogli un indice nel mezzo del petto e spingendolo ad indietreggiare verso la porta, - Questo è successo!
- Nossignore. – ribatté Dave, afferrandogli la mano e togliendosela di dosso per ricominciare a incombere su di lui, costringendolo ad indietreggiare come Kurt aveva appena fatto nei suoi confronti, - Io vi ho baciato, d’accordo, ma non è quello il punto!
- Ah, davvero? – sbottò Kurt, cercando di liberarsi della sua stretta senza però riuscirci, mentre Pavarotti cinguettava incerto alle loro spalle, - E quale sarebbe il punto?
- Che voi avete ricambiato il bacio! – rispose Dave con ovvietà, lasciandolo andare, infastidito dal suo continuo dimenarsi, ed allargando le braccia ai lati del corpo in un gesto per metà rassegnato e per metà semplicemente sbigottito dalla sua ottusità.
- Un tragico errore. – esalò Kurt, cupo, portando una mano alla fronte e distogliendo lo sguardo, - Che mi premurerò di non ripetere mai più!
- Ah. – sibilò Dave, irritato, irrigidendo le braccia lungo i fianchi, - Non sembravate di quest’opinione, mentre gemevate fra le mie braccia.
- Io non gemevo affatto! – strillò il ragazzo, indietreggiando oltraggiato ed arrossendo vistosamente, - Sono tutte menzogne!
- Oh, no, non lo sono per niente! – insistette Dave, avanzando verso di lui. Kurt gli girò attorno, consapevole di essersi avvicinato troppo alla finestra, e Dave si voltò immediatamente a cercare i suoi occhi, le sopracciglia corrugate e tutti i lineamenti del volto tesi in uno spasmo nervoso. – Ebbene?
- Voi siete pazzo. – ribadì Kurt, serio e freddo, - Non ho idea di cosa vi siate messo in testa, ma quello che è successo è stato un errore, ve l’ho detto e ve lo ripeto. E non dovrà mai più verificarsi.
- Nient’affatto, signorina. – disse, calcando il tono sull’ultima parola, mentre Kurt inorridiva, le guance che si arrossavano ancora più violentemente per la vergogna e l’offesa, - Bisogna essere in due per stabilire queste cose, e se permettete io non ho ancora detto la mia.
- Voi siete… siete un individuo gretto e meschino! – sbottò Kurt, indicandolo sgomento.
- Oh, non ricominciate, adesso. – sospirò Dave, sollevando uno sguardo supplice al soffitto.
- Ma è la verità! – ribadì il ragazzo, gli occhi pieni di lacrime, - Siete orribile e maleducato, e come osate entrare qui in camera mia, di notte, e darmi della signorina, e trattarmi come se fossi— come se fossi una donna di malaffare?! Se anche ci fosse stata per voi una minima speranza, signore, adesso non avete che da dimenticarmi, perché mai i miei occhi incroceranno un’altra volta i vostri, se non per disprezzarvi!
- Non potete prendermi in giro. – disse Dave a bassa voce, per niente spaventato dai suoi rimproveri, riducendo al minimo le distanze fra loro e stringendogli i polsi fra le mani per impedirgli di spingerlo lontano da sé, - Io ero qui, in questa stanza, quando vi ho baciato la prima volta. E voi eravate lì con me. Come prima, nella stalla.
- Voi siete pazzo. – piagnucolò un’altra volta Kurt, agitandosi per cercare di farsi lasciare, - Andatevene! Io vi odio, non ero da nessuna parte, né prima, né dopo! Vi odio, voi mi disgustate!
- Kurt. – lo chiamò Dave a bassa voce, - Ascoltami—
- No! – strillò il ragazzo, spalancando improvvisamente gli occhi e recuperando abbastanza forze per piantargli entrambe le mani contro il petto e spingerlo ad allontanarsi, - Non osate! Non osate darmi del tu! Voi non siete niente! – lo spinse violentemente, - Non siete nessuno! – lo spinse ancora, - Siete solo una macchia che non posso cancellare, ma terrò ben nascosta, e mi vergogno di esservi stato vicino abbastanza da permettervi di immaginare chissà che, ma state ben certo, - concluse, riprendendo a spingerlo con violenza sempre maggiore verso la finestra, - che una tale occasione non vi sarà data una seconda volta! Lasciatemi in pace! – e così dicendo, lo spinse per l’ultima volta.
Le gambe di Dave urtarono contro il basso davanzale della finestra, e Kurt lo osservò inciampare e sporgersi pericolosamente verso l’esterno mentre l’espressione del suo volto si tramutava istantaneamente da rabbiosa a sconcertata, ed allungò entrambe le braccia verso di lui, strillando “no!” e afferrandolo per il bavero del gilet che indossava. Dave si aggrappò a lui con tutte le proprie forze, cercando di recuperare l’equilibrio per non cadere di sotto, ma nel farlo urtò inavvertitamente la gabbietta di Pavarotti, con una tale spaventata violenza che i sottili fili che la tenevano legata al davanzale si strapparono; priva del suo sostegno, la gabbia oscillò sulla propria base e in un battito di ciglia precipitò di sotto, mentre Pavarotti strillava per l’ultima volta, prima di schiantarsi al suolo.
Dopo che la sua voce sottile si fu estinta per sempre, la notte piombò nuovamente nel silenzio più oscuro e pesante, interrotto soltanto dall’ansimare convulso e spaventato di Dave e Kurt che, ancora aggrappati l’uno all’altro, si fissavano negli occhi. Fu Kurt il primo a muoversi, lanciando un grido inorridito talmente forte da far tremare i vetri.
- Pavarotti! – strillò, strattonandosi via di dosso Dave per correre al davanzale e guardare giù, - Oh, mio Dio, no! No!
Dave si alzò subito in piedi, avvicinandoglisi, gli occhi pieni di paura.
- Kurt, non urlate! – cercò di fermarlo, tappandogli la bocca, ma Kurt si divincolò velocemente, allontanandosi da lui e rintanandosi in un angolo della stanza.
- Andate via! Via! – strillò, il volto inondato di lacrime. Dave tese un braccio verso di lui e provò ad avvicinarsi, ma la casa si stava già riempiendo delle luci delle lampade ad olio, e lo scalpiccio di parecchi passi era già in avvicinamento verso la porta chiusa, perciò, pur se a malincuore, scavalcò il davanzale e ridiscese giù per la grondaia lungo la quale era salito fin lì, perdendosi presto nei cespugli oltre la siepe.
*
Rachel scelse volontariamente di non farsi coinvolgere dal trambusto che percepì giungere dalla camera del signorino Kurt. Aveva osservato attentamente il comportamento del giovane signor Finn da quando era rientrato, portando con sé quella giovane sconosciuta, ed il vederlo così inspiegabilmente preso da lei non aveva potuto fare altro che turbarla. Non avrebbe potuto dire di sentirsene propriamente gelosa – d’altronde, non aveva mai creduto che la relazione fra lei e il signor Finn potesse continuare in eterno, non fosse altro che per l’appartenenza a due classi diverse, che li teneva lontani ben più di quanto potesse tollerare di ammettere lui, con tutte le sue romantiche idee di avventura e uguaglianza tirate fuori dai poemi che amava leggere a suo fratello – ma allo stesso tempo avrebbe voluto poter dire di non esserne toccata neanche in parte, e invece così non era.
Se ne sentiva disturbata, e non riusciva a capire perché. Se non era per amore, né per gelosia, perché? Forse per gli occhi coi quali Finn guardava quella ragazza, per la luce abbagliante che sembrava brillargli nelle pupille. Aveva mai guardato lei in quel modo? Con tanto vivo e bruciante interesse? Qualcuno l’avrebbe mai guardata così?
Non era forse la gelosia in senso stretto ad urtarla, no, ma una specie di gelosia in senso più ampio, quello forse sì. In ogni caso, non si sentiva della disposizione d’animo adatta per star dietro alle stramberie del signorino Kurt: le sue dame di compagnia non avrebbero avuto alcun problema a gestirlo come sempre facevano, e lei sarebbe rimasta esattamente dove si trovava, seduta sulla panchina di legno appena fuori dalle mura della villa, dalla quale si poteva osservare l’enorme campagna che la circondava e la lunga via commerciale che, da ovest ad est, tagliava in due il paesaggio, passando a pochi metri dal cancello e perdendosi all’orizzonte, oltre le curve dolcissime delle colline.
Fu lì che il principe Jesse la raggiunse, sedendosi al suo fianco proprio mentre lei lasciava scivolare il pensiero lungo una china pericolosa, accarezzando con affetto l’idea di potere, un giorno, imboccare quella strada per andare via da lì.
- Dovreste essere a letto. – lo avvertì, - Sarete stanco, dopo il lungo viaggio.
Il principe le sorrise, anche se lei non mostrò di averlo visto o di essere in alcun modo intenzionata a voltarsi verso di lui.
- La stessa cosa si potrebbe voler dire di voi, Rachel. – commentò, e poi lasciò andare un verso frustrato e infastidito, - Dobbiamo proprio continuare con questa farsa del voi? È così irritante.
Rachel sorrise a propria volta, cercando anzi di trattenere le risate. I modi del principe erano così poco regali, e lei non ricordava abbastanza, di Carmel, per poter dire se fosse normale o se fosse lui ad essere particolarmente rozzo, nonostante il sangue blu.
- Vi sarei grata se continuaste, maestà, sì. – annuì, - Gli usi di questa terra, come vi ho detto, lo impongono.
- Gli usi di questa terra, come ho già provato a farvi capire, - sorrise lui, facendole il verso, - non mi riguardano. E non dovrebbero riguardare neanche voi. – Rachel non rispose, continuando a fissare l’orizzonte, e il principe prese il suo silenzio come un invito a proseguire. – Non intendo restare qui molto a lungo. – disse, - Questo luogo non mi piace. Non che abbia qualcosa di male in sé, s’intende, - ridacchiò, - ma tutti i luoghi smettono di piacermi, dopo un po’ di tempo. Mi è successo anche con la mia città natale, è naturale che mi succeda adesso con questo villaggio. Non esercita su di me alcuna attrattiva, se non quella della missione per uccidere la strega. Ed intendo partire subito dopo averla portata a termine.
- E per andare dove, maestà? – domandò alfine lei, prendendo in giro un po’ lui, e un po’ anche se stessa, per aver osato pensare quella stessa cosa solo pochi istanti prima, - Quale sarebbe il punto della partenza, se voi stesso avete detto che tutti i luoghi finiscono con l’annoiarvi, dopo un po’? Pensate davvero che possa esistere un luogo nel mondo così diverso da tutti gli altri da non annoiarvi anche se decidete di trascorrere lì tutta la vostra intera esistenza?
Il principe Jesse sorrise, contento di avere attirato la sua attenzione abbastanza da costringerla a rispondere.
- Il mondo è abbastanza grande da permettermi di evitare di pormi interrogativi simili. – disse, - La vita di un uomo è ben più breve del tempo che occorre per visitarlo tutto in ogni sua parte. Ma io intendo comunque provarci. – Rachel distolse lo sguardo, aggrottando le sopracciglia, sentendosi inspiegabilmente infastidita e sconfitta. Jesse sorrise ancora, chinandosi su di lei. – Mi piacerebbe potervi portare con me, quando tutto sarà finito. – le sussurrò teneramente, lasciandole un lieve bacio su una guancia. Rachel si allontanò immediatamente, voltandosi a fissarlo quasi con paura, sorpresa da quell’improvviso contatto.
Ciò che vide negli occhi di quell’uomo, un istante prima che lui si voltasse per allontanarsi, rientrando nella villa, la turbò.
Bruciava. Brillava.
La chiamava.
Ma lei non aveva alcuna intenzione di starlo a sentire.
*
Se c’era una ed una sola cosa per la quale Kurt poteva dirsi contento, la mattina successiva, era la possibilità di nascondere il proprio volto dietro la veletta nera che aveva indossato prima di uscire dalla propria stanza, per presenziare al funerale del canarino. Era stato organizzato in fretta e furia, quindi non si sarebbe certo trattato di una cerimonia in grande stile, sicuramente non la cerimonia che il povero, innocente uccelletto avrebbe meritato, ma era tutto ciò che era stato possibile approntare per tempo, e Kurt non aveva intenzione di lamentarsi al riguardo.
Oltre il velo finemente ricamato che lo copriva fin sotto le labbra, il sole batteva impietoso, avvolgendolo interamente, attirato dai toni scuri della stoffa di cui il suo abito da lutto era composto. Era una veste accollata, abbottonata fino sotto al mento. Kurt soffriva incredibilmente il caldo, ma non si sarebbe sentito in grado di mostrare neanche un polso, in quel momento, tale era il cordoglio che provava. Indossava perfino i guanti, alti, fino a metà gomito, per evitare qualsiasi possibilità di mostrarsi meno che profondamente atterrito dalla propria perdita.
Pavarotti era stato un bravo canarino. Più di ogni altra cosa, però, era stato soprattutto una promessa. Non una promessa scritta, naturalmente, né una promessa di qualcosa di specifico, piuttosto la promessa di qualcosa che avrebbe potuto essere, un pensiero dolcissimo dal quale Kurt si era spesso lasciato accarezzare ascoltando il suo canto melodioso alla sera, prima di andare a dormire. Un pensiero che parlava di una vita futura felice, soddisfacente, ricca di amore, vissuta tra le eleganti stanze del palazzo reale, in compagnia del principe dei suoi sogni.
Per quanto sciocco potesse sembrare, aveva come l’impressione che, col canarino, fossero morte anche tutte le possibilità che aveva avuto di poter vivere felicemente per sempre col principe Blaine, a Westerville. Ed immaginava che questo brutto presagio fosse causato in parte anche dal fatto che, per quanto si ostinasse a cercare in giro fra tutti gli invitati che aveva in qualche modo costretto a presenziare al funerale, il principe non figurava.
- Sua maestà…? – domandò incerto, piegandosi appena verso Santana, immobile e stretta in un abito nero dalla foggia molto simile a quello che anche lui indossava, pur più spartano e privo di veletta. La ragazza mostrò qualche segno di insofferenza, sbuffando accaldata, prima di rispondergli.
- Vorrei non essere io a darvi questa notizia, - borbottò, - ma il principe non ha ritenuto fosse suo dovere presenziare al funerale. È a cavallo, signorino Kurt. Col giovane ospite che ha condotto con sé alla villa tornando dal suo breve viaggio ieri.
Kurt spalancò gli occhi, ritraendosi di scatto, come la donna avesse tentato di attaccarlo con un coltello. Una mano sul petto e l’altra rigida lungo il fianco, trattenne il respiro per un paio di secondi, prima di abbassare lo sguardo. Ecco che tutto si compiva, dunque, ecco che, morto Pavarotti, fin da subito il principe Blaine cominciava a disinteressarsi di lui. Doveva aver preso la morte del canarino come un’offesa personale, doveva aver creduto che l’uccello fosse morto perché lui non se n’era preso abbastanza cura, e questo doveva averlo convinto della sua assoluta inaffidabilità in quanto uomo, in quanto donna ed anche in quanto qualsiasi cosa stesse in mezzo alle due condizioni. Non avrebbe mai più voluto vederlo, e Kurt non avrebbe mai più avuto la possibilità di scrutare nelle profondità dei suoi occhi scuri e vedere brillare quella scintilla d’ammirazione, interesse e rispetto che sembrava già così lontana da assomigliare a un sogno.
Istintivamente, seguendo l’impulso inconscio che sempre l’aveva guidato verso suo fratello nei momenti di maggiore sconforto, allungò un braccio alla propria sinistra, cercando la mano di Finn da stringere. Non trovò niente, comunque. Non c’era nessuno, al suo fianco. Sospirando pesantemente, dopo aver ricordato che anche di suo fratello non aveva visto nemmeno l’ombra dalla sera precedente, si chinò un’altra volta verso Santana.
- E mio fratello? – bisbigliò fra i denti, irritato. Santana si inumidì le labbra, apparentemente molto innervosita dalla situazione in generale e dalle sue domande in particolare.
- A cavallo anche lui, signorino Kurt. – spiegò, - Con la giovane che lo accompagnava ieri.
Kurt aggrottò le sopracciglia, deluso e infastidito. Il sole era bollente, l’aria immobile, e la litania con la quale il prete del villaggio – coinvolto controvoglia in quella pantomima – stava accompagnando la sepoltura di Pavarotti suonava sempre più irritante, minuto dopo minuto.
Non poté che salutare con un sospiro sollevato la fine della funzione. Scivolò accanto alla montagnola di terriccio smosso che custodiva la piccola scatola di legno decorato all’interno della quale Pavarotti era stato sepolto, e vi lasciò cadere sopra il fiore bianco che teneva fra le dita, concedendosi un ultimo pensiero per la tragica fine incontro alla quale l’uccelletto era andato, prima di abbandonare il quadrato di terra circondato da cespugli all’interno del quale la funzione aveva avuto luogo.
Attraversò il cortile deserto, chiedendosi se sarebbe stato troppo sconveniente sbottonare almeno il colletto dell’abito, dal momento che più i secondi passavano più lui se ne sentiva soffocato, ma si risolse a mantenere la propria compostezza quando sentì risuonare una risata cristallina proveniente dai prati poco oltre il cancello della villa. Seguì quel suono, oltrepassando l’entrata e guardandosi intorno con circospezione, e si sentì quasi perso quando individuò il principe Blaine e suo fratello così presi a chiacchierare e cavalcare coi loro due ospiti da non accorgersi nemmeno di lui. Due uomini che, avrebbe potuto giurarlo, sarebbero riusciti ad individuarlo al primo colpo anche in una folla di migliaia di persone, due uomini che si erano sempre accorti della sua presenza anche solo dal suo profumo appena percettibile nell’aria, due uomini che avevano sempre messo da parte tutto il resto – Finn per tutta la propria vita, il principe da meno tempo, ma sicuramente non con meno intensità – per dedicarsi completamente a lui, ora sembravano averlo del tutto dimenticato.
Il principe Blaine sorrideva sereno e perso, guardando il giovane col quale era intento a cavalcare come non esistesse niente di altrettanto bello in tutto il mondo. Uno sguardo che Kurt poteva riconoscere con facilità, avendolo sentito addosso spesso prima che il principe partisse per la breve spedizione che l’aveva portato ai confini della Foresta Nera, e dalla quale era tornato con quel ragazzo. E Finn, Finn continuava a trattare quella ragazza bionda dai lineamenti angelici come fosse il tesoro più fragile e prezioso che avesse mai posseduto. Esattamente come usava trattare Kurt prima di incontrarla.
Li spiò a lungo, osservandoli ridere e scherzare in sella ai loro cavalli, e più i minuti passavano più percepiva qualcosa di oscuro e malvagio nascergli nel petto, e ingrandirsi fino ad inglobarlo tutto. Gelosia, tradimento, odio, fastidio. Digrignò i denti, distogliendo lo sguardo dallo spettacolo idilliaco che lo stava ormai nauseando, e voltò loro le spalle, ritornando verso il centro del cortile.
Non sapeva cosa fare. Per qualche motivo, in quel momento qualsiasi luogo sembrava inospitale, triste, doloroso. La propria camera, l’officina di suo padre, i giardini, le stalle, il lago poco oltre le mura, perfino quello stesso cortile in cui si trovava. Avrebbe voluto essere lontano da lì, a chilometri e chilometri di distanza. Solo e libero di continuare a sentirsi così disgustato da se stesso e da tutto il resto senza per questo dover sentire il pungiglione velenoso del senso di colpa conficcarsi dentro di lui con forza ogni volta che rivolgeva pensieri carichi d’odio al principe Blaine o a suo fratello.
Avrebbe preferito non dover vedere nessuno, ma se anche avesse voluto stilare una lista delle persone che, con molti sforzi, avrebbe potuto tollerare di incontrare in quel momento, lo stalliere di sua maestà sarebbe stato così in basso, in graduatoria, da non comparire nemmeno. Ed invece eccolo. Eccolo attraversare il cortile, riconducendo verso la stalla uno dei cavalli meno pregiati di sua maestà.
Kurt distolse lo sguardo, fissandolo in un punto imprecisato del pavimento ciottolato del cortile. Rimase immobile, incapace di muoversi, o di seguire la richiesta quasi disperata delle sue gambe, che lo imploravano di inghiottire la tristezza che provava al solo pensiero di tornare in camera propria, e correre immediatamente dentro casa.
Ascoltò il suono che gli zoccoli del cavallo producevano, sperando di sentirlo passare oltre entro pochi secondi, ma quando quel suono si interruppe all’improvviso seppe che non poteva più sfuggire al proprio destino, e che se non era scappato fino a quel momento non avrebbe più avuto occasione di farlo; perciò sollevò lo sguardo, cercando la figura di Dave e trattenendo il fiato con dolorosa difficoltà quando intravide l’espressione contrita che da un lato addolciva e dall’altro irrigidiva i tratti del suo viso.
- Cosa… - deglutì forzatamente, stringendo i pugni lungo i fianchi, quasi insopportabilmente teso. Dave era così vicino da togliergli quasi ogni barlume di lucidità, ed era imbarazzante sentirsi così solo per la sua vicinanza. – Cosa succede?
L’uomo si inumidì le labbra, guardando altrove per qualche secondo, prima di tornare a fissarlo negli occhi.
- Sono… sono molto dispiaciuto per quello che è successo. – bisbigliò, ed era evidente quanto pronunciare quelle poche parole lo affaticasse. – Per quello che ho fatto. – aggiunse, tornando ad abbassare lo sguardo, - Mi dispiace così tanto, Kurt.
Kurt spalancò gli occhi, nel sentirlo pronunciare ancora il suo nome. I ricordi della sera precedente in camera propria invasero la sua mente senza preavviso e senza permesso, riempiendolo di confusione. Tutta la paura, la rabbia, la tristezza, l’attrazione repressa che aveva provato nei suoi confronti tornarono a farsi sentire più vivide che mai, così travolgenti da renderlo quasi instabile sulle proprie stesse gambe, e nel momento in cui sentì la caviglia ancora dolorante pulsare violentemente, quasi volesse suggerirgli di accasciarsi su di lui e lasciarsi sorreggere dalle sue braccia, seppe in un istante che il suo corpo stava semplicemente cercando di avvertirlo.
Non c’era più alcuna ragione di combatterlo.
Abbassò lo sguardo, avvicinandosi a lui, e Dave si irrigidì pericolosamente quando percepì il suo dolce peso appoggiarsi sul suo petto, quelle mani così sottili e magre stringersi attorno al tessuto ruvido della casacca che indossava, e quel viso improvvisamente così spaurito e confuso che si sollevava appena, per cercare il suo sguardo.
- Portami via da qui. – sussurrò in un mezzo singhiozzo, mentre le mani di Dave si chiudevano con calore attorno alle sue, - Per favore.
Dave si concesse di restare a guardarlo solo per qualche secondo. Poi, lasciando scivolare le mani all’altezza della sua vita, lo issò sul cavallo già sellato. Meno di un minuto dopo, erano già in fuga, al galoppo, verso la foresta.
*
La foresta si apriva lussureggiante e rigogliosa attorno a loro, carica di colori, profumi, suoni, giochi di luce, e tutte le meraviglie che la natura aveva potuto pensare nel mettere insieme ogni albero, ogni fiore, ogni foglia, ogni sasso ed ogni singolo filo d’erba perché il risultato fosse splendido, armonioso, bello come un dipinto ma allo stesso tempo vivido come solo la realtà poteva essere, ma di tutta quella bellezza così affascinante e travolgente né Dave né Kurt avevano contezza. Stretto al petto di Dave, Kurt mugolava e gemeva, le labbra premute contro quelle dell’altro uomo, le cui mani si chiudevano con forza attorno alla sua vita nonostante l’obbligo di dover reggere assieme a lui anche le redini, ma per quanto ancora provasse a guidare il cavallo attraverso i sentieri sempre più confusi e meno battuti della foresta era evidente che anche Dave avesse già da tempo perso interesse nei confronti di quella che poteva essere la strada giusta, preferendo concentrarsi sull’unica via che in quel momento avesse un qualche significato, per lui: quella umida e saporita che le labbra di Kurt tracciavano nel muoversi sopra le sue, nello schiudersi appena per accogliere la sua lingua e per lasciare che la propria rispondesse ad ogni carezza con lo stesso identico desiderio.
- Dave… - mugolò Kurt, allontanandosi da lui ed appoggiando sul suo petto le mani aperte – poteva sentire quanto forti fossero i suoi muscoli sotto la casacca che indossava, anche attraverso i pesanti guanti neri che ancora coprivano le sue dita – per invitarlo a fermarsi, - Non dovremmo…
- Dammi una buona ragione. – insistette l’uomo, chinandosi nuovamente su di lui e catturando le sue labbra con le proprie mentre il cavallo si fermava nei pressi di una radura, guardandosi intorno con aria stanca e impigrita dal caldo.
- Io non… - mugolò ancora il ragazzo, piegando il capo per evitare il bacio e finendo soltanto per esporre ai tocchi sempre più affamati delle labbra dello stalliere i pochi centimetri del proprio collo che spuntavano dal colletto abbottonato, mentre le sue mani calde provvedevano a sfilare dall’asola ogni bottone, liberandolo da quella stretta soffocante. – Io non dovrei, sono… sono promesso al principe.
- Non lo sei. – gli ricordò Dave, stringendo possessivo le mani attorno alla sua vita mentre tornava a coprire le sue labbra con le proprie, costringendolo ad un altro bacio affamato, umido e aperto.
- No, forse no… - ammise controvoglia Kurt, schiudendo gli occhi sulla radura. Il sole, filtrando attraverso le foglie sottili degli alberi, creava splendidi giochi di luce sul prato, il cui manto sembrava adesso così accogliente, così comodo. – Dave… - miagolò disperatamente, sentendo le mani dell’uomo scivolare lente sui suoi fianchi, dal basso verso l’alto, e poi soffermarsi appena sotto le curve dolci delle sue scapole, tirando alla cieca i fili che tenevano chiuso il corsetto. – Dave, no…
L’uomo lo baciò ancora, forzandolo a riportare l’attenzione su di lui. Si ritrasse quasi subito, pur rimanendogli abbastanza vicino da poter sfiorare le sue labbra con le proprie ad ogni respiro, ad ogni movimento, ad ogni parola.
- Voglio toccarti. – disse, mentre Kurt chiudeva gli occhi e tremava per la scarica di desiderio che la sua voce aveva scatenato dentro il suo corpo, - E so che lo vuoi anche tu. – aggiunse semplicemente, il tono appena più dolce, tornando ad annullare la distanza fra le loro bocche e coinvolgendolo in un altro bacio mentre smontava da cavallo, portandolo con sé. Kurt lo seguì, gemendo confusamente quando, scivolando lungo la sella per cercare di scendere senza dover smettere di baciarlo, cadde praticamente fra le sue braccia, stringendosi al suo petto e percependo il suo desiderio fra le cosce, così prepotente da tendere i pantaloni sull’inguine, così simile a quello che provava lui, che però, vergognosamente, teneva il proprio nascosto sotto l’ampia gonna a strati che indossava.
Era ancora vestito a lutto. E, per quanto inopportuno potesse sembrare, in realtà sembrava avere perfino senso. Aveva appena seppellito ogni possibilità di vivere il sogno della sua infanzia, d’altronde – sposare un principe, vivere in un castello, essere felice per sempre – per cui quale altro abito sarebbe stato più adatto di quello?
Lasciò che Dave lo adagiasse sull’erba, continuando a baciarlo come in un estremo tentativo di distrazione, anche se avrebbe voluto dirgli di non darsi pena, che non c’era niente che lui potesse fare per distrarlo da ciò che stava accadendo. Qualcosa di cui lui era estremamente, quasi dolorosamente consapevole. Qualcosa, dentro di lui, un pezzo di se stesso, un pezzo di ciò che era e che aveva resistito negli anni agli obblighi, ai cambiamenti, ad una delle condizioni più sfortunate che un ragazzo potesse ritrovarsi a vivere – quante volte s’era raccontato di essere perfettamente felice? Quante volte aveva sentito qualcosa pizzicare sotto le ciglia, e quante volte s’era ripetuto che quella tristezza immotivata e profonda sarebbe sicuramente sparita quando il suo sogno fosse diventato realtà? – morì in quel momento, quando le mani di Dave scivolarono sotto la sua gonna e, sollevandola centimetro dopo centimetro, percorsero le sue gambe in punta di dita, accarezzandolo lentamente. Quella parte infantile di lui che nonostante l’educazione e gli studi non aveva mai smesso di credere nelle favole, nel principe azzurro, nelle streghe e nei draghi, si frantumò e crollò in pezzi, sciogliendosi nel gemito libero ed estenuato che Kurt si lasciò sfuggire dalle labbra, gettando indietro il capo e schiudendo istintivamente le gambe quando la mano di Dave si chiuse ruvida e improvvisa attorno alla sua erezione, strofinandola con impazienza.
Non ci sarebbero stati principi, né castelli, e forse neanche un “e vissero per sempre felici e contenti”. Ed era magnifico che fosse così. Era magnifico sentirsi per la prima volta così libero di pensare, libero di sentire, libero di godere. Sollevò un braccio, appoggiando una mano alla nuca di Dave e tirandolo verso di sé per un bacio improvviso e affamato, gemendo ancora quando, nel movimento, Dave gli scivolò addosso, strofinando il proprio bacino contro il suo.
- Sì… - mormorò, esponendo il collo per invitare Dave a ricoprirlo di baci e piccoli morsi, - Sì, per favore.
Dave gemette a propria volta, tornando a baciarlo freneticamente sulle labbra mentre si sollevava, interrompendo il contatto fra i loro corpi per un tempo appena sufficiente a liberarsi dei propri pantaloni, tornando quasi subito a schiacciarsi contro di lui, muovendosi lentamente avanti e indietro, in cerca di un po’ di frizione, di un po’ di sollievo.
Kurt si morse le labbra, scivolando con la punta del naso lungo la curva del collo di Dave ed inspirando con forza quell’odore che l’aveva colpito fin dalle prime volte in cui si era ritrovato vicino a lui abbastanza da poterlo percepire. L’odore selvaggio della sua terra lontana, un aroma che sussurrava misteri alle sue orecchie, gli parlava di viaggi, avventure, nuove scoperte, e Kurt non aveva mai capito perché gli occhi di suo fratello Finn brillassero tanto alla sola idea di partire, ma adesso, fra le braccia di Dave, senza più nessun obbligo al quale adempiere che non quello di seguire il proprio istinto, sembrava tutto così emozionante, tutto così vivido.
- Ho paura che farà un po’ male. – sussurrò dolcemente Dave sulla pelle accaldata del suo collo, leccando via una gocciolina di sudore prima che si facesse troppo fastidiosa. Kurt annuì, chiudendo gli occhi e trattenendo il fiato, aspettandosi il peggio, e tornando a spalancarli e a lasciarsi libero di respirare quando si rese conto che Dave lo stava preparando con le proprie dita. Arrossì furiosamente, cercando le sue labbra per darsi qualcosa da fare, qualcosa a cui pensare per non dover prendere atto di quanto piacevoli fossero i suoi tocchi ruvidi ma attenti, e quando finalmente sentì premere la punta della sua erezione contro la propria apertura non poté evitare di concedersi un sospiro liquido e gonfio di desiderio e aspettativa.
- Non voglio più tornare a casa. – disse in un gemito, scivolando con entrambe le mani lungo la curva della schiena di Dave e soffermandosi lì dove quella stessa curva si faceva più stretta, invitandolo a muoversi più decisamente, - Non c’è più niente, lì, per me. Voglio fuggire via con te. – concluse con un mezzo sorriso un po’ perso, gli occhi semichiusi e brillanti di lacrime troppo piccole per poter sfuggire alla gabbia così fitta delle sue ciglia scure.
Dave gemette di gola, avanzando per un paio di centimetri dentro di lui ed affondando i denti nella carne tenera del suo collo quando Kurt lo espose, gettando indietro il capo in un urlo gonfio in egual misura di piacere e dolore.
- Quasi neanche mi conosci. – gli sussurrò addosso, accarezzando in punta di lingua la pelle resa arrossata e ipersensibile dalla pressione così famelica dei propri denti. Fra un gemito e un singhiozzo sorpreso, mentre Dave cominciava a muoversi più freneticamente dentro di lui, Kurt si concesse una risata senza fiato.
- Proprio per questo. – mugolò intenerito. E poi chiuse gli occhi, lasciando alle mani di Dave l’incombenza di guidarlo verso l’orgasmo.
*
Steso a pancia in su, la testa comodamente appoggiata contro il petto nudo di Dave, già da almeno mezz’ora, fra una chiacchiera e l’altra, Kurt stava lasciandosi ipnotizzare dai meravigliosi giochi di luce che i raggi del sole producevano filtrando attraverso la cupola di fogliame verde brillante che il complicato intreccio di rami annodati disegnava sopra la loro testa, proteggendoli dall’asfissiante calura estiva. Lì nella radura, fra l’erba e i fiori, coccolati dall’ombra e dalla lieve brezza che spazzava il prato a intervalli regolari, si stava bene; perfino il lieve pizzicare delle formiche sulla loro pelle nuda non sembrava affatto fastidioso, e Kurt stesso era abbastanza convinto – perché gli era già successo in passato – che se si fosse trovato nel proprio giardino, sul dondolo, intento a leggere, ed una formica l’avesse morsicato, avrebbe reagito con stizza e fastidio, ritirandosi immediatamente nelle proprie stanze. Invece, in quel momento, con l’aria silenziosa della radura piena solo dei loro respiri e del tono soffice delle loro voci mentre chiacchieravano del più e del meno senza soluzione di continuità, tutto sembrava così incredibilmente dolce, così incredibilmente appropriato al loro stato d’animo, da non rappresentare neanche il più insignificante motivo di turbamento. Kurt se ne accorgeva dalla piega delle proprie labbra, dall’insistenza con la quale quel sorriso indomito e divertito si ostinava a piegarle, e ne era affascinato. Non si era mai sentito così felice, lui che pure aveva sempre creduto di vivere molto felicemente.
- Quindi non hai mai conosciuto tua madre? – chiese Dave, quasi con timore. Kurt sorrise fra sé, in parte anche per rassicurarlo sulla sua stessa tranquillità, nonostante l’indiscrezione della domanda.
- Era una schiava nomade, proprio come la madre di mio fratello. In questa regione, i nomadi sono preferiti agli stanziali, soprattutto per prendere servizio nelle magioni come quella di mio padre. Arrivano per la semina e si trattengono solo fino al raccolto, che poi è il motivo per cui sia io che mio fratello siamo nati in estate. – sorrise teneramente. – I signori preferiscono gli schiavi nomadi perché non gravano sul bilancio della famiglia per altri mesi che non siano quelli in cui lavorano i campi, e perché… be’, - aggiunse con una scrollatina di spalle, - perché le madri non portano con sé i figli, dopo averli partoriti. Per un paese nella situazione in cui si trova il nostro, donne come loro sono necessarie, se si vuole garantire un futuro ai nostri nomi. Non avanzano pretese, e non portano problemi.
- E tu non ne hai mai sentito la mancanza? – domandò premuroso Dave, accarezzandogli dolcemente i capelli. Kurt scosse il capo, anche se con estrema lentezza, per non sottrarsi a quel tocco.
- E i tuoi genitori? – domandò, piegando lievemente il collo all’indietro, per guardare Dave da sotto in su. Lui sorrise distante, rigirandosi una ciocca dei suoi capelli fra le dita.
- Ho vissuto quasi tutta la mia vita solo con mio padre. – rispose lui, - Mia madre è morta quando ero ancora molto piccolo. Ma la ricordo. Ne ricordo la voce e la presenza. – annuì, sorridendo lievemente.
- Dev’essere un pensiero doloroso. – commentò Kurt, guardando altrove per qualche secondo, ma Dave scosse il capo, attirando nuovamente la sua attenzione su di sé.
- È confortante, invece. Sapere che c’è qualcosa di lei che resta dentro di me, anche se lei non c’è più. – sorrise con calore, appoggiandogli una mano sul petto, proprio all’altezza del cuore. – Tu non conservi niente del genere, di tua madre? – domandò, e Kurt si voltò sullo stomaco, appoggiandosi nuovamente su di lui e lasciando che la mano di Dave scivolasse lungo la sua spina dorsale, fermandosi lì dove la curva della sua schiena lasciava il posto alla rotondità delle sue natiche.
- Finn, sai, lui ha sempre voluto viaggiare. – annuì, - Ha sempre sentito questa spinta indomabile verso terre sconosciute, ma ha sempre detto anche che non aveva alcuna intenzione di partire finché io non mi fossi sposato. – arrossì appena, abbassando lo sguardo, - Credevo che sarebbe finalmente successo, e questo avrebbe liberato entrambi, capisci cosa intendo? Io avrei vissuto il sogno della mia infanzia, ed anche lui. Ma ormai non credo che succederà mai. – sospirò. Dave si morse un labbro, sollevando una mano per accarezzargli il viso, e Kurt lasciò che lo facesse, ma al contempo lo rassicurò con un piccolo sorriso. – Non importa più, comunque. E il punto della questione era un altro. Quello che intendevo dire è che probabilmente è questa spinta per l’avventura e per il viaggio quella parte di sua madre che Finn porta dentro di sé. Ed io credevo di non averla, credevo di aver sempre vissuto solo per sposare un principe e vivere con lui per l’eternità, e invece… - un altro piccolo sorriso gli piegò le labbra, mentre lui lasciava la frase sospesa nell’aria quieta del pomeriggio nella foresta.
- E invece? – incalzò Dave, sorridendo a propria volta, e Kurt si lasciò sfuggire una risatina, coprendosi la bocca con le mani.
- E invece tutto ciò che voglio adesso è che tu mi issi su quel cavallo e mi porti a vedere il mondo. – concluse, chinandosi sulle sue labbra per un bacio lento, umido e un po’ pigro. – E sarà… - sollevò nuovamente lo sguardo, cercando con gli occhi il destriero che li aveva condotti fin là, e dischiuse le labbra in una smorfia stupita e atterrita quando non lo trovò. - …impossibile.
- Eh? – domandò subito Dave, gli occhi ancora chiusi e i lineamenti rilassati dal torpore che li aveva avvinti fino a quel momento. – Cosa sarà impossibile?
- Partire! – strillò Kurt, saltando in piedi e vagando per la radura in cerca del proprio abito, i cui numerosi e variegati strati di stoffa giacevano inermi e sfatti per tutto il prato, - Il cavallo è scomparso!
- Che? – domandò Dave, ancora confuso dagli avvenimenti delle ultime ore, voltando lo sguardo in giro e saltando in piedi a propria volta dopo essersi accorto di ciò che le parole di Kurt implicavano: erano soli, senza una cavalcatura e persi in mezzo alla Foresta Nera, ad ore ed ore di viaggio rispetto al feudo degli Hummel, ore che si sarebbero inevitabilmente trasformate in giorni se avessero dovuto percorrere quello stesso tragitto a piedi; erano privi di abiti adatti per viaggiare, privi di viveri, privi di armi da usare eventualmente contro gli animali feroci che, si diceva, a centinaia si aggiravano per la foresta, e privi anche di una mappa che indicasse loro come uscire da quel groviglio di alberi improvvisamente molto meno ospitale di quanto non sembrasse quando erano ancora entrambi distesi sulla schiena nell’erba. – Dobbiamo ritrovare il cavallo. – disse Dave, recuperando i propri pantaloni e indossandoli sbrigativamente. Non c’era molto altro che potessero fare.
- Ma potrebbe essere ovunque! – strillò Kurt, cercando invano di allacciarsi il corsetto, contorcendosi affannosamente, - Questa foresta è immensa, abbiamo perso il sentiero, e comunque dubito che il cavallo ne abbia seguito uno! Siamo condannati, moriremo qui e nessuno troverà mai i nostri corpi. – singhiozzò, coprendosi il volto con le mani.
- Cosa? – borbottò Dave, inarcando un sopracciglio, - No, nessuno di noi morirà. Che storia è questa?
- Certo che moriremo! – insistette Kurt, agitando le braccia sopra la testa mentre il nodo casuale con cui aveva stretto i lacci del corsetto si disfaceva inevitabilmente ad ogni suo movimento, - Senza cibo né acqua, senza un cavallo e persi in una foresta che pullula di bestie selvagge assetate si sangue? Quanto vuoi che si riesca a sopravvivere?! Oh, sventura! Non viaggerò mai oltre i confini del regno, non vedrò mai l’oceano, non visiterò mai l’antica ed elegante Europa! Meschina è la mia sorte, tragico il mio futuro! Mi si fa credere di avere una possibilità di vedere il mondo solo per poi uccidermi barbaramente lontano dai miei cari! Oh, me tapino! – gemette sconsolato, abbandonandosi per terra.
- Smettila! – strillò Dave, allucinato, avvicinandoglisi e tirandolo su di peso, scuotendolo violentemente per le spalle, - Stai delirando! Adesso ci addentreremo fra gli alberi e troveremo il cavallo. Non può essere andato troppo lontano, il terreno è pieno di radici e sporgenze, non è adatto al galoppo!
- E tu cosa ne sai?! – protestò Kurt, lasciandosi comunque maneggiare con disinvoltura e cercando di guardare Dave da sopra una spalla mentre lui gli riallacciava il corsetto con gesti rudi e piuttosto spicci, - E fa’ piano con questa roba, non è mica la sella di un cavallo!
- No, infatti sarebbe molto più facile se dovessi semplicemente sellarti e poi cavalcarti. – borbottò Dave, strattonando i lacci perché il corsetto aderisse bene al torso di Kurt.
- Non mi piace dove i doppi sensi di questa conversazione stanno andando a parare! – strillò oltraggiato, voltandosi immediatamente quando Dave ebbe finito di sistemarlo, - E non mi hai ancora detto in virtù di cosa dovresti essere tanto certo che il cavallo non si sia messo a galoppare fra le sterpaglie e le radici sporgenti!
- Perché sono uno stalliere! – tuonò a propria volta Dave, incapace di mantenere oltre la propria calma e cercando di afferrare Kurt per una mano, operazione resa impossibile dal fatto che il ragazzo continuava a gesticolare come si aspettasse di poter prendere il volo se vorticava le braccia abbastanza velocemente, - Il terreno è troppo accidentato per il galoppo, se davvero il cavallo si fosse messo a galoppare stai tranquillo che ne sentiremmo i nitriti di dolore da qui, perché si sarebbe anche spezzato una zampa per provarci!
- Occielo, magari è morto! – strillò terrorizzato Kurt, portando entrambe le mani ai lati del viso, mossa teatrale fino al fastidio quasi fisico, ma che Dave accettò di buon grado perché gli permise finalmente di poter visualizzare il proprio obiettivo da fermo, e lasciar scattare una mano ad afferrare la sua, centrando finalmente il bersaglio e stringendo le sue dita fra le proprie con forza mentre prendeva a trascinarlo verso il folto del bosco. – Magari è morto e troveremo il suo cadavere mentre lo cerchiamo! Non ho mai visto la carcassa di un animale! Non ho mai visto la carcassa di nessuno prima che tu uccidessi Pavarotti sotto il mio sguardo atterrito!
- Piantala di parlare come un libro stampato! – si lagnò Dave, strattonandolo violentemente e rischiando di spezzargli un braccio nel tentativo di farlo muovere più velocemente nonostante l’ampia gonna che gli impicciava i movimenti.
- Ahi! – si lamentò Kurt, tirando all’indietro come un cane ben deciso a rendere la vita impossibile al proprio padrone, - Sei sempre il solito bruto, non posso credere di essere qui con te, in questo momento! Voglio tornare a casa!
- E addio alla voglia di viaggiare in giro per il mondo. – sospirò teatralmente Dave, ricevendo in risposta da Kurt uno schiaffo in piena nuca.
- Non ti è permesso prendermi in giro! – lo rimproverò il ragazzo, - Anzi, ora che ci penso, questa è tutta colpa tua! Se tu non mi avessi sedotto—
- Io ti avrei cosa?! – sbottò Dave, voltandosi a guardarlo.
- Sedotto! – ribadì Kurt, allontanandosi da lui con uno strattone risentito, - E contro la mia volontà! Mi hai molestato ed è per questo che ora sono qui, perché mi hai confuso! Dovrei essere a casa a lavorare all’uncinetto aspettando devotamente che il principe si riprenda da questa cotta per quell’orribile ragazzo che ha portato con sé da quel villaggio devastato dalle fiamme!
- Io non ti ho sedotto, e se davvero preferiresti essere a casa a, che Dio mi perdoni, lavorare all’uncinetto!, piuttosto che essere qui con me, be’, allora dovresti semplicemente tornarci! – sbottò Dave, incrociando le braccia sul petto e guardandolo con astio.
- È esattamente quello che intendo fare! – concluse Kurt, risentito, - Non appena avremo ritrovato… il cavallo! – strillò quindi, il volto illuminato da un sorriso sorprendentemente improvviso, mentre scattava ad indicare un punto imprecisato dietro le spalle di Dave.
- Cosa? Dove? – chiese lo stalliere, voltandosi intorno ed identificando finalmente la placida figura del cavallo intento a brucare tenera erbetta nei pressi di un’alta siepe naturale di cespugli di more. – Ah! Eccolo. – disse con soddisfazione, avvicinandosi a grandi passi mentre Kurt, correndo come un bambino, lo superava, raggiungendo il cavallo ben prima di lui ed accarezzandogli il muso con calore, stringendolo fra le braccia. – L’avevo detto io che non poteva essere lontano.
- Hai visto, Dave? – cinguettò Kurt, deliziato, - Adesso possiamo andare dove vogliamo! Partiamo immediatamente!
- E dov’è finito il tuo brillante piano? – domandò Dave con un mezzo ghigno, inarcando un sopracciglio mentre incrociava le braccia sul petto.
- Piano? – chiese a propria volta Kurt, schiudendo gli occhi e guardandolo con sincera curiosità mentre continuava ad accarezzare devotamente il muso dell’animale, - Quale piano?
- Tornare a casa, fare la calza per il tuo principe aspettando che si innamori nuovamente di te… - gli ricordò Dave, il ghigno che si apriva ancora un po’, con palese divertimento. Kurt sbuffò, distogliendo lo sguardo.
- Ho cambiato idea. – concluse, - E poi… - si interruppe all’improvviso, aggrottando le sopracciglia ed aguzzando lo sguardo come se la sua attenzione fosse appena stata attirata da qualcosa di strano e particolare. – Ma cosa… - mormorò, appoggiandosi ad uno dei cespugli, stando bene attento a non ferirsi con le spine, e scostandone delicatamente le fronde per guardare oltre. – C’è una casa, qui.
- Come? – chiese Dave, aggrottando le sopracciglia ed abbassandosi per poter spiare attraverso lo spiraglio che Kurt aveva aperto nel fogliame. – È vero, e sembra anche abitata, guarda la finestra aperta, e guarda il comignolo, ne esce del fumo. Una casa di caccia, forse?
- Nessuno viene a caccia nella Foresta Nera, - rispose Kurt, scuotendo il capo, - hanno tutti troppa paura della strega. È ridicolo. – sbottò con disappunto, - Uno si aspetta che, avendo la scuola più rinomata di tutto il paese entro i confini del feudo, almeno la gente di queste parti sia colta abbastanza da— ssh, arriva qualcuno! – si interruppe all’improvviso, schiacciando una mano contro la bocca di Dave.
- Ma eri tu che stavi parlando! – protestò Dave, abbassando la voce per non fare troppo rumore e parlando contro il palmo della mano di Kurt, prima di notare anche lui con la coda dell’occhio il movimento che aveva insospettito il ragazzo al punto da schiacciargli quella mano sulla faccia.
La porta della casa si aprì con un cigolio sinistro, ed una donna avvolta in un lungo mantello di acetato rosso si soffermò sulla soglia, guardandosi intorno con estremo fastidio e disappunto.
- Becky! – strillò, - Dove diavolo sei?!
Non passarono che pochi secondi, prima che un folletto con una stramba divisa addosso, un corto caschetto biondo e un paio di occhiali tondi sul naso, si presentasse al suo cospetto, inchinandosi con sussiego.
- Non so come scusarmi. – disse contrita. Le labbra della donna si piegarono in una smorfia.
- Non sei riuscita a trovarli? – chiese, camminando nervosamente avanti e indietro, le braccia incrociate sul petto.
- No, mia signora. – confessò il folletto, - Ne ho perso le tracce nei pressi di una radura. Il loro cavallo è fuggito, comunque, non passerà molto tempo prima che i lupi li sbranino. La notte è vicina.
- Sciocca! – la rimproverò la donna, afferrando uno dei vasi da fiori vuoti che decoravano sinistramente il davanzale di una delle finestre, e scagliandolo a terra con improvvisa violenza, riducendolo in frantumi, - Non possiamo rischiare che il mio nascondiglio venga scoperto! Mai alcun essere umano si era addentrato all’interno della Foresta Nera, in più di cento anni, e tu ora mi dici che hai perso le tracce dei due intrusi?!
- Sono mortalmente dispiaciuta, mia signora. – piagnucolò il folletto, facendosi sempre più piccolo, accucciato com’era per terra, - Cercherò ancora!
- Sarebbe completamente inutile! – tuonò ancora la donna, afferrando un altro vaso e scagliando per terra anche quello, - Mai lasciar fare a un folletto il lavoro di una strega. – aggiunse astiosa. Da dietro i cespugli di more, Dave e Kurt trattennero il respiro, increduli. – Un incantesimo di localizzazione dovrebbe fare al caso mio. Ci metterò almeno tre ore, ma vista la tua incompetenza è necessario.
- Chiedo perdono, mia signora. – ripeté il folletto sempre più contrito, - Andrò a perlustrare dalle parti della cascata, forse lì…
- Ma dove vuoi andare, dove?! – la rimproverò la donna, afferrandola per un orecchio, - Vieni con me e dammi una mano con l’incantesimo! – sbottò, trascinandola dentro casa e chiudendosi la porta alle spalle.
Quando fu sparita, il silenzio tornò ad impadronirsi della foresta, e Kurt si sentì finalmente libero di abbassare la mano che ancora teneva premuta contro le labbra di Dave. Entrambi respiravano pesantemente, e fu Dave il primo ad allontanarsi, recuperando il cavallo per le redini e stringendo Kurt per un braccio, spostando entrambi verso un luogo più sicuro.
- Dobbiamo andarcene. – disse, - Scappare il più lontano possibile. La strega è reale. Esiste davvero.
- Io non posso crederci… - balbettò Kurt, scosso, - Sono solo fantasie da ragazzini, non… non è mai esistita nessuna strega!
- Mi pare evidente che le tue fantasie da ragazzino sono ben più reali di quello che pensavamo! – insistette Dave, continuando a trascinare sia lui che il cavallo per la strada che, dalla radura, li aveva condotti fin lì. – Kurt, - aggiunse più dolcemente, - dobbiamo lasciare la foresta, subito, prima che la strega ci trovi. E poi potremo abbandonare il paese. Viaggiare, come vuoi tu! Ti porterò dovunque tu voglia, ma adesso andiamo.
- No! – disse Kurt improvvisamente, puntando i piedi per terra, - Non capisci? Se la strega è reale, allora lo è anche la maledizione! Il motivo per cui non nascono più bambine in questo paese… - gemette appena, quasi sopraffatto da quanto aveva sentito negli ultimi minuti e da ciò che queste informazioni implicavano per lui e per tutti gli abitanti del feudo. – Non possiamo andare via senza dire niente a nessuno! – disse poco dopo, aggrappandosi alla camicia di Dave e strattonandolo appena, - Dobbiamo tornare da mio padre, parlare con quel cacciatore di streghe, rivelargli il luogo dove la strega è nascosta! E poi potremo partire.
- Kurt… - sospirò Dave, stringendo le proprie mani attorno alle sue e guardandolo con occhi tristi, - Se torniamo da tuo padre adesso, se la tua famiglia scopre quello che abbiamo fatto, perché eravamo nascosti nella foresta… partire sarà impossibile.
Kurt indietreggiò, preso alla sprovvista. Non aveva considerato la situazione da questa prospettiva, e doveva ammettere che l’idea di dover tornare a casa e raccontare tutto a suo padre, a suo fratello e al principe lo turbava non poco. Ma non poteva lasciare che le sorti della sua patria fossero decise dalla sua codardia.
Stringendo i pugni lungo i fianchi, si avvicinò a Dave un passo dopo l’altro, e poi si sollevò sulle punte, tenendogli dolcemente il viso fra le mani e baciandolo a fior di labbra.
- Ti prometto che troveremo un modo per risolvere la situazione. – disse piano, soffiando appena sulla sua pelle umida, - E partiremo insieme. Ma prima dobbiamo dire a tutti della strega… e anche di noi due. – aggiunse, annuendo timidamente.
Tutti i lineamenti del volto di Dave si tesero per un secondo, la preoccupazione e la paura così evidenti da danzare freneticamente nei suoi occhi scuri, obbligando il cuore di Kurt a battere con violenza nella gabbia fragilissima del suo petto, in attesa della sua risposta. Che giunse in un sospiro, in un bacio ricambiato ed in una breve carezza su una guancia, prima di saltare in sella al cavallo e dirigersi al galoppo verso la magione degli Hummel.
*
- Non fate che correre da un lato all’altro della villa. – commentò il principe Jesse, affiancandola lungo il corridoio centrale che, dalle cucine, portava alla porta d’ingresso e quindi al cortile, - L’atmosfera rilassata che circonda questa casa non sembra neanche sfiorarvi.
- Perdonatemi, maestà, ma non ho tempo di intrattenermi in chiacchiere con voi. – rispose Rachel, nervosa e dura, proseguendo nella sua marcia verso l’esterno della dimora degli Hummel, - L’atmosfera rilassata di cui parlate sta mandando il feudo in rovina. Vi siete guardato intorno, nelle ultime ore?! – insistette, fermandosi all’improvviso e voltandosi a guardarlo, sconvolta da quanto placidamente lui sorridesse, come se le ultime vicende non lo avessero minimamente sfiorato. Cosa che, d’altronde, sarebbe stata giustificabile per lui, ma non lo era altrettanto per tutti gli altri abitanti della casa, che versavano in condizioni più o meno simili, senza eccezioni. – La gente si aggira per la proprietà come se non avesse memoria delle proprie mansioni! Nessuno si occupa dei lavori manuali! Giungo adesso dalla cucina dove ho cercato per mezz’ora di convincere le cuoche a preparare la cena senza risultati! Il principe Blaine e il signor Finn non fanno che correre dietro quei due individui alla cui sola vista chiunque sembra cadere in una trance o chissà che altro maleficio, e il signorino Kurt è scomparso! – si interruppe per prendere fiato, scuotendo il capo, sconsolata. – Come fate a non accorgervene, proprio voi? È chiaramente l’opera di una strega.
- Oh, andiamo, Rachel. – ridacchiò il principe, allungando una mano e stringendo con forza le proprie dita attorno al braccio sottile della ragazza, trattenendola, - E voi sareste l’unica immune al sortilegio? E perché mai dovreste esserlo?
- Non ne ho idea, signore. – borbottò lei, tirando appena per costringerlo a lasciarla, senza però ottenere i risultasti sperati, - Ma mi sembra l’unica spiegazione plausibile.
- L’unica spiegazione che invece sembra plausibile a me, Rachel, - insistette il principe, rafforzando la stretta attorno al suo braccio, - è che voi non ne possiate più di vivere in questo luogo. – concluse con un sorrisetto soddisfatto, come avesse appena risolto chissà che intricato dilemma.
- …come, prego? – domandò Rachel, inarcando un sopracciglio. Lui sbuffò compiaciuto, lasciandola finalmente libera di muovere il braccio e scrollando altezzosamente le spalle.
- Ma sì, - annuì, - questo feudo è ormai troppo pacifico, per te. Una viaggiatrice, un’avventuriera come te, una guerriera, come tutte le donne del nostro popolo, non può davvero sopportare una vita così noiosa e abitudinaria. Io posso capirlo, Rachel, l’ho capito dal nostro ultimo incontro, quella notte. – aggiunse, avvicinandosi a lei e sorridendole fascinosamente, - Posso capirlo, perché io sono uguale. Perfino il trono di Carmel non è stato abbastanza per saziare la mia sete di imprese ed avventure. Vieni con me, Rachel! – la invitò, stringendole una mano fra le proprie, - Partiamo! Alla volta dell’ignoto! Alla ricerca di luoghi che ci offrano sfide, battaglie, magari un vero scontro con una vera strega!
- C’è una vera strega anche qui, maestà! – sbottò Rachel, ritirando la mano e riprendendo a marciare decisa verso il cortile, - Siete cieco, anche voi, come tutti gli altri! Reso sordo da un qualche stupido sortilegio! – sbuffò ancora, annoiata. – Perdonatemi, ma non ho davvero tempo di star dietro alle vostre fantasie, principe Jesse. Devo ancora approntare i tavoli per la cena e poi inseguire ogni singolo abitante di questa villa per convincerlo a nutrirsi. Se volete scusarmi… - concluse in un mezzo inchino, che non poté mai completarsi perché dal cortile cominciarono improvvisamente a giungere strani rumori, dapprima solo confusi e martellanti, e poi sempre più violenti, fino ad esplodere in un gran fracasso. – Ma che…? – si domandò, prima di aumentare il passo e dirigersi spedita verso l’esterno della casa. Il principe Jesse, nonostante si sentisse ancora abbastanza spensierato da pensare automaticamente che non potesse trattarsi di niente di così grave, la seguì, mantenendosi a pochi passi di distanza.
- Tutto ciò è inammissibile! – stava strillando il signorino Kurt, mandando all’aria enormi secchi pieni di granaglie con la sola forza delle proprie striminzite braccina, nel più totale disinteresse dei pochi presenti in cortile, - Perché nessuno mi ascolta?! Oh, ma quando riuscirò a convincere mio padre a darmi retta, la vedrete!
- Kurt! – strillava… era lo stalliere del principe Blaine, quell’uomo che continuava ad inseguire Kurt ovunque, cercando di placarlo, mettendogli inappropriatamente le mani addosso e dandogli del tu senza che ce ne fosse un apparente motivo? – Kurt, per l’amor del cielo, calmati! Ma cosa diavolo stai combinando?!
- Nessuno mi ascolta! – strillò Kurt per tutta risposta, rovesciando un ripiano in legno ricoperto di pannocchie, - Mio padre vegeta sorridendo beatamente ad un garofano e millanta di stare osservando la di lui crescita istante dopo istante! Mio fratello giace nella paglia della stalla in compagnia di quella stupida gallina bionda che ha portato con sé dal sopralluogo di quello stupido villaggio indiano, e il principe Blaine! – la sua voce di sollevò di un paio di ottave, oltraggiata e sconcertata, - Il principe Blaine nuota placidamente nel lago abbozzando coreografie casuali per far contento quell’orrendo giovanotto che lo guarda divertito dalla riva! Tutto ciò è assurdo! Ed io che vado in giro parlando della strega e recando notizie di sventura che potevo anche risparmiarmi di riportare, vengo ostentatamente ignorato!
- Signorino Kurt! – urlò Rachel per richiamare la sua attenzione, correndogli incontro, - Siete tornato!
- Rachel! – la chiamò a propria volta il ragazzo, ancora ansante, voltandosi verso di lei, il volto istantaneamente illuminato da un barlume di sollievo, - Vi prego di ascoltarmi e di non impegnarvi in qualche insulsa attività come se fosse la cosa più importante che abbiate mai fatto nella vostra vita!
- Signorino Kurt, non dite sciocchezze. – lo rimbrottò lei, sbuffando appena e piantando entrambe le mani sui fianchi, - Piuttosto, dove eravate finito? Qui sta succedendo qualcosa di molto, molto strano, ed io vi sto cercando da ore!
- Me ne rendo conto. – annuì il ragazzo, - Sembrano tutti sotto ipnosi, vagano come sonnambuli sorridendo per sciocchezze e agendo come dissennati! Perché?
- La vostra dama è convinta che si tratti del sortilegio di una strega. – ridacchiò Jesse, apparendo alle loro spalle, - Non è ridicolo?
- Sentir dire qualcosa di simile proprio da voi, principe Jesse, proverebbe che si tratta di un maleficio anche se non sapessi, come invece so, che è proprio ciò di cui si tratta. – annuì compitamente Kurt, degnando il principe appena di un’occhiata, prima di tornare a concentrare tutta la propria attenzione su Rachel. – Avete ragione, è opera della strega, ne sono sicuro! Ella vive proprio nel folto della Foresta Nera, come il principe Blaine e il principe Jesse sospettavano prima di essere ammaliati da chissà che malvagio incantesimo! Io e Dave l’abbiamo vista con i nostri occhi!
- Oh mio Dio! – strillò Rachel, coprendosi la bocca con entrambe le mani, - Cosa ci facevate voi e lo stalliere del principe nella Foresta Nera da soli? E perché lo chiamate per nome? E, ora che ci penso, per quale motivo egli può fare lo stesso con voi e—
- Non mi pare il caso di intrattenerci in stupidi pettegolezzi, Rachel! – sbottò Kurt, arrossendo improvvisamente e stringendo i pugni contro i fianchi, - Una strega si sta prendendo gioco di noi, e tutti gli abitanti di questo palazzo devono esserne informati! Avete capito?! – insistette, voltandosi intorno e cercando di attrarre nuovamente l’attenzione di tutti i presenti, mentre anche Finn (uscito dalla stalla con la propria dama al braccio), il principe Blaine (di ritorno dal lago con un braccio attorno alle spalle del proprio accompagnatore) e suo padre (affiacciatosi sul piazzale col proprio vaso di garofani sottobraccio), si degnavano finalmente di offrirgli un po’ della loro attenzione. – Voi tutti siete vittime di un incantesimo! La strega della Foresta Nera vi rende stupidi e imbelli, in modo da poter continuare a vivere la propria vita in pace senza che noi si muova guerra contro di lei! Svegliatevi!
- Nessuno di loro si sveglierà. – tuonò una voce sconosciuta, che tutti i presenti seguirono immediatamente, per cercare di capire a chi appartenesse. Dinanzi all’enorme portone di legno, adesso spalancato, che si apriva sulle mura che delimitavano la villa degli Hummel, un uomo di media statura si stagliava implacabile contro la luce del tramonto. Il suo volto era quasi interamente coperto da un cappello a tesa larga, di cuoio marrone, ed un lungo cappotto della stessa foggia avvolgeva l’interezza del suo corpo, svolazzando nel vento ai suoi piedi. Una giovane dall’aria allegra e dall’aspetto vagamente chiassoso lo seguiva a pochi passi di distanza, stringendosi nelle spalle. – Nessuno si sveglierà, a meno che non li obblighiamo a farlo. – precisò l’uomo con un ghigno sottile, prima di voltarsi in direzione della propria compagna. – Emma. – la chiamò semplicemente, e lei annuì, sorridendo placida e portandosi silenziosamente fino al centro del cortile, sollevando entrambe le braccia sopra la testa. Il coloratissimo vestitino che indossava le lasciò scoperte le gambe per un paio di secondi, prima che lei si decidesse ad abbassare repentinamente le braccia.
- Dissolvo! – strillò, la voce rombante nell’aria placida della sera. I suoi occhi, per un istante, si accesero dello stesso fuoco che accendeva il cielo in quel momento.
- Ugh… - si lamentò la ragazza stretta al braccio di Finn, portandosi una mano al collo. Suo fratello la seguì quasi subito.
- Che succede? – domandò il principe Blaine, stringendosi al proprio accompagnatore e cercando di sostenerlo mentre questi si afflosciava inesorabilmente per terra, indebolito.
- Quinn! – gridò Finn, nell’osservare la ragazza al suo fianco spalancare gli occhi e gettare indietro il capo, schiudendo le labbra in un urlo animalesco mentre il suo corpo si riempiva di una luce anomala e dall’aspetto pericoloso, calda come se bruciasse. Istintivamente, Finn mosse un paio di passi indietro, e la stessa cosa si ritrovò costretto a fare Blaine quando la mano di Jeremiah, che stava ancora stringendo convulsamente, si fece troppo calda per poter essere sopportata ancora.
- Che cosa state facendo?! – gridò Dave, rivolgendosi allo straniero e alla donna, che nel frattempo gli era tornata accanto, quando nell’orrore degli astanti Quinn e Jeremiah presero a bruciare, avvolti in una fiamma biancastra che sembrava incapace di appiccare il fuoco a qualunque cosa non fossero i loro corpi, - Sono esseri umani!
- È questo l’errore. – ghignò l’uomo, e nell’istante successivo le urla di Quinn e Jeremiah si trasformarono in lamenti striduli, poco prima che i loro corpi, invece di carbonizzarsi, cominciassero a tramutarsi velocemente in polvere. Ne rimasero solo due mucchietti, sopra ai quali aleggiò per un singolo istante un’ombra scura con uno spaventoso ghigno e due occhi di brace, prima di sparire, lasciando solo cenere.
- Cosa… - mormorò il principe Blaine, lanciando uno sguardo confuso attorno a sé e spalancando gli occhi subito dopo, come se improvvisamente i suoi ricordi fossero stati lasciati liberi di fluire al suo cervello. – Kurt… - gemette, i lineamenti del volto contratti in un’espressione addolorata, avvicinandosi lievemente a lui, una mano protesa verso la sua figura. Kurt si strinse nelle spalle, schiacciandosi immediatamente contro il fianco di Dave, che prima ancora di capire perché il ragazzo si stesse comportando così lo cinse protettivo con un braccio. Blaine si fermò all’istante, abbassando la mano e serrando le labbra, le sopracciglia ancora inarcate verso il basso. – Ne… ne riparleremo. – mormorò con palese vergogna, abbassando lo sguardo, per poi sollevarlo verso lo straniero. – Chi siete voi? – domandò imperioso, mentre attorno a lui anche tutti gli altri abitanti della villa riprendevano possesso delle proprie facoltà, e il vaso che Burt aveva portato con sé come un figlio nelle ultime ore finiva infranto contro il pavimento acciottolato del cortile.
- È… è William Van Schuester. – deglutì il principe Jesse, - Il più grande cacciatore di streghe al mondo.
L’uomo sollevò finalmente il viso, abbastanza perché i presenti potessero vedere i suoi occhi. Profondi e scuri, nascondevano segreti inconfessabili.
- Voi tutti… - spiegò, muovendo qualche passo intorno, come stesse prendendo confidenza con l’ambiente, - Siete stati vittime di un incantesimo. La strega che infesta questo paese con la sua presenza, la stessa che ha gettato sul vostro popolo la maledizione che vi impedisce di generare figlie femmine, sentendosi evidentemente minacciata da qualcosa che avete fatto ha spedito in mezzo a voi due creature. – indicò il mucchietto di ceneri, che la sua assistente stava già provvedendo a spazzare e conservare in due ampolline, ed annuì. – Quelle due creature. Non erano che diversivi, e il loro compito era distrarvi e attutire i vostri sensi, di modo che i vostri propositi bellicosi si smorzassero.
- Ah! – strillò Kurt, battendosi un pugno contro il palmo di una mano, - Visto? L’avevo detto io.
Van Schuester si voltò a guardarlo, infastidito dall’interruzione.
- E voi chi sareste? – domandò. Burt si fece avanti, frapponendosi fra lui e l’uomo.
- Mio figlio, messere. – rispose a muso duro, - E nel caso vi chiedeste chi sono io, ebbene sono il signore di questa casa e di questo feudo.
- Bene. – annuì il cacciatore, per nulla intimidito né tantomeno impressionato dalla durezza dell’uomo, - Allora è con voi che devo parlare, perché di sicuro siete voi ad avermi obbligato a fare tutta questa strada per venire fin qui.
- Che cosa?! – ringhiò Burt, aggrottando le sopracciglia, - Ma di cosa diamine state parlando? Nessuno vi ha chiamato!
- Se posso intromettermi… - cinguettò la donna, avvicinandosi con un sorriso timido, - Il mio nome è Emma, è un piacere fare la vostra conoscenza, signor… - allungò una mano verso di lui, ma quando si accorse che era sporca di terra si affrettò a ritirarla, prima che Burt potesse stringerla, - …signor signore della casa e del feudo. – annuì compitamente. – Io e il mio signore siamo giunti in visita perché il nostro incantesimo di localizzazione ha chiaramente mostrato uno squilibrio dell’energia magica in questa zona del principato. – spiegò sorridendo, - Tale squilibrio poteva essere motivato solo da un’importante combinazione di sortilegi, e ci è bastato fare un paio di ricerche per capire che qualcosa di losco stava avendo luogo da queste parti. Vorremmo, se ce lo permetterete, aiutarvi a liberare il paese dal maleficio che questa strega ha gettato su tutti voi.
- Se permettete, - iniziò il principe Blaine, facendosi avanti, le sopracciglia aggrottate e i lineamenti tesi, - io e il principe Jesse, qui, abbiamo il pieno controllo della situazione. Siamo già giunti alle porte della Foresta Nera e siamo sicuri di essere vicini a scoprire dove si trova la strega.
- Principe… - richiamò la sua attenzione Jesse, schiarendosi la voce, - Lasciate perdere. Van Schuester è di un altro livello. Io stesso, che pure di streghe ne ho ammazzate parecchie, non sono che un principiante, al suo confronto.
- E, in ogni caso, - soggiunse Kurt, tornando a farsi avanti pur rimanendo al fianco di Dave, - non avete il pieno controllo su niente. Signor Van Schuester, tutto quello che il principe e il suo seguito sono stati in grado di fare è stato spingersi fino ai confini della foresta e poi tornare a casa recando con sé due malefici. Io e Dave, invece, siamo rimasti all’interno della foresta solo poche ore, ma siamo comunque riusciti a fare di meglio, scovando il nascondiglio della strega e tornando qui di corsa per comunicarlo a tutti, anche se nessuno voleva ascoltarci.
Van Schuester lo guardò con severità per una manciata di secondi.
- Dilettanti! – proruppe quindi, scrutandoli tutti con malcelato disgusto, - Organizzare spedizioni nei pressi di un rinomato luogo saturo di magia, e portare con sé persone mai viste prima e palesemente sospette? Inoltrarsi da soli all’interno di una foresta di quel tipo e spingersi fino al cuore della stessa, disarmati e inermi, alla ricerca del covo di una strega potente al punto da lanciare una maledizione centenaria su un intero paese?! Sciocchi! Dissennati! Ridicoli dilettanti!
- Non siamo disarmati, Van Schuester! – interloquì il principe Jesse, sentendosi in questo punto nel vivo, - I miei alchimisti—
- I vostri alchimisti sono degli incapaci. – tagliò corto il cacciatore, agitando una mano a mezz’aria, - Quel ridicolo liquido che utilizzate per ucciderle… l’acido, è questo il suo nome, vero? Che sciocchezza. Come se fosse possibile combattere una strega portandosi dietro un calderone in cui immergerla.
- Ho sconfitto parecchie streghe, col mio calderone d’acido, signore. – insistette Jesse, rigido, stringendo i pugni lungo i fianchi.
- Siete stato solo molto fortunato, stupido ragazzino presuntuoso! – lo rimproverò Van Schuester, lanciandogli un’occhiata di fuoco, - Le streghe sono creature magiche. Non è possibile sconfiggerle senza magia! L’unico modo per renderle deboli senza usare incantesimi contro di loro, consiste nel conquistarle come donne, e non c’è neanche bisogno di dire quanto questa pratica sia disgustosa. – concluse con una smorfia a metà fra il saccente e l’inorridito. Rosso di rabbia e vergogna, Jesse rimase in silenzio.
- Adesso smettetela. – si fece avanti Rachel, scrutando l’uomo con piglio severo, - Il principe Jesse ha fatto ciò che ha ritenuto opportuno fare per proteggere il proprio paese, offrendosi poi di aiutare anche il nostro. – Van Schuester la fissò con un certo interesse, aggrottando le sopracciglia. – È ovvio che, non potendo egli disporre di poteri magici, abbia scelto di provvedere al meglio delle sue capacità, con ciò che poteva fare. Voi non avete alcun diritto di—
- Non è esatto dire che non può disporre di poteri magici. – la interruppe il cacciatore, avvicinandosi un passo dopo l’altro e girandole intorno con aria pensosa, - Voi, che vi fate avanti per difenderlo… siete sempre stata al suo fianco?
Rachel rimase immobile nella propria posizione, senza seguire l’uomo neanche con lo sguardo.
- No, signore. – rispose freddamente, - Io ho sempre vissuto qui.
Van Schuester si voltò verso il principe Jesse, indicando Rachel con un cenno del capo e concedendosi un sorriso sghembo, di scherno.
- Che razza di cacciatore sareste, voi, se non siete in grado di riconoscere una strega neanche quando ce l’avete di fronte?
- Che cosa?! – strillò immediatamente Rachel, perdendo tutta la propria compostezza e voltandosi repentinamente a guardarlo.
- Adesso basta con queste stramberie! – tuonò Burt, muovendosi a grandi passi verso lo straniero per poi frapporsi fra lui e la ragazza, - Rachel è parte di questa famiglia ormai da anni, ed è comunque troppo giovane per essere la strega della foresta!
- Non ho mai pensato che la strega della foresta potesse essere lei. – inarcò un sopracciglio Van Schuester, incrociando le braccia sul petto senza però indietreggiare di un singolo passo, per nulla intimorito, - Ho solo detto che lei è comunque una strega. Ne ha l’odore, ne ha l’energia, ne ha l’aura magica. È sicuramente figlia di una strega, e strega anch’ella. E… Emma? – chiamò la propria compagna, e lei, immediatamente, si voltò verso di lui. – Risvegliala. Potrebbe esserci utile. La strega che andiamo a combattere potrebbe costringerci a chiedere aiuto.
La donna annuì compitamente e, sorridendo serena, si avvicino alla ragazza.
- Cos’avete in mente? – domandò Blaine, facendosi avanti.
- Oh, assolutamente niente di pericoloso. – sorrise rassicurante lei, tirando fuori un sottile guanto di seta da uno dei graziosi sacchetti ricamati che portava appesi alla cintura stretta in vita, ed indossandolo con attenzione, - Ma state indietro, per favore. Anche voi, signor signore della casa e del feudo.
- È Hummel, per tutti i cieli e gli inferni. – sbottò lui, infastidito, - Hummel.
- Signor Hummel, dunque. – sorrise ancora Emma, affatto turbata, - Indietreggiate, prego. Sto per risvegliarla e potrebbe esserci uno scoppio d’energia.
- Cosa… ma di cosa state parlando?! – sbottò Rachel, stringendosi nelle spalle, sulla difensiva, - Io non sono una strega! Non… che cosa state facendo?! – ebbe appena il tempo di strillare, prima che Emma, sorridendo serenamente, coprisse in pochissimi istanti la distanza che ancora le separava, appoggiando la mano guantata sulla sua spalla.
I presenti lanciarono un grido di sorpresa quando videro entrambe le figure femminili essere avvolte da una luce splendente, all’interno della quale scomparvero per qualche secondo. Nel momento in cui la luce si diradò, Emma si allontanò da Rachel, sfilando il guanto che aveva indossato e riponendolo in una delle sporte. Rachel rimase immobile nel mezzo del cortile, gli occhi spalancati e vuoti, la pelle crepitante di scintille bluastre. Le tremavano le labbra.
- Mia madre… - bisbigliò, - La strega Shelby. Io… io l’ho vista.
- Dannato mostro! – strillò Finn, scagliandosi contro Emma, - Cosa le avete fatto?!
- Fermo! – lo bloccò Rachel, sollevando una mano. Finn si ritrovò sbalzato all’indietro, seduto per terra sul ciottolato del cortile, prima di riuscire a colpire Emma, prima ancora che Van Schuester potesse muoversi per proteggerla. – Io ho visto mia madre. – proseguì, cercando con lo sguardo il principe Jesse, - La strega Shelby. Di Carmel. – gli occhi le si riempirono di lacrime, quando individuò la figura del principe, che quando sentì le sue parole serrò le labbra, i lineamenti del viso tesi in una maschera di sconcerto. – La prima strega che avete ucciso. Era mia madre.
- Bene. – tagliò corto Van Schuester, spezzando la tensione che rendeva l’aria del cortile irrespirabile, - Ora ditemi, qual è il vostro compagno?
Rachel si voltò a guardarlo, gli occhi persi.
- Come…? – balbettò, incerta, e Van Schuester sospirò sgarbatamente, sollevando gli occhi al cielo come fosse già stufo di dover fornire spiegazioni su spiegazioni a un gruppo di palesi ignoranti.
- Il vostro compagno umano. – precisò, - Come io sono il compagno umano di Emma. Una strega può scegliere di condividere il proprio potere o parte di esso con il proprio compagno, rendendolo più forte, adatto al combattimento. La strega di cui stiamo parlando è molto potente, e potrebbe servirci aiuto. Dunque, ditemi chi è il vostro compagno, e vi spiegherò come condividere parte del vostro potere con lui.
Rachel boccheggiò, guardandosi intorno con paura. I suoi occhi si posarono per un secondo anche su Finn, ancora seduto per terra e sbigottito, ma nel momento in cui i loro sguardi si incrociarono, lui distolse il proprio, e lei si sentì costretta a fare lo stesso, piegando le labbra in una smorfia addolorata.
- Non ne ho uno, signore. – rispose, abbassando il capo.
Del tutto disinteressato a quale potesse essere il suo dolore, Van Schuester scrollò le spalle.
- Be’, trovatene uno, e in fretta, anche. Non possiamo rischiare che—
- Che cosa, cacciatore? – disse una voce profonda ma indiscutibilmente femminile alle loro spalle. Tutti i presenti si voltarono, individuando immediatamente la figura di una donna alta e magra, avvolta in uno strano mantello rosso, le gambe divaricate e le mani poggiate sui fianchi in una posa presuntuosa e arrogante. La donna ghignò cattiva, piegando appena la testa. – Che la strega possa arrivare prima che voi possiate aver concluso i vostri preparativi per difendersi? – scoppiò a ridere, gettando indietro il capo. – Ops. – concluse, prima di sollevare le braccia verso il cielo. – Tempesta! – strillò, ed immediatamente il cielo ancora rossastro del tramonto si tinse di una sfumatura più scura, quasi sanguigna, mentre nuvole enormi e cupe si addensavano minacciose sopra le loro teste, gonfie di pioggia.
- Dannazione. – ringhiò fra i denti Van Schuester, stringendo i pugni ed indietreggiando di qualche passo, mentre tutti i presenti si stringevano inconsciamente l’uno all’altro e dietro di lui.
- Rachel… - disse piano il principe Jesse, quando le fu vicino, - Io…
- Tacete. – lo zittì lei, distogliendo lo sguardo, - Non adesso. Forse mai. Ma sicuramente non adesso.
Jesse distolse lo sguardo a propria volta, mordendosi un labbro.
La strega avanzò di un passo.
- Guardatevi, dunque. – disse con cattiveria, - Siete tutti qui? Così pochi? E pensate di avere anche solo una misera possibilità di sconfiggere me e la mia armata? – rise, allargando le braccia e, con esse, anche il mantello, che svolazzò furiosamente nel vento che adesso spazzava il cortile con violenza, e poi tornò ad afflosciarsi lungo i suoi fianchi. Mostrando all’improvviso decine e decine di donne – amazzoni, si sarebbe detto – dai lunghi capelli blu, abbigliate negli stessi toni rossastri del mantello della strega – gli stessi toni rossastri del cielo e dell’aria e di tutto ciò che li circondava in quel momento – in attesa di un solo ordine, le labbra già piegate in un ghigno ferino e spaventoso, le lingue che ogni tanto saettavano ad inumidirle, come non vedessero l’ora di avventarsi su tutti loro per divorarli senza pietà. – È tanto di quel tempo che le mie creature non mangiano. – soggiunse la strega con un altro spaventoso ghigno, - Dovrei lasciarle attaccare?
- Dannata! – ringhiò a quel punto Burt, avanzando di un paio di passi e ponendosi coraggiosamente in testa al drappello di persone, - Perché fai tutto ciò?! Cosa mai ti ha fatto il nostro popolo di tanto malvagio, perché tu abbia tanto rancore da serbare nei nostri confronti?!
Nel momento in cui gli occhi della strega di posarono su di lui, le pupille della donna si fecero ardenti come braci, e le sue labbra si piegarono in una smorfia di disgusto. Le amazzoni schierate dietro di lei ringhiarono con maggior forza, probabilmente percependo la tensione nella loro padrona, e snudarono le zanne, mostrando denti appuntiti e scintillanti degli stessi bagliori rossastri che agitavano il cielo della tempesta sanguigna evocata dalla fattucchiera.
- Nonostante la mia magia… - disse la strega, fissando l’uomo con disgusto, - sei invecchiato, Burt.
- Cosa…? – sussurrò il principe Blaine, indietreggiando appena e lanciando un’occhiata preoccupata a messer Hummel, - Voi la… la conoscete?
- Non l’ho mai vista in vita mia! – si difese Burt, voltandosi verso gli altri e guardandoli tutti con ansietà sempre crescente. Cercò gli occhi di Kurt, e vi trovò dentro solo paura e smarrimento. – Giuro che non ho la più pallida idea di chi questa donna sia e cosa voglia da noi. – disse più dolcemente, parlando ad alta voce perché tutti potessero sentirlo ma allo stesso tempo fissando il proprio sguardo colmo di paterna tristezza solo su Kurt, e su suo fratello Finn, di fianco a lui, così che fosse chiaro che a ciò che gli altri avrebbero potuto pensare era interessato solo parzialmente, e l’unica cosa che contava davvero, per lui, era che i suoi due figli gli credessero. Entrambi annuirono, senza mai distogliere gli occhi dalla sua austera figura.
- Il fatto che tu non ricordi rende la mia rabbia solo più profonda e devastante! – ringhiò la strega, mentre fiamme apparentemente incandescenti la avvolgevano interamente, senza ferirla in alcun modo, e le sue amazzoni si scatenavano, abbaiando e ruggendo e torcendosi le dita artigliate, - Tu avevi promesso, Burt Hummel! In riva al lago, centoquindici anni fa, tu hai promesso!
- Cento… centoquindici…? – Kurt spalancò gli occhi, guardando il proprio padre con sconcerto. – Padre, cosa… - provò a chiedere, ma fu costretto a interrompersi quando vide gli occhi di Burt spalancarsi, come se un’improvvisa consapevolezza li illuminasse. Trattenne il fiato, e Finn accanto a sé fece lo stesso, e così si ritrovarono costretti a fare anche tutti gli altri quando una voce tonante dal cielo cominciò a raccontare.

La notte era placida e silenziosa, calda e umida sulla riva del lago. Burt giunse da Ovest, come sempre faceva, e Sue lo attendeva, seduta su uno dei grandi sassi che, come sedute naturali, si affiancavano nei pressi della piccola cascatella che, rotolando giù dalla montagna, faceva sì che la temperatura di quelle acque restasse sempre gelida. Abbigliata di rosso, come al solito, sedeva compostamente, le mani poggiate in grembo ed un ampio cappuccio a coprirle il capo e scivolare lungo i contorni eleganti e fieri del viso. Le sue labbra sottili erano increspate in un sorriso appena distinguibile, e Burt, come ogni notte, la trovò bellissima.
«Sei in ritardo» lo ammonì scherzosamente lei, e lui ridacchiò imbarazzato, grattandosi la nuca e prendendo posto al suo fianco, su una pietra ampia ma più bassa rispetto a quella sulla quale sedeva lei.
«I preparativi, sai…» borbottò, stringendosi nelle spalle, «Mia madre ha passato l’intera giornata a piangere» aggiunse con aria un po’ triste, «Mi ha detto che avrebbe preferito avere una figlia femmina, in modo da poterla tenere sempre con sé. Con me non può farlo, se dico che voglio viaggiare non può impedirmelo.»
«Deve infastidirti parecchio» commentò Sue con un mezzo sorriso, avvicinandoglisi di un paio di centimetri. Burt rise divertito, scuotendo il capo.
«In realtà la comprendo» confessò imbarazzato, «È questo il motivo per cui anch’io vorrei avere solo figlie femmine. In modo da non dovermene separare.»
Nel sentire quelle parole, Sue arrossì immediatamente, ma riuscì a distogliere lo sguardo abbastanza in fretta da fare in modo che Burt non lo notasse. Si schiarì la voce, fissando insistentemente gli ampi cerchi che l’acqua della cascatella generava infrangendosi sulla superficie del lago. «Parti domani, dunque» commentò, provando a celare la tristezza così evidente nella propria voce. Burt si voltò a guardarla, allungando una mano ad accarezzarle una spalla.
«Tornerò» cercò di rassicurarla con un mezzo sorriso. Lei lo ricambiò, ma senza crederci.
«Però non è questo ciò che ti preoccupa» gli disse, sorridendo con aria più furba, gli occhi chiari stretti come due fessure, eppure ancora così brillanti. «Qualcosa ti angoscia, ma non è tua madre, né la tua imminente partenza, né, ahimè, doverti separare dalla sottoscritta per intraprendere questo lungo viaggio» aggiunse in una risatina, dissimulando l’imbarazzo che provava per avere appena detto qualcosa di simile ad alta voce. Burt volle ribattere, ma non ne ebbe il tempo. «So che qualcosa c’è» disse lei, interrompendolo prima che potesse dirle alcunché a proposito di quella battuta, «Ti va di dirmi cos’è?»
Burt sospirò, abbassando lo sguardo e torcendosi le mani in grembo. «Oggi…» cominciò incerto, «Risistemavo i miei progetti e le mie carte, e… improvvisamente mi è stato tutto molto chiaro.»
«Cosa?» domandò Sue, lanciandogli un’occhiata incuriosita. Lui si strinse nelle spalle, concedendosi un mezzo sorriso.
«Io non ce la farò» rispose con rassegnazione. «I miei studi sono all’avanguardia. Troppo all’avanguardia. So già che fine faranno. Le mie macchine non saranno mai, mai comprese prima di centinaia d’anni. I miei progetti subiranno lo stesso destino di quelli del grande Da Vinci. Nessuno dei miei prototipi funziona, nessuno li comprende, i miei genitori e tutti gli accademici del paese mi trattano come fossi un pazzo visionario. Intraprendo questo viaggio sperando di trovare qualcuno, da qualche parte in questo paese, che sia disposto a credere in me e in quello che sono capace di fare, ma la realtà è che so già che questo viaggio sarà inutile. Non troverò nessuno. Semplicemente perché è impossibile che io lo trovi.»
«Via, via, adesso» lo prese in giro lei, con una risatina divertita, «Non stiamo volando un po’ troppo alti, paragonandoci a Da Vinci?»
«Volare…» quasi mugolò Burt, un debole sorriso sognante a farsi strada sulle sue labbra, «Quello sarebbe davvero il massimo. E la mia non è presunzione!» si difese, sentendosi però quasi moralmente obbligato ad abbassare lo sguardo subito dopo, «Intendo… forse sì. Forse un po’ lo è. Ma è solo perché so dove tutto ciò mi sta portando, e so che si parla di un luogo molto lontano. Un luogo che potrebbe non essere qui nemmeno in cinquecento, seicento anni! Io ho… ho solo bisogno di più tempo. Più tempo, capisci? Per vedere dove mi porteranno i miei studi.»
Sue sorrise, stringendosi nelle spalle. «Sei ancora giovane» rispose, «Hai tutto il tempo che ti serve.»
«No, non è così» scosse il capo lui, avvicinandosi a lei e stringendo le sue mani pallide e sottili fra le proprie, «La mia scienza è già parecchio avanti rispetto a quella degli altri scienziati di questo paese, ma— non è sufficiente. Non mi serve solo qualche anno in più, non sto parlando di un paio di decenni, sto parlando di… tempo. Tempo vero. Quel tempo che quando lo guardi sembra infinito, quel tempo che ce n’è sempre abbastanza. Quel tempo lì serve a me.»
Rossa in viso, la ragazza deglutì, senza allontanarsi di un passo, ed anzi, ricambiando la stretta delle sue mani con le proprie. «Cent’anni? Duecento?» deglutì ancora. I suoi occhi scintillavano. Dalle sue dita partivano tenui raggi di luce che illuminavano la radura come stelle. La superficie del lago, resa nera come la pece dalla notte inoltrata, sembrava un cielo d’estate. «Io posso darteli» annuì, «Ma tu devi promettere.»
Lui non si allontanò. Avrebbe promesso la luna a chiunque, se solo gli avessero dato abbastanza anni per imparare a raggiungerla e catturarla in una gabbia. «Dimmi cosa devo promettere, e lo prometterò.»
«Prometti…» sussurrò la ragazza, avvicinandosi a lui e bisbigliando al suo orecchio. «Prometti di sposarmi. Rimanda il viaggio di qualche giorno, sposiamoci in fretta, non ho bisogno di grandi cerimonie, non ho famiglia, non ho legami. Sposiamoci, e poi partiamo insieme. Voglio… voglio rimanerti accanto, e fare di te il mio compagno.»
Lui spalancò gli occhi e, nell’ascoltare la sua voce gentile e ciò che diceva, si lasciò sfuggire una risatina divertita. Non poteva essere che uno sciocco gioco, lei non poteva aiutarlo. Era solo una ragazzina innamorata, che per lui avrebbe fatto di tutto, ma che non poteva a conti fatti fare niente. Ma lui le avrebbe comunque promesso ciò che voleva, per ringraziarla di averlo ascoltato ed aver provato ad illuderlo che un modo per sconfiggere il tempo esistesse davvero.
Chinandosi sulle sue labbra e sfiorandole in un bacio lievissimo, promise. Rispondendo al bacio, lei suggellò la promessa, e quando si separò da lui bisbigliò poche parole. «Possa la clessidra per duecento volte girare, prima che il tuo corpo cominci ad invecchiare. Con quest’incantesimo, tempo, ti comando: al giovane che amo…» arrossì appena, «Concedi più vita, e meno affanno.»
Dovettero salutarsi celermente quando furono passati solo pochi istanti: la madre di Burt doveva essersi svegliata ed aver creduto che lui avesse deciso di partire nottetempo senza salutare nessuno, perché ovunque intorno alla villa uomini armati di lanterne stavano invocando il suo nome a gran voce. Lui pensò non fosse il caso di spaventare e rattristare ancora la sua povera madre, e baciò Sue sulle labbra in fretta e furia prima di imboccare di corsa il sentiero del ritorno.
Partì l’indomani. Non la rivide più. Nel corso del suo lungo viaggio intorno a tutto il continente ebbe modo di imparare molto, ma niente di ciò che vide sembrò aiutarlo a progredire nei suoi studi in maniera sostanziale. Venti volte le stagioni si avvicendarono, venti volte venne l’autunno con le sue piogge, e venti volte l’inverno con le sue nevi e le pelli di animali che Burt cacciava per ripararsi dal freddo; venti volte la primavera, col profumo intenso dei fiori, e venti volte l’estate, col sapore zuccherino dei suoi frutti maturi. All’alba del ventunesimo anno, Burt guardò il sole sorgere, e si sentì triste.
Recuperò i propri bagagli e si accodò alla prima carovana diretta verso Nord-Est. L’odore di casa, dei campi coltivati, della cucina di famiglia, dell’aia, del cortile, della stalla, del lago, delle colline ricoperte di fiori, si faceva più forte giorno dopo giorno, e Burt sentì per la prima volta da quando era partito il bisogno di piangere quando vide finalmente apparire all’orizzonte i contorni della grande villa che era appartenuta agli Hummel per generazioni. Avrebbe continuato a lavorare sui suoi macchinari a tempo perso, era ora di prendere il suo giusto posto nel mondo. Probabilmente, non era quello il suo destino. Doveva accettarlo, per quanto doloroso fosse.
Sua madre lo attendeva seduta sulla poltrona che era stata di suo padre, in salotto. Le mani in grembo, il viso bianco e pallido ricoperto di dolci rughe, i capelli candidi a scivolare in ciocche ordinate fuori dalla cuffietta da notte. Sorrideva come se sapesse esattamente che lui sarebbe tornato proprio quella sera.
Si alzò, e Burt le corse incontro perché dovesse fare meno strada. «Figlio» lo salutò lei, accarezzandogli una guancia, «Non sei cambiato affatto.»
Morì pochi giorni dopo. Ancora frastornato, dopo il funerale, Burt convocò gli abitanti della villa, ed assicurò loro che né lì né nel feudo sarebbe cambiato qualcosa.
«Qualcosa, però, è cambiato, mentre voi non c’eravate, signore» disse qualcuno. Non nascevano più bambine. Non era nata una sola femmina negli ultimi vent’anni, e gli abitanti avevano escluso che dovesse trattarsi di un problema di fertilità, perché di maschi continuavano a nascerne a iosa.
Burt non avrebbe mai avuto una figlia.
Non pensò mai a prendere moglie. Chiese solo una volta se qualcuno avesse notizie della donzella sempre vestita di rosso con la quale soleva accompagnarsi negli anni della sua gioventù. Ma nessuno seppe rispondergli, e dopo un po’ Burt smise perfino di pensarci.


- Ma io non ho mai smesso. – disse la strega quando la voce rombante smise di raccontare. I suoi occhi erano gelidi e immobili, fissi sulla figura di Burt, attorno alla quale s’era formato uno spazio via via sempre più grande, man mano che tutti gli abitanti della villa si andavano allontanando da lui, ascoltando il racconto dipanarsi una battuta dopo l’altra. – Dopo la tua partenza, avendo capito quanto poco fosse valsa la tua promessa, sono tornata nel folto della foresta, al luogo al quale appartenevo. E ho lanciato la mia maledizione sul tuo paese. Nel caso tu fossi mai tornato a casa, tutte le belle figlie che volevi non le avresti mai avute. Nessuno le avrebbe mai avute. E sarebbe stata solo tua la colpa!
- Sue… - provò Burt, avvicinandosi di un passo, la mano tesa verso di lei mentre le amazzoni ringhiavano e strepitavano sul posto, come fossero trattenute da catene invisibili, - Io pensavo che fossero solo le fantasie di una ragazzina! Sono uno scienziato, non ho mai creduto nella magia! Come potevo sapere che—
- Non era importante che tu sapessi! – lo interruppe lei, ringhiando tanto forte da far tremare la terra, mentre le amazzoni si avventavano su di lui e poi tornavano ad indietreggiare e ruggire frustrate, come se lo scoppio d’ira di Sue le avesse liberate dalle invisibili catene che le tenevano bloccate, e poi, una volta placatosi, le avesse obbligate a fermarsi ancora. – Era una promessa! Che io fossi una strega o meno, che la mia magia funzionasse rendendoti più longevo o meno, avresti dovuto mantenerla! E invece non ti è mai importato, mi hai dimenticata! – inspirò ed espirò a fatica, calmandosi mentre le nubi in cielo si scurivano sempre di più, come fossero pronte a esplodere in una pioggia di sangue. – Ma ormai non importa più. – concluse in un breve sorriso cattivo, - Ora tu morirai, e con te tutta la tua famiglia e tutta la tua gente. Io e le mie bestie metteremo a ferro e fuoco il feudo e niente resterà più anche solo a ricordare la tua esistenza e il tuo passaggio su questo mondo! Preparati, Burt Hu—
- Abbiamo finito? – la interruppe Van Schuester, frapponendosi fra lei e l’uomo, - Possiamo passare oltre, al momento in cui ti sconfiggo e brucio il tuo corpo di modo che tu possa fare la stessa fine di tutte quelle della tua razza?
- Ma guarda un po’… - sorrise la strega, imperturbabile, incrociando le braccia sul petto e picchiettandosi con due dita sull’interno del gomito, - Un altro ficcanaso. Credevo che le mie due altre creature sarebbero state sufficienti a distrarre la compagnia a sufficienza perché nessuno mi scoprisse… a questo proposito, principe Blaine, giovane Finn, avete gradito i miei doni? – ridacchiò, disegnando un cerchio nell’aria con entrambe le mani ed evocando due evanescenti figure in tutto e per tutto somiglianti a Quinn e Jeremiah, - Sono così dispiaciuta che il mio perfetto incantesimo di ipnosi abbia funzionato al punto da distruggere la relazione che avevate con le due persone di cui eravate davvero innamorati. – disse, fingendo contrizione, - Oh, ma cosa dico. – rise quindi, scrollando le spalle, - Non mi dispiace per niente. Ma fossi in voi, giovani signori, - aggiunse in un ghigno, - non mi sentirei troppo in colpa. Mentre voi vi dibattevate inconsapevolmente in balia del mio incantesimo, i vostri innamorati… - sghignazzò, disegnando figure invisibili nell’aria mentre due fili di magia evanescente apparivano in mezzo alla folla, - erano bene impegnati a dimenticarsi di voi il più in fretta possibile. – concluse, mentre uno dei due nastri avvolgeva per un istante Kurt e Dave per poi dileguarsi, ed il secondo faceva lo stesso con Rachel e col principe Jesse, scomparendo subito nel crepitio delle gocce di pioggia rossastra che aveva cominciato finalmente a cadere dal cielo. – È questo che succede con l’amore. – riprese cupa, allargando entrambe le braccia ai lati del corpo, - Ti strappa il cuore, e poi lo porta via con sé, solo per gettarlo in un fosso e perderne ogni ricordo. – i suoi occhi divennero neri come la pece, mentre chiudeva un’altra volta le braccia, prima di urlare, - Andate, bambine! – liberando una volta per tutte le amazzoni dalle loro catene invisibili, e lasciandole finalmente libere di piombare sulla folla con ruggiti terrificanti ed urla raccapriccianti.
- Dannazione. – ringhiò a propria volta Van Schuester, - Emma!
La donna annuì, sollevando le braccia.
- Escudo! – urlò, battendo le mani in aria e poi allargandole progressivamente ai lati del proprio corpo, mentre, quasi seguendo il movimento delle sue braccia, sopra di loro si creava una barriera magica protettiva contro la quale le amazzoni andarono a schiantarsi una dopo l’altra, finendo sbalzate all’indietro e stordite per qualche secondo, prima di riprendere ad attaccarla con pugni, calci, morsi e unghiate. – Will… - mormorò la giovane strega, concentrando tutti i propri sforzi nel tentativo di fortificare la barriera, - Non reggerà a lungo…
Van Schuester annuì, voltandosi verso gli altri. Si trattava di poco più di un mucchietto sparuto di persone, nessuna delle quali aveva la più pallida idea dell’enorme disastro che si profilava davanti ai loro occhi. La strega stava modificando lo spazio attorno a loro, manipolando anche il clima di quella campagna, e naturalmente attentando a tutte le loro vite. Dovevano fare qualcosa, e dovevano farla al più presto.
- D’accordo. Tu. – disse risoluto, indicando il principe Blaine, - Tu. – proseguì, indicando anche Finn, - E… tu. – concluse, indicando Dave, - Ascoltatemi attentamente. Quelle bestie là fuori, - spiegò, accennando alle amazzoni ancora intente a lanciarsi ripetutamente contro la barriera, nel tentativo di aprirla, - non sono magiche. Sono demoni, la strega li ha evocati, ma non posseggono energia magica, sono solo animali affamati di sangue. Per questo motivo, appena la barriera crollerà, perché crollerà, questo è certo, voi dovrete prendere tutti gli inermi e condurli in un luogo sicuro, e combattere per proteggerli.
- Possiamo farlo. – annuì Blaine, - Siamo armati.
- No! – interloquì Kurt, aggrappandosi al braccio di Dave, - Lui non lo è!
- Posso combattere, Kurt. – ribatté l’uomo, scostandosi da lui con gentilezza, ma anche con decisione, - Ho solo bisogno di una spada. – continuò, voltandosi a guardare Blaine. Il principe scrutò prima lui e poi le mani di Kurt, ancora poggiate sul suo avambraccio, e deglutì.
- D’accordo. – rispose, - Ci serve una spada.
- Prendete quella del signor Hummel. – risolse per loro Van Schuester, e Burt portò istantaneamente una mano all’elsa della propria arma.
- Cosa? No! – protestò, sulla difensiva, - Voglio combattere. Tutto questo è successo per causa mia, e—
- Oh, combatterete, signore, non preoccupatevi. – tagliò corto Van Schuester, avvicinandoglisi in un paio di passi e privandolo della propria spada con tutta la fodera, per poi consegnarla a Dave, - Solo, non con quest’arma. Avete qualcosa di ben più potente ed efficace da usare contro quella strega. Voi, - disse, - e voi, anche, - continuò, accennando a Rachel e Jesse, - Non andrete con gli altri. Avrò bisogno del vostro aiuto contro la strega, non contro i demoni.
- Signore, non c’è niente che io possa fare per aiutarvi. – abbassò lo sguardo Rachel, torcendosi le mani, - Non so nemmeno se sono in grado di utilizzare i miei… poteri. Li sento agitarsi dentro di me, ma è come se provenissero da qualcun altro. Non li sento miei.
Van Schuester la fissò, senza neanche cercare di nascondere il proprio disappunto.
- Questo è semplicemente logico e normale. – sbottò, infastidito da una tale palese ignoranza, - Generalmente, le giovani streghe vengono risvegliate da una scintilla di potere delle loro madri quando raggiungono l’età della maturazione completa, intorno ai quattordici anni. Voi, signorina, avete superato quell’età da un pezzo, e per di più a risvegliarvi non è stata vostra madre, dal momento che evidentemente non ne ha avuto il tempo, per cui è perfettamente ovvio che voi non sentiate il potere che vi scorre in corpo come qualcosa di vostro. Ciononostante, - aggiunse, - quel potere c’è, e ci è necessario, se vogliamo sconfiggere quella strega. L’alternativa è non fare niente e lasciarci ammazzare, e se permettete non sono disposto a considerarla come valida.
- Non mi sembra il caso di parlarle a questo modo, signore. – si intromise Jesse, aggrottando le sopracciglia. Van Schuester si voltò a guardarlo con aria profondamente disgustata.
- Non so se qualcuno di voi l’ha notato, - cominciò con piglio severo, - ma qui siamo tutti in pericolo di vita. La mia compagna – disse, indicando Emma, - sta tenendo in piedi una barriera da sola contro un’orda di demoni inferociti, e quando quella barriera sarà crollata non ci sarà più niente a proteggerci. La nostra unica speranza è unire le nostre forze, proteggere i più deboli e cercare di sconfiggere la strega. Per questo motivo… - tornò a guardare Rachel, - ho bisogno che voi scegliate il vostro compagno, giovane strega. Dovete condividere i vostri poteri con lui. La condivisione rende la strega più forte, e arma il compagno a sufficienza per renderlo pericoloso in battaglia. Usualmente, non si tratta di una scelta che possa essere forzata, ma capite bene che…
- Un attimo, un attimo soltanto! – protestò Finn, pinzandosi la radice del naso, - Volete forse dire che… intendo, non vorrete mica obbligarla a prendere una decisione simile nel giro di così pochi minuti?! Tutta la sua vita potrebbe dipenderne!
- La sua vita ne dipenderà sicuramente, se non la prende! – insistette Van Schuester, gesticolando animatamente, - Io ed Emma non possiamo contrastare la potenza di quella strega da soli! Credete forse che tutte le streghe siano in grado di evocare demoni dall’inferno o cambiare la pioggia in sangue?! Siamo di fronte ad un esemplare di una potenza inaudita, reso ancora più potente dal risentimento covato nel corso dell’ultimo secolo! Abbiamo bisogno di lei!
- Ma non potete costringerla a—
- Basta! – li interruppe Rachel, alzando la voce al punto che tutti la sentirono rombare all’interno della bolla formata dalla barriera protettiva. La ragazza si voltò verso Finn, scrutandolo con occhi privi di emozione. – Signore, qualunque sia la mia scelta, state pure sicuro che voi non ne sarete coinvolto. – si sforzò di sorridere, avvicinandosi a lui e sollevando un braccio per accarezzargli una guancia, - Finn, noi non eravamo niente. – disse piano, - Eravamo solo convenienti. Semplici. Voi non volete nemmeno rimanere in questo luogo, ed io non vi appartengo. Non vi sono mai appartenuta, e non apparterrò mai a nessuno. Il principe Jesse ha ragione, quando dice che io non sono fatta per questi luoghi, per questa terra, o per essere una maestra di canto. Non sono mai stata quel tipo di donna, ed ora so anche perché.
- Finalmente sento qualcuno parlare con un po’ di senno. – sbottò Van Schuester, - Dunque è quest’uomo, la vostra scelta? – chiese, indicando Jesse con un cenno del capo. Rachel lo guardò, e poi tornò a fissare Van Schuester.
- Combatterò da sola, signore. – disse con fierezza, - Lasciate che il principe aiuti a proteggere i più deboli.
- Questa è una sciocchezza. – quasi ringhiò il cacciatore, stringendo i pugni lungo i fianchi.
- È la mia ultima parola. – ribadì lei con un mezzo sorriso, e Van Schuester sospirò.
- Sta bene. – cedette, - Voi, unitevi agli altri. Prendete con voi le donne e i ragazzi, ed allontanatevi il più possibile. Trovate un riparo, e presidiatene gli ingressi. Noi cercheremo di fare in modo che la battaglia possa durare meno a lungo possibile. – aspettò un cenno d’intesa da parte dei due principi e di Finn e Dave, prima di voltarsi a cercare la sua compagna. – Emma, - la chiamò, - lasciala andare!
La strega annuì, e con un gemito di sollievo e dolore abbassò finalmente le braccia, lasciando la barriera infrangersi sotto i colpi delle amazzoni affamate, che si lanciarono immediatamente su di loro.
- Andiamo! – gridò il principe Blaine, stringendo la propria spada fra le mani e parando l’attacco di un demone, - Raggruppate gli altri, scappate verso la stalla!
- Principe Blaine! – gridò Kurt, - Alla vostra sinistra!
- Cosa? – ringhiò lui, a stento in grado di controbattere ai furiosi attacchi dell’amazzone che aveva di fronte, - Dannazione!
- Dave! – chiamò Kurt, ma quando si voltò a cercare lo stalliere al proprio fianco non lo trovò. Si era già lanciato al fianco del principe Blaine, brandendo la spada appena in tempo per parare l’attacco della seconda amazzone.
- Voi avete salvato la mia vita. – disse, combattendo col principe spalla contro spalla, - Adesso siamo pari.
Il principe Blaine lo guardò incerto per qualche secondo, e poi un breve sorriso gli affiorò alle labbra, e lui annuì.
- Coraggio, - incitò Kurt, rivolgendosi a Finn ed al principe Jesse, - andiamo verso la stalla!
I due uomini annuirono, e mentre Jesse si lanciava in avanti, attirando parecchi demoni e trafiggendoli uno dopo l’altro, Finn raccolse il gruppo, si assicurò che fossero tutti presenti e poi li guidò tutti assieme verso l’entrata della stalla.
- Kurt, una volta dentro, controllate le finestre e le aperture, e cercate di chiuderle. – disse. Suo fratello annuì, restando in disparte per far sì che tutti gli abitanti della villa potessero rifugiarsi all’interno dell’edificio, per ripararsi dagli attacchi dei demoni e da quelle gocce di pioggia rosse come sangue che continuavano a piovere dal cielo. Fece per entrare quando si accorse che erano tutti già passati, ma Finn lo fermò, arpionandolo per un braccio, e Kurt si voltò nuovamente a guardarlo. – Mi… mi dispiace che le cose siano andate così. – sospirò, - Forse, se vi fossi stato maggiormente vicino…
Kurt sorrise dolcemente, allungando una mano ad accarezzargli il viso.
- Non è stata colpa vostra. – lo rassicurò in un sospiro, - È accaduto ciò che doveva accadere. Non datevi pena, sarebbe accaduto anche se mi foste rimasto accanto per tutto il tempo. – concluse, prima di correre dentro la stalla ad aiutare gli altri nella fortificazione dell’edificio.
Finn abbassò lo sguardo e sospirò profondamente. Non aveva mai pensato ad una carezza come ad un addio, eppure, nel giro di pochi minuti, era già successo due volte che dovesse prendere atto di quel secondo significato nascosto di un gesto tanto semplice e dolce.
- Finn! Arriviamo! – lo avvisò il principe Blaine dalla distanza, e lui non poté fare altro che riscuotersi dai suoi pensieri.
- Sono pronto! – rispose, impugnando saldamente la spada e parandosi di fronte all’entrata della stalla mentre Blaine e Dave si sistemavano al suo fianco, da un lato e dall’altro, e Jesse continuava ad attirare l’attenzione di alcuni demoni lontano da quel punto, - Da qui non passerà nessuno. – sentenziò cupamente, lanciandosi all’attacco di una delle amazzoni.
Dave e Blaine rimasero a presidiare l’ingresso, respingendo gli attacchi uno dopo l’altro e pregando che la strega venisse sconfitta il più in fretta possibile. Erano già stremati, mentre le amazzoni continuavano ad attaccare come non sentissero alcuna fatica, e – cosa ancora più preoccupante – il loro numero continuava ad aumentare indipendentemente da quante loro riuscissero a sconfiggerne. Continuando di questo passo, non avrebbero resistito ancora a lungo.
*
Van Schuester sollevò entrambe le braccia, scagliando palle di fuoco contro le amazzoni che continuavano ad attaccarlo. Emma, impegnata a proteggere quanto più poteva l’indifeso signor Hummel, e al contempo a respingere gli attacchi delle altre amazzoni, non poteva aiutarlo. Quella giovane, Rachel, faceva il possibile per dare una mano, ma i suoi poteri erano ancora deboli, ed ella stessa non sembrava in grado di controllarli come avrebbe voluto e come sarebbe stato più utile per tutti che imparasse a fare. Sciocca, cocciuta ragazza. Avrebbe avuto bisogno di così poco, per rinforzarsi… e quella strega restava immobile, sollevata in aria di un paio di metri, ridendo e scagliando incantesimi contro i campi, contro il lago, contro il cielo, bruciando gli uni, prosciugando l’altro e ferendo a morte l’ultimo, e non c’era niente che loro potessero fare per impedirglielo. Era troppo forte. Non avevano speranza.
- Maledetta… - ringhiò fra i denti, scagliando lontano due amazzoni con la forza delle proprie braccia, e chinandosi appena in tempo per evitare le due stalattiti di ghiaccio che Emma aveva creato con la propria magia e poi lanciato contro di loro. Le trafissero nel mezzo del petto, ed entrambi i demoni crollarono a terra dopo un urlo disumano, apparentemente senza vita, solo per rialzarsi subito dopo, quando entrambe le stalattiti si furono disciolte a causa del calore insopportabile che ormai avvinceva l’intera zona in un soffocante abbraccio di morte.
- Sembra che non possiate niente, contro le mie creature. – rise malvagia la strega, appiccando un incendio ad un boschetto nelle vicinanze, - E naturalmente non potete nulla contro di me. Arrendetevi al vostro destino! Consegnatevi nelle mie mani e ai più forti di voi sarà concesso di vivere come miei servi, mentre sarò tanto magnanima da infliggere una morte solo moderatamente dolorosa a tutti gli altri!
- Mai! – urlò Van Schuester, giungendo le mani per creare un’enorme palla di fuoco da scagliarle contro. La strega non ebbe neanche bisogno di evitarla: le bastò sollevare un braccio per estinguerla ben prima che arrivasse anche solo a bruciacchiarle l’orlo del mantello.
- Non stiamo progredendo. – commentò Emma, affaticata, lanciando un fulmine di luce contro un’amazzone pronta a saltare addosso a Rachel.
- Grazie, Emma, senza di te non me ne sarei mai accorto. – borbottò Van Schuester, inarcando un sopracciglio e finendo a rotolare lateralmente quando un demone gli si lanciò contro da dietro un mucchio di fieno. – Maledetto mostro— - ringhiò, cercando di trattenere le fauci e gli artigli della creatura lontani dal suo corpo, resistendo appena a sufficienza da permettere a Rachel di strillare terrorizzata e generare con la propria voce un’onda sonora che sbalzò via la creatura, stordendola per qualche minuto. – Dannazione. Moriremo tutti. Come se la cava la linea difensiva davanti alle stalle? – gridò, voltandosi e cercando il principe Blaine con lo sguardo.
- Teniamo! – rispose lui, tranciando con la propria spada il braccio di un demone dopo una mezza piroetta, - Ma non potremo farcela a lungo! Bisogna fermare la strega!
- Certo! – grugnì Van Schuester, afferrando un’amazzone per un polso e rigirandoglielo dietro la schiena, in modo da bloccarla abbastanza a lungo da poterle afferrare la testa con un braccio e torcergliela di netto, spezzandole il collo, - Continuate tutti a ricordarmi ovvietà di cui sono già perfettamente a conoscenza! È proprio quello che mi serve, in una situazione come questa! – soffiò imbestialito. L’amazzone cadde a terra senza vita, e pochi minuti dopo si risollevò in piedi, senza neanche darsi pena di rimettere a posto il collo, prima di avventarsi contro Rachel, che la tenne lontana con un altro strillo dei suoi. Sembrava che quella fosse la sua peculiarità, il suo potere speciale, ma per tutti gli dei del creato e per tutte le forze mistiche dell’universo, andava perfezionata. – Rachel, piantatela una buona volta di strillare a caso ed ascoltatemi. – cominciò con piglio severo, scaricando fulmini crepitanti di elettricità sulle amazzoni che lo circondavano ogni paio di minuti, - Ho capito che non avete la benché minima intenzione di seguire i miei consigli e condividere i vostri poteri con qualcuno, ma qui stiamo solo perdendo tempo prezioso, e se non ci sbrighiamo a fare qualcosa quella donna e le sue maledette arpie faranno strage di noi tutti. – Rachel gli lanciò un’occhiata colma di terror panico, e Van Schuester annuì. – Bene, adesso che ho la vostra attenzione, ho bisogno che voi vi… - si interruppe per scansare l’attacco di un’amazzone ed utilizzare la forza con la quale essa gli si era avventata addosso per mandarla a sbattere contro un carretto pieno di cereali dietro di sé, - …vi avviciniate ad Emma, e vi concentriate. Lei vi spiegherà cosa fare. – concluse, per poi rivolgersi alla propria compagna ed indirizzarle un cenno d’intesa, al quale lei rispose annuendo determinata, liberandosi delle due amazzoni che l’assillavano per portarsi più vicina a Rachel, e poggiare le proprie mani sulle sue spalle.
- So che al momento percepisci l’energia dentro di te come una massa confusa e indomabile, - le sussurrò, sorridendo comprensiva, - ma chiudi gli occhi e prova a focalizzarla. Immaginala come una cosa fisica, se pensi che possa aiutarti. Tu canti, vero? – Rachel annuì incerta, mordicchiandosi il labbro inferiore. – Bene. – sorrise Emma, più convinta, - Allora pensala come se fosse una voce. Una voce interiore. Chiudi gli occhi e prova ad ascoltarla.
- Ma… - provò Rachel, - Non posso chiudere gli occhi, in mezzo alla battaglia…
- Siamo protette. – le sorrise Emma, rassicurante, - Ho creato una barriera, e Will ci sta proteggendo da fuori. Non preoccuparti. Ora, chiudi gli occhi. – sussurrò, sorridendo compiaciuta quando vide Rachel obbedire. – Senti come ti chiama dalle profondità della tua mente? Da luoghi della tua coscienza ancora inesplorati, che non credevi neanche di contenere dentro di te? Ti sta chiamando perché è tua, vuole che tu la riconosca.
- Non c’è… - aggrottò le sopracciglia Rachel, scuotendo il capo, - Non vedo niente…
- Non devi vedere. – sorrise ancora Emma, stringendo le sue spalle con più calore ed aiutandola con un’altra scintilla della propria magia, - Devi sentire. – sussurrò, e nel momento in cui lo disse Rachel spalancò gli occhi e sollevò il capo, e un gemito piccolissimo le si dischiuse sulle labbra mentre la sua pelle si illuminava appena, come bagnata dalla luce fioca e tremula di una candela.
- La sento… - mormorò confusamente, - Batte nelle mie vene col ritmo di un tamburo di guerra.
Emma sorrise soddisfatta, allontanandosi di un passo.
- Adesso abbasserò la barriera, Rachel, e nel momento in cui sentirai la mia energia smettere di proteggerci tu dovrai concentrarti al massimo delle tue forze e raccogliere tutta la magia di cui sei capace focalizzandola in un unico punto, ed indirizzandola contro la strega. L’incantesimo è un incantesimo basilare di prigionia, non avrai problemi a portarlo a termine. – sorrise con maggiore convinzione, cercando di spazzare via i dubbi che si agitavano sul fondo scuro degli occhi di Rachel. – Non è necessario che tu pronunci una formula, la tua magia sa ciò che vuoi da lei. – concluse, facendole l’occhiolino. – Adesso, mi raccomando. Abbasso la barriera e corro dal signor Hummel a spiegargli cosa deve fare. Tu fai subito come ti ho detto, niente esitazioni, eh! – precisò per l’ultima volta, mentre Rachel, più confusa che persuasa, annuiva freneticamente.
Non perse tempo a fare ciò che aveva detto: dissolse la barriera con un rapido cenno della mano e si precipitò al fianco del signore del feudo, ergendone immediatamente un’altra attorno a loro e prendendosi qualche secondo per osservare con evidente soddisfazione Rachel strizzare gli occhi e poi lanciare un grido quasi disperato, mentre un fascio di luce abbagliante si sprigionava dal centro del suo petto, diretto verso la strega. Le sarebbe piaciuto poter portare con sé quella ragazza. Istruirla secondo la sua vera natura, aiutarla nel lungo cammino che avrebbe fatto di lei una vera strega. Ma non era quello il suo destino. E, in ogni caso, in quel momento aveva un compito ben più urgente da svolgere.
- Signor signore del feudo, - sorrise amabile, - adesso mi ascolti attentamente.
*
Van Schuester osservò con attenzione Emma muoversi velocemente da un lato all’altro del campo di battaglia, creando bolle protettive prima attorno a se stessa ed a Rachel, e poi attorno a se stessa e al signor Hummel. La sua attenzione venne immediatamente calamitata dalla giovane quando, una volta libera dalla protezione di Emma, si ritrovò da sola, ferma in mezzo al cortile, le braccia lievemente larghe rispetto al corpo e gli occhi apparentemente vuoti, brillanti però di una luce sinistra, quasi cattiva. Van Schuester sorrise: questo era ciò che faceva delle streghe le creature più forti al mondo, quella loro crudeltà di fondo che risiedeva nella negatività essenziale della loro magia.
La loro negatività di base era però anche il loro limite. Una strega puramente malvagia non sarebbe mai stata forte quanto una strega che, invece, aveva conosciuto la luce. In sostanza, una strega che si fosse, almeno una volta nella propria vita, innamorata. E che avesse deciso di condividere il proprio potere con un compagno. Quello era il passo che rendeva le streghe forti al massimo del loro potenziale, lasciare entrare un po’ di luce nella loro anima permetteva loro di esplodere come stelle.
Ironicamente, era anche ciò che le rendeva vulnerabili.
Van Schuester sorrise. La strega che avevano di fronte era fortissima, ma aveva conosciuto l’amore. E sarebbe stato quell’insignificante dettaglio a distruggerla.
- Rachel! – gridò, - Tutta la vostra energia! Concentratela sulla strega!
Rachel non parve nemmeno sentirlo, ma il grido che nacque sulle sue labbra e il fascio di luce che si generò dal suo petto furono risposte sufficienti. Van Schuester osservò quella luce raggiungere la strega trapassando con violenza ogni sua difesa, ed osservò la strega strabuzzare gli occhi quando quella stessa luce assunse forma fisica, girando attorno a lei due volte e poi stringendosi attorno alle sue spalle e alle sue braccia come una corda.
- Cosa… cosa diamine sta succedendo?! – strillò, e Van Schuester sorrise ancora.
- Bene. Bene! – esultò entusiasta, generando a propria volta un fascio di luce, giungendo le mani all’altezza del petto, - Ci siamo.
Il suo fascio di luce, più ampio e veloce di quello generato da Rachel, si affrettò ad allacciarsi anch’esso attorno al corpo della strega, la quale rispose con un ringhio furioso, provocando nelle amazzoni una furia anche maggiore. Quando anche il raggio di luce generato da Emma – che nel mentre doveva aver spiegato al signor Hummel cosa fare – fu avvolto attorno a lei, Van Schuester si concesse di sperare che quella battaglia sarebbe finita presto.
Fu un errore.
Lanciando un grido di dolore e frustrazione, la strega si rannicchiò per un secondo come in posizione fetale, e quando tornò a raddrizzarsi spalancò entrambe le braccia, spezzando i fasci di luce che la tenevano prigioniera e che scomparvero il secondo successivo. Ansimante, bruciacchiata, provata, ma ancora indubitabilmente forte, lanciò uno sguardo di trionfo ed un sorriso cattivo in direzione di Van Schuester.
- Non siete forti abbastanza. – gracchiò, - La streghetta non è forte abbastanza. – precisò con una mezza risata, indicando Rachel, la quale, ritornata in sé e tremendamente indebolita dall’uso massiccio che aveva fatto della propria energia senza sapere bene come controllarla, indietreggiò terrorizzata. – Faccio fuori lei, - considerò la strega, - e non avrete più speranze.
Attorno all’estremità del suo dito indice, quello puntato contro Rachel, andò formandosi un cerchio di fuoco, che si fece via via sempre più grande, sempre più grande e minaccioso.
- No! – urlò Van Schuester, capendo ciò che la strega aveva intenzione di fare. Debole com’era, Rachel non avrebbe saputo come difendersi, ed in ogni caso non era istruita abbastanza da sapere come lanciare un incantesimo di protezione, e sia lui che Emma erano troppo lontani per provare a frapporsi fra lei e l’incantesimo di fuoco che la strega lanciò subito dopo.
Van Schuester ebbe appena modo di muovere un passo, prima che l’incantesimo giungesse a destinazione, schiantandosi a terra e appiccando un incendio al covone di paglia poco distante.
Quando riaprì gli occhi, aggrottò le sopracciglia.
Il cadavere. Non c’era.
*
- Rachel. – disse il principe Jesse, accarezzandole una guancia, - State bene?
- È viva! – gridò Van Schuester, individuando i due giovani avvinghiati per terra poco lontano. Il principe, decisamente più vicino rispetto a loro, doveva essersi liberato del demone contro il quale stava combattendo, e doveva anche essersi lanciato sulla ragazza, allontanandola dal luogo dell’impatto. La sua camicia era bruciata in più punti, specie nel centro esatto della schiena. Non doveva essere uscito completamente illeso dallo scontro.
- Principe Jesse. – boccheggiò Rachel, spalancando gli occhi e rendendosi conto di quanto era successo, - Siete ferito!
- Ma voi siete viva. – sorrise lui, rotolando giù dal suo corpo ed accasciandosi a terra con un gemito gonfio di dolore, - È ciò che importa. Ora abbiamo ancora una speranza.
Emma gli si precipitò accanto, stringendogli una mano e chiudendo gli occhi.
- È stato colpito gravemente. – disse poi, rivolgendosi alla ragazza, - La sua energia vitale è stata compromessa.
- Che sciocchezza… - ansimò il principe, agitando la mano libera, - È solo una ferita superficiale.
- La ferita lo è, - annuì Emma, aggrottando le sopracciglia, - ma la forza degli incantesimi non risiede nel dolore fisico che procurano, ma nell’uso che fanno dell’energia di chi li scaglia e di chi li assorbe. È una questione di bilanciamento, ed un alchimista come voi dovrebbe saperlo. – concluse severamente, voltandosi a guardare Rachel. – L’energia del principe non è più bilanciata. Il suo corpo è invaso dalla magia nera, e non può reggere ancora a lungo.
Rachel le ricambiò lo sguardo, mordendosi il labbro inferiore.
- Cosa posso fare? – domandò quindi, la voce tremula.
- Cosa puoi fare, già lo sai. – rispose Emma, sorridendo debolmente.
Rachel si irrigidì per qualche secondo, fissandola con paura e incertezza per un tempo che sembrò lunghissimo, prima di abbassare nuovamente lo sguardo sul principe Jesse. Ansimava pericolosamente, il petto che si sollevava e si abbassava con fatica sempre maggiore sotto la camicia bruciacchiata, i capelli scomposti appiccicati alla fronte dal sudore e dal sangue. Ne scacciò via una ciocca, accarezzandogli una tempia. E poi gli sorrise.
*
- No… - mormorò la strega, indietreggiando appena quando vide il cacciatore, la sua compagna, la giovane strega e colui che era appena diventato il suo compagno avanzare risolutamente verso di lei, - No, questo è… no.
- È finita, strega. – ruggì Van Schuester, - Adesso siamo forti abbastanza. Preparati.
- No! – gridò ancora lei, sollevando le braccia per evocare un altro incantesimo di fuoco, mentre tutte le sue amazzoni lanciavano un devastante urlo di guerra e si avventavano sulle loro vittime con maggior foga.
Il principe Blaine e i suoi cavalieri ne circondarono un gruppo, trapassandole da parte a parte con le loro spade. Finn si lanciò con tutto il proprio corpo contro un’amazzone ormai pronta a irrompere all’interno della stalla, caricandola con forza fino a rispedirla indietro di un paio di metri. Dave ruggì con forza, afferrando per le caviglie un demone che stava già arrampicandosi lungo la parete della stalla per entrare dal tetto, e le spezzò le ginocchia con le proprie mani, prima di calciarla lontano.
- Non possiamo farcela. – ansimò, appoggiandosi alla parete per non cadere a terra in ginocchio, - Non abbiamo più forze. Van Schuester! – urlò, cercando con gli occhi il cacciatore, - Se la strega non muore… - ma dovette interrompersi, schiudendo le labbra in un’espressione di pura meraviglia quando vide quattro fasci identici di luce bianca sprigionarsi dal centro dei petti dei quattro impegnati a fronteggiare la strega. Come fulmini, attraversarono lo spazio fino al corpo della donna, chiudendosi attorno a lei con la violenza rabbiosa di una tenaglia e imprigionandola. La strega si dibatté, ringhiando e urlando, mentre gli attacchi delle amazzoni si facevano sempre più confusi e furiosi, ora che l’esercito di demoni stava perdendo la lucidità di chi li aveva evocati.
- Hummel! – gridò Van Schuester, - È il vostro momento!
Il signor Hummel, rimasto fino a quell’istante nascosto all’interno di una bolla generata da Emma, si fece avanti, mentre l’incantesimo di protezione attorno a lui si dissolveva. Inspirò ed espirò profondamente, irrigidendo le braccia lungo i fianchi e stringendo convulsamente i pugni.
- La tua magia, strega… - pronunciò a bassa voce, in un ringhio sommesso, - Io la rifiuto! – aggiunse in un grido più forte, ed il tempo sembrò fermarsi per un istante mentre la sua rabbia diventava magia, prendeva forma in una sfera di energia rosso sangue, e poi si lanciava contro la strega, colpendola all’improvviso.
La donna lanciò un grido straziante, gettando indietro il capo, il corpo squassato dalle fitte di dolore.
- Maledetti! – gridò, mentre le sue amazzoni si accasciavano per terra una dopo l’altra, in preda a convulsioni violentissime, per poi sparire senza lasciare la minima traccia. – Maledetti! Io vi maledico! – e mentre il suo corpo prendeva fuoco dall’interno, mentre gli occhi all’interno delle sue orbite si scioglievano e colavano via, mentre i suoi capelli si riducevano in polvere ed ogni fibra del suo corpo si anneriva, devastata dalla potenza della propria magia rifiutata che tornava indietro per distruggerla, trovò la forza di pronunciare un ultimo, tremendo incantesimo. – Giunone, Giunone, siimi vicina, mentre di Madre Natura inverto il ciclo, meschina. Ciò che un tempo aveste, e tolto vi fu, torni adesso ove al maschio fa male di più!
Quando tutto fu finito, restò solo l’eco della sua voce, ed un mucchietto di ceneri dove un tempo era stato il suo corpo. Il vento furioso della notte, tornata scura dopo la sua morte, portò via entrambe le cose nel giro di pochi istanti.
*
- È già nato? – strillò Finn, irrompendo nell’anticamera che introduceva alla stanza del fratello e spalancando la porta senza la minima grazia, ricevendo in cambio un colpo di asciugamano bagnato in faccia da parte di Santana. Era ancora avvolto nel proprio impolveratissimo mantello da viaggio, essendo rientrato appena in tempo dopo aver ricevuto la lettera recapitata dal messo che l’aveva trovato a cavalcare lungo la costa orientale del continente, recante l’informazione della gravidanza del fratello ormai giunta quasi a compimento.
- Chi dovrebbe essere nato? – domandò Brittany, e Finn, massaggiandosi il viso, la fissò con aria incerta.
- Ma come chi? Il bambino! – rispose con ovvietà, allargando le braccia ai lati del corpo.
- Quale bambino? – insistette Brittany, e Finn lasciò andare un suono frustrato, mentre Santana interveniva in sua difesa, pinzandosi la radice del naso.
- Il signor Finn usa la parola “bambino” per intendere “neonato”, Britt. Parla della bambina del signorino Kurt. – rispose. Finn spalancò gli occhi, e poi le sue labbra si dischiusero in un sorriso ebete.
- È davvero femmina! – esclamò estasiato. Quando aveva sentito dell’assurda spiegazione fornita da Rachel e da quell’altra strega, mesi prima, non aveva potuto crederci; aveva deciso di prendere il tutto con le pinze, ed era tutto sommato contento di averlo fatto, dal momento che ora poteva dire di provare una gioia sorprendente che nessuno di coloro che avevano creduto a quella versione fin da subito poteva affermare di aver provato. – La prima femmina in tutto il villaggio dopo centoquindici anni, ed è mia nipote! – quasi cinguettò, muovendosi verso la porta più interna, attraverso la quale sentiva provenire i placidi vagiti di un neonato indiscutibilmente felice di essere venuto al mondo. – Fratello! – lo chiamò, spalancando anche quella porta e precipitandosi al fianco del giovane, ancora steso a letto, prima che Santana potesse anche solo provare a fermarlo, - State bene? – chiese premuroso, inginocchiandosi sul pavimento e sporgendosi per sbirciare la bambina avvolta in un morbido panno bianco ricamato. – Oh, cielo, è deliziosa. – ridacchiò nell’osservarne le gote chiazzate di rosso e la piccola bocca di rosa, - Dunque Rachel aveva ragione.
Kurt annuì, stringendo al petto la bambina mentre Dave, seduto sul letto al suo fianco, stringeva al petto lui. Quando, qualche mese dopo la dipartita della strega, il ventre di Kurt aveva cominciato a gonfiarsi, inizialmente tutti avevano pensato con terrore ad una qualche malattia. Il signor Hummel, che pure dalla morte della strega aveva preso ad invecchiare molto velocemente, e che ora si ritrovava bianchissimo e quasi privo di forze ma tutto sommato in salute per contare quasi centoventicinque anni d’età, aveva temuto di poter perdere il minore dei propri figli prima che fosse giunta la propria ora, e il pensiero si era fatto insopportabile al punto che, dopo aver consultato tutti i medici ed essersi sentito ripetere decine e decine di volte che la causa di quel gonfiore sembrava introvabile, aveva supposto che dovesse trattarsi di qualcosa di relativo all’ultima maledizione lanciata da quella donna prima di bruciare, e pertanto aveva chiesto a sua maestà Blaine – ritornato a palazzo dopo aver appreso dalla viva voce di Kurt che, pur lusingato dal suo affetto, non intendeva più sposarlo – di inviare messi in tutti gli angoli del continente, per rintracciare gli unici che forse avrebbero potuto salvare Kurt, e che si trovavano in quel momento da qualche parte senza che nessuno sapesse dove, in viaggio alla ricerca di nuove streghe da sconfiggere.
Rachel, il principe Jesse, il cacciatore Van Schuester e la sua giovane compagna Emma erano stati ritrovati nei pressi della Foresta dei Salici Piangenti, a Ovest rispetto a Lima, intenti a cercare di portare a termine una nuova missione, ed erano stati ricondotti alla villa di gran fretta. Lì, dopo un’accurata visita ed un consulto, Rachel ed Emma avevano fornito la spiegazione che ritenevano più plausibile: entrambe ricordavano bene le ultime parole della strega, e poggiando le mani sul ventre gonfio di Kurt potevano ancora sentirne l’eco; la donna aveva ridato la fertilità al villaggio, che ora era nuovamente in grado di dare alla luce bambine, ma solo tramite gli esponenti maschi della specie. Da quel momento in poi, solo gli uomini avrebbero potuto partorire femmine, mentre le donne avrebbero continuato a partorire solo maschi.
Le due streghe avevano rassicurato Kurt sulla salute della sua bimba, spiegandogli che per quanto l’eco della maledizione della strega risuonasse forte dentro di lui, l’energia spirituale della bambina sembrava intatta e pura come quella di tutti i bambini prima di nascere, e che pertanto non correva alcun rischio.
Il ventre aveva continuato a crescere. Tutti avevano preso atto dell’incredibile verità come più cento anni prima avevano preso atto dell’altrettanto incredibile verità di non poter più dare alla luce bambine, e poco a poco anche l’idea di un uomo che potesse partorire una bimba era diventata naturale, come anni addietro era diventato naturale che nessuna donna potesse più farlo. Era stato per certi versi perfino obbligatorio accettarlo, dal momento che, come Van Schuester aveva professionalmente spiegato quando era stato interpellato, l’ultima maledizione che una strega lancia prima di morire non ha alcuna possibilità di essere annullata in alcun modo.
- Eccola qui. – disse dolcemente Kurt, mostrando al proprio fratello la bambina appena nata, - È bella, vero?
Finn annuì, commosso. Aveva viaggiato in lungo e in largo, da quando, dopo la morte della strega, era riuscito a confessare che non esistesse niente al mondo che desiderasse di più di spingersi oltre i confini del continente, ed esplorare il mondo; aveva viaggiato in lungo e in largo, sì, ma non aveva mai visto niente di più bello di quella creatura.
- Come la chiamerete? – domandò. Kurt chiuse gli occhi ed inspirò profondamente, ascoltando la musica dentro di sé, quella che l’aveva accompagnato per tutta la gravidanza, e di cui non aveva mai parlato a nessuno.
- Sue. – rispose, - La chiamerò Sue.
La bambina, stretta contro il suo petto, persa nei propri sogni, piegò il capo e sorrise.
Genere: Comico, Erotico.
Pairing: Dave/Blaine.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Switchgender, Crack, Het, Lemon.
- "Tu sei diventato femmina così, dal giorno alla notte! Queste cose non succedono!"
Note: Scritta nel corso della Notte Bianca #4, su prompt gender bender. Non so di chi sia la colpa di questa storia ma indubbiamente non è mia. Non so, qualche spirito maligno deve avermi posseduta XD
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
UPTOWN GIRL

- Non sapevo dove altro andare. – dice Blaine, stringendosi nelle spalle, e nel momento stesso in cui lo fa i suoi seni, sotto la camicetta stretta a quadri che indossa, si schiacciano l’uno contro l’altro, sollevandosi appena. Dave arrossisce così tanto da sentirsi svenire, e decide saggiamente di distogliere lo sguardo, almeno per qualche secondo, per evitare che gli esploda il cervello.
- Il problema, - ribatte, quando si sente tranquillo abbastanza da poter tornare a guardarlo senza che questo sia motivo di decesso istantaneo, - è che non saresti dovuto venire neanche qui! Io e te praticamente neanche ci conosciamo!
- Appunto! – Blaine saltella sul posto, impaziente, le sopracciglia inarcate verso il basso in un’espressione infantilmente preoccupata. Nell’osservarlo saltellare, Dave si sente mancare un’altra volta. Ovviamente non indossa alcun reggiseno. D’altronde, perché dovrebbe? Era maschio, fino a quando l’ha visto andare via oggi a scuola. Buon Dio. – Proprio perché non ci conosciamo, tu eri la scelta migliore! – continua Blaine, nel tentativo di dare un senso a ciò che palesemente non ce l’ha, discettando di scelte migliori mentre Dave a stento riesce ad allontanare gli occhi dal suo seno che si alza e si abbassa ondeggiando ritmicamente ad ogni movimento che fa, - Non sarei mai potuto andare da Kurt! Dio, che vergogna… - mugola disperatamente, coprendosi il viso con le mani e comprimendo nel movimento il petto in un modo che tende la camicetta fin quasi a farle saltare i bottoni, mentre Dave rischia di strozzarsi con la propria stessa saliva.
- Saresti potuto andare da chiunque altro, santo cielo! – sbotta appena riesce a ricominciare a respirare normalmente, allargandosi il colletto della maglietta che improvvisamente sembra bene intenzionato a strangolarlo, - Che ne so, qualcuno degli altri perdenti del glee club!
- L’avrebbero detto a Kurt! – insiste Blaine, la voce che si spezza in un singhiozzo arreso, mentre Dave si rende conto per la prima volta di quanto sia sottile ed acuta, così diversa da quella che era abituato a conoscere e detestare poco meno che cordialmente. – E poi… - aggiunge, abbassando lo sguardo con aria imbarazzata, - non è che… voglio dire, non è che abbia poi chissà che amici, nel glee club. Stanno ancora… imparando ad accettarmi, e ora come ora non sono molto più che conoscenti.
- Esattamente come noi. – annuisce Dave, cercando di chiudergli la porta in faccia e resistendo coraggiosamente ad un infarto incipiente quando Blaine, per impedirgli di farlo, vi si getta praticamente contro, schiacciandosi tutto contro la superficie in legno.
- Lo so. – ammette, annuendo con decisione, - Ma tu sai cosa vuol dire nascondere qualcosa. – aggiunge, - Perciò di te mi fido.
Dave spalanca gli occhi, preso alla sprovvista dall’affermazione. Questo ragazzo, qualunque cosa gli sia successa nelle ultime ore tale da farlo diventare femmina, deve essere completamente pazzo. E inadatto alla vita, poi, se è capace di fidarsi anche di uno che lo odia manifestamente dal primo giorno che l’ha visto.
- Io non so se… - comincia incerto, ma Blaine inarca le sopracciglia e, spostandosi dalla porta, gli si avvicina con aria timorosa, le mani giunte sotto il mento.
- Ti prego. – pigola stremato, - Ti prego, se non mi fai entrare qualcuno mi vedrà.
Dave sospira, gli occhi che vagano in luoghi dove non dovrebbero vagare, ma davvero, Blaine è troppo vicino per impedirselo, anche se Dave sa che dovrebbe riuscirci.
- Va bene. – cede infine, scostandosi dalla porta, - Dai, vieni dentro.
*
- Allora… - comincia Dave, girando attorno al letto sul quale Blaine si è seduto, le mani strette in grembo e il viso basso, non appena si sono chiusi in camera sua, al piano di sopra, lontano dagli occhi indiscreti del signor Karofsky. – Dimmi, com’è successo?
- Non ne ho idea. – risponde lui sinceramente, singhiozzando appena, - Sono tornato a casa, ho pranzato, ho fatto il riposino—
- Tu fai il riposino? – domanda Dave, strabuzzando gli occhi, - Quanti anni hai, cinque?!
- Avevo sonno! – singhiozza ancora Blaine, ballonzolando sul letto.
- No, ti prego, fermati. – lo blocca Dave, avvicinandoglisi in un paio di passi e posandogli entrambe le mani sulle spalle, per impedirgli di continuare a saltellare in quel modo palesemente suggestivo e osceno, - Quelle robe sono enormi, sul serio, Anderson, che cazzo?
- Lo so! – strilla Blaine, le mani fra i capelli, perfino più sconvolto di lui, a quanto pare, dalla realtà sconcertante dell’enormità del proprio seno, - Dio, sono uscito di casa perché non riuscivo a smettere di guardarle.
- Ecco, appunto, per cui— eh? – domanda Dave, sollevandogli gli occhi addosso con sincera sorpresa.
- Non riuscivo a smettere di guardarle. – ripete Blaine, con l’aria afflitta di un condannato a morte, - Una tragedia.
- Ma scusa, tu non sei gay? – domanda ancora Dave, adesso genuinamente confuso dal dialogo che stanno avendo.
- Be’, anche tu lo sei. – ribatte Blaine, scrollando le spalle e costringendo un’altra delle sinapsi di Dave a suicidarsi andando in corto circuito, - Eppure non riesci a smettere di guardarle nemmeno tu, vero? Cioè, è surreale. Impressionante.
- …sono quasi sicuro che questo sia un sogno. – mugola Dave, abbattuto, lasciandosi ricadere sulla propria poltroncina girevole davanti alla scrivania e prendendosi la testa fra le mani, - Anzi, un incubo. È troppo assurdo. Tu sei diventato femmina così, dal giorno alla notte! Queste cose non succedono!
Blaine sospira, abbassando nuovamente lo sguardo e stringendosi un’altra volta nelle spalle.
- Non so cosa dirti. – ammette in un pigolio piagnucoloso, - E non so nemmeno cosa fare. Voglio solo mettermi in un angolo e piangere fino a consumarmi. E sparire nel nulla. Assieme a queste tette enormi.
- Io ti prego di stare zitto! – quasi strilla Dave, coprendogli la bocca con entrambe le mani e sentendosi arrossire fino alle orecchie, - Dio, che problema sei. Ok, ascoltami, dobbiamo portarti da un medico, ma prima di tutto il resto ti devi cambiare, perché non puoi andare in giro così.
Blaine si lascia sfuggire un singhiozzo, ma poi inspira, espira e cerca di farsi coraggio, annuendo.
- Mi presti qualcosa di tuo? – domanda piano piano. Dave annuisce, arrossendo ancora un po’. Perfino il profumo di Blaine sembra cambiato, adesso. Non che Dave abbia mai perso del tempo ad annusare Blaine quando era ancora maschio, ovviamente, ma non c’entra. Comunque il suo profumo adesso è dolce, e Dave fatica un bel po’ ad allontanarsi da lui, camminando con aria decisa verso l’armadio per recuperare una maglietta ed un paio di pantaloni che possano essere sufficienti a nascondere il ben di Dio che Madre Natura ha deciso di donargli all’improvviso. Sempre che detto ben di Dio possa effettivamente essere nascosto, cosa di cui Dave non è affatto certo. Per non parlare dei capelli, come faranno a nascondere quel metro abbondante di capelli neri e ricci che rotolano lungo le spalle un tempo sgombre di qualsiasi riccio di Blaine, questo Dave proprio non lo sa.
- Senti… - borbotta, recuperando una vecchia maglietta dell’Uomo Ragno ed un paio di jeans sformati che probabilmente appartenevano a suo padre in qualche era geologica precedente, e che devono essere finiti nel suo armadio per un disdicevole fraintendimento, - vedi se questi possono andare bene. – annuncia, voltandosi verso di lui.
La cosa successiva che sa è che sta spalancando gli occhi talmente tanto che gli fanno male, deve stringere le mani a pugno se non vuole che partano indipendentemente a fare cose di cui tutti loro potrebbero pentirsi ed è costretto a deglutire ripetutamente almeno dieci volte in due secondi se non vuole annegare nella sua stessa saliva.
- Che c’è? – chiede Blaine, Blaine senza camicia né pantaloni addosso, stringendosi nelle spalle e rischiando seriamente di portare Dave al crollo nervoso.
- Che c’è? – balbetta lui, - Che c’è? Sei nudo! – strilla, indicandolo con sconcerto.
Blaine si guarda a lungo, prima di capire. Poi, finalmente, realizza, ed arrossisce appena.
- Scusa. – biascica, - Non sono abituato.
- Copriti! – strilla Dave, ma naturalmente il suo cervello è troppo confuso per permettergli di capire che, se vuole che Blaine si copra, deve dargli i vestiti che ha preso. Pertanto, privo di indumenti adatti allo scopo, Blaine fa l’unica cosa alla quale riesce a pensare, e si copre con le proprie mani.
Quello che succede dopo è surreale: nel momento esatto in cui le dita di Blaine si posano sui suoi capezzoli per nasconderli alla vista di Dave, lui mugola.
- Mmhn… - dice, ed è un suono strascicato e piagnucoloso e così involontariamente sensuale che Dave perde il lume della ragione, e si accascia contro l’armadio, fissandolo senza il minimo pudore.
- Cosa… cos’era quello? – domanda incerto. Blaine arrossisce più intensamente.
- Non lo so, è una sensazione così… - si stringe i seni fra le dita un’altra volta, emettendo un altro gemito liquido che gocciola dritto dritto fra le cosce di Dave, - …piacevole.
- Anderson, abbi pietà. – mugola pietosamente lui, deglutendo ancora una volta, - Stai fermo con quelle mani.
Blaine annuisce, ma si sprimaccia ancora una volta, prima di lasciarsi andare, e quando Dave lo vede inumidirsi le labbra, nel guizzo rosa della lingua che riesce a intravedere per qualche istante, gli pare di scorgere il suo futuro. Ed è una roba da suicidio istantaneo.
- Mi sento strano… - annuncia Blaine, che nel mentre si è inginocchiato sul letto e ora sta lì, seduto sui talloni, a muoversi senza pace, come non riuscisse a trovare la posizione giusta.
- Strano come? – domanda Dave, avvicinandosi cautamente. È perfino un po’ preoccupato: se è diventato donna dopo un riposino, Dio solo sa cosa potrebbe succedergli adesso. Potrebbe perfino crepare all’improvviso, e se questi sono i suoi piani è meglio che cambi idea, perché lui non ce lo vuole un cadavere nudo nel letto, questo va ben oltre ogni livello di perversione che lui abbia mai pensato di poter accettare come legittimo.
- Non lo so. – risponde lui, quasi piagnucolando, - Mi sento strano fra le gambe, non mi era mai successo!
- …uhm. – riflette Dave, grattandosi nervosamente la nuca, - Vuoi… vuoi andare in bagno a controllare? Posso coprirti, nel mentre. Fare la guardia alla porta, che ne so.
- No, non voglio controllare da solo! – strilla Blaine, allungando le mani e stringendo le dita attorno alla maglietta di Dave, trascinandolo più vicino al letto, - Ho paura. Controlla tu!
- Mai nella vita! – sbotta Dave, cercando di divincolarsi, ma Blaine non lo lascia andare, anzi, mentre lo trattiene ancora per la maglietta con una mano, afferra una delle sue con la propria rimasta libera, e senza fare tanti complimenti se la trascina fra le gambe, imprigionandosela fra le cosce.
Urlano entrambi, contemporaneamente. Dave perché sta toccando cose che mai, in nessuna occasione dovrebbe toccare, specie in questo complicato e confuso momento della sua esistenza; Blaine perché, nel tentativo di ritrarsi dalla sua stretta e fuggire da quella morbida prigione, Dave gli si è strofinato contro, riempiendogli la pelle di brividi di piacere che, per quanto la fonte possa essere sconosciuta e misteriosa, riesce comunque a riconoscere alla perfezione.
Si scambiano un’occhiata incerta. Blaine si morde un labbro e stringe le cosce attorno al polso di Dave, il quale ha perfino smesso di provare a togliere la mano da lì.
- Anderson, stai scherzando? – domanda in un fiato, ma a questo punto spera solo che la risposta sia un no, o che questo sia un sogno davvero, perché c’è un limite preciso a quello che un uomo può sopportare, anche se forse è gay, e quel limite è già stato abbondantemente valicato.
Fortunatamente, Blaine non perde tempo a rispondergli. Quantomeno, non a parole. Gli si preme contro, però, gettandogli le braccia al collo e schiudendo le labbra nello stesso istante in cui sfiorano le sue.
Dave non pensa neanche alla remota possibilità di tirarsi indietro. Gli gira un braccio attorno alla vita sottile, stringendoselo contro e scivolando ad accarezzargli le natiche con una mano mentre sistema più comodamente l’altra fra le sue gambe, strofinando due dita contro il tessuto già umido degli slip che indossa, e che peraltro sono da uomo, cosa che, in questo momento, non riesce più neanche a confonderlo, e si limita ad eccitarlo come mai niente nella vita ha mai fatto.
Blaine lo bacia profondamente, mugolando fra le sue labbra e strusciandosi contro di lui come un gattino in cerca di attenzioni. La pressione dei suoi seni contro il petto, nonostante il tessuto della maglietta che Dave ancora indossa e che impedisce al calore delle loro pelli di sfiorarsi, è sufficiente a far capire a Dave che non sarà una cosa lunga. Oh, no, non lo sarà affatto.
Sale sul materasso assieme a lui, spingendolo finché non riesce a farlo distendere fra i cuscini. Blaine geme, puntando i piedi per cominciare a muovere il bacino più morbidamente, ondeggiandolo in alto e in basso in modo che Dave quasi non ha più neanche bisogno di muovere le dita, perché Blaine fa benissimo da solo.
Si morde un labbro, rapito dai movimenti fluidi ed improvvisamente così aggraziati del suo corpo, e dal momento che Blaine sembra tanto preso da quello che gli sta succedendo fra le gambe lui decide di togliersi almeno un paio di soddisfazioni, e gli stringe un seno fra le dita, accarezzandolo gentilmente e godendo dei piccoli gemiti quasi disperati che rotolano liquidi e densi fra le labbra umide e gonfie di Blaine quando alla sue dita attorno ai suoi capezzoli si sostituiscono i suoi denti e la sua lingua.
- Okay, okay, basta, basta con le dita. – piagnucola Blaine, agitandosi senza senso sotto di lui. Dave gli solleva addosso uno sguardo che, se potesse, lo spoglierebbe più nudo di quanto già non sia, e poi si concede un mezzo ghigno sardonico.
- Sei sempre così impaziente? – domanda divertito. Blaine mugola e si agita ancora.
- Zitto. – sbuffa. In qualsiasi altro momento, Dave lo manderebbe a quel paese. Segna mentalmente di farlo dopo, ma intanto gli lascia scivolare gli slip lungo le cosce piccole ma proporzionate, e quando se ne libera Blaine sta già schiudendo le gambe, invitandolo a sistemarvisi in mezzo, cosa che Dave non si fa pregare per fare.
Preme appena contro di lui, osservandolo con una certa tenerezza mentre serra gli occhi e si tende tutto, terrorizzato da ciò che sta per arrivare.
- Rilassati un po’. – suggerisce sorridendo appena, chinandosi a sfiorargli la punta del naso in un bacio divertito.
- È la mia prima volta… - si giustifica Blaine, voltando il capo per guardare altrove.
- Ci credo che lo è, - ridacchia Dave, - neanche ce l’avevi, fino a due ore fa… - comincia, ma Blaine si volta a guardarlo e i suoi occhi dicono molto più di quanto le sue parole poco prima abbiano fatto, e Dave si sente morire la voce in gola. - …oh.
Blaine arrossisce così tanto che gli si riempiono gli occhi di lacrime, e Dave lo bacia ancora, stavolta sulle labbra, e più profondamente di quanto non abbia fatto prima, solo per distrarlo mentre si spinge lentamente dentro di lui, soffocando i suoi gemiti misti di dolore e piacere sulla propria lingua mentre si guadagna spazio dentro il suo corpo, centimetro dopo centimetro.
Lo stringe a sé, muovendosi più veloce un istante dopo l’altro, percependolo sciogliersi attorno alla sua erezione tesa che si immerge e riemerge ritmicamente dal calore umido del suo sesso, e piano piano i gemiti di Blaine cominciano a farsi più liquidi e liberi, si gonfiano di desiderio selvaggio proprio come il suo, e il suo bacino comincia a muoversi incontro alle sue spinte, accogliendolo sempre più profondamente un affondo dopo l’altro.
Quando viene dentro di lui, fa appena in tempo a chiedersi se dovrebbe preoccuparsi per non avere usato un preservativo.
*
La risposta arriva qualche mese dopo. Blaine, nel mentre, è perfino tornato maschio. In ogni caso, è una risposta inquietante da morire, ma Dave non può fare altro che prenderne vergognosamente atto e sedere al fianco del proprio ragazzo mentre lui, canticchiando, lascia che il medico che l’ha in cura gli ricopra il bassoventre di gel, preparandolo per l’ecografia.
Spin-off/seguito di Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World.
Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Pre-Slash, Underage, OC, Spin-off, Flashfic.
- The bathrobe is there, abandoned on the coverlet.
Note: Scritta nel corso della Notte Bianca #4, su prompt Accappatoio umido.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
TEMPTATION

Leonard looks carefully around himself, and only when he’s sure he’s alone in the room he dares to sit on the bed.

The bathrobe is there, abandoned on the coverlet. It’s not really wet, but then it’s not really dry either. It’s been used. Not right now, but not hours ago either. Anyway, Blaine’s nowhere to be seen, so Leo takes for granted he took a shower, then dressed up and then walked out, maybe to take a walk down the promenade, wearing his best outfit. Oh, how he loves to show himself off to the tourists crowding the little Italian village on the sea where they rented this huge house near the seaside for the summer break. That’s why he didn’t want to come. He’s already bored out of his mind just thinking he’s got to spend the entire summer with his parents instead then with his friends, but if Blaine’s here too, then how is he supposed to have fun? He just can’t. Blaine is so annoying, Leonard can hardly stand him. He’s everything he dislikes in a man. It’s unbelievable how whatever Blaine does can make Leo feel. So annoyed and tense and— he definitely shouldn’t be here, now.

Not in this room, not near this bathrobe.

But he is. And the bathrobe is so very close. He holds out a hand and touches it lightly. He can feel it’s still warm under his fingertips. Warm and damp. And so unbearably close.

Leonard can’t help it. He holds the bathrobe in his hand and drags him closer to his face, inhaling the smell that comes out of it. Warm water, fruity bath foam, delicate shampoo. Some other things that Leo can’t identify clearly, but it’s what makes it all spicy and interesting, that different thing that nothing else smells like to. That thing that’s only Blaine’s, that Leonard always smells when he happens to be close to him, the same thing he smelled the first time he saw him, and talked to him, and danced with him. He was only six years old and this smell got stuck in his head, and he couldn’t get rid of it for days.

Now he’s fourteen, he’s been trying to get what it is for years, and he never managed to. He tries hard even now, but he can’t. It’s nothing he’s smelled before, on anything else. It’s just Blaine’s.

“Here you are,” Blaine says, opening the door and staring at him from where he is. Leo throws away the bathrobe so violently and suddenly it flies through all the room and hits the luckily closed window, falling on the ground right after. “What was that for?” Blaine asks, genuinely curious.

Leo frowns, blushing furiously and crossing his arms over his chest. “Nothing,” he answers, “Vandalism, I think.”

Blaine snorts a laugh, looking at him like he can’t even believe what he just heard. “You’re the strangest kid I ever met, I swear to God,” he chuckles. “Anyway, what are you doing here? Dinner’s ready. We’ve been searching for you for half an hour, already.”

Leo opens his eyes wide, tilting his head on a side. “What do you mean we?” he asks, “I thought you were out searching for the next guy you could invite over for the night without even knowing his name, or something,” he adds with a sassy smile.

“Instead, guess what?” Blaine mocks him, sticking his tongue out at him. Sometimes Leo just can’t believe this man’s almost thirty-five. He’s so ridiculous. “I was searching for you,” he says, and whatever he said before instantly doesn’t matter anymore.

Leo blushes and jumps down of the bed, unable to control himself anymore. He runs out of the room, brushing Blaine’s side with his own as he walks past him to go downstairs for dinner. “Whatever,” he says. But he knows it’s a lie.

The smell is still haunting him hours later, when he finally goes to bed. And as he closes his eyes, he lets it take over his senses, and lull him to sleep.
Genere: Introspettivo, Malinconico.
Pairing: Blaine/Kurt.
Rating: PG.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Future!Fic, Flashfic.
- La storia fra Kurt e Blaine è finita dopo il liceo. Nel rivedersi dopo anni di lontananza, Blaine scopre che l'ordinazione preferita di Kurt al Lima Bean è cambiata. E che gli anni e le distanze sono un ostacolo solo se vuoi che lo diventino.
Note: Scritta nel corso della Notte Bianca #4, su prompt Lost sight, couldn't see when it was you and me (Candles, Hey Monday). A questo punto posso andare su Facebook e mettere come stato "è in una relazione complicata col Klaine". (JK.)
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
LATTE MACCHIATO SENZA ZUCCHERO

- Sono contento di vedere che stai bene. – sorride Kurt, imbarazzato, oltre la sua tazza di latte macchiato senza zucchero. Blaine non può fare a meno di pensare a quando ricordava a memoria la sua ordinazione preferita. Negli anni che sono passati, Kurt è diventato un’altra persona, una persona che quando si è presentata al Lima Bean per incontrarlo, venti minuti fa, indossava un paio di occhiali da sole a mascherina che gli coprivano il volto per più di metà, una persona che oggi, probabilmente, non metterebbe più un kilt ad un ballo di gala neanche per tutto l’oro del mondo. Una persona che beve latte macchiato senza zucchero, insomma, qualsiasi cosa questo particolare possa significare. A parte il fatto che fra l’ultima volta che si sono visti ed oggi c’è stata una vita, in mezzo, e Blaine non è così sicuro di poter dire che lui non stia avendo su Kurt lo stesso effetto straniante e un po’ spaventoso – e decisamente molto triste – che Kurt sta avendo su di lui.
- Anch’io. – annuisce lui, stringendosi appena nelle spalle, sorseggiando il suo caffè. Il Lima Bean è pieno di studenti che chiacchierano e ridono fra loro, e mentre Blaine prende nota dell’enorme quantità di divise rosse e blu mischiate con abiti assolutamente comuni – segno che fra gli studenti della Dalton e quelli del McKinley le cose vanno ancora bene, cosa che non può non riempirlo di un sentimento misto e quasi struggente di tenerezza e malinconia – non può fare a meno di pensare a quanto dovrebbe essere inappropriato, per due persone della loro età, incontrarsi ancora in un posto come questo. Dovrebbero sentirsi fuori luogo, ed invece, be’, Blaine non potrebbe giurarlo, ma se il lieve sorriso sincero che increspa le labbra di Kurt è di una qualche indicazione, anche lui si sente perfettamente a suo agio, proprio come si sente Blaine. In qualche modo, è come se il tempo si fosse fermato, riavvolgendosi attorno ai loro sedici anni. Anche se Kurt è una persona che beve latte macchiato senza zucchero. Anche se Blaine è una persona che beve caffè nero con una spolverata di cacao. Anche se nessuno dei due, a sedici anni, beveva cose simili.
- Sembra passata una vita. – sospira Kurt, rilassandosi contro lo schienale della sedia. E Blaine vorrebbe rispondergli “lo sembra perché è così”. Perché è vero. Sono quindici anni. Quindici anni sono una vita. Quindici anni hanno insegnato a Kurt a bere il latte macchiato senza zucchero, e a lui a bere caffè nero una, due o anche tre volte al giorno, dipende dai periodi. Ed è quasi sicuro che, se dicesse a Kurt una cosa del genere, lui non capirebbe. Non capirebbe, perché è una persona che beve latte macchiato senza zucchero. E Blaine non riesce a superare ciò che questo significa. Non il latte macchiato senza zucchero in sé. Semplicemente il fatto che Kurt non beva più quello che beveva prima. Che, se Blaine volesse ordinare anche per lui, non saprebbe più come fare, cosa chiedere. Aveva sempre immaginato che, nel momento in cui si sarebbero rivisti, lui avrebbe ordinato per entrambi. Come sempre, al liceo. E tutto sarebbe stato identico a com’era prima. Ma non è così. Non avrebbe mai potuto essere così. E lui adesso si sente stupido e ridicolo anche solo per averlo pensato. Desiderato.
- Sai, - comincia piano dopo qualche secondo, - in questi ultimi anni ho sperato tanto che… - sospira, concedendosi un sorriso disilluso, - in realtà non so neanche cosa. Non credo che lasciarsi sia stato un errore, eravamo così giovani, c’era un mondo intero da vedere, una vita intera da vivere, e dal momento che non eravamo sicuri di volerla davvero vivere tutta insieme, be’, perché insistere? – Kurt lo ascolta con attenzione, senza mostrare fastidio di alcun tipo. Ma la verità è che Blaine non è sicuro che riuscirebbe a scorgerlo nei suoi occhi, se quel fastidio ci fosse davvero. - …Dio, - sospira, - che cosa sto dicendo?
Vorrebbe solo dirgli che gli è mancato. Che forse allora non erano sicuri di voler restare per sempre insieme, ma erano davvero sicuri di volersi lasciare, invece?
Blaine non lo sa. In realtà crede proprio di no.
Kurt ridacchia appena, coprendosi la bocca con una mano. Mette giù la tazza di latte macchiato ormai freddo, ed apre la borsa che ha appeso alla spalliera della sedia quando si è seduto. Ne tira fuori una penna, recupera uno dei tovagliolini di carta che fanno capolino dal dispensatore e vi scrive velocemente il proprio numero di telefono sopra.
- Facciamo che mi chiami. – dice, lasciando scivolare il tovagliolino piegato in due sul tavolo, verso Blaine, - Se ti va.
Nel prenderlo in mano e conservarlo in tasca, Blaine pensa solo “latte macchiato senza zucchero”. L’ha già memorizzato.
Spin-off/seguito di Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lime, Underage, OC, Spin-off, Flashfic.
- “So you’re endangering your life and your freedom, secretly running away to see me?”
Note: Scritta nel corso della Notte Bianca #4, su prompt Why d'ya have to be so cute? / It's impossible to ignore you / Must you make me laugh so much / It's bad enough we get along so well / Say goodnight and go (Imogen Heap, Goodnight And Go).
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
TELL ME LOVE ISN’T TRUE
it’s just something that we do

Leonard arrives late, and he doesn’t even say he’s sorry about it. He doesn’t really need to, that goes without saying, but still the fact that he doesn’t even show sadness for not coming on time somehow disturbs Blaine deeply, though he knows it shouldn’t. He should just stop feeling so affected by everything Leo does. But it’s hard, and he doesn’t even know why.

“It was hard to leave daddy behind,” Leo explains, throwing away his backpack and then jumping on the huge bed filling half of the space in Blaine’s hotel room, while he kicks away his shoes, “He wanted to call Annie while I was still there to be sure she knew I was going there, and I wasn’t lying. Luckily,” he adds with a little smirk, “she already knew what to say.”

“Your dad’s going to kick my ass so hard, kid,” Blaine can’t help but laugh as he moves closer to the boy, sitting right beside him. “Are you sure he doesn’t know? Or suspect?”

“Believe me,” Leo answers with a bright smile, instantly moving closer to him, as if drawn to his body thanks to some magnetic field, “if he knew, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be grounded. Probably for the rest of my life.”

“I see,” Blaine chuckles, moving one of his arms away to give Leo more space, and looking at him while he snuggles closer like the kid he is, brushing the tip of his nose against the fabric of Blaine’s shirt, one hand wandering on his chest, fingers sneaking between two buttons to catch the lightest touch of the warmth of Blaine’s skin underneath his clothes. “So you’re endangering your life and your freedom, secretly running away to see me?”

“That’s right,” Leo says, nodding quickly. Blaine chuckles again, but the laugh fades away when he sees Leo’s lips curling up in a smile that tries so hard to be sexy it turns hilarious and then even sexier that it would be if Leo just knew how to be sensual. “So you better make it worth it.”

Blaine just nods, and he doesn’t even know why. It’s just so stupid. Why should he nod, why should he promise this kid he’s going to make the time they spend together worth the risk he’s facing to just get there? Leo keeps saying it’s just sex between them. That’s what Blaine should think too. Except he can’t.

He wraps his arms around him and Leonard raises his own, to let him free to do whatever he wants. The way he carelessly gives himself away to him makes Blaine shiver inside. It makes him worry, it makes him scared, and he’s never been scared of sex in his life. Not for a very long time, anyway. And that’s what frightens him the most.

Blaine kisses him, holding him close until he hears him whimper, fidgeting under his body because he wants to see more, he wants to taste more, he wants to touch more, he wants to feel more. Leo never asks for anything, he leaves Blaine to guess. And that’s something else that terrifies Blaine so much. He always guesses right.

*

Leonard lies beside him, breathing hard. His chest goes up and down with every breath, and Blaine just came out of his body and already feels like wanting to go back in again.

He’s so fucking beautiful. This kid is just so fucking beautiful, Blaine can’t help himself. He can feel himself falling. He doesn’t know how to stop. In only happened once that he could see what was coming without knowing how to stop it. That ended bad, and he can’t help to think it’s going to be just the same. He’s not ready for this. Not with a kid this age. He’s not ready. He probably never will.

He should just tell him to go. And yet, all he can do is wrap his arms around him, and ask him to stay.
Scritta a quattro mani con Tabata.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico, Generale.
Pairing: Dave/Kurt, Kurt/Blaine (accennato).
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Angst, Future!Fic, Lemon, Slash, OC.
- Leonard, Kurt and Dave's 6 years old son, wants his parents to get married and he goes through an incredible amount of tasks to get it done. Everything seems fine, until Blaine shows up.
Note: Notes, we don't like notes. The story should be talking for itself but since English is not our first language, it probably won't. Anyway, everything started with a little boy named Leonard who was just doing his job, telling the story of his two more famous gay dads' wedding.
He did his job so well, though that we fell for him, badly. Leonard "Leo" Karfosky-Hummel quickly became our favourite character, the one you cherish with all your heart everytime you put yourself to write about him.
We love him so much, despite him being a fussy, picky, little smart-ass, that we are well aware he deserves a story of his own. But this is another matter.
We hope that even with the tons of mistakes you are going to find in here, you will still be able to enjoy the story because we are really proud of it and proud to have managed to finish it, in the end.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
LEONARD KAROFSKY-HUMMEL VS. THE WORLD

Leonard is a pretty smart little kid. He has always been kind of a weirdo for one of his age, but Dave really thinks this is pretty obvious since he is Kurt’s son too, after all. He is not noisy, he is not spoiled, he is not a crybaby and he never had a thing for strangeness just for the sake of it. He is not that kind of eccentric Kurt is, he is just a little… uncommon. Maybe. Which Dave thinks is a great, great thing, because being uncommon can be good and no one knows it better than him, but really, his kid scares him, sometimes. Just slightly.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Dave says, searching for his son’s eyes while the boy just stares at his milk and cereals, swinging his legs under the table. “Leo?”

“It’s just that,” he pouts, his voice a little whiny, “all my friends’ parents are married. Or, maybe they were married and then got divorced, but they were married before. What if you and daddy get divorced without being married first? Doesn’t it sound totally not cool to you too?”

“Hey, hey!” He stops him, putting down his coffee cup and bending over him to talk in a lower voice, so Kurt, still hidden in the bathroom for his Sunday morning beauty treatment, won’t have to hear them. “What does being cool have to do with being married? That was decades ago, Leo. I thought the world had moved forward, by now.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Leo gabbles, moving uncomfortably on his chair. “It’s just that it sounds pretty cool. The flowers, the dresses, the people, the music, the food…” he sighs, shrugging. “I wouldn’t mind if you and daddy got married. Then you could have rings to throw away when you divorce.”

“Leo, please!” Dave says, looking at him with his eyes wide open, “Kurt and I are not going to leave each other or you alone anytime soon. Now, tell me who told you this divorce bullshit.”

“David Karofsky!” Kurt yells, magically appearing in the kitchen with his face still covered in a disgusting green mask that is so dry already it seems it is going to fall any minute now. It looks like his very face would fall behind it, and Dave and Leonard averts their eyes simultaneously, horrified by the exact same thought. “How many times do I have to tell you, you can’t use the B-word in front of our son?”

“I wasn’t!” Dave immediately says, lifting his hands up in the air like he has to show they are clean, “I swear.”

“He was, he’s a liar.” Leonard mumbles, going back to his cereals, but only after he is sure his father noticed the angry look he gave him. Dave just doesn’t know. When did his son lose his mind?

“Dad won’t never use that word again with you, baby,” Kurt smiles, sitting at the table and starting to drink his excessively sugared coffee. “Now, what are the plans for the day?”

“Is staying home and sleep an option?” Dave asks, tentatively, biting on his lower lip. He is so tired he could sleep for days. His kids at school are such a pain. He thought McKinley’s football team was shit when he joined it? They were geniuses compared to the kids he is coaching now. They are so clumsy and whiny and confused. At the end of the week, the only thing Dave wants is to fall on his bed, bury his face in his pillow and sleep two days straight so he will be in top shape when he has to go back on Monday and start hating everything all over again.

Obviously, the fact that he wants to sleep doesn’t mean he will be able to. At all.

“Of course not,” Kurt answers, biting at the enormous cookie he is holding with both his hands. “What about the park? It’s a wonderful day for a walk. The sun is shining, the air is fresh, birds are singing in the air—”

“And you wanna go out singing too, don’t you?” Dave smiles, looking at him with tenderness and a little bit of mockery.

Kurt’s skin, under his beauty mask, gets slightly pinker, as he quickly swallows his cookie.

“Well, maybe,” he admits with a tiny laugh. “Wanna join me?”

“I’d rather listen,” Dave says, and Leonard snorts, leaving his cereals where they are and rapidly getting up.

“So, are we going out?” He asks, he is clearly not entirely happy.

Kurt frowns, just slightly worried. “Is everything okay, sweetheart?” He asks, his voice as soft and reassuring as it could, but Leonard just shrugs, leaving his question unanswered.

“Are we going out?” He asks again instead, and Kurt uncertainly nods.

Kurt listens to the sound of Leo's feet stomping on the stairs and on the carpeted corridor of the second floor. He carefully waits until he is sure the boy is safe in his room, getting ready to go out, before turning to Dave and frowning at him again. “What's wrong with him?” he asks.

Dave rolls his eyes, finishing his coffee. “I know nothing,” he says, and he doesn’t leave Kurt the time to ask something else because he gets up and runs away in their room – hopefully, not to hide himself in their closet – leaving Kurt with what is left of his breakfast and his beauty mask ready to fall down.

*


The weather is nice outside and, as he looks at the bright blue sky over Schoonover Park, Dave can even forget how tired he was when he woke up this morning. Kurt is walking beside him, under the trees that cast nice long shadows. Dave is holding his hand so he can keep his eyes closed while humming like the bird he is. Leo is running ahead, kicking every stone and chasing every butterfly he meets on the way. Sometimes Dave looks at him and wonders how he can have so much energy. He doesn't remember being half as lively as he is when he was a kid.

“Dad!” He calls, waving frantically. “Come over here! I want to show you something.”

Kurt smiles but does not open his eyes. Both he and Dave always know which one of his dads Leo is calling. “Your son wants you,” he says instead, releasing Dave's hand so he can go.

“He's always my son when he wants something, isn't he?”

Kurt laughs. “Pretty much, yes.”

“Dad! Come on! You're so slow!”

“Now go, your little monster is waiting,” Kurt pushes him a bit in the general direction of Leo's voice.

“Open your eyes, Fancy,” Dave calls over his shoulder. “I don't want you to fall on your face.”

Kurt glares at him. “Call me that again and you know what you won't see for a very long time.”

Dave laughs and Leo rolls his eyes at the two of them. “Is that another way to say that you will be sleeping on the couch again?” He asks, looking up at Dave.

“This is none of your business, little man,” Dave answers him, ruffling his hair. “So, what did you want me to see?”

Leo points a chubby little finger at the lake shore, where some very sharp dressed people are gathered.

“It's a wedding,” he explains, as if the very white and very puffy dress of the bride wasn't a clue.

“Yes, I see that.”

“She was on the boat over there,” Leo continues, pointing at the little white boat filled with flowers. “She came through the lake, you know? The man took her by the hand and helped her off the boat. She is very clumsy, so he had to take her in his arms, eventually. She is always laughing and seems very happy.”

Dave looks at him, curiously. “How long have you been watching them?”

“A while,” Leo shrugs and drags him closer to the scene. “Her name's Sandy. Her mom keeps calling her, that's how I know. Those are all their brothers and sisters and cousins and stuff. And there's a violin somewhere. She danced with the man.”

“She's really beautiful and you're right, she seems happy. It is a very nice wedding.” Dave doesn't exactly know what he’s looking at, but he learned long ago that whatever his six years old son feels the need to tell him, it must be listened and watched closely.

“I think they're going to have a party on the other side of the lake,” Leo explains, tilting his head a bit as if pondering the situation. “And maybe they will leave after. When it's dark, I guess.”

“I think so,” Dave doesn't know what else to say. “Come on, let's go back, now. You know your dad, he's probably wondered off, singing silly love songs. Someone could find him too cute and take him away from us.”

He starts walking but Leo doesn't follow him. He goes the other way instead and sits on a big rock near the lake. Dave stops in midstep and watches his son as he grabs a stick from the ground and starts playing with it.

“Don't you wanna come?” He asks. Leo shakes his head without looking at him.

The man sighs, knowing what comes next. He glances over to check on Kurt, who is literally swirling around the meadow while he sings some melody from The sound of music, and he is so taken with it that he hasn't even noticed the group of people watching his impromptu live performance.

Dave decides that he can spare a moment for his son without Kurt running away with the first traveling circus that offers him to sing all day, and reaches Leo who still won't look at him. He is playing with five or six giant ants that are bringing back some food they have probably just stolen from the wedding buffet. Leo is pursuing them with the stick and they are running around, trying to escape him.

The kid seems pretty sad, so Dave comes close to him and crouches beside him.

“Hey buddy, what's up?”

“I don't really wanna talk to you right now,” Leo says in a very low voice.

He is dangling his feet back and forth a little, kicking the rock with the new red shoes Kurt bought for him in New York, last week. Kurt buys him a new pair of shoes every time he gets the chance, which is a lot more than it should be legal. Leo is the only kid in the neighborhood to have a closet only for shoes. Dave has prevented Kurt to dress their son as a little miniature of himself, but there was nothing he could do against the shoes’ invasion. Kurt can hardly control himself.

“Did I do something wrong?” Dave asks, caught by surprised.

“You didn't even listen to me when we talked about marriage this morning!” Leo says, pouting.

David sighs because now he knows it is going to be hard. “Can I sit with you?” He asks, then.

“Well, yes, I suppose,” Leo nods. He keeps playing with the ants that are now aliens from another planet, coming on Earth to force people to marry.

Dave sits with his son and looks at the ants with him. “What do you know about marriage?”

“It is what two people do when they love each other and want to live their lives together!” Leo answers, his voice going all the way up as it always does when he is excited to know something and wants to say it as fast as he can.

“People can love each other and live their lives together even if they don't marry,” Dave explains. “Do you think me and your dad don't love each other? Is this that you're worried about?”

Leo makes a very sad face. “You two fight a lot.”

Dave and Kurt made a promise never to fight in front of the kid, so what Leo has seen and heard are only bland arguments about who is taking the car or who is picking Leo up from school. Sometimes they do fight badly behind closed doors, though, and now Dave fears Leo heard more than he should, jumping to the wrong conclusions. “Sometimes people fight but it doesn't mean they don't love each other. It just means they disagree on something.”

Leo shakes his head. “But this has nothing to do with marriage! Why don't you want to marry my daddy? You're going to leave him and you don't want to make him believe you'll love him forever?”

Dave's heart skips a beat. He is really sensitive about his feelings. He knows he is not very good at showing them, so he is always making sure Kurt and Leo know how much he loves them. “I will never leave you or your father. What does make you think that?”

“Why can't you just answer my questions?! “ Leo cries, his voice slightly breaking from frustration. “Why do you answer with another question? I'm not stupid, you know? And I'm not a kid anymore, I can understand things of life!”

He looks at his father with very stern eyes. Dave should feel ashamed, but Leo is so cute that the only thing he manages is not to laugh. “You sure do,” he says. Then he sighs and strokes Leo's ruffled black hair. “It's not that I don't want to marry him, we just never talked about it. Nothing would change, you know? I love him, already. And I plan to keep on loving him for the rest of my life, so a marriage is not really necessary.”

“But I know he'd be so happy!” Leo insists, looking at him. “Don't you want him to be happy?”

“Of course I do,” Dave sighs. He watches the wedding party head for the reception on the other shore of the lake. He doesn't know how Leo came up with the idea of him and Kurt getting married. “Wait,” he suddenly says, not a bell but a whole orchestra ringing in his head. “Did he tell you that he wants to get married?”

“Well... no, but you know him!” Leo glances over at Kurt, who is now chirping with the birds and dancing like a Disney princess. People are actually singing chorus parts with him, like in one of those group scenes in Broadway musicals. Strange things always happen in the background if they stop long enough for Kurt to make them happen. “He has his head always in the air. He would never tell you.”

“And don't you think maybe that's because he doesn't really care about getting married?”

Leo lifts up a very skeptical eyebrow. It looks so much like Santana's “bitch, please” stare that Dave has a hard time not laughing again. “He's been planning weddings since he was younger than me,” he says. “He's got an entire book filled with photos, notes and possible playlists. He's always sketching dresses, too!”

The kid has a point. “You're right. I just thought he wasn't interested anymore,” he explains. “We already have each other and a house. And we've got you, of course.”

Dave doesn't know why he’s talking about matters like these with a kid, but Leo seems always so mature than sometimes he just forgets he is only six years old.

“Daddy would be so happy,” Leo says again. “I know he would. And I want so much to see you two married! It'd be so cool! I could invite all my friends, so they would see!” He throws his little fist in the air and smirks.

“Would see what?” Dave asks, suddenly concerned. “Did they tell you something?”

Leo shifts awkwardly on his seat, eyes back down to the ants again. “They say it's not normal when parents aren't married. It's okay if they're not married anymore, but if they never were? It's strange.”

When he and Kurt adopted Leo, Dave knew it was going to be hard, them being gay and all. The other kids would be asking a lot of questions and making a lot of jokes on Leo, so he made sure to be ready to face every possible situation. But sometimes kids go beyond imagination and they can be so mean he actually hates them. “It's not strange,” Dave says, firmly. “People sometimes make different choices. It's that why marriage is suddenly so important to you?”

“I just want to see you married and I want to have a normal family. Is that too much to ask?” Leo jumps off the rock and opens his arms as wide as he can with a very dramatic outcome.

David feels bad because most of all, he wants his son to feel normal. He remembers how it feels when something about you is different from everyone else. You just want to fit in. “Do you really want me to marry your dad?” He asks.

“Yes!” Leo cries in frustration. “Yes, I do. I want you to propose to him. But you must do it the right way, not like you always do!”

David automatically blushes under his son slightly judgmental glare. “What are you talking about?”

“You actually never asks for things,” he says. “You just go and take what you want. That's not cool, dad.”

Dave doesn't agree at all with that. He ask for things. Most of the time, at least. “So, what do you suggest?”

Leo lights up with a smile. “You can sing!” He says immediately, as if he has been waiting only for this moment to come. “You never want to do it, and Daddy's always asking you to!”

Dave shakes his head. “No way. I can't.”

“Have you ever tried singing to someone with all your heart?” The kid asks.

“I can't sing for your father!” Dave panics instantly because he knows where this is going and he so does not want that. “He's a fu... a freaking wonderful singer.”

“I know, he's always singing,” Leo nods, looking again at Kurt who is still performing. “And I mean always. But I never heard you.”

“That's because I play football.”

“What does this have to do with singing?” Leo groans in frustration.

“Nothing, that's the point.”

Leo puts his hands on his hips, looking at him with exasperation. “Daddy said you were in the show choir with him.”

“That's not correct,” Dave says nervously. “I was in glee club only for a couple of weeks and just because the coach thought me and my teammates needed more coordination. I never sung, just did some really easy dancing. And your father wasn't even in there at the time.”

“I don't believe you,” Leo says stubbornly. “Daddy says you can sing, so you obviously can.”

Leo is in that phase when kids think whatever comes out of their mother's mouth is the truth. And since Leo doesn't have one, he settled for the closest figure, who's definitely Kurt.

David tries to get out of this the easy way. “Listen, I'd love to, but I really can't,” he says, smiling apologetically. “I'm only good at sports. Perhaps I can throw him a ball with something written on it or I can even throw him somewhere if you think that's could be of any use. But I can't sing.”

“You wouldn't throw daddy!” Leo says, outraged.

“That was just a figure of speech,” David sighs. The story of his life.

Leo doesn't waste any time looking at him with all the perplexity those words have given him. “I don't know what that is but that's not important! He wants you to sing, I know that. It doesn't have to be a concert. Just the proposal. It'd be so awesome!”

Leo is like Kurt, so stubborn that he only has things his way or not at all. And since the not-at-all part seems out of question, Dave can only surrender. “Fine. I'll sing,” he gives in.

Leo squeals happily and starts jumping around like a madman. “You're gonna get married! You're gonna get married! My dads are gonna get married.”

It feels really good to see him acting like the kid he is now and then. Dave smiles. “Now, now, calm down. Your father didn't say yes, yet.”

“Oh, he will,” Leo stops abruptly, nodding with confidence. “Don't worry about that. So, you will need some pretty flowers and an engagemement ring.”

Dave giggles. Leo always mispells words like this because he wants to speak like a grown up but he has no idea what he is saying most of the time. “I will try and find one of those engagemement ring. Leave it to me,” he says. “So flowers, ring, song, that's it?”

“No, of course not!” Leo answers, looking at him like he said the worst of atrocities. “You two must have dinner first. You can choose between cooking something for him with all your love, or take him out to some expensive and classy restaurant.”

Last week Dave set two different meals on fire, so it is kinda of a Hobson's choice. “I'll go with the fancy restaurant,” he says. “We don't want to poison dad.”

Leo shakes his head, his tight black curls swinging back and forth. “No, we don't,” he says seriously. “Then, you'll have to organize the marriage. But don't worry, I'll help you. I know everything about it. I read daddy's notes on that book of his! And I watched a lot of wedding tv.”

Dave takes a mental note to check on him when he watches tv. For some reason, what he has just said doesn't sound completely right. “You should really watch more cartoons.”

Leo shrugs. “They're boring. They’re made for little kids,” he pouts. “I'm not one anymore.”

Dave rolls his eyes. “God, you really are the miniature copy of your father.”

“Is that so?” Leo says. He acts like the information doesn't really affect him, but it does and turns his cheeks an adorable shade of pink.

“Yes, you are. A very precise copy. I don't know what to do with the two of you sometimes.”

“I just care about this wedding,” Leo adds, making circles in the sand with his right foot. “I want it to be really awesome.”

“I'm sure it will be spectacular with your precious help, little wedding planner.” Dave tickles him on his belly and Leo laughs, running away to hide behind the rock and out of his father's tickling fingers.

“Daddy's right, you know?” He says, peeking from behind his cover just to run away again when Dave moves to catch him.

“About what?”

Leo laughs uncontrollably with excitement like kids do when being chased playfully. “He says you look like a prince, but you're actually the trapped one, and that makes you the princess.”

“What?” Dave grabs him and tackles him easily on the ground, tickling him to death. “I'm not a princess. That's clearly your father. He's the one with all the creams and the pretty dresses.”

Leo curls up in a ball and laughs until he's out of breath. Dave lets him go, and then they both lie down, panting heavily. After a while, Leo turns on his side and looks at Kurt who finally stopped singing and is now sunbathing on the grass not too far from them.

“Daddy really looks like a prince, though, doesn't he? He's so beautiful.”

Dave turns his head and looks at Kurt with the same loving eyes as his son. “Yes, he is. The most gorgeous prince of the whole freaking kingdom.”

*


Leonard helps him to chose the right restaurant, obviously. That is because the last time Dave invited Kurt out for dinner it was at Breadstix, and Breadstix is not exactly the first place you have in mind when you think about what’s fancy and classy, so Leo just takes the lead and makes a list of five or six potential candidates, half of which Dave doesn’t even know.

“What about this one?” Dave asks, pointing out one of the names without even paying attention to which one he’s choosing. He has probably made the wrong decision, anyway, because Leonard immediately looks at him in horror, eyes filled with disappointment.

“That one’s the worst!” he almost screams, his little hands lost in his hair, “I only put it there to test you! You are such a mess.”

Dave can’t help it, he just has to laugh. Leo’s taking the whole matter so seriously. Just looking at him when he screams in frustration and passes the whole day drawing different kinds of decorations for both the place they’re going to get married in and the restaurant they’re going to use for the wedding reception can be so funny Dave can’t hold back laughing.

He never thought about this that way, but sharing this little secret with Leo while Kurt doesn’t even suspect what they’re doing just feels so good. Dave and Leo never had secrets of their own, secrets they could not share with Kurt, so every moment Dave passes with his son planning the wedding is so precious to him he almost doesn’t want it to ever end.

“So, where do you suggest to go?” Dave asks, smiling softly, “I trust you completely.”

Leo puffs his chest out, smiling victoriously, and an hour and a half later they’re in front of the restaurant he chose, which looks a little intimidating even from the outside.

“It seems like I’m going to have to wear a tie,” Dave sighs, and Leo looks at him with an arched eyebrow and the eyes of someone who’s already reaching the limit of their patience.

“That wasn’t even in question, dad,” he answers.

The very moment they step inside the place, a pretty blonde waitress comes near them, smiling gently. “Can I help you?” she asks, slightly tilting her head.

Dave uncertainly scratches the back of his own neck, almost looking away from her, while his son heavily sighs, shaking his head. “Can we talk to the owner?” He finally manages to ask.

“Yeah, sure,” the pretty girl smiles ever wider, “He’s in his office. This way, please.”

On their way to the owner's office, Leo grabs the hem of his father’s shirt and pulls it. “Let me do the talking,” he whispers, lifting himself up on his tiptoes to virtually get closer to his ears, so he doesn’t have to speak louder.

“What?” Dave asks, opening his eyes so wide his face almost hurts.

“You even had problems asking the waitress where could we find him!” Leo answers, almost jumping up and down in frustration, “You’ll ruin everything! Let me do the talking.”

Dave really wants to talk back at this, just to remind his son he’s just six and has no right to talk this way to his own father, but it’s too late, the pretty girl stops in front of a door with a big, golden name plate saying “Mr. Donovan” and there’s nothing Dave can say right now without looking like a fool in front of her.

“Here we are,” the waitress says, “Something else I can do for you?”

“We’ll be alright, thank you.” Dave answers, managing to smile a little. She nods and disappears the second after, and there’s nothing Dave can do but knock on the door and wait.

“Come in,” the soft voice of an old man speaks from the inside, and Dave opens the door to find the said old man sitting in a giant armchair behind an equally giant antique desk, smiling happily as if he was expecting them. He is so little and strange he almost seems unreal, with his big white mustaches covering his lips and those thick eyeglasses that make his eyes look like they’re twice their size. “Hello. Do I know you?”

Dave tries to speak faster than his son, but Leo doesn’t really have rivals when it comes to talking, so he doesn’t manage to be fast enough, and has to step back while his son makes a step toward the old man and then literally climbs on his desk, sitting on his heels in front of him.

“Hello, granddaddy,” he smiles, “Can I ask you a favor?”

Dave almost chokes on his own breath. “And that would be ‘do the talking’ for you?” he asks, looking at him while Leo shrugs. “Get immediately down from there!” he tries, frowning a little to look more intimidating, but his son is not scared of him even slightly, and Mr. Donovan keeps laughing like he has been doing since the very moment he first heard what Leonard had to say. So Dave's scolding is soon forgotten, and Leo can stay wherever he wants without anyone forcing him to come down.

“Sure you can, little boy,” Mr. Donovan answers, with a smile on his face so big not even the mustaches can hide it anymore, “But first, let me ask you one thing. What’s your name?”

“My name is Leonard, and I’m six years old,” Leo immediately answers, showing his age with his fingers, “My daddies are going to get married soon, so I wanted to ask you if we can use your beautiful restaurant for the singing proposal my daddy’s going to perform. My other daddy really likes fancy places like this one, so it would be perfect, you know?”

“Leo!” Dave tries to stop him, reaching for him and grabbing him by his shoulders to take him down of the desk, “You’re being rude and that’s not how you ask someone to do you a favor.”

“Oh, please, leave him be, leave him be!” the old man says, laughing again, “He’s so cute and smart. Besides, isn’t courtesy just something adults invented to make the kids feel like they’re not prepared enough to live with them?”

“I am very sorry for my son,” Dave insists, bowing a little.

“Daddy, didn’t you hear?” Leo says, elbowing him in his leg, “He said he’s alright with me!”

“Leo!” Dave insists, raising his voice, but Mr. Donovan laughs again, so happily that it really seems pointless to keep scolding the kid.

“I’d be very honored if you propose to your future husband here in my restaurant, mister…?”

“Karofsky,” Dave answers, blushing a little and staring at his feet, “My name’s David Karofsky, sir.”

“Mister Karofsky, then,” Mr. Donovan nods and smiles, standing up behind his desk and leaning over it to hold out his hand to Dave. “It’ll be a pleasure for me to host your marriage proposal. Would you be so kind to let me offer my collaboration, and would you promise me you’ll let me know whatever you might need to make that moment really magical?”

Dave blinks a couple of times, his lips partly open, barely breathing. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I… you're saying it’s alright if we do it here?” he asks, while Leo jumps up and down and screams a little, clapping his hands in joy, “It’s just— we had something a little peculiar in mind, so maybe you want to know… but I can’t really tell you right now, ‘cause we still have to talk to someone, and…”

“It’s alright, it’s alright!” Mir. Donovan smiles, waving one of his big yet thin, pale hands in the air, “Just give me a call when you know exactly what you want to do, and I’ll make sure everything’s set by the time you arrive.”

Dave nods again and shakes the old man’s hand, thanking him for his kindness and generosity, before saying goodbye and leaving the room, holding Leo’s hand just to be sure he can't run away as he seems so eager to do, excitement running through his little body, making him squeals and jumps like he’s been given the most beautiful present in the world.

“I’m confused,” Dave says in a low voice, leaving the restaurant, “We came here to ask if we could use the place, and we ended up being asked to use it as we please. I’m still not sure on how it happened.”

Unseen, Leo grins, satisfied.

*


It’s almost evening when they arrive at Puck’s pub. The place is quiet, at the moment, but Dave knows that, as soon as it actually opens for the crowd, it will be pretty messy around here; it often happens on Friday night, when Puck usually digs up his guitar from wherever he keeps it hidden during the rest of the week, and entertains his clients with some good old style pop music.

That’s why Dave wants to hurry up: he doesn’t want to get stuck in the crowd with Kurt waiting for Leo and him at home, not having an idea of where they are and what could they be doing, and he definitely, definitely doesn’t want to end up listening to Puck playing guitar for the rest of the night.

Still, he’s scared. He can’t find the courage to walk in and just ask Puck to play for him while he proposes to Kurt. He imagines that this sudden fear comes from the fact that asking Puck will make everything so real. Talking to Mr. Donovan was a first step, but talking with Puck? Maybe even setting a time and a day? That’s terrifying.

“Daddy!” Leo calls him, bored and tired of waiting, “I’m hungry and I have to pee! I wanna go home! Please, let’s just do this, okay?”

Dave sighs, trying to relax at least enough to just move already. “Okay, buddy,” he finally says, swallowing hard, “Let’s do this.”

The inside of the pub is practically empty, except for Puck – who’s doing his sound check on the little stage at the back of the big room – and a waiter cleaning up the bar for the evening. Dave and Leo wait for Puck to notice them, and it doesn't take him a lot of time, since he’s obviously bored to death – God only knows how long he’s been rehearsing – and is just waiting for an excuse to look up and leave his guitar on the stage to find something more interesting to do.

“Hi, Puckerman,” Dave smiles, lifting a hand and waving a little while Leo shifts uncomfortably in his place.

“Well,” Puck laughs, quickly approaching him with his arms wide open, as if he wants to hug him, even if, when he’s close enough, he just pats him on his shoulder, knowing that Dave’s never been very fond of excessive body contact. Well, with everybody but Kurt, at least. “Look who’s out of his fancy neighborhood to visit some good old friend. And how’re your wife and kid?” he asks, clearly not noticing Leo almost hidden behind Dave.

“Wife’s fine and singing somewhere in the country,” Dave answers, moving aside just enough to show Leo’s there too, “And the heir’s here,” he says, as Leo manages to wave and smile despite his upsetting condition.

“Hey, you!” Puck says, his smile growing wider as he sees the kid. He bends a little to hug him and then lift him up in his arms. “Whoa, you’re growing fast,” he comments, still holding him while Leo laughs, trying to wriggle his way out of his grip. “So, what’s the occasion?” Puck asks, turning back to Dave, “Should I offer you champagne?”

“Yes!” Leo immediately answers, lighting up in an excited smile, “Can I have some?”

“No, you can’t,” Dave glares at him, before turning back to Puck, “And no, thanks, Puck. But speaking of champagne, I’m here to ask you a favor,” he manages to say, throwing his fears aside so he can have his son out of this place and sitting on his toilet at home before Puck manages to have them both drunk. Because he knows he would find a way.

“I can’t give you money, you know,” Puck immediately says, raising both his hands and letting Leo fall on his feet on the floor with a little scream. “Don’t even ask, dude, I’d hate to say no in front of the little one here.”

“The little one you nearly killed right now?” Dave asks, while Leo starts jumping up and down on his feet because the fall made him craving for a toilet more than he was before. “Anyways, no, I don’t need money. It’s something… different.”

“As long as it’s not money,” Puck nods, “I’ll be happy to help. Have a sit,” he invites them, sitting on one of the stools in front of the bar and patting on his knees so Leo can climb on his legs and sit on his lap. “Tell me what you need.”

“Well,” Dave sighs, sitting in front of him, “Long story short: I want to… ask Kurt to marry me,” he says, blushing furiously. It’s actually the first time he has to say it out loud. It feels pretty big.

Puck opens his eyes wider, looking at him like he has never seen him before. “You want do to what?” he asks, clearly shocked.

“I want to propose to him,” Dave answers, following the wave of courage that seems to keep him strong at the moment, “We’ve been together for almost ten years, and…” he looks at Leo and then back to Puck, “He seems to care for a wedding, you know, so…”

Puck seems to need a moment to recover, before he can speak again. “Dude,” he finally says, shaking his head, “What’s with this gay marriage thing?” he asks, “It’s so 2010. And why now?”

“Because it is the right time!” Dave insists, getting more and more confident as he speaks, “We’ve got a house, we’ve got financial security, we’ve even got a kid! There’s only one thing missing.”

“Well, I’m not married, but I don’t feel like missing something,” Puck laughs, “It’s just strange,” he adds, his voice softer and his smile sweeter, “The David Karofsky I knew back in high school would have never, never had the balls to do something similar. I guess time changes people, after all.”

“Yeah, it does,” Dave nods, smiling back at him, “Even though it doesn’t seem strong enough to change you too,” he adds, while Puck laughs, shaking so much that Leo’s eyes get almost teary for the need he feels to just pee already. “So,” Dave resumes, noticing the desperate expression on his son’s face, “My problem is that I want to make a…” he blushes deeply, shifting on his seat, “a singing proposal.”

“That’s my idea,” Leo specifies, allowing himself to get distracted by the discussion enough to stop thinking about his needs.

“A singing proposal?” Puck asks, looking at him in shock again, “Are you nuts?”

“No, I’m damn serious here,” Dave immediately answers, taking his son back in his arms, where he knows he will be safe and free to twist as he likes to try and calm himself, “Listen, I can do this, I really can, but I’m gonna need help, someone who plays the guitar while I sing.”

“And you want me to play the guitar while you sing what and where?” Puck asks, still doubtful. Dave tries to answer, but Leo, clearly in desperate need of distraction, jumps up and answers in his place.

“It’s gonna be awesome, uncle Noah,” he explains, standing up on his father’s knees, “They are going to go in a fancy restaurant we already saw, where all the tables are rounded and have little candles on them. Dad will sing Marry Me by Neil Diamond, I chose it ‘cause it’s romantic and daddy likes romantic things, and he’ll be so happy he’ll cry, and they’re gonna get married afterwards.”

Puck listens carefully to the boy, nodding quietly from time to time, and when Leo stops talking he turns to face Dave once again. “And you called coming out back in high school a social suicide?” he asks, “Then, how do you call this?” he points at Leo as if the things the boy has just described had already taken place in front of him, “Social Armageddon?”

“I call it avoiding sleeping on the couch for a very, very long time,” Dave answers with a grin, and Puck instantly shivers.

“Now, that was a bad case of TMI. I so don’t wanna hear about where you sleep. So don’t want to,” he whines, shaking his head. “Anyway, the answer’s no.”

“But why?” Dave frowns, gesturing a little while his son pouts and crosses his arms on his chest, looking disapprovingly at his so-called uncle, “You should just play the guitar. I’ll do the singing.”

“Karofsky, no,” Puck repeats, still shaking his head, “Listen, You're a good friend and I love you in the most not-gay way, but you’re batshit crazy and Kurt— no, everyone in Lima is going to laugh at you forever. I’ve got a reputation!”

“Why should they laugh at me?” Dave protests, “I can sing as much as you can, and you know it. If you can sing with Kurt, than I can sing for him,” he says, standing up for himself, guided by a sudden rush of pride that Leo welcomes with a big, shiny smile and an adoring look.

Puck blinks a couple of times, sighing deeply. “This is some crazy shit you’re asking me to do,” he considers, “Popping out of nowhere playing my guitar.”

“Oh, please, you used to do it all the time!” Dave replies, rolling his eyes, “You could never walk the hallways without you or Artie or Sam popping out of nowhere singing at least once a week. People learned how to avoid you and keep walking while you performed!”

“Dude, that was in high school!” Puck insists, “I was sixteen and high most of the time! No, I don’t want to. I won’t do it.”

“What does high mean?” Leo asks, slightly tilting his head to the side.

Puck clears his throat, ruffling the kid’s hair. “I’ll tell you when you’re old enough. Now take your crazy dad and get lost.”

“Oh, come on,” Dave almost whines, “What’s your problem?”

“My problem is that it’s going to be ridiculous, and that there’s the real possibility I will be forever remembered as the dude who played guitar for the most weird proposal of all times,” Puck nods seriously.

“Why do I want to punch you in the face all of a sudden?” Dave sighs, tired of fighting.

“Maybe because you still have problems controlling your anger,” Puck immediately replies, arching an eyebrow. “Man! Why are you doing this? You’re going to cover yourself in shame!” he insists, as if he really couldn’t believe Dave would do something like that. Problem is, Dave would. Even if he had to cover himself in shame, even if he had to survive to the mocks and the laughs of every single person in Lima, he would do this. If only to see the look in Kurt’s eyes when he asks him to marry him, Dave would risk to lose everything else.

“I love Kurt,” he answers, looking straight in Puck’s eyes, “I love him and it’s not going to be ridiculous. It’s going to be awesome.”

“Oh, God,” Puck sighs, rolling his eyes and then looking at Leo, “You realize you’re sentencing your own dad to social death with this idea you came up with?” he asks, pointing at him.

“I don’t know what social death is, but my dad can’t die, so it’s ok,” Leo just replies, shrugging.

“This is so Broadway,” Puck sighs again, “I don’t even know why we’re still talking about it.”

“I’m kind of asking myself the same thing, Puckerman,” Dave groans, trying to decide if he can just shove him against the first locker he finds and fucking go home, since he honestly can’t take any more arguing.

“Don’t be angry, daddy,” Leo tries to calm him, “Uncle Noah just needs to be convinced. Uncle Noah, you know,” he explains, turning to the other man, “Broadway is exactly my plan. In fact, daddies will have dinner, then you’ll come out playing your guitar and everybody will stare and listen and smile. Maybe chanting the chorus all together, too,” he ponders, “Dad will sing and maybe dance with daddy a little bit, then he’ll go down on his knee and propose. It’s classy and it’s classic, which are two different words, daddy says.”

Puck can’t help but burst into laughing, slowly shaking his head. “When did you became the portrait of a younger and clearly crazier Kurt?” he asks, “What was I looking at when it happened? Dude,” he adds, turning to Dave, “Your son really is something.”

“He is,” Dave nods, sighing softly.

“So, uncle Noah,” Leo insists, closing his hands in two nervous little fists, “Will you do it? Daddy really, really, really, really wants dad to sing for him. And he wants to marry, too.”

“Don’t you even think to win me over only with those big blue eyes,” Puck mocks him, even if it’s clear he already decided what to do, “You’re not cute enough to convince me.”

“Oh, please!” Leo starts to jump up and down again, remembering he has to pee when it’s already too late; so his jumping up and down starts to be motivated by more than just his intense desire to have Puck playing for Dave during the proposal. “Uncle Noah, please,” he cheeps, eyes filled with tears and cheeks reddening more and more every second, “It’s so important!” Puck keeps playing cool, so Leo does the only thing he knows it always works in hard times like these, he flutters his eyelashes. “Pretty please with a cherry on top?” he asks.

Puck opens his eyes wide, chocking on his own breath. “I recognize your father’s touch!” he almost screams, turning to Dave, “You let your future husband teach that eyelashes thing to your son! Dude!”

“I didn’t let him!” Dave defends himself, “He keeps teaching him things like that during his father-son time. There’s nothing I can do. Kurt’s… Kurt.”

Puck sighs, nodding as if he perfectly knows how difficult could be to restrain Kurt from doing whatever he wants. And he actually knows it. “Luckily, it seems you’re going to marry him soon. So every other man will be safe. At least temporarily,” he ponders, nodding again. “This wedding needs to happen as soon as possible. That’s clearly my chance to save the world and the whole mankind.”

“Every other man was already safe even before,” Dave snorts, but Puck shakes his head.

“You know what they say, there’s nothing sure about the future. But you two have been together for so long,” he smiles sweetly, “So I think there’s at least one thing we can all be sure about the future.”

Dave smiles, while Leo finally understands Puck basically said yes without having to say it out loud. “You can bet,” he says, and Puck laughs a little, hearing those words.

“You know, I actually did,” he nods, and Dave arches an eyebrow, looking uncertainly at him.

“You did what?” he asks.

“Well, when you two started dating,” he remembers, while Leo suddenly forgets he still has to go to the bathroom, because he just loves to listen to the tales of his parents before they had him, “There was this thing in the football team. We never told you because we knew you’d be angry, and then you were already going through so much… Basically, Finn bet you wouldn’t last two weeks, while Sam said one month and Azimio was all ‘duuuude, it’s Dave Karofsky and Kurt Hummel we’re talking about, it’s like a fucking royal wedding, I’d be personally disappointed and offended if it lasts less than four months’,” he laughs, trying to imitate Azimio’s voice while both Dave and Leo laughs madly; he waits until they stop to talk again. “I gave you a year, and I bought two new guitars,” he nods, lifting his hands up in the air in a small gesture of triumph.

“Wow,” Dave laughs again, wiping a little tear from the corner of his eye, “I didn’t know any of that. But you bet the longest period, why?”

“You’re here, now, asking me to play for you during your singing proposal, dude,” Puck answers, still smiling, “And you ask me why I bet the longest period? I knew you were crazy enough to make it! Besides,” he adds, “You waited so long to ask him out, it would have been disappointing if it didn’t last long.”

Dave gives in to a little smile, as his eyes suddenly look so distant and shiny, his head filled with memories. “It took me, like… I don’t know, a month? Just to put together the words to tell him, and he was so pissed it took me so long.”

“Oh, God, I still remember him running around during that home economics class,” he remembers, laughing again while Leo starts jumping from one foot to another but is just too fascinated to ask for the toilet, “Singing that cheesy Emma Bunton song, what did it say? What took you so long, what took you all night, what took you forever to see I’m right? With all the other girls dancing on the desks. Creepiest moment of my life.”

“You really attended home economics classes?” Leo asks, opening his eyes so wide they seem to occupy the entirety of his face, “So how come you can not cook at all?”

“I wasn’t very good at it, ok?” Dave snorts, remembering the moment Puck just mentioned as one of the creepiest of his life too, just as much as that other moment in which he broke an egg and Brittany suddenly turned to him and screamed he was a murderer.

“And why did you sing during classes, uncle Noah?” Leo asks, turning to Puck.

“We used singing as a way to express our feelings,” Puck answers, smiling happily, “Even during classes, yes. Besides,” he adds, turning to Dave, “Creepy as it was, Kurt had all rights to sing his heart out, in that moment. I remember him constantly whining about how clueless you seemed whenever he came near you. And after how it ended with Blaine…” he stops for a moment, as if he just remembered something really important, “Speaking of which,” he says, “Are you going to invite him?”

“I…” Dave says, instantly averting his eyes, “I didn’t think about the guest list, yet. I don’t know. Maybe. Kurt will decide, I guess. I hate the guy, but Kurt… who knows. Maybe he’ll want him there.”

“It could be dangerous, don’t you think?” Puck asks, “Say he understood his mistake and wants your princess back,” he laughs.

“Over my dead body,” Dave snaps, suddenly turning to him, eyes shiny with jealousy and possessiveness, “He won’t go near Kurt unless I can see where his hands are.”

“Who is this guy you’re talking about?” Leo asks, arching an eyebrow.

“The little one here doesn’t know about prince charming, Blaine Freakin’ Warbler?” he asks, pointing at Leo, “Now, that’s a shame. Should I tell him?” he teases Dave with a grin.

“Is he a real prince?” Leo immediately asks, eyes filled with curiosity and admiration, while Dave groans, bothered by the turn the discussion is taking.

“Good job, Puckerman. Now he got the wrong idea. Come on, tell him the truth.”

Puck laughs, taking Leo in his arms and letting him sit on his lap. “Well, he wasn’t exactly a prince, but he really looked like one. You know, there was a time,” he starts telling the kid with his most mysterious tone, “Before you were born, even before your daddies started to date, when Kurt dated this young boy attending an all-boys school called Dalton, and he was always wearing an elegant uniform, as princes do. And he didn’t have a surname, most of the time. As princes do, too, now that I think about it.”

“What did the uniform look like?” Leo asks, so interested in the matter he definitely forgets his need for a toilet, “And why didn’t he have a surname? Was he cool like dad?”

“No, he wasn’t,” Dave immediately answers. Leo looks at him and than back at Puck.

“Daddy didn’t love him, right?” he asks, now somehow worried, probably because he noticed the little spark of insecurity in his father’s eyes.

“Well, I wouldn’t know,” Puck answers, actually thinking about it – that bastard – “Your daddy seemed pretty interested in him, but they both were so young they kind of lost themselves on the way. Which is good, because then your daddy found himself back again with your other daddy, and everything fell in its place.”

“That’s right!” Leo nods enthusiastically, “Daddy can’t love anybody but me and dad. And maybe aunt Rachel and aunt Mercedes, if he wants, but not as much.”

Puck laughs out loud, hugging Leo, touched by his words. “I’m sure he doesn’t love anything in the world as much as he loves you two. This, you can be sure about.”

“I am,” Leo answers, nodding again, “And I love him too. He adopted me with dad, did you know that, uncle Noah?” he starts, getting all excited like every time he has the chance to tell the wonderful tale of his adoption, something he manages to find the way to do as often as he can, even when no one asks him to do it.

“I totally didn’t know that!” Puck answers, opening his eyes and pretending to be really surprised, when he obviously does know everything concerning the kid’s adoption. “Here I was, thinking they found you under a cherry tree, feed by fairies and pampered by elves.”

“No, no!” Leo starts jumping up and down again, managing to escape Puck’s arms to fall down on his feet on the floor, turning to look seriously at him, “They wanted to have a baby so much they went to the hospital searching for one, and a kind lady gave me to them. I was sooo little.”

“Now that I think about it,” Puck answers, hitting the palm of his hand with a fist, “I remember you being so little I could hold you in one hand!” he nods, showing the kid his hand well open, “See? I remember your daddies putting you here, and you slept all the time.”

Leo nods again. “Daddy always says I would sleep all night through.”

“That’s because he didn’t have to wake up to feed him,” Dave adds, with a little snort.

“Well, he’s always been cute, at least,” Puck laughs, and Dave can’t help to smile in return.

“Yes, he is,” he nods, “That’s why I’m here now, with this little monster,” he adds, leaning on Leo to hold him tight in his arms and tickles him hard.

“No, no, no!” Leo screams and laughs, his whole body shaking, “Daddy, don’t! I have to pee, I have to pee!”

Puck laughs again as Dave lets his son go. “You two are gonna be a great married couple,” he states, “I can already picture you ten years from now, with your big house and the garden, and a thousand dogs.”

“Let’s just say a couple of dogs and one more kid,” Dave corrects him, while Leo jumps up and down screaming he wants a thousand dogs and can do without a brother.

“Well,” Puck says, ignoring him even though he’s so noisy, “You’ll have your honeymoon to think about it and generate another fruit of your love. Which leads us to another TMI discussion I definitely don’t wanna have right here and now. Or never.”

Dave laughs, standing up and holding Leo’s hand since he already knows the kid's going to run to the car the minute they’re out of the pub, careless of the other cars that could cross the street in the same moment he does. “You’ll have the report when we come back, for sure,” he teases him.

Puck shivers. “Fact is, I don’t want to,” he clarifies, “Now, just let me know the details for that singing proposal of yours, when you have them. I’ll do my best to help you.”

Dave smiles again, and actually leans in for a little hug before he goes. “I’ll give you a call.”

*


Dave is really nervous, that kind of nervous that makes his heart race and makes him want to turn around and run as fast as he can; but Leo is there beside him and he wouldn't allow that, let alone that Dave would never leave him there all by himself, so he has to stay.

This is insane. It feels like the senior prom all over again, when he came to this very same house to pick Kurt up and Burt's face was so grim he actually managed to scare the leaving shit out of him without saying a word. Burt was standing in a corner of the family room and watched as Kurt run down the stairs – beautiful beyond words – and hugged Dave happily, not daring to kiss him in front of his father. Burt's eyes were telling Dave that if he was just fooling around with his son, he would never, ever see the light of day after he had finished with him. Dave had shivered all the way back to the car.

Now, things are different because he actually lives with Kurt already and they have a son. Him being here in front of this door waiting to ask Kurt's hand to his father it is just a mere formality to keep up the tradition. Burt is not supposed to say no, what would they do if he did? It doesn't make any sense. Still, Dave wants to ask him and do things properly and he wants Burt's approval as much as he wants Kurt's because he needs to feel that the whole Hummel family is with him in this.

“Dad, can we please at least ring the doorbell?” Leo asks, looking up at him with a sigh. “We've been here for ten minutes now. It's weird, people are staring at us.”

Dave reaches for the doorbell and finally rings. The doorbell's sound is the same as ten years ago and still makes him shiver. It's going to be a very long and very hard chat with mr. Hummel.

It's Finn who opens the door with the most annoyed face ever. “What?” He spits out before actually noticing who's standing on the doormat.

“Hi to you too, Finn,” Dave says, raising a perplexed eyebrow.

“Sorry, man. We weren't expecting you,” he explains. Then he tries and look past him and Leo to see if Kurt is with them too. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Yes, everything's fine.”

“Who's there, Finn?” Burt’s voice comes from inside the house.

Finn puts his head back inside. “It's Dave with Leo,” he yells to his step-father, then turns back to Dave and gives him one of his smiles. “Me and Burt are about to watch the game. Wanna join us?”

“No, thanks,” Dave declines. “I... I actually thought I'd find you here because of, you know, the football game. I need to ask you something.”

Since Dave seems pretty serious, Finn nods seriously as well and steps back. “Uh. Okay, sure. Come in.”

Dave enters hesitantly, still uncomfortable with the whole situation, while his son precedes him in the living room. “Hey! Is that my nephew?” Burt says, looking at them from the armchair.

“Yes, it's me!” Leo answers, running to hug him. “Are you my grandpa?”

Burt laughs. “You can bet I am, little champion.” He lifts Leo up so he can sit on his lap. “How you doin'? Have you thought about starting to play football as I asked you last time we saw each other?”

“Not much,” Leo answers, honestly. “I really want to be a pilot, you know. But dad is teaching me something in the backyard because it's family business, he says. I know how to tackle, now.”

Finn is gone to fetch a couple of beers, so Dave can watch Leo and his grandfather having a chat of their own. Leo is pretty good at football, but he doesn't like it. And since he doesn't seem to like much dancing and singing either, he probably won't follow neither his nor Kurt's footsteps.

“Racing is too dangerous for a kid of your age!” Burt says. “Football would be a better choice, at least until you're old enough to get a driving license.”

“I'll drive go-karts until I'm old enough to drive real cars,” Leo explains, now playing with his grandfather's baseball cap. “Dad said he is going to think about it.”

Leo turns to his father for confirmation, but Finn is back and the two of them are talking so he lets it go and goes back to his grandfather.

“So, what is it you wanted to ask me?” Finn is saying, handing Dave his bottle of beer with a slightly uncomfortable smile.

“Yes, right. I was wondering if you can keep an eye on Leo tonight. I'd like to take your brother out to dinner. It's a special date,” he explains, sipping on his beer. “I know I should have called you first, but I have a lot on my mind right now and I just forgot.”

Finn doesn't understand why Dave is so upset. It is not like he never left Leo here or at Finn's house for that matter. Sooner or later each one of the group has babysittered Leo for a couple of hours or even the night, so Dave shouldn't be so worried for his kid. “Uh, it's alright, dude. We're going to watch the game for the rest of the night anyway. Keeping an eye on Leo won't be a problem at all. Why are you acting so weird? Is there something wrong? You can tell me, y'know.”

“It's nothing, really,” Dave tries to smile but what comes out is just a grimace of pain.

“It doesn't really seem so,” Burt says, just letting Leo go after tickling him so hard he can barely breathe anymore. The kid runs away blindly until he slams against his uncle Finn's legs. “You look like you're having gas.”

Finn laughs and takes Leo in his arms, heading with him upstairs, where he apparently has a present for him. Dave feels uneasy now more than ever after the gas joke and everything.

“Come on, have a sit,” Burt invites him, going back to watch the game.

Even after almost ten years of being with this man's son, Dave is still terrified of him; maybe it is because Burt has never been exactly rude with him. He has been just the right grade of finely threatening, enough to make Dave know he was closely watching him but not to make Carole or Kurt angry for being an asshole with him. Dave sits uneasily on the armchair opposite to Burt's and tries to find a way to talk to him in between a game action and the other.

“Do you know I recently became a vegetarian?” Burt asks, conversationally.

Dave doesn't know exactly what he is supposed to answer to that and most of all why Burt is telling him now. “Really. And why is that?”

Burt doesn't look away from the TV as he speaks. His eyes follow the players on screen with great attention. “My heart's sick. Doctor says it's time I start taking it easy, 'cause I'm getting old,” he says, sipping juice from an half empty bottle. “But that's not the point. Do you know what me being vegetarian means?”

“That... you don't eat meat, sir?” Dave says, hesitantly. It feels like an episode of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, except that he doesn't know exactly what he's going to lose if he doesn't answer correctly.

But Burt turns to him with a little smile. “It means that I'm not going to eat you alive, Dave,” he says, leaning over the armrest and touching Dave's knee with the bottle. “So relax.”

Dave smiles nervously. “I'm trying my best, sir.”

“Well, try harder,” Burt insists, turning back to the game. “You're sitting like your spine is made of iron or something. And stop calling me sir. I don't know why you're always doing that, but it creeps me out. You're not seventeen anymore and I'm not that old.”

Dave would be really upset by this answer if he couldn't see some mischievous smile lingering on Burt's lips. “Sure, Burt,” he says. “It just feels strange to call you by your first name when I came here to ask you something so delicate.”

He's expecting some sort of reaction, but he gets none. Burt keeps watching tv and sipping juice. “What is it?” he asks. “If you need money or something for the kid, me and Carole can help you but Kurt alone earns more in a week than me in a couple of months, so don't expect much.”

Dave wonders why everyone keeps thinking they need money. They’re actually pretty well off, with Kurt's career and everything. Not billionaire, maybe, but they've got their nest egg put aside in case of emergency. Just because they didn't move immediately in a bigger house or even a bigger city when Kurt landed his first well paid role on Broadway, it doesn't mean they are in dire straits or something. Dave could even quit his job and stay home with Leo, if he wanted to. Too bad he doesn't and he still have a problem with earning less than Kurt, but it's something he's slowly getting over with.

“Don't worry, we don't need any money,” he finally says aloud, getting out of his own head to answer. “I'm here to talk to you about me and Kurt.”

This attracts Burt's attention. “What about you two?” He asks suspiciously.

Dave is so happy to have him fully listening that he doesn't even care for the dangerous tone. “We've been together almost ten years now. And they have been the most beautiful years of my life.”

Burt relaxes and smiles sweetly to that, clearly not expecting any buts. “I'm pretty sure they've been the most beautiful years of Kurt's life so far too,” he says and then sighs, almost wistfully. “I admit I had my doubts on you, Dave. I couldn't really see why Kurt would choose you, considering he's a wonderful, talented and beautiful person, worthy of the best in the entire world, but looking in his eyes is enough for me to understand. He almost never smiles as he does when he's with you. So you must be worth it.”

Dave blushes a little. He is so grateful to hear those words that his heart could easily explode. “I'm so lucky to have him. And I love him more every day,” he says “I'm doing my best to make him happy as much as he makes me.”

Burt is already nodding. “I know you are, son. Is that why you won't let me see the end of this game? To tell me things I am already aware of? Y'know, you could have called, I would have spared you the trip. As I said, I had doubts on you but that was a long time ago. Now I wouldn't trust Kurt's life with anyone but you, so you can relax.” Burt laughs but keeps watching the game, completely unaware that something momentous is about to happen.

“I had to come, sir.” Dave takes a deep breath. The moment is finally arrived and if he doesn't do it now, he will never do it. “I'm actually here to ask your permission... to propose to Kurt, tonight.”

Burt's brain shuts down. He turns to Dave and looks at him like he is not seeing him at all. Dave's heart is racing madly. He is so scared, he can't even breath. This can end two ways, and right now he is not completely sure one of them is actually good.

*


Finn doesn't live here anymore, obviously.

He moved out to go to college and then never came back. He has his own house now, though it is not too far from Burt and Carole's because, just like Dave, he didn't really want to leave his parents. Or Lima, for that matter. But he spends a lot of time in the old family house, because he lives alone and he gets easily bored. His old room looks exactly the same and he sleeps there too sometimes.

Leo loves it. No other room of his grandparents' house but the attic is more appealing than Finn's old room to him. He likes to explore it and quest for the many treasures it holds. Finn never throws away anything, so there's plenty of his old toys and trophies in there. There are shelves and shelves filled with action figures from movies and comics. Some of them Leo recognizes from Dave's own collection of comics, but for the most part they are unknown characters he never heard of because he is too young. There is one in particular that never fails to get his attention. It is a green, gnomish figure wearing a purple cape that covers it completely, so you can't see its face except for its round, yellow eyes. Finn told him it is a mage or something but Leo doesn't care for the story behind it, he just likes the look of the character. It is the first doll he grabs every time he enters Finn's room. He is playing with it even now, although his main thought is the present Finn was talking about.

“Why did you buy me a present?” He asks. “It's not my birthday.”

“I didn't buy it,” Finn explains, taking out a big cardbox from under his bed. “It's one of my old games. I found it a couple of days ago and I thought you would like it.”

“What game is it?”

Finn smiles. “Go on, open the box and see for yourself.”

Leo kneels before the box and carefully lies the little toy beside him while he opens it. Inside the box there is one of those old fifth or sixth generation consoles. Leo knows them from the internet but he has never actually seen a working one. On top of it, a game with the biggest case he has ever seen.

“It's a go kart simulator,” Finn explains as he sits on his old bed to watch Leo going through the box. “It's a bit old, but it's still a good game.”

Leo's eyes are sparkling. “Really? That's so cool, uncle Finn!”

He watches closely every single piece he finds in the box, turning each one of them in his little hands. The console looks nothing like the ones he has at home; it is dusty, scratched and really ugly and squared, but as much as it is old, it holds a charm of its own. It's like when the old PSP his dad gave him. It has scratches all over it and it keeps getting stuck from time to time, but Leo loves it more than his brand new Nintendo Dsi-4 which he mostly needs to exchange Pokémons with his friends at school.

“Do you like it?” Finn laughs, looking at him with affection. He fell in love with Leo the moment he laid his eyes on him for the first time after Kurt and Dave brought him home. He is a very proud uncle and takes his role really seriously, which basically means he spoils Leo as much as he possibly can.

“Yes!” Leo cries, putting everything back in the box so he can drag it to the old TV in the room. “Can I try it?”

“Sure,” Finn nods. “Your dad said you're really enjoying this driving thing, recently. Is Kurt alright with it?”

“Not much, really.” Leo puts the console, the cables and the controller meticulously in front of the TV, trying to figure out what he is looking at. It has always been this way with him. He is the kind of child who always reads the instructions before playing with anything and doesn't want any help, unless he asks for it. Finn knows that, so he just watches.

“And you still want to drive? Even though you know how dangerous it could be?”

“Of course I do!” He looks at him and then back at the game. “And it's not so dangerous. Where's the motion sensor?”

Finn laughs. “There is no motion sensor, kid. This thing comes from a time of cables,” he says, pointing at the various parts as he proceeds to explain. “You connect the console to the TV and the fake steering wheel to the console. Then you just start the game and, you know, drive.”

“I got it.” Leo executes with no hesitation whatsoever. Like any kid his age, he is used to technology and has a quick grasp of it even if it is of a kind he has never seen before.

“This way, you won't have to actually drive a real go-kart,” Finn continues. But when Leo turns to look at him with a slightly troubled face, he realizes that maybe his words were too conclusive. “Obviously, I'm not saying you will never, ever drive a go-kart, but you can practice with this game first, so you can drive the real thing only when you know you're ready, and it'll be less dangerous.”

“I'm ready, uncle Finn,” Leo shrugs and moves the TV a bit to reach for the plugs on the back. “I'm not a little kid anymore and I want this more than anything else in the whole world. Except for one thing.”

“Hm? Something more important than go karts? And what would that be?” Finn asks, genuinely interested. He is more than willing to help Leo have whatever it is that can distract him from those damn mini-cars, since Kurt is driving him nuts, always complaining on how his only child will die in a go-kart accident at the tender age of six.

Leo is busy trying to figure out which cable goes where, so he doesn't bother turning around. “Dad marrying daddy.”

“Oh, yeah, that— WHAT?”

Leo is totally calm. He doesn't even look at him. “They're going to get married soon,” he explains patiently, like his uncle was a bit slow, which he is anyway.

“Kid, wait,” Finn says, standing up to get closer to him. Leo says the strangest things all the time, but this one seems pretty weird even for him. “What are you talking about? Kurt would have told me if he was getting married!”

Leo tries putting the yellow cable in the plug marked as A even if it is green, since all the other cables don't fit anyway. “That's because he doesn't know yet.”

“What the...” Finn starts saying, then he realizes. “Wait. Is your father...?”

Leo nods casually. “Yes. He's asking grandpa Daddy's hand right now.”

Finn leaves Leo in his room and run downstairs. There’s no way he’s going to miss it, and Leo will be okay on his own, anyway.

*


Burt has hardly spoken a word since he heard the big news, so Dave is basically reciting a monologue. And since speaking in front of people has never been his thing, he's getting more and more nervous as time goes by. “I love him, sir. A lot. And we've been together so long that it seems the perfect thing to do because it's actually the only thing missing,” he says, palm sweating, heart racing and everything. “I want to promise Kurt I'll never leave him in every way I possibly can and marrying him is pretty definitive... if a child wasn't already. I mean, I'm not saying that marriage is just a joke. Geez, I know I would mess this up.”

Burt keeps staring into nothing for the longest time after that, but then he eventually clears his throat.

“You know, when I was younger and Kurt's mom was still alive but Kurt wasn't born yet, I wanted to have a daughter so much,” he starts, finally looking at him. Dave tenses, because now that Burt is speaking who knows what he is going to answer. “I'm not saying I was disappointed when Kurt came out to be a boy, only that when I had fantasized about it, I wanted a girl. And you know why? 'Cause I kept thinking about how beautiful she would be, how sweet, how passionate, and I wanted her to find a man who could protect her and love her as she deserved, so I could give her away to the right one, and regret nothing. Then Kurt was born and, as you know, he was a boy. And times have changed. Nowadays no one asks the permission to marry someone to their father anymore, so I was just... you know, resigned I would never really had the chance to give him away.” Burt turns back to Dave and looks at him with shiny eyes. “I thought you would never ask.”

Dave has listened carefully and with the last words his face slowly relaxes. “Thank God you said yes,” he breathes out, relieved. “For a moment there I thought you were going to refuse.”

Burt laughs and shakes his head. “Your face was absolutely priceless,” he says. “I wish I had a camera hidden somewhere in this room.”

Dave laughs too because he is too happy even to be ashamed of his everlasting fear of Burt. In this very moment he actually feels the urge to hug the man, but he doesn't dare because he has never done such a thing before. “Thank you,” he says instead, with all the honesty he can put in his voice. “You can be sure I will always protect him and love him. Nobody can touch Kurt without me kicking their asses.”

It's Burt the one who stands up and opens his arms, then. “Come here, son. It's pretty good to call you like that, you know.”

Finn enters the room that moment, watching the two of them with wide, bewildered eyes. “Oh my God, then it's true!”

Caught in his bear but manly hug with Burt, Dave smiles proudly and happily at him. “You can bet it is, Finn,” he says. “Like it or not, you're going to be my official brother-in-law.”

Burt is overwhelmed with happiness, so he stops talking for once and sits down, letting the other two men talk about the event.

Finn is astonished and can't even form a complete sentence. “Whoa, man. I mean, this sounds like... I mean, it's pretty big.” For him, who is not married nor even engaged, marriage looks like some sort of epic quest only the bravest can complete. He is watching Dave with brand new eyes, now.

As far as he is concerned, Dave is trying to be cool, not to give in to panic. “It can't be bigger than a twenty years mortgage and a six years old kid who gets lices three times in a row while your brother – soon to be my beautiful husband – has a big show to do and wants to sleep in the garden fearing of taking them too, isn't it?”

Finn laughs. “I think I understand. Well, not really, but yes,” he says, giving Dave his right hand. “Congratulations, dude.”

Dave shakes his hand. “Thanks, man. Now I just hope Kurt will say yes.”

“Dude,” Finn says with such intensity to be almost ridiculous. “He's been planning his wedding since he was five.”

“Yes, I know.” Everyone knows that, actually. “But with Kurt you never know. Maybe the proposal won't be right, or... or the timing, or maybe now it's already too late or something. Your brother is not easy to understand sometimes.”

“Word,” says Finn, sitting on the couch with a heavy sigh. “But when it comes to you, then it's different. You really touch him.”

“I'm not completely sure to understand what your talking about,” David says, a bit puzzled. And that is your stepfather, who happens to be also Kurt's father, right here, so watch what you say. He would like to tell Finn that too, but he doesn't and just casts a very weird look at him, hoping he will get it.

“I mean,” Finn says, realizing what he has just said, “that you're close to him. You understand him. That's what I wanted to say. You're right.”

“And you're also late, I bet,” Burt adds, since he has turned back to his usual self in the meantime.

Dave looks at his watch and frowned. “Oh God, yes. I definitely am. I've got to pick him up in 5,” he says, and then turns to Finn for the last recommendation. “Take care of Leo. I'll be back to pick him up after dinner. Let's say at ten?”

“Dude, take your time. Your kid's going to be alright,” Finn reassures him.

Burt smiles and wishes him good luck.

Dave thanks him one last time and then he is off.

*


The restaurant is almost full, and Dave’s sweating. As he looks at Kurt, pretending to listen to whatever he’s saying about the food and how good it looks on the menu and how beautiful the place is and how he would have never thought Dave could take him to a place like this, Dave lets his thoughts wander back to his teenage years, to a very specific day, the one in which Kurt told him he didn’t dig on chubby guys who sweats too much and are going to be bald by the time they’re 30. He’s still chubby, though he managed to keep his weight under control – also because he could be easily fired if he didn’t, not to mention lose control on the bunch of crazy hyperactive kids he coaches – and he’s just 27, so he guesses it’s a little early to talk about balding and shit, but somehow sweating so much now is making him really uncomfortable. He can’t help but to think at the moment he will hold Kurt’s hand in his own, and he prays not to have sweaty palms by then. He wouldn’t survive the shame of having sweaty palms as he proposes to his lover. That would be so lame, not to mention disgusting. What if Kurt withdraws his hand with a horrified face? Dave just couldn’t stand that. Not in the most important moment of his life.

All of this is Leonard’s fault, he knows it. He just didn’t care about having a wedding before, and he’s pretty sure Kurt would never ask if he never brought that up, but now proposing to him seems like the only thing Dave can think about anymore. Every single second of his life is beaten by that thought. Asking Kurt. There’s nothing else in the world.

He’s glad this day’s almost over, because he can’t take any more of this. He doesn’t work well in stressful situations, and this is definitely one.

“Dave?” Kurt calls for him, frowning slightly behind his glass of red wine, “Are you even listening to me?”

“Wha— sure,” Dave immediately answers, nodding quickly, “Of course I’m listening.” He knows pretty well how Kurt can be annoyed by people not giving him the exact amount of attention he thinks he deserves – which is pretty much all they can give, and sometimes that much isn’t even enough – especially when he’s in a bad mood. God, Dave so wishes Kurt’s not in a bad mood. “So…” he starts, hoping Kurt won’t notice he actually wasn’t really listening at all, “What do you wanna eat?”

“As I already said…” Kurt answers, which means he noticed. Well, at least he’s still smiling. That’s good. As long as his smile doesn’t turn in that awkward smirk that always comes right before a fight, everything’s good. “There are so many delicious things here,” Kurt comments, flipping through the menu, “It’s a very fancy restaurant, Dave. I’m really… impressed.”

“Did you think I would learn nothing, living with you for almost ten years?” Dave asks, smiling nervously and trying to keep himself from randomly fidgeting on his suddenly really uncomfortable chair. He clumsily leans on the table, holding out a hand and brushing his fingertips over Kurt’s loosely closed fist.

Kurt blushes instantly, looking back at him. “Sometimes, I can’t even believe so much time has passed,” he says softly, his smile so sweet that Dave almost burns with the need to kiss him, to taste it and tell if it really is as sweet as it looks.

“Yeah…” Dave smiles too, casually caressing Kurt’s hand, “We’ve almost been together longer than we’ve been apart,” he considers, chuckling softly, and as he lets his eyes wander over the restaurant’s big room his breath almost got caught up in his throat. Leo’s here, hiding behind a curtain near the kitchen door. His uncle Finn is with him, and he’s so big the curtain’s barely enough to cover half of him, while Leo, not really caring about hiding at all, stays beside him, watching closely over what’s happening at their table.

Finn gestures something, probably an apology. Dave can read on his mouth that he’s sorry, that it was Leo’s idea and that he wants to die. Three things he doesn’t really care about right now. Luckily, they’re behind Kurt’s back, at least.

“Dave?” Kurt frowns, and Dave’s eyes instantly switch on him, “You’re really distracted, tonight. Is everything ok?”

“Of course, honey. I’m sorry, I’m just… nevermind.” He manages to smile, squeezing Kurt’s hand one last time before retreating his own and starting to go through the menu. “What were you saying?”

“That you should stop making me blush,” Kurt answers, laughing in a low voice, “Because blush doesn’t match the color of my shirt tonight. But it sounded better the first time, I’m sorry you missed it.”

Dave laughs too, shaking his head a little. “It’s still funny, though. Don’t worry.”

“Yeah, sure,” Kurt pretends to be very offended, pouting and scoffing and crossing his arms over his chest for a moment, “Keep going on like that, ruining my lines and then pretending to be still amused by them.” He shakes his head too, his cheeks pleasantly flushed as he flips through the menu once more, trying to act casually when he speaks again. “So, what’s the occasion?” he asks, “We’ve got a big anniversary coming on, but it’s in three weeks.”

“Nothing special,” Dave lies, throwing a nervous glance at Leo, hoping he sees the scolding in his eyes and understands he really has to hide behind the curtain. He obviously doesn’t get it and stays exactly where he is, and Dave is not sure that he would hide if he understood that’s what his father’s asking him to do. Sometimes he doesn’t really know if it’s harder to be Kurt’s partner or Leo’s father. What he knows is that the combination of the two things will probably be the death of him. “I just wanted to hang out with you,” he manages to say with a smile, “It’s been pretty hard to do that recently, since we’ve got no time and, when we’re free, we’re always with Leo.” He laughs a little, shifting uncomfortably on his chair when he sees Leo move a step forward and almost clash against an innocent waiter. Finn manages to avoid the disaster grabbing his nephew from under his arms and forcing him to step back, closer to the curtain. “I… don’t think I’ve been this good with you, in the last few… months,” Dave sighs, looking back at Kurt.

Kurt smiles immediately, his eyes so full of love and joy Dave feels himself melting inside. “You’ve been busy being a good dad. I can’t be mad for that.”

“Yeah, but you deserve some attention too, once in a while,” Dave insists, “And don’t talk to me like I don’t know that another couple of weeks without a ‘you look gorgeous, tonight’ and you’d have kicked me out of bed,” he adds in a sweet laugh, gently kicking one of Kurt’s legs under the table.

Kurt laughs, kicking him back. “That’s true. It’s just that I like it so much when you say that to me,” he explains, almost purring softly at the mere thought of hearing a compliment like that addressed to himself, “You know, our little moments away from my shows and your team, back when we still had time for us… I miss that, just a bit.”

Dave’s whole body tenses for a moment, as he holds Kurt’s hand in his once again, squeezing it softly. “Well, then,” he says, “what if we could have the opportunity to take some time just for the two of us?”

Kurt blankly stares at him, blinking a couple of times and looking kind of clueless, which is actually funny, because Kurt never looks like that. He loves to keep things in control, he’s not really wild as a person – especially when they’re out of bed – and he panics when he feels something important is happening somewhere near him and he doesn’t understand what it is. This time, though, he seems more prone to breath in and out and count to ten before he panics. This gives Dave enough time to cast an uncertain glance at Finn and Leo, which are clearly rooting for him from their hidden position behind that curtain.

“It would be lovely,” Kurt admits, sighing a little, “But it’s not like it’s going to happen, isn’t it?”

“But if you could choose, I mean…” Dave clears his throat, looking and feeling kind of uncomfortable now that he feels the moment approaching, “if we could just go wherever we wanted, for, like, a week or two, where would you like to go?”

“Well, if I could choose, I would like to see Europe,” Kurt finally answers, his voice soft and distant, his eyes dreamy as he just needed to fantasize to go exactly where he wants to. “I’ve never been there, you know? London, maybe, or Paris. It would be wonderful to see Paris.”

Dave chuckles, holding Kurt’s hand more sweetly, now, squeezing it in his right hand as he brushes the soft skin on his knuckles. “I think we could go both to London and to Paris, then,” he nods, starting to find really amusing the bewildered look on Kurt’s face. “It has to be a pretty special trip, you know,” he adds with a little smile, “It’s for a special occasion.”

“What…?” Kurt asks, arching an eyebrow, “Dave, what are you talking about?”

Dave clears his throat again, hoping his voice won’t scratch when he starts singing. He actually can’t believe he’s about to sing. It’s the silliest thing ever. Suddenly, he wishes Puck had been convincing enough to stop him, back at his place. Instead he hadn’t, and now Dave’s here, leaving Kurt’s hand to stand up while Puck himself appears – apparently out of nowhere – holding his guitar in his arms like a lover, and starts playing the intro to the song. Dave prepares to sing and Kurt looks so shocked. Dave searches for his son’s eyes to remember why this whole insanity is still worth it, and Leo’s still hiding with Finn, and he’s smiling so brightly he alone is enough to lighten up the room, and Dave knows it’s worth it. It really is.

Say that you’ll marry me, sometimes carry me, and I will be there forever more for you,” he starts singing, as Kurt’s eyes wander from Dave’s face to Puck’s, so wide and shocked he’s almost hilarious.

“Oh my God…” he whispers, covering his mouth with both his hands, “Is it…?”

Dave can’t help but smile as he holds out a hand to Kurt and gently helps him to stand up, moving away from the table and holding him close to slowly dance with him. “And if you marry me, I will give ev’ry thing, and I will do anything that you need me to…”

“It’s a proposal!” Kurt almost sobs, tears shining in his blue eyes, “A singing proposal!” He tries to hide his face against Dave’s chest when he notices everybody’s staring – mostly because they’re dancing and Puck’s jumping all around them chanting backvocals and improvising improbable dance steps – but he ends up laughing as he keeps watching him, with an adoring look in his eyes. “You’re singing to me. Oh my God.”

Dave laughs a little. Kurt is so, so beautiful and cute, in this very moment, he can’t even believe he waited so much to ask him. It’s just the most natural thing to do. He loves Kurt so much, he always will. This is just the best gift he could give to him, and so he kneels right in front of his future husband and takes his hand in his own, looking straight in his eyes as he sings the last verses of the song. “You’ll know by the love in my eyes and the beat of my heart, I’ll be there. You’ll know ‘cause you’ll never be lonely again, anytime, anywhere. This I promise if you marry me.” He stops singing, smiling brightly. Puck stops right beside him, holding his breath like everybody else in the room. “So… What do you say?”

Kurt giggles confusedly, wiping away the tears from his own eyes. He’s on cloud nine, right now, and Dave feels so proud, both because he can tell and because he’s the one who brought him there. “I say yes,” Kurt answers, his voice breaking a little, “I would say yes a hundred times.”

Dave smiles again, reaching for the little velvet box he’s been hiding in the back pocket of his jeans for the whole night. Leo chose the ring, obviously, and Dave happily let him, so it’s really easy to smile brightly now that he hears Leo squeal in joy, still hiding somewhere, so Kurt can’t see him. “May I…?” he asks, his cheeks flushed as he moves the ring closer to Kurt’s finger.

“Oh God, you’ve got a ring too!” Kurt almost screams, holding out his hand to him, maybe a little too much eagerly. So much he actually almost slaps him in the face. Dave laughs, and he’s ok even with this.

“I knew you’d be happier for this than for my performance!” he comments, pretending to be really outraged, while the truth is he’s not. He puts the ring around Kurt’s finger and then stands up, searching for his eyes and smiling again when Kurt looks at him. He’s crying. He’s the most beautiful thing Dave has ever seen in his entire life, and he's his. “Are you happy?”

Kurt looks down at his ring and stares at him for a couple of seconds, like he can’t see anything else. “It’s so beautiful, I love it.” He raises his eyes again, holding Dave close around his waist. “And you… you…” he sobs a little, unable to stop crying or just calm down, “I love you too. I love you so much,” he whispers, moving forward to close the distance separating them, kissing him slowly and deeply, wrapping his arms around his neck.

The crowd around them cheers, everybody raises their glasses as they keep kissing, and there’s a little voice in the back of Dave’s mind that speaks right to his heart. “Not bad, Dave Karofsky,” that’s what the voice says, “not too shabby”. He parts from Kurt, and catches a glimpse of his son cheering with Finn. The moment Leo notices Dave’s looking at him, he immediately stops, smiles as shiny as the sun itself and gives him a thumbs up. That’s the best reward for the night, and all in all Dave can go home satisfied.

*


The news of the marriage spreads fast, thanks to a dense network of gossip and to some lovely cards, designed by Leo, who has run out of crayons to draw them all under the supervising and equally fussy eye of his father Kurt.

Soon, David finds out that after the worst part has been done – actually proposing to Kurt – there is no much left for him to do, because Kurt and Leo takes over the wedding and do everything in their power to be sure that he or any other adult male of the family is as out as possible of their way.

Female specimens of the species are called to help, though. Rachel, Mercedes, Lauren and even poor, confused Brittany, all converge to the Bridal Emporium, in Wapakoneta, answering the mandatory summoning of the little man himself, who is now really busy briefing them standing on a footstool.

“Me and daddy went through the shop on line catalogue and chose ten possible outfits for him,” he says, very seriously. “Now, daddy is gonna try them all and you will tell us what you think about them.”

“Is he always so business-like?” Rachel asks, looking at him with a raised eyebrow. “Shouldn't he be out, playing with a rattle or something?”

Living in New York and being busy as she is with all the big productions she is involved in, Rachel has seen Leo only a couple of times since the day he was born and quite obviously she doesn't know him – or any child – at all. She and Leo has been staring at each other curiously for quite some time now.

“Rachel, he's six years old. He is not a baby,” Mercedes tells her, rolling her eyes, exaggeratedly.

“Well, with toy soldiers or something, then,” she insists.

“Is it something wrong, aunt Rachel?” Leo asks, speaking up and looking in her direction like a teacher who has surprised her talking with the girl next to her.

Lauren leans on Rachel's shoulder. “You better pay attention, woman,” she murmurs. “Leo doesn't forgive.”

Rachel swallows. “No, everything's fine.”

“Good,” Leo nods. “Then, please be quiet. Daddy needs complete silence.”

“That kid scares me,” Rachel says when Leo's eyes finally leave her and she feels allowed to breathe again.

“He is not a kid,” Brittany steps in with her most serious face and casual tone. “He is a baby alien. He only eats cauliflower, except that on his planet they are pink and sparkly and taste like strawberry smoothie.”

Rachel looks at her not knowing if she should feel more compassionate or resigned.

“It's true,” Brittany nods eagerly. “He told me.”

As Rachel sighs, going for compassion, Leo glares at them and doesn't stop looking until he is sure they will not talk again. Then he smiles and proceeds to introduce his father who is been waiting behind the curtains of the changing room for half an hour now and is starting to feel hot in there.

The first three suits don't encounter the favor of the audience, who finds them way too plain for Kurt. The fourth and fifth are okay for most of the girls, but just okay is not exactly what Kurt and Leo are looking for. According to Leo, Kurt should look like a prince from the fairy tales, while Kurt wants something more memorable, with some tartan insertions and maybe a sash or some beads.

“So basically, we're looking for a punk tuxedo with some feathered hat or something?” Lauren asks, not quite sure.

“It's gonna be so easy to find it, here in Ohio,” Mercedes says, ironically.

“Why aren’t you marrying in New York?” Rachel asks. “You would have the best wedding shops at your disposal, catering services, flower arrangement specialists and let alone the most gorgeous city landscape to use as a background for your wedding photos. Besides, you need something to draw the attention from Dave, you know?”

Mercedes elbows her in her ribs so hard that Rachel almost bends over with a little cry. “Don't worry sweetie,” she says to Kurt, smiling lovingly “we are gonna find something you like.”

Fortunately, Kurt knows Rachel and her complete lack of tact too well to get upset by her words. Besides, he is actually so happy about this marriage that Rachel could say whatever she wants about Dave and he would smile at her anyway. “Dave wants to marry in Lima,” he explains as he takes off the sparkling blue marine vest he is wearing and gives it to Leo who hands him another one. “Here is where we met and fell in love with each other, so it seems right to celebrate our relationship where it began.”

Rachel lets out a very silly sound. “That's so romantic, Kurt!”

“I know,” he chuckles. “You wouldn't expect that from Dave, right?”

“I didn't expect anything from him, actually,” Rachel sighs. “I thought he wasn't the right guy for you.”

Mercedes elbows her again and then nods towards Leo. The kid is listening very carefully to everything they say but as every other kid he pretends not to, so he just prepares the next outfit for his father.

“Apparently, you were wrong,” Kurt smiles, anxious to end the discussion before it gets too ugly. “So, what's next, little pumpkin?”

“This one,” the boy says, holding up a swallowtailed coat he wants Kurt to wear since the first time they saw it in the catalogue. Leo likes it because it is old fashioned and with its whiteness satisfies his need to have some kind of bride at this wedding, even if his parents are both male. Obviously the bride has to be Kurt because Leo can't image Dave to play the role, not even wearing pants.

Kurt puts on the white suit and turns around in front of the mirror. From the couch where all his future bridesmaids are sitting comes a chorus of “aaw” and “wow” that makes Leo really proud.

“This is the best so far,” Mercedes smiles, pulling Leo on her lap. He settles against her body very naturally and nods a couple of times.

“I chose it,” He says.

“I suggest a touch of color in the front pocket,” Rachel says. “What about a blue foulard?”

“My cousin Layton had an onion in his front pocket, ” Brittany says casually. “To keep away the vampires.”

Leo frowns. “That's garlic, aunt Brit.”

“Garlic is for normal vampires,” she explains. “Onions are for wedding vampires. They come to steal the cake and make everybody sad.”

“Those would be great and funny stories,” says Mercedes, shaking her head. “If only you didn't believe them.”

Brittany doesn't understand why everybody is rolling their eyes, but she doesn't have the time to ask because her always ephemeral attention is caught by something only she sees and that she stands up to chase around the room for.

“So, what about your something borrowed?” Lauren asks as she helps Kurt straighten the coat on his back.

“Finn gave me his lucky tie. It was his father's, he wore it at his own wedding,” Kurt smiles to her through the reflection.

“Will you wear something of your mother as something old?” Mercedes asks.

Kurt nods. “I have one of her rings,” he says. “Dad gave it to me when she died because it was my favorite piece of her jewelry. It's gonna be my wedding ring.”

He smiles. His mother's memory never ceased to be painful, but it has always been a good and warming one as well. Kurt likes to imagine her next to himself now, looking at him fondly like he remembers her doing. She would sit on the porch as he was playing with his toy china set, pretending to have tea with His Majesty the Queen of England, and she would smile and weave at him. She had the most beautiful smile in the world.

“So, speaking of something old,” Rachel steps in and, by her tone, everybody knows she is doomed to say something extremely uncomfortable. “Did you invite Blaine?”

Silence falls on the room and Rachel gets elbowed in her ribs once again. Kurt clears his throat and he seems rather to be waiting for someone to change the subject than willing to answer the question.

“Wait,” Brittany stops doing whatever she's doing with her arms up in the air under the chandelier. “Can you use people for that? Isn't he too young to be something old?”

Leo suddenly remembers. “Blaine?” He says to his father. “Is he the guy without a surname? The one you were in love with when you were little?”

Kurt's eyes widen. “How do you know that?”

“Uncle Noah told me,” Leo explains. “He said that Blaine always wore a uniform and that he is a prince.”

“Don't worry, Kurt,” Lauren assures him. “I'm beating Puckerman senseless, tonight.”

“Well, he is charming,” Rachel states. “He could easily be a prince.”

“He is not a prince,” Kurt says, kneeling in front of his son. “He is an actor, like aunt Rachel and me. He was my boyfriend when we were in high school, long before you were born. Now, he is just a friend. A very good friend of mine.”

“And is he coming to the wedding?” Leo asks him.

“I don't know, baby,” Kurt kisses him on his forehead. “I sent him his card, we'll have to wait and see if he wants to come.”

*


Dad has been whining for the last hour and a half and Leonard can’t honestly take anymore of this shit. He knows he’s not supposed to use the S-word, and he’s sure that Kurt would go crazy if he even suspected he knows what does it mean (even though Leo can’t help but wonder what does his father think six years old kids are nowadays, whenever he thinks about all the words Kurt strongly believes Leo doesn’t understand, while he obviously does), but seriously, Dad’s out of his mind. Besides no one can hear him if he uses the word only in his thoughts. So he’s totally free and entitled to think his dad just lost his mind and that he can’t take anymore of his crazy shit, because it’s too much.

“Dad!” he almost screams, turning to him and punching him on his side just to make him stop babbling senselessly, “Would you please cut it out and give me a rest?!”

“I’m just saying!” Dave insists, flailing his arms everywhere, so wildly a couple of people waiting in front of the arrival gate actually turn and stare at him, trying to get if everything’s right or if he’s having a heart attack or something similar. Sometimes Leo feels ashamed to be seen with his parents. They’re so childish. “Your father could at least ask if I needed some help today! Offer to do something!”

“Dad, you know he would if he had time!” Leo whines, hiding behind Dave’s legs because people keep staring at him like he’s the reason why his father’s screaming so much, “He had to find the right dress for his bridesmaids. You know it’s not simple!”

“First of all, he’s not a bride, he doesn’t need bridesmaids,” Dave snorts, crossing his arms over his chest, which is actually good, because now, at least, he’s not flailing anymore, and Leo can stop hiding, “And then what, just because he’s got to go through countless shops ‘cause he’s demanding like a five years old spoiled girl, then I get to do everything else? Pick up Santana, choose the wedding cake, fetch my wedding ring, check on the place for the wedding reception and then drive Santana to fetch her dress for the ceremony?!”

“Dad, stop being so loud, please!” Leo whines again, covering his face with both his little hands, “You would have been the one picking up auntie Tana and driving her to fetch her dress anyway!”

“But I would have gladly spared myself the travel to the bakery and the wedding reception place!” Dave whines back, not even thinking about lowering his voice.

And then it happens. Then auntie Tana happens.

“I see you’re still the usual lame-ass, whining, unnerving, childish and insufferably annoying waste of space you’ve always been, Karofsky,” she says, appearing in front of the arrival gate wearing the shortest black leather mini-skirt ever seen on the face of earth, heels so high she looks taller than Dave and a white tight shirt that pushes up her boobs like she’s offering them to the world to adore them. Her eyes are cold as stone and her lips tightly closed, like carved on her face, but then they melt in a little smile and her gaze becomes warmer too, and everything in the world seems more beautiful and both Leo and Dave are looking at her like she’s a miracle, an angel just landed on Earth to bring the sacred word of God. “You haven’t changed at all, you asshole.”

It appears God’s sacred word is a little bit crude, today. He must be pissed off or something.

“Tana!” Dave smiles, his whole face lightening up. He practically throws himself at her, hugging her tightly while she does the same; she’s so smaller than him she completely disappears in his hug, and Leo can’t see her anymore. Which is disappointing, because auntie Tana is a pleasure to look at. Leo doesn’t really get why – but then he’s just six, he kind of knows he’s not supposed to know why, yet – but she is.

Auntie Tana lives in New York, just like aunt Rachel, but unlike aunt Rachel – who’s always walking blindfolded on the verge of a nervous and emotional breakdown – she lets only the cool things from New York affect her personality. She’s all kind of awesome, auntie Tana, always cool and stylish, and Leo loves how she talks, especially when she talks to him, because she doesn’t treat him like the idiotic kid everybody else thinks he is. She treats him like a young man, and that’s just freaking awesome.

However, since she lives so far away, it’s not unusual to see her just every once in a while, only on special occasions, also because she doesn’t like Lima very much. Leo agrees with her on that – among many other things he agrees with her on – because Lima’s just depressing. There’s nothing in here, that’s why he wants to be a pilot when he grows up, so he can travel the world on his shiny red car and see everything that’s worth seeing. And that’s why he wanted to be an astronaut before wanting to be a pilot, because who else sees more than what an astronaut sees? An astronaut gets to see the whole world from the space! That would be awesome. Just thinking about it makes Leo want to be an astronaut again, though now he’s totally over it and totally into driving and cars. He wanted to be something else, before wanting to be an astronaut, by the way; he doesn’t remember anymore because he was very, very little back then, but he’s sure it was something that would lead him to see a lot of different places too, like an airplane pilot, or a magician – because magicians travel the world with their shows, obviously – or maybe join the circus. Or something like that. Something that can take him away from Lima, because he doesn’t like it here. Auntie Tana’s right, she always is, Lima’s just plain boring.

That’s not important right now, though, that’s just him spacing out and drowning in his own thoughts as he often does. Actually, so often people thinks he’s dumb. Because there are times he just sits there staring at the void in his head and he thinks and thinks and thinks and…

“So,” auntie Tana says, breaking the flow of his thoughts, “Why do you let this lousy imitation of a father pester you like this?” she asks, bending over Leo and wrapping her arms around him, lifting him up in a sweet and warm hug. Leo chuckles, leaning against her and enjoying her delicious smell and the soft sensation of her skin under his hands. “You’re, like, twice a smart-ass than he is, concentrated in less than half the space. You should already be going around accomplishing your important mission.”

“Which would be?” Dave inquires, raising an eyebrow at her while he retrieves her enormous luggage and leads them both to the car.

Auntie Tana smirks and Leo blushes. She’s so beautiful, she’s unbelievable. When he grows up, he wants a girl just like her. Better, he’s going to marry her precisely, because there’s no one like auntie Tana in the whole world and he loves her so much. “Conquering and then destroying the world, obviously,” she answers, and Leo laughs, amused.

“It’s on my to-do list!” he nods, and his father rolls his eyes.

“Don’t give him any weird suggestion, he might just as well take you seriously.”

Auntie Tana chuckles – Leo feels her soft laughter vibrate under his fingertips, and he chuckles too – sitting in the car and letting Leo free to climb on the backseat, placing himself right between herself and his father, like he’s supposed to guide them or something, and he therefore needs to see the streets clearly.

“So, where are we going?” she asks, “I wanna go shopping.”

“I’m afraid that’ll have to wait,” Dave snorts. “We have to do a couple of things and see a couple of places before.”

“You’re always the same,” Santana pouts, crossing her arms over her chest and looking out the window as Dave starts the engine and begins driving down the street, leaving the airport, “You would take any chance to avoid taking me shopping!”

“Believe me, Lopez, I would trade our plans for the afternoon with shopping with you anytime,” Dave sighs, shaking his head, “But you see the little soldier sitting…” he looks at his son in the rearview mirror, “I said sitting,” he repeats, and Leo lets out an irritated snorting sound, sitting properly on the backseat. “What was I saying? Oh, yeah, the little soldier. He’s here to watch our every move. We can’t deviate from the original plan, or we will be forced to face the sentence of death.”

Santana looks at him, raising an eyebrow. “You’re such a drama queen,” she says. “So, Leo, where are we going?” she asks again, turning to the kid and smiling at him.

He instantly smiles back. “First, we have to go and fetch dad’s wedding ring,” he explains, “Daddy was smart enough to have his already, but dad wasn’t, so he had to buy it, and today it should be ready, so we have to go and pick it up. If you ask me, it was stupid of him not to have a ring already. Daddy’s always smarter.”

Santana nods in agreement. “I know, your father here is just dumb. It’s an old story.”

“Could you both please give me a rest?” Dave whines, keeping his eyes locked on the street both because he doesn’t want to take the wrong way, and because he doesn’t want to give Leo and Santana too much attention, since he doesn’t think they deserve it.

“Then,” Leo proceeds, ignoring him, “we have to go pick the cake.” He smiles fondly just thinking about it, “Daddy said I could choose it, because he wants me to like it.”

“So we’re going to have a damn chocolate car-shaped cake, at our wedding,” Dave sighs. His son glares at him, pouting.

“Dad, you’re just so dumb,” he protests, “I’m not stupid, I know that the wedding cake must be pure white. We’re going to have it chocolate flavored, sure, but covered in cream!” he decides with a bright smile. “What do you think, auntie Tana?”

“I think you’re a little genius, really,” she answers, giggling. “Besides, I love me some chocolate to bite at, in every way this sentence could possibly be interpreted, so bring it on.”

“If you could just keep your innuendos far from my firstborn underage ears, Tana, that’d be very kind of you,” Dave snorts. He ends up being ignored as usual.

“After that,” Leo continues, “We’re going to check on the place daddy and I chose for the wedding reception. It’s awesome, it’s in the country. There are hills and a lake and horses running around. They keep them in their stables and then let them run around free on the horizon during the photocall. It’s great.”

“Oh, my God,” Santana laughs, shaking her head and looking at Dave as she points at Leo, “Is he real? Is he a clone or something?”

“Just… don’t let me even start on this,” Dave sighs, and Leo looks at both of them, puzzled.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asks.

Santana turns to him, smiling sweetly. “Not at all, buddy. Anyway, when are we going to buy some candies for auntie Tana?”

“I have candies,” Leo answers, “Here, in my pocket.” He nods and starts scrambling in his jeans’ pockets, while Santana gracefully laughs her ass off.

“I didn’t mean real candies, Leo,” she explains, “I meant a dress for me.”

“Oh!” Leo nods, not at all bothered by having said and done something really stupid, “Right after we check on that place. We can go shopping and you can buy a wonderful silk red dress and be beautiful while being dad’s best man.”

Santana laughs again, the thought of a silk red dress awakening a lot of memories in her mind. She looks at Dave, and he looks back at her, smirking lightly. She does the same. “A red dress, huh?” she ponders, “We’ll see about that.”

*


“That’s not exactly what I had in mind,” Dave says, and he really hopes Santana doesn’t ignore him this time because he’s had enough of this behavior. She and Leo kept ignoring him the whole afternoon, and it was kind of unnerving. They chose the cake, they told the decorator how to arrange the room for the reception, they even had some – definitely unwanted – remarks on his wedding ring, and had to surrender and take it as it was only because there was not enough time to order a new one who they would have liked better.

This time, though, Santana can’t just keep going her own way ignoring him, and not only because even Leo (who would usually be more than happy to kiss the ground beneath her feet) seems confused now, but mainly because it’s Dave’s wedding they’re talking about, and he won’t allow his best man, which happens to be his ex-fake girlfriend too, to wear a suit more manly than the one he himself is going to wear.

“Oh, shut up, Karofsky, it’s awesome,” Santana answers, smiling so brightly her face practically shines. “And it looks so damn sexy on me.”

“It’s a man suit!” Dave insists, flailing his arms and stopping only when he sees his own reflection on the mirror Santana’s using to look at herself, and find himself so stupid he barely can stand himself. “You want a suit? Fine by me! We’ll find a woman’s suit!”

“But I want this one,” Santana replies, tying the bow tie around her white shirt’s collar. “It’s amazing. You can fix it for my body, can you?” she asks to the young, timid tailor who’s throwing frightened glances at her and Dave alternatively.

“I… I guess,” the guy answers, torturing the tape he’s holding in his hands.

“Great,” Santana smiles, “Then go on, take my measurements,” she commands, holding out her arms and standing in front of the mirror, offering herself to the man. He nods and starts working, and as he moves around her like a busy bee she looks at Dave in the mirror. “What’s your problem, now?”

“If you don’t get in on your own…” he snorts, sitting on the stuffed bench where Leo has been sitting in silence for the last half hour, since Santana picked her outfit. “Tell her something!” Dave says to his son, and the kid turns to him, his eyes so big Dave can see his reflection inside them.

“She’s wearing a man suit,” he says.

“Yeah, I can see that already,” Dave scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest and turning back to Santana. “You see? You traumatized him. Look at his face! He’s shocked.”

“He’s yours and Kurt’s son, I don’t see why crossdressing should shock him,” Santana peacefully answers.

“Why? Because we don’t crossdress! That’s why!” Dave says, eyes wide open, quite shocked himself.

“Oh, come on,” Santana laughs, “Kurt used to wear skirts all the time in high school.”

“Ok, first, he didn’t wear skirts all the time,” Dave considers, using his fingers to count his points on the matter, “Secondly, he still wears them, but they’re skirts for men. Can you see the subtle yet essential difference? That’s why I said you can wear a suit, if you want, but let’s be sure it’s made for a woman!”

“Oh, cut it out, Karofsky!” Santana finally stops him, turning around so suddenly and violently she makes the poor tailor trip and fall on the ground. “I’m sorry, man,” she apologizes with a little smile, and then jumps off the footstool she was standing on to help the man take her measurements. In a couple of steps, she’s only inches away from Dave, and she looks at him, clearly bothered by his nonsense talking. She looks at him like that just for a couple of seconds, though, because she kneels besides him right after that, looking at Leo. “Hey, buddy,” she smiles, “What about this suit?”

“It’s a little confusing,” Leo answers, biting at his lower lip.

“I get it. But, you know, not every confused thing is bad on principle. Some things just need to be like that, because they can’t be explained any other way,” she nods. “Me, for example,” she adds, smirking. “I really like this suit. Is it confusing? Yes. Will people look at me like I’m some kind of alien from outer space? Probably, yeah. But the real point is, do I look good in it?” she smiles again, “You tell me.”

Leo actually takes his time, before answering. And that’s bad, because it means he’s actually considering the facts as he sees them. And Dave knows what Leo sees, because he’s seeing it himself.

“You look good in everything, auntie Tana,” he finally answers, blushing a little as he smiles confidently, or better, pretending to feel really confident as he compliments her.

Santana laughs, standing up, perfectly satisfied. “Then it’s decided,” she says, turning to Dave. “You have something else to complain about, Karofsky?” she asks him.

Dave just scoffs and laughs, shaking his head. “I missed you, Lopez,” he says, instead of answering.

Santana winks at him, climbing back on the footstool and letting the tailor go back to his job. “Man, please, just stop being in love with me, it’s been ages already, and you’re getting married.” Her smiles turns sweeter, and Dave can see it in the mirror’s reflection. “I can’t believe it. I’m so proud of you.”

Dave smiles back at her, stepping forward and entwining his fingers with hers. “That’s the whole point of the matter, in the end,” he says, “I mean, being proud.”

“You sure have come a long way,” she says, turning to him, still smiling. “And you’re happy, now.”

He chuckles softly, pressing his lips against her in a sweet, chaste kiss. Leo looks at them and smiles, because what he’s seeing is just cute. And he’s just happy. His fathers are going to marry. Auntie Tana and every single person he and his fathers love will be there. It will be the most beautiful wedding ever seen, and he feels proud about it. And dad’s right, that’s the whole point of the matter, in the end. Being proud.

This, and – as he demands in a whimsical whine jumping off the bench – getting to kiss auntie Tana on her lips too.

*


All things being ordered to various shop owners or taken care of by Kurt himself or his mobilized soon-to-be husband, the only thing left are the wedding rehearsals, which mainly consist into reenacting every single part of the ceremony as many times as possible because, as Kurt has said too many times not to be hated by all his guests, practice makes perfect.

After a tiring three hours session of walking down the aisle, pretended wedding vows to each other and an insane amount of singing, Dave asked for mercy and Kurt granted him and all their pissed guests a five minutes rest which they all accepted cursing and throwing at him very bad words to say to a groom.

He himself, though, won't rest, because he can't waste time sitting when all the decorations are yet to be done. Actually, in the past week the interior decorator hired for the job has been seeing to Kurt's every need decoration-wise, but Kurt was so annoyed with him eventually that he smiled kindly, paid him as agreed and then changed everything he had done to the last leaf in the center-piece on the reception's tables.

Now, he's rearranging flowers for the fifth time today because apparently the way they look good one moment is never appropriate the moment after, and as he moves rose petals and brings vases around the room, he sings.

Hey little sister, what have you done? Hey little sister who's the only one,” he chirps, swinging from one vase of petunias to the other, completely unaware of the eyes spying upon him from behind the curtains.

When his secret admirer comes out from behind his hidden place to sing with him, Kurt doesn't really need to turn around to know who that is.

Hey little sister, who's your superman? Hey little sister, who's the one you want?” Blaine sings, his voice stunning as it has always been. “Hey little sister, shot gun!

He dances as he comes forward, shining like a new dime in his perfect black Italian suit that fits him perfectly.

Kurt turns around and smiles, so used to play along that he doesn't stop singing. “It's a nice day to start again. It's a nice day for a white wedding. It's a nice day to start again.

He keeps moving vases between the tables, dancing around Blaine and still never touching him or tripping over him because he still remembers very well how Blaine moves and how to dance with him.

They are so good at this, they look like a living musical; the only thing missing here is the music springing out of nowhere and a line of backup dancers dressed up as waiters and waitresses doing their routine in the background.

Blaine sings the refrain with Kurt, following his moves and dancing around the flowers, stopping only at the end of the song playing simultaneously and only in both their heads. Then, he laughs.

“Well, it's good to see you haven't change,” he says, his smile always so sweet.

“It's good to see you didn't change either,” Kurt smiles back as he decides to leave those plants where they are, for now. He's got another twenty-four hours to change his mind several times. “When did you arrive?”

Blaine comes a little closer. “A couple hours ago. I wasn't really sure if you wanted to see me, so I took my time to make myself presentable.” He looks at him from head to toes. “You already are, I see.”

Kurt would like to say to Blaine to stop being so cute; instead he blushes as he was still sixteen. “Thank you,” he says. “You look good too. You're pretty elegant even when you're not wearing your old uniform. And by the way, I wouldn't have called you if I had not wanted to see you.”

Blaine keeps smiling and tilts his head to the side, just slightly, nodding toward the path between the trees they can see just outside the building. “Do you want to take a walk with me?” He asks. “I've seen a wonderful lake, coming over. You chose a lovely place for the wedding.”

Kurt gives one last look around, wondering if the flower decoration are really fine. “Yes, I'd love to.” He cleans his hands with an elegant pochette he chose to match his tie today and takes his bag. “I've always dreamed to marry by the lake,” he explains as he and Blaine goes out in the park where the reception will be given. “It's kinda magical. Like, any moment you expect to see fairies and pixies come out of water and trees when the sun goes down.” He giggles. “Pretty stupid, isn't it?”

Blaine looks at him like he is the most wonderful thing in the world, which is why Kurt was so crazy for him when they were in high school. Since everybody were either just friends with him or looked at him like a freak, it felt good when he was with Blaine, who always treated him like the porcelain he took one of his nicknames from.

“No, I don't think so. You seem really... happy,” Blaine says, leading him to the lake. “Do you think we could hold hands? If you've always dreamed of getting married by the lake, my dream has always been to walk hand in hand by the lake with a beautiful man, and now that I have the chance I'd like to take it.”

Kurt looks awkwardly at Blaine's outstretched hand, even though he's eager to accept it. “I don't know, Blaine. This could be misunderstood.”

Suddenly, they're both gentlemen from the past, speaking in old-fashioned manner and asking for each other hands to hold. It has always been this way with Blaine, who seems to come from another time and brings it with him wherever he goes.

“I would never force you to do something inappropriate,” he says, smiling. “But no one's around.”

Kurt hesitates for a moment but then holds his hand.

They walk hand in hand for a while, looking at the light of the setting sun shining on the lake's surface. The evening is quiet, there are not many people around. The chilling air doesn't invite people to stay longer after the sun goes down. Kurt likes this moment of the day, when everything is plunged into orange and pink.

“So, David Karofsky, huh?”

Kurt smiles fondly, hearing the name. “He is very special.”

“I would have never thought.” Blaine squeezes his hand a little. “But then, you're obviously happy. You look radiant, like a brand new person, from... well, from when I was still around.”

Kurt swallows, slightly. He never really wanted to talk about his relationship with Blaine in high school and the way it ended. He has always been one of those people who actually ignores the pink elephant if it makes them really, really sad and confused. “I was not happy with you, at the very end,” he admits, probably for the first time in years. Not that Blaine didn't know that, but still Kurt had never clearly said it. “And I felt bad because I wasn't. With David things are easy, they've always been. Everything has always happened so naturally with him.”

Blaine nods. “I know you weren't happy. We both weren't.” He sighs and looks at him. “You know, I loved you until the very last moment. Or at least I thought so. I really couldn't understand how could we be unhappy if we loved each other, since I was sure we did. But then, maybe love isn't enough, sometimes.”

Kurt walks looking at the ground. He's unconsciously following the stone path that leads to the lake, stepping only on stones, not touching the grass as he used to do when he was a little kid and he would never step on the lines between tiles. “Maybe it's only because sometimes it's not the same kind of love,” he says. “Love comes in different degrees.”

Blaine naturally helps him step from stone to stone, gently holding his hand. “You think you loved me less than you love Karofsky now?” He asks, his voice firm as he smiles.

“I... no... I don't know, Blaine,” he says, confused. “Things now are completely different, and what I felt back then, it's not what I feel now. Maybe it really was love for the old me, I was different too.”

The sun has set behind the horizon, leaving them in a greyish, dusty light. The outlines of things are fading into darkness, and everything around them seems unreal, almost fairy-like.

They stop on the lake shore, water almost lapping at their feet. Nearby there is the same boat Leo has seen bringing the bride to his groom the day he asked one of his father to marry the other one. It lies on its side, as if sleeping now that the night comes.

Kurt looks at the last of the light disappearing behind the lake and Blaine looks at him. He can't help but gently brush his cheek with two fingers. “I think I understand what you're talking about. It's the same for me. It just felt so right, back then, but if I try to imagine that kind of love happening to me right now, I know it wouldn't feel right enough.”

“Yes, exactly. And then... I can't really see myself without Dave anymore,” he says, leaning on his hand, almost naturally. Those are probably some pretty mixed signals which he's not really aware of sending, at least not until Blaine comes closer and bends on him to kiss him slightly on his forehead.

“I'm glad to hear that. Now I know I can give you away without regrets.”

Kurt blushes furiously. “Blaine?”

“I'm not doing anything wrong,” Blaine says, still caressing his cheek. “Just, it feels like we left something incomplete. You know, when we broke up, we didn't really... we just turned our back and left. No goodbyes, like we weren't worthy of a good end. I think we were wrong. We deserve our goodbye, as dramatic and romantic as it could be. So, can I...” He comes even closer. “Can I kiss the bride?”

Kurt slightly panics because his first mental answer was 'yes!' and then he thought of Dave and everything else, so he just shut his mouth. It shouldn't feel like Blaine is right, but it does.

Besides, Kurt has been missing an end to their story for all these years, and this could be it.

“Only to close what we were together. For good,” he clarifies, just to be sure they are on the exact same page, here. “So we can really move on.”

Blaine smiles and nods as he gently brushes his lips against Kurt's. He barely touches them with his tongue, asking for permission, which Kurt gives him, opening his mouth enough to let him in.

Blaine kisses him more deeply and a little hungrier than before, holding him tight to his body for a couple of minutes before slowly backing off.

Kurt stands there, flushing and a bit breathless with emotion, just like he would at sixteen after every kiss Blaine has ever gave to him, that's why Blaine finds him so damn cute even now. He smiles at him and presses his nose against Kurt's. “Now, that was a proper ending.”

Maybe Kurt is trembling a little as he looks at him. For a moment it feels like it's ten years ago and everything that happened has yet to come. It's a strong, warming feeling, one that makes time look gentle and fair and something to cherish while it usually isn't. Kurt smiles fondly; he doesn't want their story back, he just likes the way it came back to life so easily for them, the tenderness they both can look at it now, free as they are of all their anger and regrets. “Yes, it's an ending.”

“Now, don't look so scared,” Blaine laughs a little, feeling him trembling. “Or your fiancée will think I hurt you or something.”

Kurt would like to tell him he's not scared at all but a sudden noise stops him before he can say anything. He turns around to find Leo coming out of the bushes, with his eyes wide open and filled with tears.

“Leo... Oh my God,” Kurt brings his hand to this lips, wondering if his son has been there all the time, but obviously he was if his horrified expression is any proof. “Honey, listen to me.”

He moves towards him, trying to explain, but the kid shakes his head and bursts into tears. “I hate you!” he screams, and then he goes back inside the bushes, getting lost in the woods.

Blaine is confused. He keeps looking from Kurt to the now still bush and back. “Who is this?” he asks. Then, he realizes. Kurt obviously talked to him about Leonard, but he had never seen him before. “Is he your...?” he tries, but Kurt ignores him completely, leaving him to figure everything out by himself.

He kneels on the ground and tries to go after his son, but the bush is obviously too thick for him to pass through. “Leo! Oh God. Please, come back here. Come back, sweetheart. Everything's fine.”

Leo hides behind a bush, crying. He waits for his father to spring up to his feet again ad walk in a completely wrong direction before running to the deep of the woods as fast as he can.

Everything has happened so fast that, for the first time in ages, Blaine actually doesn't know what to do. Moreover, after hearing about the boy just vaguely, getting to meet him like this just adds weirdness to weirdness. “Kurt! Wait, you— I'm so sorry,” he blurts out.

Kurt doesn't seem to care about him or what he is saying. He keeps looking around frantically. “Where did he go? Leo!” When he finally turns to Blaine is only to say, “He saw us. He must be so upset!”

Blaine has always been good at handling situations. So, despite his general awkwardness, he takes everything in his hands and grabs Kurt by the shoulder, forcing him to look in his eyes.

“Listen, you have to stay calm. He can't be too far, but we need to go back and tell the others he ran away, because he could have gone in any direction. We need to be a lot to search for him, do you understand?”

Kurt nods, but he's not all there. His mind is racing fast, coming up with all the most dreadful scenarios for the end of his son's desperate run. “It's all my fault,” he mutters.

Blaine hugs him tight. “No, hey. It's not your fault,” he tries to soothe him. “He is upset only because he doesn't know. We will explain everything to him. He'll understand, you'll see.”

“He's only six, Blaine.” Kurt sobs a little. “The only thing he'll understand is that I was cheating on his father.”

Blaine knows exactly how their kiss must have looked like to the eyes of a six years old. Kids Leo's age tends to be pretty definitive in their judgment. He remembers very well how it had felt to be discovered naked by a little kid in the bed of his father, without having any good explanation for that. But he doesn't see any use in telling this story to Kurt right now. “You weren't cheating,” he says instead. “We'll explain and everything's going to be alright, I promise. But you have to stay here with me and keep your feet on the ground, alright? I can't solve this alone, you have to stay calm.”

Kurt nods again and tries to breathe. “Okay. You go and bring the others, tell them he's gone and we need their help to find him. I'm calling Dave.”

“Alright. Just— maybe it's better if we don't mention this kiss thing, at least until your kid is back, safe and sound.”

Kurt nods because he doesn't really want to tell about this kiss to anyone, let alone Dave.

As Blaine runs back to the place where the others are, he turns around and dials Dave's number, biting nervously at his nails and looking around as he hopes to see Leo coming out from the bushes somewhere nearby.

Dave’s phone rings twice before he picks up. Whatever they're doing down there, Kurt can hear it in the background. Puck and Santana are singing some very foul song and Dave is still laughing and speaking to them when he answers the phone. “Hey Fancy,” he says, still laughing happily. “If you called to tell me you're leaving me at the altar, I have to tell you you're early. The wedding's in two days and you should wait for that moment to run away. In the meantime, you're late for the rehearsal, so...”

If Kurt weren't so worried, he would think Dave is a little bit drunk too – they're probably rehearsing the toast too, apparently – but he has no time to deal with it, especially since he feels too guilty to blame Dave for a drink too many. “Dave, something happened. Leo ran away and I don't know where he went,” he says, his voice breaking.

Dave instantly sobers up and stops chuckling. “What? Kurt, what are you talking about? Is something wrong?”

“He ran away,” Kurt repeats, because he doesn't want to have to be more specific. He keeps speaking as he walks, looking around the park. “I'm searching for him but I can't find him anywhere. He was upset, Dave. I'm afraid he's gone somewhere dangerous. He doesn't really know what he's doing right now.”

Dave is already worried out of his mind like every time something happens or is supposed to happen to his only son, but he pretends to be calm because he can tell Kurt is already upset enough for the two of them.

“Okay, Kurt, just… where are you?”

“By the lake. I was rearranging flowers for the reception. Blaine's here too,” he says, nodding to every single word as if he needs a great deal of concentration to answer. He's hardly breathing properly, panic taking over. “He's getting the others to look for Leo.”

Dave tenses slightly at Blaine's name. “...alright. Just stay there. I'm coming. Don't move. I'll see you there and we'll search for Leo together, alright baby?”

“If something happens to him...” Kurt can't finish the sentence because he starts crying. “It's my fault, David. I'm the worst father ever.”

Dave starts heading to the lake while he's still on the phone. “Now, that's talking nonsense,” he says in a soothing tone. He's so used to take care of Kurt's fits, whatever the cause, that words come to him automatically in the right order and tone. Sometimes it doesn't even matter what he says, Kurt just needs to hear him speaking softly, like a child would do. “You know Leo loves you. You're a good father and whatever happened I'm sure we can make everything right again. Don't worry.”

“Just hurry. He can be anywhere,” Kurt says again.

Dave can already see the lake and the little white reception house they rented for the party. “Don't worry, we'll find him. He'll be alright. I'm almost there.”

*


He doesn’t even know how he should be supposed to call this kid, that’s all Blaine can think about as he searches through the bushes, his eyes wide open, ready to catch even the smallest glimpse of something moving behind the leaves and the branches covered in thorns.

“Leonard?” he calls, tentatively, “Leonard, where are you? If you’re hiding in here, please, come out. It’s dirty and dangerous!”

Leo really is there after all. He tries to stay still as much as he can, though he’s got mud in his shoes, making his trousers dirty and wet, and every single thorn is hurting him all over his face and arms and neck. He curls himself in a ball and looks at Blaine, hoping he doesn’t find him, but that would obviously be too much to ask to his luck, and so, after a couple of seconds of more thorough research, Blaine finally parts two branches and finds him. “Oh! Here you are,” he says, trying a little smile, “Would you come out of that bush? It’s getting all your clothes dirty and torn. Your father’s going to be upset about it.”

“Why are you here?!” Leonard finally spits out, looking right in Blaine’s eyes. He’s so angry he just wants to curl in a ball and cry. Somewhere inside him, he knows he’s too small to contain such anger. His body can’t take it. He just wants to let it out, but he doesn’t want to cry in front of this man, he doesn’t want to make him think he’s just a crybaby.

“It’s just a casualty,” Blaine speaks softly, his reassuring smile never leaves his lips. “Everybody’s been searching for you, I was just lucky enough to find you before the others. Come on, come here.”

“No!” Leo answers, backing off even more, not caring about all the thorns pushing against the light fabric of his shirt, hurting his back, “No, I don’t want to. I hate you!”

“But you don’t even know me,” Blaine argues, chuckling slightly. The sound of his voice alone makes Leo even more angry! Why is this man here? Why can’t he just disappear? He doesn’t want to see him ever again, let alone have him so close to himself, as he is now.

“I know you well enough, thanks,” he almost growls, “And stop smiling! You’re creepy, and ugly.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Blaine is laughing now, holding his hands out, “You sure don’t mince words, do you? Alright, what if I just sit here beside the bush, and you stay there where you are now? So that we can talk a little.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Leo answers, shrugging and looking away, “You ruined my family.”

“Now, now,” Blaine says, sitting on the ground with his legs crossed, “Aren’t you overreacting? Just a bit?” Leo doesn’t answer; Blaine waits for a couple of minutes for him to just say something, but that doesn’t happen, and in the end he just has to surrender and sigh deeply, shaking his head. “Alright, if you don’t want to talk to me, maybe I can talk to you, I guess. You know, your father was a very, very important part of my life for almost two wonderful years. That’s why I’m here now, to begin with.” Leo turns his head and stares at him with so much hate in his eyes he could easily kill him, if a look was enough for that. Blaine tries to ignore the glare, and keeps talking. “Unfortunately, we didn’t break up well. We just kind of… stopped talking to each other, you know what I mean? We were so afraid to do or say things that could make everything even worse than it already was, that we kind of just… stopped. And when you stop talking honestly and openly with the person you love, then you’re doomed to grow apart from him. That’s why talking is important. Not only between lovers, but between everybody else, too,” he nods, throwing a meaningful glance towards the kid.

“I… I don’t care about you,” Leo says, looking down to the tip of his new shoes, now ruined and all covered in mud and dirt. Daddy’s going to be so mad about it, he thinks for a moment, but then he remembers he doesn’t even care about daddy anymore. He cheated on dad, he ruined everything with this man, and he will never forgive him for that. “I don’t care about you at all!” he repeats, now looking back ad Blaine with the same angry eyes, “You and daddy did a very bad thing! And I hate you, I hate you both!” he screams, holding his legs to his chest and cuddling himself a little, since no one seems around to do it in his place.

“Look…” Blaine tries, sighing deeply, “Your dad and I probably didn’t act very mature, before. We probably shouldn’t have kissed. But the fact is, we needed to. Which does not mean I’m going to take him away from you or your father. He’s yours, but there was a time in which he was mine, and that time had to come to an end, someway. Kissing was the way we chose to reach that end, do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“You shouldn’t have touched him!” Leo insists, “You’re right, he’s not yours, so you shouldn’t have! Uncle Noah said you’re a prince, but you don’t look like one to me. Princes never steal princesses from their true love!” he pauses for a moment, looking at his shoes again. He loved those shoes. And now they’re ruined, like everything else. And it’s all Blaine’s fault. “Daddy always used to say this, before you came back. Princes are good, they protect true love, they don’t ruin it.”

Blaine can’t help but letting out a little sad smile. “You’re right, kid,” he says, “I’m not a prince. I’m just a guy who’s been very happy with your father, when he was young. Your daddy is the right prince for your dad, and I’m not going to steal Kurt from you in any way. I just came to say how happy I was, and to say goodbye. That was just a goodbye.”

“That was a kiss,” Leo says angrily, “Kisses are important, you don’t give a kiss away!”

“And you’re right again,” Blaine nods, moving closer to him, “In fact, that was not given away, I can assure you. But, you know, not every kisses have the same meaning. Some kisses mean ‘I love you’, some others could mean ‘you’re my beloved baby and I’m glad to have you’, and then there are kisses that mean other things, like ‘I’m sorry’, or ‘hello”. Your father’s and mine meant goodbye. It was just… really, just a way to close that part of our life for good.”

“I don’t believe you,” Leo says, looking away again, “Yours was not a goodbye kiss. I know goodbye kisses. Daddy gives them to dad when he goes to work every morning. That one was a… a wet kiss,” he explains, blushing a little, “And you were holding his hand by the lake.”

“Now, now, what do you even know about wet kisses?” Blaine laughs faintly, a little embarrassed by the whole situation, “Listen, I know it seemed kind of passionate and a little bit too much romantic, maybe, but I swear it had nothing to do with being in love with each other. I am sure Kurt only loves your dad and you. I am just an old friend.”

“For your information,” Leo starts, looking half outraged and half still angry, “I know a lot about wet kisses! I’m six! And my daddies always kiss that way when they forget I’m in the room with them. And then daddy always blushes a little. Old friends don’t kiss like that. You… I don’t like you. I don’t want you here, so just go away!”

Blaine sighs heavily, running a hand through his hair. He keeps them longer than he used to, it’s easier to have them that way, so he can keep them or cut them, depending on what producers ask him to do for every show he has a role in. He likes his hair long, he likes to keep them free as he's been doing in the last few years, but sometimes they’re just a burden. Like now, for example, when the weather is hot and the air is sticky and he’s feeling clumsy and stupid because he can’t even talk properly to a child to make him understand he didn’t want to ruin his life. “I guess you’ll never forgive me, will you?” he asks, throwing a sad glance towards Leonard, “I’m very sad about it. I always hoped I’d be friend with Kurt’s babies. Maybe like one of those uncles you don’t see often but cover you in gifts when they come to pay a visit.”

“You’re not my uncle, and you never will,” Leo says bitterly, curling himself up in a ball again. “Go away, I can’t stand you anymore.”

Blaine sighs again, crawling closer to him, almost entering the bushes as well, though he’s too big to fit properly in there like Leo does. He looks at the boy and he is so small and cute, he can’t help but feeling really bad for what he did. He knows there was nothing really wrong in kissing Kurt the way he did, especially because it meant something important that had to be clarified once and for all, and he knows that Leo himself would probably understand it better if he was just a little older, but he is not, and Blaine did something that he can’t accept now. And that’s just sad, because if there’s something Blaine didn’t want was to be hated by Kurt’s only son. “Look,” he says in a low, reassuring voice, “I understand you hate me and you think I did something bad. That’s alright, you have your reasons, but everybody’s really worried for you, because they don’t know where you are and they still don’t know I already found you. We should go back to them.”

“I won’t go anywhere with you!” Leo protests, looking even shocked by the mere thought.

“Well, you could just go ahead, then,” Blaine ponders, shrugging a little, “I’ll wait until you’re far enough, and then I’ll follow you. You won’t even see me, I’ll be like the invisible man, just following you to make sure you’re alright.”

“I don’t need you to watch over me, I now how to come back. I can take care of myself,” Leo answers, looking at him, suspiciously.

“Well, alright, but I have to come back too,” Blaine says, blinking a couple of time. The kid’s a tough nut. “Mmh, how can we solve this problem?” he thinks about it for a couple of minutes, and then just smiles. “Here, I have an idea. You’ll go ahead, I’ll wait a couple of minutes and then I’ll come too, but I swear I won’t check up on you. I’ll just be casually walking the same way you do.”

Leonard doesn’t really seem impressed with his idea, and he takes a lot of time to think about it, considering all the pros and the cons and ultimately deciding he’s starting to freeze, he’s wet to the bone because of the rapidly approaching evening dampness in the air and he just wants to go home, even if that means seeing daddy again, which is something he would rather not do at the moment. “Fine,” he says, crawling out of the bushes, “But if you try and get close, I’ll start screaming.”

Blaine raises both his hands. “I promise I’ll keep my distance.”

Leo looks at him for another couple of seconds, to be sure he’s not going to do something silly like waiting for him to turn his back to grab him and put him in a bag or something, and only once he’s satisfied and he believes he’s been staring long enough, he turns his back at Blaine and starts walking back to the place where rehearsals took place hours ago.

Keeping his promise, Blaine waits to see him disappear behind a little hill covered in green grass, and then starts walking behind him, retrieving his phone from his back pocket to call Kurt.

*


Kurt interrupts the call and lets out a relieved sigh, closing his eyes and passing his open hand over his tired eyelids. “It was Blaine, he told me Leo’s coming from that way,” he says to Dave with a little smile, pointing at the little path that can be seen through the hills surrounding the place.

“Yeah, there he is,” Dave nods, spotting Leonard approaching slowly. The kid moves like he’s unwilling to come back, which is definitely weird, and Dave finds himself running towards him without even realizing he’s doing it. “Hey, buddy!” he says, finally reaching the boy and kneeling in front of him, opening his arms to offer a hug. “Where were you?”

“Leo!” Kurt calls him, coming closer too, “Thank God you’re ok.”

Leonard ignores Kurt completely, though, and turns his head the other way, throwing himself between Dave’s arms, hugging him and clinging desperately to his shoulders. Worried beyond limits, Dave holds him tight. He has never seen his son like that, not even when he was very little and he first moved out of their room to his own, and he used to have awful nightmares that reduced him a messy, crying and whimpering bag of bones with curly hair. Back then, he used to wake up way before Kurt did, and he used to sneak into Leo’s room to hug him and stay with him on his bed until he fell asleep again. Now there’s no bed to lay on, and there’s no reason Dave sees for which his beloved son should cry like that, so he feels kind of helpless, and keeps holding him close to his own chest, trying to reassure him. “Buddy, what happened?” he asks in a low, soft voice, “You’re shaking.”

Leo sobs hard, hiding his face against Dave’s shirt. “I’m sorry, dad,” he cries, hiccupping after every word, “Really, I am,” he says, and all Kurt can do is look at him feeling his heart hurting like it got trapped in a clutch.

“Hey, there’s nothing to be sorry about, buddy,” Dave says, smiling a little and patting his son’s shoulder, trying to calm him, “Just… just tell me what happened.”

Kurt closes his eyes briefly, taking a deep breath before trying to get closer to the kid. “Honey, I know you are upset and you think… stuff, but…”

“I don’t wanna talk with you! You’re bad, just like him!” Leo screams, hiding more in his father’s arms, almost disappearing in the hug. Kurt instantly steps back. He has never been so hurt in his entire life.

“Hey, now, calm down,” Dave says, standing up and holding his son between his arms, lifting him up too and helping him to rest against his shoulder, “Baby, why don’t you just tell daddies what happened? We can help you, whatever it is. Did someone hurt you?” Leo shakes his head, eyes filled with sadness. “Then what?” Dave insists, brushing the boy’s hair with his hand, “Just tell me, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not okay!” Leo looks away, as tears starts to fall down his flushed cheeks again, “Everything’s ruined, and it’s my fault, because I wanted the wedding so much and now I will have a family no more!”

Dave opens his eyes wide. “Leo, come on,” he says, pulling the kid away from his chest just enough to look in his eyes, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about and you’re acting like your father does when he needs to let me know he’s sad but he doesn’t want to tell me why.”

Leo manages to look at his father for only a second, just because being compared to Kurt now bothers him way more than he can take. Then, he lowers his eyes and slowly starts to talk. “They kissed,” he says in a very low voice.

“Leo…” Kurt breaths out, holding out a hand towards him, as if to try and prevent him from talking.

“What?” Dave asks, raising an eyebrow, “Who kissed?”

“Daddy and that man!” Leo answers, still looking down, “They kissed,” he repeats, and Dave opens his eyes wider, looking puzzled as if he couldn’t even get what his son is talking about.

“Leo, please,” Kurt tries again, moving a step towards them, “It’s not like—”

“I saw you!” Leo screams, holding on to his father, and that’s when Dave finally understands, because he sees Blaine approaching from the same path Leo came back from minutes earlier, and it’s like seeing it happening in front of his own eyes, though he didn’t see it, and he’s actually glad he didn’t. Kurt and Blaine kissed. And when Blaine arrives and he can’t even look at him in his eyes, he gets all the evidence he needs, but he still turns to Kurt, looking lost and helpless.

“…is it true?” he asks, murmuring breathlessly.

“Dave, it’s… it’s not what you think it is,” Kurt tries to explain, but he struggles to find words convincing enough to help Dave and Leo understand what is so clear to himself and Blaine.

“What… what are you talking about?” Dave asks, clinging to Leo, “Did you kiss him or not?”

“Hey, Dave, I know you probably won’t hear a word from me, but it really is not what you think it is, and I can explain, if you just let me,” Blaine tries, moving a step forward, but the way Dave instantly glares at him stops him in midstep.

“You’re damn right I don’t wanna hear a single word from you, Anderson,” he snaps, turning back to Kurt, “You’re the one who owes me an explanation, Kurt.”

“Please,” Kurt bites at his own lower lip, trying not to cry, “Please, can we not talk about this here?”

Dave frowns, but then the light weight of Leo’s body between his arms reminds him their son’s here, and he definitely doesn’t want him to witness this conversation, especially since he seems to feel guilty about this whole situation. “Yeah, sure,” he says, clearing his throat and then turning back to Leo, forcing a little smile. “Hey, buddy, don’t worry about it, everything’s fine, I promise,” he lies, “Daddy will explain everything to me.”

Leo doesn’t believe a single word and finds irritating that his dad’s trying to reassure him about that saying such silly things. His dad doesn’t understand, none of them do, and that Blaine can’t either. He’s too exhausted to keep crying, though, so he just leans against his father’s shoulder and closes his eyes, sobbing lightly, letting his father try and comfort him with some cuddles. “Just don’t worry, buddy,” David says, “It’s alright. Why don’t you take a nap? You must be tired. I’ll carry you, don’t worry.”

Leo just shrugs, keeping his eyes closed as he feels his body getting heavier and heavier, sleep already making his breath slower and calmer.

Dave looks at Kurt, expecting something from him, but he doesn’t even know what, and after a couple of seconds of silence Kurt sighs, looking down first. “We should probably go home,” he suggests, on the verge of tears.

Dave averts his eyes too. “Yeah,” he answers, “Just… tell the others. I’m gonna wait for you in the car.”

Kurt nods and then heads back to where the others gathered moments before, and Dave ignores whatever Blaine is doing when he moves a step towards him to try again and explain everything. He just turns his back to the man and walks to the car, holding Leo close to himself.

“Dad?” the kid calls out seconds later, his little hands closing in fists around the fabric of his shirt, “Dad, will you bring me to bed? I don’t want him doing it.”

Dave sighs, kissing his son on his forehead. He would like to tell Leo that, whatever Kurt did, he’s still his father, and he shouldn’t be so angry at him, but he doesn’t because he’s not sure on how Leo would react to something similar, being as upset as he is. It still hurts, tough, that after all the first thing he thinks about is trying to defend Kurt no matter what. “Don’t worry about that, buddy,” he answers anyway, “I’ll take care of you.”

Leo leans on him again, quietly, and Dave walks faster to reach the car and gently lay him down on the backseat, covering him with his own jacket, so he doesn’t feel cold as he sleeps. Then, he climbs on his seat and rests his forehead against the steering wheel, breathing slowly in and out to keep himself calm as he waits for Kurt to come back, which he does less than five minutes later.

“I told the others to go home,” he says in a low voice, sitting beside Dave, “We can do the rehearsal again tomorrow,” he adds, looking at him tentatively.

Dave tenses a bit, because his first answer would be something he would regret saying, like for example that he’s not even sure rehearsals will be needed, if there won’t be a wedding to rehearse for, but he manages to keep his mouth shut long enough to think about it and realize that saying something similar wouldn’t be of any good for either of them. “…yeah. Okay. Thank you.”

They don’t say a word for the entire drive home. Kurt looks at Dave, every now and then, but mainly, he just looks back at Leo, reaching out with his arm to caress his head while he’s asleep. The first words Dave says come when he stops the car in front of their house, half an hour later, and he slips out of it trying to be as less noisy as he can. “Open the door,” he says to Kurt, “I’ll take Leo.”

Kurt nods sadly, understanding that Dave won’t let him handle their child at all, at least not for tonight. He opens the door and keeps it like that while Dave carries Leo inside the house, heading straight to the kid’s room to take him to bed, without even looking at Kurt, who closes the door and follows him right after.

Dave takes off Leo’s shoes and puts him in the bed, covering him with a blanket and brushing away his hair from his forehead, sighing a little, before he leaves the room. From the doorstep, Kurt keeps staring at him, hoping he’ll at least say something, but he doesn’t, so he keeps following him even when he comes out of the kid’s room and heads downstairs, ignoring him completely. “Dave…?” he calls him, having to clear his throat because that’s the first thing he says in what seems like ages, and it comes out really rough.

“Yeah?” Dave answers. He tries to stay calm, but actually he can’t stop moving all around the sitting room, moving things and then replacing them just to give himself something to do.

“Can we talk?” Kurt asks, looking down at his feet, and when he says that, Dave instantly snaps at him.

“No, we— I don’t really wanna talk right now,” he says, turning to him and staring for a couple of seconds, before he just slips past him to reach the built-in-wardrobe in the corridor.

“Would you let me explain, at least?” Kurt insists, following him around, “I don’t want us to go to bed like this.”

“We’re not going to go to bed like this,” he answers, opening the wardrobe and fetching a pillow and a blanket, before heading back to the sitting room.

“What… what are you doing?” Kurt asks in an uncertain breath.

“I’m sleeping on the couch, tonight,” Dave answers, arranging it to be as much comfortable as it can be.

Kurt swallows hard, fists closing suddenly around the fabric of his trouser, just to hold onto something. “Dave, please, don’t.”

“No, Kurt, you don’t,” Dave snaps, looking back at him with anger burning in his eyes, “You… I don’t even know. What the hell were you thinking about?!”

“It’s not what you think, Leo doesn’t know what he saw,” Kurt tries to explain, but Dave snorts and looks away, shaking his head.

“Okay, listen, I really don’t wanna talk about this right now,” he says, trying to sound calmer than he is, “Just… leave me alone.”

“Please,” Kurt tries again, “come to bed. What… what if Leo finds you here, tomorrow morning?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure this is gonna traumatize him a lot after he saw you fucking kissing another man,” he answers in a low growl that makes Kurt lower his eyes and steps back.

“Please, don’t do that,” he says, speaking softly, “You don’t even know what happened yet. Just… just don’t do that.”

“Fucking no, Kurt, I said it before, I’ll say it again, you don’t do that!” he almost screams, “Don’t just step back like— like I’m the one who hurt you! You know after all we’ve been through since the beginning I’d kill myself before having to hurt you again! Fuck… just go away, I can’t stand you anymore,” he sighs, sitting on the couch with his head between his hands.

Kurt holds his breath as he speaks, his eyes still locked with the floor, his fists closed so tightly he’s almost hurting himself. He hesitates, but when he understands Dave’s not going to let him in until he’s calmed down, he just nods. “Goodnight,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady, though it’s hard, since he’s crying.

Dave doesn’t even answer.

*


It's early morning and the house is quiet and still dark, except for the dim light of dawn coming through the sitting room's window. Dave sits on the couch with his arms crossed to his chest and he stares at the wall in front of him. There is a painting on it that he and Kurt have bought a couple of months ago when Kurt was redecorating the room for the third time this year. It's one of those contemporary drawings with lines and dots of which Dave understands nothing about but Kurt said it was perfect for the new urban flavor he wanted to give to their sitting room, so they took it.

For Dave, this is just a sitting room and it has been so after every redecoration, but Kurt is so happy every time he can change something about it, that Dave doesn't mind to let him do whatever he wants. Now he's wondering if Kurt has been feeling the need to change their relationship too, yesterday. If him kissing Blaine could be the first sign that he's bored with what they have.

It's been a very long and rough day and he doesn't really know what to do about the way it ended. The feeling of betrayal is too strong to let it go, but he loves Kurt too much to follow his instincts when he thinks about what he has done. So when he notices him standing in the doorway, he can't help the sting of pain he feels in his heart but he can't help to talk to him either.

“Are you already up?” He asks.

Kurt stands there in his pajama and bare feet, not daring to enter the room. “I... I've never really fallen asleep, actually.”

“I guess that makes two of us,” Dave sighs. Then he looks up at him. “Come here.”

Kurt comes closer and sits on the couch, curling himself into a ball. Seeing him so vulnerable and sad makes Dave want to kiss him and hug him and tell him everything is gonna be okay already, because that is how much he loves Kurt, but he knows he can't do any of those things because what happened is really serious and it endangers what they are.

Somebody has to start this conversation and make things clear, but it won't be Kurt, that much Dave knows, because Kurt doesn't talk unless he's forced to. Even when he is damn wrong.

“Come on, Kurt. What the hell happened?”

Kurt tries to speak three times before he actually manages to. His voice is hoarse and low, as if he had been crying for hours. “Blaine came to me and we talked. We had... things to say to each other.”

Dave snorts almost immediately. “So that's what you two were doing when our son saw you kissing? That was 'saying something'?”

Kurt looks down. “No. That was...” he moistens his lips. “That kiss means nothing, Dave. It was just a way to close things up once and for all.”

Dave has wanted to face this situation with all the calm he could gather, for the sake of their kid if not of the two of them, but Kurt not apologizing right away and saying those words to booth, makes him instantly angry. “Well, kissing someone doesn't sound to me like a way to close things up. Open them again, perhaps, but closing them? Not at all.”

Kurt sighs because he is aware that this is going to be the hardest part for Dave to understand. Or for anybody, for that matter. He and Blaine have always had their own way to deal with things. “We did close things, Dave,” he says. “That was the way it should have ended between us. We broke up so angrily. We just wanted to fix things up.”

Dave can't really believe what Kurt is saying. At this point, Dave is not even interested in how it happened, he just wants some apologies from Kurt, because he behaved badly and, of all things, he should be apologizing. “You don't fucking fix things up kissing your ex boyfriend two days before your fucking wedding!” He screams. The more Kurt talks, the more it seems like Blaine will always be that one unforgettable love Dave will never be enough to match up.

“I wasn't kissing him,” Kurt says, instead. “It was just one kiss and it means nothing of what you think it does.”

Dave looks at him angrily. “That right? And what am I thinking?”

“That I still love him, but I don't.”

“But that's how it is!” Dave jumps up and starts walking around the couch because he is too nervous to stand still. “You'll love him forever, ‘cause it's your first love we're talking about. He's the one who broke your heart first and how is that forgettable? Man, I hate you. I hate that you're so dramatic that you would still love him even if he broke your heart again!”

Kurt is a little taken aback by his hate statement. “Are you listening to me? I said I don't love him, Dave. I'd never have kissed him today if I did.”

“So why did you kiss him?” Dave asks. “So our son could watch you and be heartbroken? I don't think you even realize how Leo's feeling!”

Kurt is feeling frustrated. He knows very well that everything he says will never be enough for Dave, because the only thing he gets and understands is that he kissed Blaine, whatever the reason. He closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. “Because...” he starts and then sighs again. “Because something was weird in the way we broke up and it was that kiss missing. We just wanted to make things right with the past. That kiss is nothing more than a way to have a good memory of our relationship instead of that horrible one we had. I'm sorry Leo saw it. I didn't mean it for him to see.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dave snorts. “But he did anyway, and now he's going to regret the fact that this whole wedding thing was his idea, forever! So good job, Kurt, you now have a good memory for yourself, and an horrible one for your son!”

Kurt looks down, feeling guilty for his kid. “I didn't want any of this to happen. I'm sorry it went the wrong way.”

Dave shakes his head, arms crossed. “Well, sorry might be not enough, this time.

Kurt looks up immediately, pure panic in his eyes. “What?” He asks, searching for him around the dark room. “What do you mean?”

Dave has spoken out of jealousy and irritation and it takes him a couple of seconds to realize what he has just said. “I don't know. I feel very bitter and angry, right now,” he says, looking away.

Kurt sighs. “Dave... I didn't want to hurt anyone. Blaine means nothing to me anymore,” he insists. “I love you. I thought you would know that by now.”

“And I did!” He says, raising his voice but not too much. Over the past six years he has learned the very precious art of screaming without making noise, so not to wake up his son. After the first two months of sleepless nights, both of them has had to wise up if they wanted to survive. “But then you just had to kiss him! Fuck!” He starts walking around the couch again, just to move away from him. “It's like being in high school all over again. It sucks so much.”

Kurt is shaking his head way before Dave has even finished. Blaine has been an issue with him for so long now. Dave has never gone past Kurt and Blaine's relationship in high school and Kurt has never known how to assure him it's been over for over ten years. Kissing Blaine has obviously not helped his cause.

“It's not! I mean...” he says as he stands up and goes after him. “We are together, me and you, in a way me and Blaine never were.”

“Sure, because you two didn't have the time and chance!” Dave protests. “That kiss— you may think it's just a goodbye, but to me it says welcome back. And I just... I just hate the thought.”

Dave stops and looks down, closing his fists, his hands shaking a little. He is just giving up, again.

There were times, when they were in high school, when he would get so mad seeing Blaine and Kurt together that he needed to destroy things. He would go to the gym, then, and hit the punching ball so hard that coach Beiste would come to him and ask what was wrong. It was she who suggested Dave's father to send him to speak with a rage management therapist. That was the worse time of his life; he would go to therapy for every single problem he had. He felt so bad, back then. Then, Blaine and Kurt broke up and he and Kurt got together, and everything fell into place for him.

What's happening now feels like everything is breaking into thousand little pieces again.

Kurt tries and touches his arm. “The fact that I wanted to fix things up with Blaine doesn't mean I want him back in my life too,” he says in a sweet, low voice. “In fact, I didn't want any open issues with him.”

Dave looks up at him and raises a hand to his lips, touching them lightly. “I can't even stand the mental image of you two kissing. It brings everything up again, all the pain and the hate I felt when you two were together and I wouldn't even come close to you because I just couldn't, while he could.”

“That's in the past, babe,” Kurt says, his lips moving against Dave's fingers. “Now only you can be close and he can't. Never forget, it's you I chose.”

Dave is really trying to forget, but it's hard. It has always been. He comes a little closer, fingers sliding down Kurt's cheeks, as if tracing his features to snatch him out of the darkness still surrounding them despite the coming dawn. “He wasn't around anymore when you chose me,” he says, after a while. “I'll never know if you would have still chosen me if he stayed long enough.”

“You'll have to trust me on this one,” Kurt says, closing his eyes under Dave's caress. “I didn't settle for the second best.”

Just looking at Kurt with his eyes closed makes Dave's heart throb. “You are so beautiful,” he murmurs. He just can't believe Kurt is here with him and not with Blaine, in some fancy attic in New York where Dave knows Kurt wanted to be when he was sixteen.

Kurt gives him a little smile. “Am I?” He asks, looking at him.

Dave thinks he is just so adorable and can't help but looking at him with pure adoration in his eyes. “Yes, you are. So unbelievably beautiful.”

“And you are a very good liar.”

Dave chuckles. “Oh please, shut your mouth, will you?” He says as he drags him closer and hugs him. “He's not dancing with you after the wedding. He's not.”

“We'll make sure of that. You'll be the only one dancing with me, if you want.”

Dave shakes his head and hums softly. “No, you can dance with your father and with your brother and with whoever you want, but you're not dancing with him. Last time I saw you two dancing... well, that sucked a lot. I'm not gonna watch it happen again.”

“I won't dance with him if this upsets you. I'll tell him I can't.”

Dave is astonished. “Did he dare asking you if he could?” He says, really upset. “I can't believe he would come here in my city, in my house, and would ask my future husband to fucking dance with him!”

Kurt can't deny he loves when Dave shows such possessiveness. “Now, come here,” he pulls him closer. “He didn't want to challenge you, honey. It's just what he does. He sings and dances.”

“And he can, as long as he's doing it wherever he lives now, far, far away from here.” He holds Kurt tight, gently stroking his back. “God, how much I missed you tonight.”

Kurt puts his arms around Dave's neck and lets him gently rocks both of them back and forth. ”I missed you too. I thought to join you on the couch tonight but you were so angry, I was scared you would send me away.”

“I would have not,” Dave sighs, brushing his neck with the tip of his nose. He is painfully aware he could never send Kurt away, even if he is rightfully mad at him. He loves him too much to risk losing him for any reason. “But maybe I would have been kind of uncontrollable.”

Kurt tries to look at him but he obviously can't because Dave is kissing his neck and he seems to have no intention to stop. “What do you mean?”

“I was angry and fucking jealous and I just kept thinking about what I would do to you if I had you in my hands,” he explains, speaking in a low voice, on his skin.

Kurt shivers and smiles, rubbing his face against his soon-to-be husband's broad chest. “That's just freaking hot, Mr. Karofsky.”

Dave's voice is low and warm. “Is that so?” He asks, as he kisses Kurt's neck, gently. “And you don't even know what I would have done.”

Kurt is enjoying this so much, especially now that things are falling back into place and he’s realizing he really was just one step away from losing everything. “Why don't you tell me?”

Dave bites at his neck and then looks at him. “I would have held you down on the couch and kissed you so hard you could not breathe.”

“God, I love the way you say 'held down'.” Kurt breaths in hard. “I'd have been frightened, though. You can be so rude sometimes.”

“That's because I know you like it when I grab you and do whatever I want with your body.” Dave grabs his ass and squeezes it. He can feel the curves of Kurt's body as if he was naked, thanks to Kurt's pajama, which is one of those silk, elegant outfits so thin you can almost see it through. Not manly, but so damn sexy on someone as slim as Kurt.

“Dave!” He screams, pretending to be outraged. “That's totally not true.”

“You know it is,” he kisses him forcefully. “You always let me do whatever I want, if I'm hard enough on you.”

He comes even closer so Kurt can feel what he means exactly. Kurt is okay with this attitude now, because he knows very well Dave is just joking to spice things up. He has stopped to be afraid of him the moment he said he was sorry. “Maybe, if you're really – and I mean really – good, I'll let you play as you want,” he moans in his mouth.

“You'll let me, Fancy?” He lifts him up effortlessly and brings him to the couch, grinning. “You think I'd ask for permission? Spread your legs for me.”

Kurt shivers in that good and very pleasant way that makes his toe curls. “What if I don't?”

“Then I'll have to force you.” Dave bends over him and puts a hand between his knees.

Kurt looks straight in his eyes as he puts his arms on the couch's back, daring him to proceed with his threat.

Dave groans at the mere sight of him acting like that. He loves when Kurt manages to get rid of all his inhibitions and let himself go completely. “You're not going to collaborate, aren't you? Fucking tease,” he hisses between his teeth, as he unbuttons Kurt's shirt and caresses his chest.

“You will need to work hard if you want to get what you want,” Kurt says, arching a bit at the touch of his fingers. “And what is it that you want, Dave?”

Dave lets the shirt slide down his arms but, instead of taking it off, he uses it to tie Kurt's wrists together as he looks at him with a dirty smile on his lips. “You know what I want from you, Fancy.”

Kurt moans a little as he pretends to be astonished, but he doesn't stop him. “Oh, that's so bad. Karofsky, where did you learn these things? You were a family man just a couple of hours ago.”

Dave smiles wider as he lets the bottom of Kurt's pajama fall down his legs. “I still am, but now I want to drive you crazy ‘til you beg for more.”

He caresses the inside of his thigh with one hand, while stroking his lips with the thumb of the other one.

Kurt shivers, looking at this hand with interested eyes. He moves a bit too, because he can never lay completely still when Dave's hands are down there.

Dave grins, satisfied with his reaction. “You should look at yourself right now, you're so needy. Look at how you move...” he licks his lips and moves his hand closer to his groin, “Do you want it, babe?”

Kurt tries to kiss him, at least. He can't stand to be touched like that and not be able to move his hands to touch him back. “Try harder,” he brags then, struggling a lot not to beg. “You're not even close.”

Dave doesn't give up to his requests. It is so much funnier when Kurt is so helpless and desperate. Most of all if he is clearly lying and his whole body gives it away. “Oh, you know I'm more than close, Fancy,” he smirks. “I can see it in your eyes. You'd scream if I just touched you. Want me to try? Want me to touch you and make you scream?

He comes closer and rubs himself against Kurt, who keeps pulling at his makeshift ropes, desperately wanting to kiss him. “Oh God,” he exhales, arching against him to get some relief.

“There you are, I love you so much when you do this.” Dave drags him closer and kisses him hard while finally stroking him between his legs with his hand. “D'you like it, babe?”

Kurt gives him a long, moaning, wet kiss. “Yes, keep doin' it.”

“I wouldn't stop if the house should fall on us.” Dave kisses him back and quickly gets rid of his own trousers, caressing him faster. “Do you want me, Fancy?”

Kurt doesn't even let him finish the sentence, drowning the scream he would like to let out in another hungry and passionate kiss. “Yes! I want you as hard as you can get.”

“Fuck.” Dave tries to hold himself back and licks his neck, still stroking him. “And where do you want me, baby? Tell me.”

Kurt bends his head back on the couch, gasping for air. “In me. I want you in me,” he exhales, as he tugs at the shirt around his wrists. “Dave, let me go.”

Dave unties his wrists immediately, bound to Kurt's request and to his own need to have Kurt's hands on himself. “Here I come baby, you ready?” He breaths heavily while slowly entering him, holding Kurt's hips firmly.

Kurt grabs his shoulders and buries his face in Dave's neck. “Yes, I'm ready. I'm... don't... just stop fucking around. I want to feel you, now!”

Dave almost laughs, half breathlessly, because Kurt is always cuddly and cute and then, suddenly, he becomes so damn impatient when he can't really take it anymore. God, how much he loves to see him like this for him. “Okay baby,” he pushes himself hard inside of him and starts moving. “Do you feel me now? Because I feel you, babe and you're so fucking tight.”

“Yes,” Kurt moans slightly, whispering in his ear. “C'mon big boy, weren't you going to make me scream?”

Dave pushes harder inside him and strokes him faster, kissing him deeper than before. “Scream for me, baby, let me hear you.”

Kurt actually screams this time, forgetting that there is a kid in the other room. Luckily, rage and a very bad day have made Leo a heavy sleeper, today. Kurt searches for Dave's lips again and kisses them hungrily, almost growling.

“Fuck, yes.” Dave pushes inside him so hard he buries himself inside his body for his entire length. He can't talk properly anymore and he keeps breathing hard on Kurt's mouth, kissing it and sucking on his lower lip. “Oh God, Kurt, fuck.”

“Dave, keep it like this. You're there.” Kurt arches his back to push himself better against him.

He moves faster and thrusts deeper, holding Kurt's hips as still as possible so he can better angle himself with each thrust and hit his special spot every time. “Are you close, baby? I wanna feel you come. Would you come for me?” He speaks nonsense as he strokes him, waiting for him to give in to pleasure as he seems so close to do.

Kurt nods because he can't talk anymore. Those magic words always work with him and they don't fail this time either. He comes hard, moaning, covering his eyes with his right arm.

“Fuck— let me see your face, babe,” Dave murmurs as he moves Kurt's arm away and leans on him to kiss him gently, coming hard inside him. “Let me see how beautiful you are.”

They take their time to catch their breath, pleasantly drained and tired. Kurt looks at him through heavy eyes and smiles lovingly, seeing how overwhelmed Dave is.

Dave breathes heavily, resting his forehead against Kurt's with his eyes closed as he brushes the tip of his nose with his own, cuddling him. “God, that was amazing.”

Kurt smiles, still so caught up in it that he doesn't even bother to blush. “Yes, I'd dare say it was one of the best we had so far,” he says, kissing him lazily. “I like you when you're all jealous and possessive.”

“Do you?” Dave says, laughing on his lips as he kisses him back. “Then how come I always end up sleeping on the couch when we fight because of my jealousy?”

Kurt laughs, looking at him with so much love in his eyes. “Because,” he says, caressing his face with just a light touch of his fingertips, “you don't usually touch me like that when we fight. You need to be away from me for a while just to be back like this.”

Dave opens his mouth, pretending to be outraged. “So you send me away on purpose?”

Kurt shrugs. “Maybe just a little bit.”

“Oh, you little...” Dave chuckles, shaking his head. “But I'm going to come back to our bed tonight, my back is killing me. I'm too old for this shit,” he says, kissing him lightly on his lips and starting to tidy up Kurt's pajama. “You're a mess. God, how come you're still so cute?”

Kurt lets Dave dress him as if he was a doll. “It's because I'm fabulous. I'm never really a mess, even after hot wild sex on the couch with my sexy soon-to-be husband who actually made me unable to walk,” he explains as he moves his legs and groans in pain.

“Do you know what having a sexy soon-to-be-husband who makes you unable to walk means?” Dave asks as he lifts him up and holds him in his arms. “It means you don't have to walk.”

Then, Kurt tells Dave he loves him right away in a very dramatic, oh-so-theatrical way, and they both laugh as Dave carries him to their room, where they will pretend to have slept all night when their son will come checking on them once he finally wakes up.

*


When he fell asleep in his father’s arms, two days ago, Leonard would have never thought that everything, somehow, would just fall into place, in the end. He was sure the wedding was over and, for what he knew, his parents’ relationship was about to go the same way, and he was ready to blame himself forever for that if it happened, but when he woke up he didn’t find his dad on the couch, where he was sure he would find him – since he always sleeps there when he and daddy have a fight –, so he checked the bedroom and he stood on the doorstep for two minutes straight before figuring out what happened. It was clear his dads had made peace during the night, because they were sleeping together, tied in a sweet hug.

Now that the wedding’s over, Leonard stays on the edge of the huge white painted wood dance floor he and daddy decided to have for the party after the wedding reception, and he can’t help but smile just like he did when he found them. Everything seems so right he clearly feels like he couldn’t be more happy than he is now, like his body couldn’t hold more happiness than what he’s feeling right now.

The wedding has been awesome. There were white flowers everywhere and everybody was looking happy. Dad and daddy kept smiling the whole time, and daddy managed to keep smiling even when he started to cry, after dad’s wedding vows, which were the sweetest ever, since Leo helped him sort them out. Auntie Tana was gorgeous, even in her manly outfit, and her speech during the reception was really funny. Leo listened to it very closely, happy to hear the story of his parents’ love from a point of view he had never considered before, and thinking with some pride that now he has the right to talk about this story too, since he’s helping making it. Not only being the main reason why they decided to get married in the end, but with everything else. With every step he takes, he’s making history. He’s making his parents’ life worth living just as much as they’re doing with him. That’s being a family, and Leo probably didn’t need a ceremony to know, but in the end maybe he did. He didn’t need the vows themselves, but what made them possible, all the troubles he went through, all he had to accomplish to have his parents smiling at each other and swearing they’ll be together forever no matter what comes their way, this he needed, and he firmly believes his parents needed it too. So he can’t help smiling smugly, now, because he knows he was right, right from the start, and now he can afford feeling so self-satisfied, like all this happened only thanks to him, though he knows it’s not exactly true.

“Would you allow me this dance?” Blaine asks, jumping into his view literally from out of nowhere. Leo makes a face, stepping back. He has been good ignoring him up to now, but he just had to come and ruin everything.

“No way,” he answers, looking away, “And why do you have to talk like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like you came out of some fairy tale book or something,” Leo snorts.

Blaine laughs a little, kneeling in front of him and sitting on his heels. “Does the way I speak seem strange to you?”

“Definitely,” Leonard nods, “You’re cheesy. Like some fairy tale princes, the lame ones.”

“This is true,” Blaine chuckles again, “Maybe I am a prince, after all, then.” Leo looks at him, and Blaine’s smiling gently as he stays like that in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees, the elegant suit he wears making an interesting contrast with his wild curly black hair which he left untied, free to brush against his neck.

“Of the lame kind,” Leo insists, crossing his arms on his chest.

“Of course,” Blaine chuckles, “But, just follow me: if your parents just married each others, that means they’re no more prince and princess, or princes, or whatever, they just became king and queen, or kings, am I right?”

Leo looks at him confusedly, tilting his head. “I suppose,” he concedes, shrugging.

“Well, then, if they’re kings, that makes you a prince,” Blaine continues, nodding at himself in agreement.

Leo arches an eyebrow. “What’s your point, mister Anderson?” he asks, and he feels pretty amused when he sees Blaine actually shivering after his words.

“Don’t call me mister,” he says, “Just… please.”

“Okay,” Leo nods, “Anderson.”

Blaine lets out a little laugh, shaking his head. Leo finds himself hypnotized by the way his hair move, but he manages to look away in time for Blaine not to catch him staring. “You really are a smart ass, aren’t you?” the man asks, and Leo sighs.

“You still didn’t tell me what’s your point,” he repeats.

“My point is,” Blaine smiles, “That if you’re a prince and I’m a prince too, lame as I am then I must be a prince visiting your reign from another land. Therefore, since your parents are busy dancing with each others, and since apparently I couldn’t dance with Kurt even if he was alone, or at least that’s what I was told, then you should be the one dancing with me, since we’re both princes and I’m a special guest.”

Leo opens his eyes wide, taken aback from the way he’s putting it. “Do you really think any of this made sense?” he asks, and Blaine laughs again. Leo’s coming to hate the sound of this laugh, it makes him uncomfortable and hot on his cheeks.

“I thought it was a fascinating way to put it in,” he answers, “Besides, I really want to dance with you.”

“Don’t you have women or men your age to ask to?” Leo snorts, annoyed.

Blaine shrugs. “I prefer little kids.”

“You know, this could be reported as harassment,” Leo answers, smiling wickedly. Blaine opens his eyes wide, looking extremely amused, and Leo hates him: why does he seem so totally unable to take him seriously? He’s being so very really serious, now, and all this man can do is making fun of him.

“You shouldn’t even know that word,” he says in a light chuckle. Leo snorts again.

“Whatever,” he concedes, “I’m still not gonna dance with you.”

“Not even if I ask really nicely?” Blaine tries.

“I don’t think you would even know where to start to be nice!” Leo answers, “But even if you could, I don’t dance,” he says blushing and looking away.

“Oh, come on,” Blaine insists, rolling his eyes, “It’s a party, you should dance.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to!” Leo yells at him, stomping his feet on the ground, “I mean, I don’t want to ‘cause I still hate you, since you’re mean and horrible, but even if I wanted, I can’t!” he spits out, “I can’t dance.”

“Oh my God,” Blaine chuckles again, standing straight on his feet again, and smoothes the wrinkles on his trousers, “Well, then I definitely have to teach you. It’s terribly inappropriate for a young prince of your birth to be unable to dance. I can’t let this happen. Come on,” he smiles again, “You can put your feet on mine. I promise it will be fun.”

Leo shakes his head, letting out an annoyed, frustrated moan. “You’re not going to leave me alone if I don’t dance with you, are you?” he asks. Blaine just laughs and doesn’t say anything, since the answer is obvious enough. “Okay then,” Leo sighs, holding out both his hands to him, “But when I get bored, I go away, and you don’t get to force me to stay.”

“Got it,” Blaine nods, helping him to climb on his feet and then moving around the dance floor, one goofy step after another. “See?” he asks, comically but gracefully turning around and bringing Leo with himself, “This is fun.”

“This is stupid…” Leo corrects him, looking everywhere around, “And everybody’s staring!”

“I suppose it’s because we’re dancing really good,” Blaine says, but he’s laughing so hard it’s obvious he’s not meaning a single word he’s saying.

“Did you do that just to make me look ridiculous?” Leo asks, and his cheeks are flushed, and he feels angry. He looks up at Blaine and he’s smiling so calmly and peacefully he can’t help but feeling a little stupid because he seems to be getting upset over nothing.

“No,” Blaine answers, speaking in a low, soft voice, “I just wanted to make things right with you. You know, apologize for what you saw. My behavior was unacceptable, and I hope you can find in your heart the will to forgive me.”

Leonard feels himself blushing again. He would like to loosen the knot of his tie, but Blaine’s holding both his hands and he fears he would fall down his feet if he left them, so he doesn’t. “Why do you want me to forgive you?” he asks, anyway, “It’s not like I’m gonna see you much from now on, you don’t even live here!”

Blaine smiles again, shrugging lightly. “Yes, maybe,” he nods, “But I like you.”

Leo’s cheeks turn so red he feels breathless and unbelievably hot for a moment, and it’s already too much. He jumps off Blaine’s feet willingly, shaking his head, trying to make the blush disappear. “Well, I don’t!” he says, pouting lightly. He still feels too hot to bear it, and he wants to run away, but at the same time he doesn’t, so in the end he stands still.

Blaine smiles, a hand on his hip, arching an eyebrow. “You already got bored?” he asks.

Leo sticks out his tongue at him. “I just wanted to ruin your shoes, anyway,” he tells him, and only then he feels free to run away, right in his fathers’ arms. They just stopped dancing, but he asks them to dance once more, this time with him. They accept, and when Leo starts dancing with them, holding both his parents’ hands in his, he doesn’t realize it, but he’s already using the steps Blaine taught him.
Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico.
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Angst, Slash, Future!Fic, Spoiler, Song-fic.
- "Alla fine, si può dire che Kurt e Blaine abbiano avuto una relazione normale per metà anno, e un complesso sistema di torture per i restanti sei e mezzo."
Note: Ho riflettuto a lungo sulla possibilità di piazzare o meno un bell'OOC lì in mezzo ai warning, ma alla fine ho preferito non farlo. Tenete presente che si tratta di una future!fic e che prende delle caratteristiche "particolari" del Klaine che sono state mostrate in questo inizio della s3, e le estremizza. Tipo, tantissimo. Siate preparati. XD
Comunque, ho scritto questa storia perché volevo tanterrimo scrivere su questo argomento. XD Ebbene sì, il Klaine mi piace solo angst. E siccome sono io, non poteva essere angst normale, no, doveva essere uno psicodramma terrificante montato attorno alla canzone per bambini più inquietante ever. Beeeene. *sosopira*
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
THE CAT CAME BACK

Old Mr. Johnson had problems of his own
He had a yellow cat that just wouldn't leave him alone
He tried and he tried to give the cat away
He gave it to a little man going far away
But the cat came back the very next day
Yes, the cat came back, they thought he was gone,
But the cat came back, he just wouldn't stay away

Kurt ricorda il momento. Il momento esatto. Ogni mattina, quando si guarda allo specchio e cerca di convivere col mostro che è diventato, ricorda quel momento preciso, impresso a fuoco nella sua memoria, e si ricorda che ne vale la pena. Che è stato per quel singolo momento che è diventato ciò che è adesso, e che il solo riportare alla memoria quell’istante – il brivido che gli è corso lungo la schiena, la scarica di piacere che per un secondo gli ha annebbiato perfino la vista – è ancora sufficiente a stringergli lo stomaco in una morsa di dolorosa eccitazione, come se da quel giorno non fossero passati che pochi minuti. Quindi deve valerne la pena per forza. Se è ancora così bello, se lo riempie ancora tanto, deve valere la pena per forza.
È stato in occasione dei provini per West Side Story. È stato allora che ha cominciato a capire le dimensioni del potere che aveva su Blaine, cosa poteva ottenere incurvando appena le labbra in una smorfia di disappunto, o indurendo lo sguardo a sufficienza da farlo sentire in difetto. È stato quando un fremito delle sue ciglia è stato sufficiente a fare in modo che Blaine rinunciasse non solo alla parte di Tony, ma anche all’idea stessa di provarci, perfino al pensiero di potersela in qualche modo meritare più di lui.
Non è servito altro che un fremito delle sue ciglia, e Blaine era in ginocchio.
Kurt ricorda perfettamente la scarica di adrenalina che gli ha attraversato tutto il corpo nel rendersi conto di quanto in alto fosse situato il piedistallo sul quale quella situazione lo poneva. La ricorda con un’intensità particolare perché è venuta inaspettata, la più incredibile delle sorprese. Blaine aveva già ceduto a qualche ricatto morale, prima di quel momento, non ultimo quello che l’aveva portato a convincere in un baleno i suoi genitori dell’assoluta necessità di consentirgli un trasferimento lampo dalla Dalton al McKinley, ma in quell’occasione Kurt aveva dovuto effettivamente chiedergli di fare qualcosa per lui e per loro, perciò, nel momento in cui Blaine si era alla fine trasferito, Kurt non aveva avuto modo di rendersi conto della potenza di ciò che era accaduto. Aveva insistito per tutta l’estate!, era semplicemente una questione di tempo, prima che Blaine accettasse, sarebbe stato allucinante il contrario. Ma la rinuncia al provino per un ruolo da protagonista nel musical della scuola era stata un qualcosa di completamente diverso, perché a Blaine poteva ragionevolmente non interessare di quale fosse la scuola nella quale si sarebbe diplomato, ma Kurt era consapevole di quanto invece fosse importante per lui ottenere un ruolo come quello. Era stato un sacrificio doloroso, quello di Blaine.
E Kurt non aveva dovuto nemmeno chiederglielo. Era semplicemente bastato che lasciasse trasparire quanto sarebbe stato deluso, triste e arrabbiato se il ruolo fosse stato assegnato a lui invece che a sé, e questo era stato sufficiente perché Blaine prendesse la propria decisione.
Minimo sforzo. Massimo risultato. Era davvero troppo allettante perché si potesse pretendere che lui rinunciasse all’opportunità di continuare su quella strada.
È più difficile, invece, riuscire a capire quando questa sia diventata una questione di cattiveria. Perché lo è, adesso lo è, adesso non è più una questione di potere, o se lo è ancora non lo è di certo nella stessa misura in cui lo era prima.
Kurt non vuole più ottenere niente, da Blaine. A ventitré anni, fidanzato più o meno ufficialmente ormai da sette, non c’è nient’altro che Blaine possa dargli, niente che Kurt non abbia già visto, masticato, digerito, niente di cui non si sia già riempito lo stomaco fino a scoppiare – niente che, a questo punto, non lo nausei violentemente. Ed è così da un po’, ormai, ma Kurt non saprebbe dire da quando. Non ricorda più il momento in cui fare o dire qualcosa per mettere Blaine in difficoltà ha smesso di essere un modo per sentirsi unico, potente, importante, e sia diventato semplicemente un modo per sentirsi cattivo.
Kurt si guarda allo specchio e non vede altro, ora. La cattiveria. I suoi occhi ne sono pieni, il periodo in cui poteva dire di stare comportandosi crudelmente perché almeno così sarebbe stato più semplice ottenere qualcosa che voleva è così lontano che quando Kurt ci ripensa sembra il ricordo di un’altra vita. Tutto ciò che cerca adesso, quando ferisce Blaine, è quella scintilla di dolore che gli vede brillare in fondo agli occhi. È tutto quello di cui gli importa. Non gli importa di ottenere ciò che chiede, non gli importa di sapere che ogni rinuncia di Blaine è importante perché esiste solo in quanto modo per farlo contento, no. Tutto quello che vuole è sentire il dolore di Blaine, vederlo chiaramente nella sua espressione, sentirlo nel tono della sua voce, sapere di essere stato lui a causarlo.
Fargli male gli piace da impazzire, perché Blaine non è capace di fermarlo. Non è capace di porgli un freno – non lo è mai stato – non è neanche in grado di allontanarsi davvero da lui. È sempre Kurt ad allontanarlo, sempre, ogni volta, quando si è saziato della sua espressione triste e rassegnata al punto da trovarla nauseante; allora lo manda via, litiga con lui con tanta forza da farsi sentire per tutto il quartiere, spaventare i vicini, magari spaccare qualche vaso, e poi lo butta fuori di casa. Ma Blaine torna sempre. Torna ogni volta, ed ogni volta che lo rivede Kurt fa fatica a trattenersi, perché il piacere malato che lo pervade ogni volta che lo vede ritornare, sempre più mesto e afflitto, è tale da fargli bruciare la pelle addosso.
Le migliori scopate che si sono fatti hanno avuto luogo dopo cose come questa. Dopo i litigi e le porte sbattute in faccia, dopo le ore che Blaine passa seduto su una panchina nel parco di fronte all’appartamento che condividono perché ha paura di tornare a casa prima di essere certo che siano passate abbastanza ore per fargli sbollire la rabbia, dopo tutto questo Blaine torna a casa e ogni volta i suoi occhi parlano di un dolore sconfinato e senza via d’uscita, e quel dolore fa tremare Kurt fin dentro le ossa, gli permette di abbandonarsi alle mani di Blaine con un trasporto che mai hanno visto in altro modo, ed ogni volta, ogni dannata volta, Blaine si convince che fare l’amore sia un modo per chiedere scusa, per fare pace, per lasciarsi tutto alle spalle.
E non immagina nemmeno che per Kurt non è affatto così.

He gave it to a little boy with a dollar note
He told the boy to take the cat up river on a boat
The boat turned over and was never found,
And now they drag the river for the little boy who drowned
But the cat came back the very next day
Yes, the cat came back, they thought he was gone,
But the cat came back, he just wouldn't stay away

Stavolta è stato per colpa di sua madre. Kurt detesta la signora Anderson, anche se non ha nessun motivo per farlo. Probabilmente è così solo perché l’ha conosciuta in un momento in cui la sua relazione con Blaine si era già consolidata sui binari sbilanciati della guerra emotiva che Kurt le ha imposto fin quasi dall’inizio. Alla fine, si può dire che Kurt e Blaine abbiano avuto una relazione normale per metà anno, e un complesso sistema di torture per i restanti sei e mezzo, per cui era anche inevitabile che, nel momento in cui avrebbe conosciuto i genitori di Blaine, l’impressione che ne avrebbe avuto sarebbe stata comunque distorta dalla situazione in cui stava vivendo.
Ha conosciuto i signori Anderson in occasione del suo terzo Natale in compagnia di Blaine. Aveva già capito l’anno prima, quando Blaine si era premurato di fargli sapere quanto fosse entusiasta all’idea di passare le feste nuovamente in compagnia di Burt e Carole, che lui non si sentiva così a suo agio all’idea di presentargli la propria famiglia, ed aveva già deciso che, l’anno successivo, fosse anche solo per capire se Blaine lo amava abbastanza da superare il proprio imbarazzo per fare le presentazioni ufficiali, sarebbe riuscito ad ottenere quantomeno un invito a cena. Per questo, quando i tempi erano stati maturi, aveva suggerito a Blaine l’idea di passare il Natale coi suoi; Blaine si era irrigidito e gli aveva chiesto se fosse davvero così importante, Kurt aveva sorriso e gli aveva risposto “certo che no”. Dopodiché, aveva aspettato fino a sera ed aveva cominciato a mettergli il broncio. Il broncio era diventato un ostinato silenzio, e quando alla fine, dopo cinque notti di gelo e cinque giorni di saluti rivolti a malapena e giusto per educazione, Blaine lo aveva guardato con l’aria di un condannato pronto a camminare fino al patibolo sulle ginocchia e poi gli aveva chiesto “è per il Natale, vero?”. Kurt non aveva avuto bisogno neanche di rispondergli. E, naturalmente, non era stato necessario ribadire la proposta di passare il Natale in casa Anderson: Blaine aveva chiamato i suoi ed organizzato il tutto quella sera stessa.
A quel punto, però, a Kurt non interessava più per niente conoscere i genitori di Blaine. Passare il Natale con loro non era una questione di piacere, ma di pura ostinazione. Era un privilegio che gli serviva ottenere, ma finiva tutto lì, la sua vittoria si era già esaurita, e Kurt stesso avrebbe preferito mille volte continuare a passare il Natale con suo padre come sempre, ma ormai la promessa era stata fatta, e d’altronde non c’era nessun motivo per cui Kurt non dovesse quantomeno scomodarsi per andare a guardare in faccia l’uomo e la donna il cui figlio stava – consciamente o meno – torturando ormai da anni, e che, con tutte le probabilità, sarebbero diventati i suoi suoceri.
Il signor Anderson s’era salvato dal suo odio. Non per qualche merito particolare, semmai il contrario, per un demerito piuttosto imponente, quello di non essere ancora riuscito, nonostante tutto, a venire a patti con l’omosessualità del figlio. Per tutta la durata della cena, il signor Anderson era rimasto in disparte, spiccicando sì e no una parola ogni venti minuti, più spesso un grugnito generico che avrebbe potuto essere di approvazione ma, la maggior parte delle volte, dava l’impressione di non esserlo affatto, e questo suo tenersi così ostinatamente in disparte aveva incontrato l’approvazione di Kurt, il quale con lui non voleva avere niente a che fare – più per testardaggine infantile che per qualsiasi altro motivo – e pareva aver trovato terreno fertile in questo anche dalla sua parte.
La signora, invece, era stata una questione completamente diversa. Adelina Anderson aveva immediatamente cercato di far sentire Kurt come a casa propria. Aveva sorriso, posto domande sempre e soltanto educate e discrete, s’era complimentata per la sua bellezza e il suo fascino, gli aveva fatto i complimenti anche per la sua breve carriera teatrale già in ascesa, augurandogli di poterlo vedere presto dal suo palco d’onore al Gershwin Theatre, e non si era risparmiata dal raccontare con materna dolcezza alcuni deliziosi episodi dell’infanzia di Blaine, di cui tutti avevano riso insieme in un clima rilassato e perfino familiare.
Kurt l’aveva detestata istantaneamente. L’aveva trovata appiccicosa, affettata, dai modi così anacronisticamente aristocratici da rasentare l’idiozia, ed aveva istintivamente sperato che potesse morire presto, in modo da non dovere avere a che fare con lei troppo a lungo.
Usciti da casa Anderson, nell’andare verso la macchina, Blaine gli aveva chiesto cosa ne avesse pensato dei suoi genitori. “Sono deliziosi,” aveva risposto Kurt con un sorriso di plastica, “Ho passato davvero una splendida serata.” Blaine aveva sorriso, i suoi occhi si erano riempiti di luce e le sue mani erano scivolate automaticamente a stringerlo attorno alla vita per un abbraccio affettuoso. Kurt si era immediatamente irrigidito contro di lui, per rimetterlo al suo posto. Blaine si era allontanato di fretta, il sorriso un po’ incrinato, ma tutto sommato ancora contento.
“Sono felice,” gli aveva detto, “Avevo paura di presentarteli. Dal momento che mio padre è… be’, l’hai visto, e mia madre tende un po’ ad essere… be’, hai visto anche lei,” aveva scrollato le spalle con una risatina imbarazzata, “avevo paura che non ti piacessero.”
Kurt aveva sorriso ancora, scosso il capo e accettato il coltello che Blaine gli aveva appena offerto premurandosi perfino di tenerne la lama fra le mani, in modo da potergli porgere direttamente il manico.
Il signor Anderson non è durato molto. Si è spento un anno dopo il loro incontro. Kurt ha presenziato al suo funerale, ha consolato la vedova, è stato vicino a Blaine per due notte di pianto consecutive, poi s’è rotto il cazzo ed è andato a stare dai suoi per due settimane. Quando Blaine, gli occhi ancora rossi per quanto doveva aver pianto per lui, per suo padre, ancora per lui e per tutto il resto, si è presentato a casa, chiedendogli perché fosse andato via, Kurt, gelido come una statua, gli ha semplicemente detto di aver bisogno di un po’ di tempo per se stesso. “Proprio adesso?” gli ha chiesto Blaine, la voce ridotta ad un rantolo spezzato. Kurt non ha nemmeno risposto. È rimasto lì una settimana e poi è tornato, e Blaine lo stava aspettando. L’ha accolto sulla soglia, l’ha abbracciato stretto, ha pianto per ore. Kurt non l’aveva mai visto così prima di quel momento.
In serata, quando si è un po’ ripreso, gli ha chiesto per favore di non rifarlo mai più. Gli ha detto “mi sta bene qualunque cosa, Kurt, qualunque, ma ti prego, non andartene mai più”. E Kurt ha capito che era necessario anche per lui piantare qualche paletto qua e là, se non voleva che il gioco al massacro gli sfuggisse di mano e all’improvviso non gli restasse più niente da massacrare. Perciò ha promesso che non sarebbe più andato via di casa, e da quel momento non l’ha più fatto.
È per questo che adesso è così facile utilizzarlo come un’arma.
La signora Anderson non ha il permesso di venire a casa loro quando vuole. Può farlo se invitata, ma succede raramente. Il fatto è che, da quando il signor Anderson è morto, la signora Anderson passa praticamente l’intera durata della propria giornata sola con se stessa. Blaine fa il possibile e l’impossibile per passare a trovarla ogni volta che può, ma da quando è stato assunto come maestro di canto al conservatorio l’impossibile è diventato il miracoloso, e passare a trovare sua madre dal lato opposto della città, quando già per andare dal proprio appartamento alla scuola di musica perde mezza giornata – ed a Kurt piace così tanto diventare intrattabile quando Blaine sta via per tutto questo tempo – è diventato praticamente una possibilità da escludere.
Sono tre mesi – tre mesi – che Blaine non vede sua madre. Kurt sa perfettamente che se fosse costretto a non vedere suo padre anche solo per la metà del tempo, darebbe di matto. Ma si diverte a tenere lontano Blaine dall’unico genitore che gli sia rimasto con le scuse più assurde e ridicole, sorridendo fra sé ogni volta che lui china il capo e si rassegna a telefonarle e basta, invece di prendere la macchina e correre da lei.
Stavolta, Blaine ha insistito. Proprio perché tre mesi sono tanti, proprio perché palesemente non ce la faceva più, ha implorato Kurt di lasciar venire sua madre a pranzo da loro. “È già pronta, praticamente è sulla porta, ti prego, Kurtsie, solo un paio d’ore, solo per il pranzo, sarà una cosa così veloce che nemmeno te ne accorgerai.”
Kurt ha dato di matto. Ha detto cose prive di qualsivoglia senso o significato, “quella donna non entrerà in casa mia”, “io qui dentro non ce la voglio”, e dal momento che Blaine continuava ad insistere non c’è stato più molto che lui potesse fare, se non ricorrere a quella minaccia, nonostante avesse promesso. “Se viene lei, me ne vado io,” ha detto. “È questo che vuoi, Blaine? Vuoi che me ne torni dai miei?”, ed è stato così bello, così soddisfacente, Dio, il sapore dolcissimo che s’è sentito sulla lingua nell’osservare quell’ultimo briciolo di fiducia negli occhi di Blaine sbriciolarsi senza pietà sotto i suoi colpi. Era l’unica cosa che gli avesse mai promesso, l’unica sulla quale Blaine si fosse permesso di contare. Usandola contro di lui, Kurt ha realizzato di non aver fatto mai niente di altrettanto meschino, di altrettanto gratuitamente crudele. E ne ha goduto.

The man around the corner said he'd shoot the cat on sight
He loaded up his shotgun full of nails and dynamite
He waited and he waited 'till the cat came walking round
And ninety-nine pieces of the man was all they found
But the cat came back the very next day
Yes, the cat came back, they thought he was gone,
But the cat came back, he just wouldn't stay away

Kurt ha cenato da solo, ma ha preparato il pasto anche per Blaine. C’è un piatto di tagliatelle freddo che staziona da ore sulla tavola ancora perfettamente apparecchiata. C’è una metodicità, nel modo in cui Kurt si comporta, che dà alle sue azioni dei tratti ossessivo-compulsivi che a volte lo spaventano. Quando litiga con Blaine, ad esempio, e Blaine esce – ormai non c’è quasi neanche più bisogno che sia lui a buttarlo fuori di casa, Blaine si butta fuori di casa da solo per risparmiargli il disturbo – non capita mai che Kurt si comporti in maniera negligente. Non capita mai che non gli prepari la cena – anche se poi gliela fa trovare fredda –, non capita mai che apparecchi con poca cura, non capita mai che dimentichi di preparare il letto per entrambi. Non lo fa per gentilezza, non lo fa per premura, lo fa solo perché sa che a Blaine fa ancora più male vedere quanta attenzione riservi a particolari e dettagli inutili, così palesemente di facciata, quando invece tratta il suo cuore e il suo affetto come immondizia da gettare via ad ogni occasione propizia.
Quando Blaine rientra, Kurt è seduto sul divano. Ha un piattino di fragole con lo zucchero sulle ginocchia e le mangiucchia distrattamente, guardando un programma idiota in televisione. Ci sono bambini di tutte le età che cantano e la conduttrice – un mascherone abbigliato in un enorme vestito di trine e merletti rosa, con una cascata di boccoli biondi anacronistici e plastificati che le incorniciano il volto paffuto dai lineamenti volgari e rozzi – li presenta ad uno ad uno esaltandone i pregi, fra i cori di intenerita approvazione del pubblico. Kurt sta pensando che c’è stato un periodo, da qualche parte nel suo percorso di vita, in cui avere un figlio, in futuro, era uno dei suoi sogni. Adesso, il solo pensiero di poter condividere un bambino con Blaine lo riempie di rabbia fino a nausearlo, ed è contento che Blaine non abbia mai sollevato l’argomento, perché con i binari sui quali si muove la loro relazione adesso Dio solo sa cosa Kurt avrebbe potuto rispondergli, solo per trovare il modo migliore per spezzargli il cuore un’altra volta, magari utilizzando il bambino come un’arma.
Il solo pensiero di potere arrivare a tanto lo fa rabbrividire. Kurt afferra il telecomando alla cieca e spegne il televisore con uno scatto netto, voltandosi a guardare Blaine, ancora fermo sulla porta che si è chiuso alle spalle cercando di fare il minor rumore possibile, come nella speranza di evitare di attirare la sua attenzione e, pertanto, dover incontrare i suoi occhi.
- Sei tornato. – dice Kurt. È una constatazione che l’uso continuato ha reso stantia, priva di valore. Blaine torna sempre. Tornerà per sempre. – Sei stato a trovare tua madre?
Blaine annuisce silenziosamente, restando dove si trova. Ha gli occhi bassi e le labbra tirate in una smorfia di dolore contegnoso e trattenuto. Sembra intenzionato a non dargli soddisfazione. Kurt non può accettarlo.
- Bene. – dice quindi, - Così non ci sarà bisogno di invitarla. Mi irrita avere quella vecchia intorno. – conclude, prima di staccare un altro morso dalla fragola che tiene fra le dita.
La linea delle labbra di Blaine si apre in un lamento frustrato e silenzioso, ma non importa che Kurt possa sentirlo, l’importante è che possa vederlo, che possa sapere con certezza che quello ha fatto male, che Blaine sta soffrendo.
Lo sente avvicinarsi, lanciare uno sguardo distratto alla tavola imbandita e poi decidere di ignorarla, per sedersi sul divano accanto a lui. Kurt recupera il telecomando e riaccende la televisione. C’è un bambino che canta, ha la stessa espressione stupidamente estatica che anche Blaine aveva quando, da ragazzino, si metteva a saltare sui mobili e cantava. Blaine era un ragazzo così felice. E Kurt l’ha fatto a pezzi così facilmente.
- Perché mi odi tanto? – domanda con un filo di voce. Kurt non si volta neanche a guardarlo.
- Io non ti odio. – risponde gelido.
- E allora perché mi fai questo? – insiste lui, la voce già incerta che si spezza in un singhiozzo infantile, trattenuto a stento.
Kurt sospira e spegne la televisione col telecomando che regge ancora in mano. Si volta verso di lui ed osserva i suoi lineamenti stanchi, gli occhi arrossati, il labbro inferiore stretto fra i denti. E si chiede “ma io cosa ci faccio qui? Con te?” e non sa darsi una risposta. Ed è la cosa peggiore di tutte. Non saprebbe dare una risposta a Blaine, ma non saperla dare a se stesso è tutto un altro paio di maniche, tutto un altro discorso, tutto un altro livello di cattiveria. Non più contro di lui. Anche contro se stesso.
- Non lo so. – dice, e pensa “non è vero”. Pensa “sì che lo so”. Pensa “è solo che ho paura di raccontarmi la verità”. Una paura che parla di un rapporto sbocciato troppo in fretta, di un sentimento già consumato e fatto a brandelli prima ancora di cominciare a stare insieme, della paura di perdere un treno per aspettarne un altro che magari non sarebbe mai arrivato, della certezza di trovarsi davanti a qualcuno che rappresentava praticamente un principe delle fiabe – e come rinunciare al richiamo? Lui, che non aveva fatto altro che sognare principi azzurri per tutta la propria vita? –, dell’accorgersi troppo tardi di aver sprecato mesi, anni, una vita intera, ingabbiato in una storia che per pura ostinazione aveva continuato a restare insieme senza mai muoversi dal punto in cui era nata.
Sono cose che Kurt sa. Non può dirle a se stesso perché gli fanno paura, e non può dirle a Blaine perché non le capirebbe, avendo vissuto in una realtà praticamente diversa rispetto alla sua nonostante abbiano condiviso il letto la casa la vita per anni, ma Kurt lo sa. E quando dice che non è vero, Blaine legge in fondo ai suoi occhi che si tratta solo di una menzogna, l’ennesima dopo tante. E un altro frammento del suo cuore si sbriciola, e Kurt può quasi vederlo frantumarsi davanti ai suoi stessi occhi. E la scarica di piacere è la stessa di ieri, la stessa di due mesi fa, la stessa di due anni fa, la stessa della prima volta in cui quella scarica, da sola, è stata in grado di farlo sentire grande, e potente, e completo.
- Quindi? – domanda allora, recuperando un’altra fragola dal piattino e rotolandola nella montagnola di zucchero lì di fianco. La sua voce ha un tono quasi di sfida. È certo che faccia male anche quello.
Blaine si morde il labbro un’ultima volta, deglutisce e chiude gli occhi, e poi si siede più compostamente accanto a lui, girandogli un braccio attorno alle spalle per stringerselo contro in una posa artefatta, rigida come quella di una statua. Guardano insieme la televisione, e Kurt sogghigna fra sé, soddisfatto, già pronto a ricominciare da capo.

The H-bomb fell the very next day
The A-bomb fell in the very same way
Russia went! England went! And then the USA
The entire human race was left without a chance to pray
But the cat came back the very next day
Yes, the cat came back, they thought he was gone,
But the cat came back, he just wouldn't stay away
Genere: Commedia, Erotico.
Pairing: Dave/Blaine.
Rating: NC-17.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Lemon.
- "Ti rendi conto che stiamo per fare sesso gay dentro un armadio? I passi indietro che sta facendo il movimento LGBT, e tutto a causa tua, Dave Karofsky."
Note: Questa storia è nata perché a) io avevo voglia di Blainofsky, e b) a un certo punto questa è apparsa in rete e il mio mondo non è stato più lo stesso. X'D Abbiate pazienza.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
IT’S IN THE BLAZER, BABY

A Dave casa di Blaine non piace per niente. Esteriormente non è diversa dal resto delle case tutte sistemate ordinatamente lungo i vialetti del circondario, un quartiere di periferia immerso nella pace e nel verde surreale di decine di giardinetti con alberi dai quali immancabilmente pende sempre un’altalena o un vecchio copertone usato come tale, per nulla dissimile da quello in cui vive anche lui, ma l’interno fa la differenza, ed in modo nient’affatto piacevole.
Blaine gli ha raccontato che a Westerville vivevano in un palazzo, non in una villetta come quella. Lui e suo padre avevano un appartamento all’ottavo piano di uno stabile che di piani ne contava dieci, ed era un regolare appartamento da tre stanze più due bagni e una cucina, insomma, il classico appartamento che fa esattamente al caso tuo se sei un padre solo con un figlio che, per l’ottanta percento del tempo, non vive neanche insieme a te.
Il problema è che, trasferendosi da Westerville a Lima, il padre di Blaine ha deciso di portare con sé tutti i mobili e i soprammobili che possedeva nell’appartamento. Scelta legittima, per carità, ma l’impressione che si ha adesso entrando in casa di Blaine è quella di trovarsi di fronte ad una serie di stanze in cui sono state infilate a forza delle cose che non c’entravano niente con quelle che invece avrebbero dovuto trovarsi lì, ed è una cosa parecchio disturbante per uno che, come Dave, ha vissuto in una casa simile a questa per tutta la sua vita, guardando sempre gli stessi mobili, gli stessi soprammobili, gli stessi quadri e le stesse tende, come se la casa fosse nata già fornita di tutte queste cose e quindi non necessitasse di alcun tipo di cambiamento.
Entrare in casa di Blaine è un po’ come entrare in un universo parallelo in cui più ti guardi attorno più quello che vedi ti sembra fuori posto, non ti convince affatto, e la sensazione è ancora più straniante perché invece per Blaine e suo padre, che a quella mobilia sono assolutamente abituati, non trovano niente di strano in ciò che li circonda; per cui, ogni volta che Dave è ospite in quella casa – non che sia capitato spesso, e d’altronde se il padre di Blaine sapesse che i compiti di matematica, materia in cui Blaine è sempre stato disastroso comunque, non sono il vero motivo per cui lui e il suo amato figlio unico si frequentano, probabilmente Dave a questa casa non potrebbe più neanche avvicinarcisi, figurarsi entrarci dentro – non può fare altro che sentirsi a disagio. Che è una cosa usualmente tremenda, ma che in alcuni casi può avere una sua utilità. In questo, ad esempio.
Camera di Blaine è in assoluto la più inguardabile della casa. Nel suo vecchio appartamento, Blaine stava – o meglio, non stava, abitando alla Dalton – in una stanza ampia meno della metà di questa. Dal momento che, però, ha tenuto gli stessi mobili, adesso sembrano sparsi per l’ambiente in modo del tutto casuale, non lo riempiono, lasciano interi pezzi di parete vuoti, il che è tremendo perché i muri non sono ancora stati ritinteggiati, e si vedono i segni dei mobili del precedente proprietario sull’intonaco, cosa che non fa che aumentare la sensazione straniante e nient’affatto piacevole che Dave sta provando.
E che fa allontanare Blaine da lui con uno schiocco umido e uno sbuffo infastidito.
- Dave, se non è di troppo disturbo, ti dispiacerebbe concentrarti? – domanda il ragazzo, appoggiando entrambe le mani alle sue cosce nude e guardandolo dal basso verso l’alto con un’espressione di offesa infantile che già da sola è capace di far dimenticare a Dave tutte le brutture del luogo in cui si trova. Dell’arredamento delle case altrui non gli è mai fregato un accidente, ma pensare a quanto è brutta casa di Blaine è l’unica arma che ha quando lui si piega sulle ginocchia e, senza grandi cerimonie, glielo prende in bocca. È bravo in modi che Dave non è sicuro di riuscire a descrivere senza farsi esplodere un paio di sinapsi, e malgrado ciò sia assolutamente un pregio, purtroppo rappresenta anche un problema di una certa entità.
- Stavo cercando di—
- Lo so cosa stavi facendo. – sbuffa ancora Blaine, - Me l’hai già spiegato. Ed è un ragionamento ridicolo!
- Scusa se cerco di durare abbastanza da arrivare a scoparti. – borbotta lui, arrossendo vistosamente. Blaine si lascia sfuggire dalle labbra un ringhietto risentito che gli vibra in gola. Dave ha un brivido al solo pensiero di quello stesso ringhietto che vibra tutto attorno a lui.
- Secondo te, - protesta, - fra un ragazzo che mi viene in bocca perché sono troppo bravo ed uno che non viene affatto ma lo fa solo perché, invece di concentrarsi su me che glielo succhio, si perde a pensare alla mia mobilia, cosa potrei mai preferire? – domanda con aria sarcastica.
- Prima di tutto, se tu potessi evitare di essere così sboccato… - si lamenta Dave, passandosi una mano sugli occhi. Tutta questa faccenda dell’essere gay era già dura prima di cominciare a fare anche cose da gay; ora che le fa, l’ultima cosa di cui ha bisogno è un ragazzo che le cose che fa le descriva in maniera tanto grafica. Blaine dovrebbe andare in giro con un dannato bollino rosso appiccicato sulla fronte. Chissà se anche con Hummel parlava in questo modo. Dave è pronto a scommettere di no, figurarsi se con quella principessina si azzardava a parlare così. – E comunque il punto non è questo, il punto è che per me potevamo anche scopare direttamente senza che tu provvedessi a… insomma.
- Che? – esclama Blaine, quasi deluso, - Ma a me piace prendertelo in bocca.
- Blaine, Dio mio… - esala ancora lui, incurvando le spalle e coprendosi il volto con entrambe le mani.
- Dave, piantala… - piagnucola Blaine, sollevandosi sulle ginocchia e, allo stesso tempo, arpionandolo da dietro la nuca per poterlo baciare. Dave lo lascia fare, schiudendo le labbra per accogliere le carezze della sua lingua e mugolando appena quando gli sente in bocca il sapore diverso che ha sempre quando fa cose come quella. – Adesso tu ti metti buono… - gli sussurra addosso Blaine, scivolando con le labbra lungo la linea della sua mascella, - E ti concentri su di me… - aggiunge, mordicchiandogli il collo e strusciando il naso lungo la curva della sua spalla, cercando di infilarsi oltre il colletto mezzo aperto e scomposto della sua camicia, - E qualunque cosa succeda… - conclude, stringendo le dita attorno la sua erezione ancora umida, - mi prometti che non penserai all’arredamento di questa casa neanche una volta. Ok?
- Mmh… - mugola Dave, incapace di rispondere qualcosa di sensato nel momento in cui le dita di Blaine prendono ad accarezzarlo lentamente verso l’alto e verso il basso, per tutta la lunghezza.
- Bravo. – sorride Blaine, soddisfatto, lasciandogli un ultimo bacio sulle labbra e poi tornando ad accucciarglisi fra le gambe, sfiorando con le labbra umide la punta della sua erezione, come a voler intenzionalmente ritardare il momento in cui la accoglierà fra il palato e la lingua. Dave tiene gli occhi chiusi e respira lentamente, mordicchiandosi il labbro inferiore, impaziente. Blaine si concede un piccolo sorriso, prima di farsi scivolare la sua erezione fra le labbra, e mugola con soddisfazione nello stuzzicarlo con la lingua, stringendo la presa sulle sue cosce mentre le mani di Dave si chiudono con uno spasmo nervoso attorno alle lenzuola già tutte stropicciate del suo letto. Sentire i tremiti di Dave fra le labbra e sulla lingua lo eccita come poche altre cose al mondo, più ancora delle sue mani addosso o della fame con cui in genere lo bacia quando riesce a ribaltarlo sul materasso, il senso di controllo misto a quello solo apparentemente opposto dell’abbandono che si concede in queste situazioni è già da solo quasi abbastanza per farlo venire senza neanche essere sfiorato.
Dave continua a tenere gli occhi chiusi per tutto il tempo, e lentamente le sue mani sciolgono la stretta attorno alle lenzuola e si spostano. Mentre una rimane, rilassata, poggiata sul letto, l’altra risale lentamente lungo il braccio di Blaine, saggiando la consistenza dei muscoli tesi in punta di dita, cercando di scivolare oltre l’orlo della manica corta per sfiorare la spalla e, non riuscendoci, passando oltre, ad accarezzare le linee tese e dritte del collo, fino a fermarsi sulla sua nuca, dove cominciano a pressare piano per invitare Blaine a prenderlo più profondamente.
Blaine obbedisce, le mani che risalgono lungo le cosce di Dave fino a stringersi attorno ai suoi fianchi, e nel momento in cui comincia a muovere la testa più velocemente e Dave si sente scivolare dentro di lui così in profondità da sfiorare quasi la parete della gola con la punta della propria erezione, improvvisamente il pensiero di lasciarsi andare e venire non sembra più così atrocemente insopportabile. D’altronde, se Blaine volesse preservarlo per un momento successivo non si muoverebbe così, e starebbe buono con quella lingua, e qualsiasi cosa stia facendo adesso con la mano che gli ha lasciato scivolare in mezzo alle gambe, oh no, decisamente non la farebbe, e poi comunque chi se ne frega, potrà sempre farselo ritornare duro un’altra volta dopo, non che questo sia esattamente un problema, dal momento che avere diciassette anni gli ha concesso maratone che a raccontarle in giro nessuno ci crederebbe, ma Dave non ha il tempo di verificare quali siano le reali intenzioni di Blaine, perché a un certo punto, senza cerimonie esattamente come quando ha cominciato, lui si ferma.
- …l’armadio. – gli sente dire, mentre apre gli occhi, tornando in sé dopo la palese esperienza extracorporea che ha appena affrontato.
- Eh…? – mugugna incerto, ben consapevole di essersi perso più di metà della frase che Blaine gli ha appena rivolto.
- Nell’armadio! – quasi strilla lui, scattando in piedi e tirandolo per costringerlo a fare lo stesso, - Nasconditi nell’armadio!
- Cosa?! – sbotta Dave, rischiando di spezzarsi l’osso del collo nell’inciampare nei pantaloni che gli impigliano le caviglie, mentre Blaine lo spinge senza riguardi verso la porta che conduce alla cabina armadio, in un angolo della stanza, - Ma che cosa stai dicendo? Non dovresti incoraggiarmi ad uscirne, semmai?
- Spiritoso. – sbotta Blaine, spalancando la porta e spingendolo all’interno, - C’è mio padre! Sta’ buono e zitto, arrivo tra poco. – conclude sbrigativamente, chiudendogli la porta quasi sul naso.
Dave sospira, ascoltando Blaine risistemarsi addosso i vestiti e correre veloce fuori dalla stanza, e poi si china a recuperare i propri pantaloni, per riportarli ad un’altezza più decente – anche se chiuderli addosso all’erezione ancora dolorosamente tesa che gli svetta fra le gambe è un’ignominia di cui Blaine pagherà le conseguenze più tardi, senza dubbio – e poi comincia a guardarsi intorno. Non è mai stato dentro la cabina armadio di Blaine, per quanto in effetti non riesca ad immaginare nessun motivo valido per il quale avrebbe dovuto visitarla prima di oggi, e per la verità non è contento di dovercisi trovare neanche adesso. Un po’ perché è spaventato dall’idea del signor Anderson che li scopre mandando a puttane mesi di segretezza ed abitudini ormai consolidate, un po’ perché già vive la propria vita all’interno di un armadio metaforico piuttosto opprimente e trovarsi ora all’interno di un armadio vero ha un che di inquietante a livello karmico.
Ciononostante, prima di annoiarsi a morte, decide che può quantomeno dare un’occhiata in giro. Metà dell’armadio è pieno della robaccia che Blaine usa per vestirsi quando viene a scuola. Tutte le sue ridicole camicie a quadretti, gli orribili gilet passati di moda in epoche storiche ben precedenti alla sua nascita – questo sempre ammesso che Blaine sia una creatura terrena e non qualche essere mitologico nato nel milleottocento, cosa che, quantomeno, spiegherebbe il suo modo di esprimersi pomposo e antiquato – per non parlare di quegli agghiaccianti cravattini che, da quando non è più obbligato a indossare la divisa della Dalton, sembrano essere diventati i suoi migliori amici.
Dave, a livello personale, odia il gusto di Blaine in fatto di abiti, ed è convinto di esserci finito a letto assieme la prima volta non tanto perché volesse proprio andare a letto con lui, ma perché non ne poteva più di vederlo andare in giro conciato in quel modo assurdo. Meglio nudo – senza dubbio.
La divisa della Dalton gli piaceva. Non aveva avuto modo di notarla per bene, all’inizio, perché Blaine aveva deciso di apparirgli come la cosa più insopportabile mai vista sulla terra, ma da quando i loro rapporti si sono prima distesi e poi evoluti in questa specie di allucinante relazione priva di senso, Dave si è ritrovato spesso a sentirne la mancanza.
E infatti, posarle gli occhi addosso è quasi rassicurante.
Sta nascosta in un angolino dell’armadio, poveretta, come se Blaine se ne vergognasse. E in questo senso è allucinante pensare che cose come quell’orribile maglietta a righe, o quei pantaloni col risvolto che a qualunque essere umano di altezza normale arriverebbero al polpaccio, possano invece risiedere in posti d’onore, quasi centrali, di modo che siano perfettamente visibili anche a qualcuno che si ritrovasse ad infilare la testa in quella cabina armadio per un paio di secondi per sbaglio. Cos’avrà mai fatto la povera divisa della Dalton per vedersi riservato un trattamento simile? Dave non riesce nemmeno a immaginarlo.
Si avvicina alla divisa, accarezzandone distrattamente una manica e sorridendo appena quando l’immagine mentale di Blaine che la indossa si fa viva fra i suoi ricordi. Non ha idea di come reagirebbe se potesse rivederlo vestito in quel modo adesso, ma molto probabilmente gli chiederà di provare, prima o poi. Magari quando non c’è anche suo padre in casa.
Nel mentre, comunque, si diverte a sfilare la giacca dalla gruccia che la tiene appesa, e rigirarsela fra le mani, inalando profondamente il profumo di Blaine rimasto intrappolato fra le fibre del tessuto.
Quando nota lo specchio alle proprie spalle, non pensa davvero a ciò che sta facendo. Semplicemente si volta, guarda il proprio riflesso, poi guarda la giacca, e due secondi dopo la sta già indossando. Non si è mai chiesto come sarebbe stato frequentare la Dalton, e in realtà le divise non sono una cosa che gli piaccia tanto avere addosso, fatta esclusione per quella della squadra di football, ma mentre si guarda allo specchio deve dire che un po’ di curiosità la prova. Cerca di immaginare la propria vita come studente di una prestigiosa scuola privata che della tolleranza zero contro i bulli come lui è stato fino a qualche mese fa ha fatto il suo marchio di fabbrica, e non può fare a meno di chiedersi se le cose sarebbero state migliori, magari più facili, se fosse stato lì invece che al McKinley.
In ogni caso, deve togliersi questa giacca di dosso, perché è stretta e corta in modi insopportabili, gli tira ovunque ed ha paura di romperla. Da come stava messa in disparte nell’armadio non potrebbe giurare che Blaine ci tenga davvero, ma d’altronde se non ci tenesse affatto l’avrebbe buttata via, perciò, prima di distruggerla e magari mettersi nelle condizioni di dover sopportare i bronci infiniti che Blaine è in grado di mettere su quando si offende, meglio metterla via.
Il problema è che non ne ha il tempo, perché un secondo dopo averlo pensato sente la porta scattare, aprirsi e richiudersi, e quando si volta Blaine è lì, ad un paio di metri da lui, rosso in volto come avesse la febbre e con entrambe le mani a coprirsi la bocca probabilmente spalancata in una o sorpresa, che lo fissa con occhi enormi e luccicanti.
- …la tolgo subito. – borbotta Dave, distogliendo lo sguardo, e Blaine praticamente gli si lancia addosso, agitando le braccia come un forsennato.
- No! – quasi strilla, afferrando la giacca per il bavero e chiudendogliela sul petto, continuando a guardarlo in quel modo che non lascia presagire a Dave niente di buono, - Ma sei matto? Tienila! Oddio, ti sta benissimo. – squittisce deliziato, allontanandosi di un paio di passi per poterlo guardare meglio.
Dave si volta a guardarsi nello specchio, inarcando un sopracciglio con evidente perplessità.
- Ma se mi esplode addosso? – domanda, tornando a guardare Blaine, il quale nel mentre ha preso a mordicchiarsi il labbro inferiore in un modo che impedisce a Dave di concentrarsi su qualsiasi altra cosa nel mondo.
- E questo sarebbe un difetto perché…? – chiede Blaine, avvicinandosi di un passo. Dave spalanca gli occhi.
- Oh, no. – dice, scuotendo il capo, - No, Blaine. Toglitelo dalla testa.
- Non lo sai nemmeno, che cos’ho in testa. – ridacchia lui, avvicinandosi ancora e lasciandogli scorrere un dito sul petto attraverso la stoffa leggera della maglietta che indossa.
- Lo so perfettamente che cos’hai in testa. – protesta Dave, comunque incapace di sottrarsi quando Blaine, aggrappandosi alle sue spalle, si solleva sulle punte per raggiungere le sue labbra, sfiorandole appena con le proprie, - E non accadrà.
- Oh, ti prego, ti prego, ti prego… - pigola Blaine, intervallando ogni ti prego con un bacio a stampo sulle labbra. Già al primo, Dave si ritrova ad inseguirlo sperando di avere di più, ma lui naturalmente si tira indietro, concedendogli solo quello che vuole e nell’esatta misura in cui vuole, cioè decisamente meno di quanto Dave non riesca a sopportare, e incommensurabilmente meno di quanto Dave in realtà non vorrebbe. – Ti prego, tienila su. Solo per questa volta!
- Oh, Dio, - cede Dave con un grugnito esasperato, spingendolo contro lo specchio – unica superficie non concava all’interno della cabina armadio – ed infilandogli quasi istantaneamente le mani sotto la maglietta, - va bene, quello che vuoi, purché tu stia zitto e ti lasci scopare, adesso. Ok?
Blaine ridacchia, soddisfatto dall’avere ottenuto – come sempre – tutto quello che voleva, e si aggrappa con forza alle sue spalle larghe, saggiandone la consistenza con la punta delle dita attraverso il tessuto della giacca della divisa. I suoi sensi lo conoscono a memoria, eppure sentire come le pieghe di quella giacca si riempiono delle forme di Dave lo esalta come fosse un bambino alle prese col regalo di Natale più grosso mai visto, tutto per lui, tutto da scartare. Con la differenza che lui, oh, no, non ha davvero nessuna intenzione di scartarlo.
Gli si stringe contro, sollevandosi fino a potergli sfiorare un lobo con le labbra. Lo stringe fra i denti, lo accarezza con la punta della lingua, e Dave ringhia qualcosa di incomprensibile nel premerglisi addosso con più foga, afferrando la maglietta che indossa dall’orlo per strattonarla qui e là. Blaine solleva entrambe le braccia quasi in automatico, in un invito evidente e chiaro come la luce del sole, che Dave coglie senza starci a pensare neanche un minuto più del necessario. Getta via la maglietta e subito si volta nuovamente verso Blaine, cercando di concentrarsi su di lui, ma lui ride, stringendosi nelle spalle.
- Ti rendi conto, - dice, - che stiamo per fare sesso gay dentro un armadio? – ridacchia da solo come un imbecille, - I passi indietro che sta facendo il movimento LGBT, e tutto a causa tua, Dave Karofsky. – continua, fingendo grave serietà.
- Ti prego, smettila di parlare. – sospira lui, scuotendo il capo e appoggiandolo nuovamente allo specchio, sorridendo fra sé del brivido che gli scorre sulla pelle, scuotendolo tutto, quando sfiora con la schiena la superficie di vetro gelida.
Blaine si limita ad annuire e mormorare un “va bene” già abbondantemente perso quando Dave si china su di lui e lo bacia profondamente, lasciando scivolare le mani fra i loro corpi per raggiungere la zip dei suoi pantaloni, tirandola giù lentamente e non aspettando nemmeno di averglieli lasciati scivolare giù lungo le cosce per infilare una mano oltre l’orlo dei suoi boxer, accarezzandolo piano verso l’alto e verso il basso. Blaine mugola di piacere fra le sue labbra, spingendosi fra le sue dita e contro di lui, e al contempo gli fa scivolare le mani lungo la schiena, le punte delle dita che, muovendosi sempre più in basso, si affacciano appena oltre l’orlo dei suoi pantaloni, accarezzando il punto in cui la curva netta e forte della sua schiena si trasforma in quella più morbida e dolce dei suoi glutei.
Dave lo prende per un invito, perché utilizza immediatamente la mano libera per sbottonarsi i jeans, in modo da lasciare a Blaine la possibilità di afferrarli per i passanti della cintura ed aiutarli a ricadere lungo le sue gambe. Sente il fruscio del tessuto mentre cade verso terra, arrotolandoglisi attorno alle caviglie, e fa in modo che quelli di Blaine vadano a far compagnia ai suoi il prima possibile. Impaziente, Blaine ne salta fuori saltellando prima su un piede e poi su un altro, come un bambino, ed dopo un ultimo bacio a fior di labbra è lui stesso a voltarsi, poggiare entrambe le mani contro lo specchio per mantenersi in equilibrio e poi piegarsi lievemente in avanti, divaricando appena le gambe. La curva della sua schiena è ipnotica, come i suoi occhi quando si volta a lanciare a Dave un’occhiata grondante di desiderio da sopra una spalla.
Tutti i sensi di Dave si confondono, non c’è più spazio nella sua testa per nessun pensiero razionale. Tutto ciò di cui gli importa in questo momento è prenderlo, e quando gli si avvicina lo fa con l’intenzione di mordere, perché alle volte l’attrazione che prova per lui è talmente violenta da non riuscire ad essere espressa in nessun altro modo. Per questo, mentre serra con forza le mani attorno ai suoi fianchi, spingendosi contro di lui e scivolando lentamente per tutta la propria lunghezza lungo il solco delle sue natiche, aspetta che Blaine si sia inarcato contro di lui, gettando indietro il capo ed appoggiandoglielo contro una spalla, e poi affonda i denti nel suo collo, stringendo fino a quando non lo sente gemere di dolore.
Blaine allunga un braccio all’indietro, glielo avvolge attorno al collo e gli accarezza la nuca, muovendosi ritmicamente avanti e indietro per strusciarsi il più possibile contro di lui, e solo allora Dave si decide a mollare la presa. Accarezza con la lingua i solchi lasciati dai suoi denti sulla pelle di Blaine, e quando lo sente rabbrividire di piacere si allontana appena, chinandosi un po’ alla cieca per recuperare i propri pantaloni ed estrarre un preservativo dalla tasca posteriore. Si volta a guardare Blaine, mentre lo indossa, trovandolo praticamente sdraiato contro lo specchio, le braccia incrociate sotto il mento, gli occhi chiusi, l’aria rilassata. Gli si avvicina e lo bacia piano sulla mandibola, giù per il collo e sulla nuca mentre, con due dita umide, lo prepara per accoglierlo.
Blaine si apre al passaggio delle sue dita con un mugolio deliziato. Schiude ancora di più le gambe, inarca la schiena, le sue labbra si piegano in un sorriso divertito e Dave non può che concedersi una mezza risata, scuotendo lievemente il capo.
- Non posso credere a quanto ti piaccia. – commenta, prendendolo in giro. Blaine gli fa una linguaccia che si trasforma in un bacio e poi in una risata soffocata fra le labbra.
- Ora è il mio turno di dirti di stare zitto. – conclude, tornando ad appoggiarsi allo specchio. Dave annuisce e stringe la propria erezione fra le dita, guidandola fino a posizionarla contro la sua apertura.
Sente Blaine trattenere il respiro per un secondo, e sa che quello è il segnale. Entra dentro di lui lentamente, senza fretta. Blaine geme per ogni centimetro che si guadagna dentro al suo corpo, si mordicchia un labbro, lo chiama per nome in una serie di ansiti umidi e caldi che scivolano come lingue di fuoco su e giù per la schiena di Dave, dandogli i brividi.
È Blaine il primo a muoversi, lui il primo a dettare il ritmo delle sue spinte, andandogli incontro coi fianchi, accogliendolo più profondamente dentro di sé e poi allontanandosi per aiutarlo ad uscire, un attimo prima di spingersi nuovamente contro di lui. Dave si adatta alle sue spinte, al suo ritmo, ai suoi tempi, d’altronde è sempre stato Blaine quello portato per la musica, e l’intreccio delle loro voci mentre gemono persi l’uno nell’altro è talmente piacevole da meritare che a condurlo sia uno che ne capisce. Dave lascia che sia Blaine a farlo perché sa che di lui può fidarsi, e Blaine non lo tradisce. Non l’ha mai fatto.
Continua a muoversi sempre più svelto dentro di lui, aprendo gli occhi solo per sbirciare il suo riflesso nello specchio, il loro riflesso nello specchio, e Blaine è bellissimo, è così bello che a guardarlo gli manca il fiato. Resta appoggiato allo specchio per tutto il tempo, il suo respiro umido si infrange contro la superficie rendendola opaca, e Dave segue con attenzione la linea del suo braccio – i muscoli e i tendini in tensione – quando si accorge che Blaine ha cominciato a masturbarsi. Se ne accorge perché i movimenti del suo bacino hanno cominciato a farsi più confusi, ed è diventato più difficile seguirne il ritmo, perciò Dave aiuta entrambi seguendo quello dei movimenti della sua mano, e pochi istanti dopo stanno di nuovo muovendosi in perfetta sincronia, lui dentro il suo corpo, Blaine fra le proprie dita, gli ansiti, i gemiti e i sospiri che si fanno sempre più acuti e audaci, come le parole che Blaine gli sussurra, cose che Dave mai nella vita avrebbe pensato di poter trovare eccitanti e che invece ora sono in grado di costringerlo a spingersi dentro di lui con tanta forza da far tremare le pareti in compensato della stanza, e quando Blaine si volta a cercare le sue labbra con le proprie Dave sa che lo fa perché sta per venire ed ha paura di quello che potrebbe uscirgli di bocca mentre lo fa, perciò gli offre una scusa per non doversi lasciare sfuggire proprio niente, e lo bacia profondamente, accarezzando la sua lingua con la propria e soffocando fra le labbra il gemito più forte che germoglia nella gola di Blaine quando, dopo un paio di carezze più decise, viene, scuotendosi tutto e sporcando lo specchio del proprio piacere.
Dave viene pochi istanti dopo, seguendo le ondate successive dell’orgasmo di Blaine. Ogni volta che i suoi muscoli si contraggono in uno spasmo di piacere attorno alla sua erezione, lui si sente come risucchiato sempre più in profondità nel suo corpo, e anche solo il pensiero è in grado di dargli un piacere talmente violento da costringerlo a venire in pochi colpi sempre più forti e sempre più svelti, svuotandosi dentro al preservativo e poi accasciandosi contro la sua schiena, respirando forte a pochi centimetri dalla sua nuca, mentre Blaine, di un passo più avanti rispetto a lui, già ridacchia, contento, voltandosi ancora una volta a chiedergli un bacio.
- È stato bellissimo. – commenta in una risatina soddisfatta, facendo le fusa come un gatto pigro e sereno. Dave grugnisce, tirandogli uno schiaffetto contro un fianco.
- Nessuno ti ha chiesto un voto. – borbotta imbarazzato. Blaine si stringe nelle spalle con un’altra risatina divertita.
- Ma volevo solo farti un complimento. – si giustifica, - E magari metterti nella disposizione d’animo più adatta per ascoltare ciò che sto per dirti.
Dave arrossisce più violentemente, agitandosi subito. C’è questo enorme non-detto, fra lui e Blaine, questa cosa che entrambi sanno di provare ma che non è stata ancora mai espressa ad alta voce, ed a Dave sta bene così, ma sa che per Blaine non è proprio la stessa cosa, per cui ogni volta che Blaine annuncia solennemente di volergli dire qualcosa lui non può fare a meno di agitarsi, anche se si rende conto di quanto stupida la paura che prova sia.
- Devi proprio? – sbuffa ansioso, e Blaine ride, coprendosi le labbra con una mano.
- Non quello, idiota. Ti piacerebbe. – lo prende in giro, facendogli una linguaccia, - Ma probabilmente, quando ti avrò detto quello che sto per dirti, rimpiangerai che invece non ti abbia detto quello che tu credevi volessi dirti e che io non volevo dirti affatto.
- Mi sono perso venti minuti fa. – sospira Dave, allontanandosi da lui e sfilandosi il preservativo, cercando con lo sguardo un posto in cui gettarlo prima di rassegnarsi a liberarsene una volta che sarà riuscito a raggiungere il bagno, possibilmente attraverso il condotto d’areazione, per non correre il rischio di farsi beccare dal signor Anderson.
- Devi toglierti quella giacca. – comincia Blaine, annuendo.
- A-ha. – annuisce anche lui, del tutto disinteressato, - Tutto qui? Non è che pensassi di tenerla.
- Devi toglierla perché mio padre ti ha invitato a cena. – conclude Blaine in una risatina furba, - E non sono sicuro che indossandola faresti su di lui la stessa impressione che hai fatto su di me.
Dave sta per commentare con un “e meno male” tirato via in uno sbuffo annoiato, quando realizza ciò che le parole di Blaine stanno a significare, e sbianca.
- …no. – mormora atterrito. Blaine ridacchia ancora, chinandosi a recuperare i pantaloni e poi prendendo da terra anche la maglietta, stirandone le pieghe per indossarla.
- Sarà pronto in tavola fra venti minuti. – annuncia con disinvoltura. È palese che si diverte. Dave lo odia come mai prima. O forse no, ma non è quello il punto. – Farai meglio a liberarti di quella roba. – conclude, accennando con un ghignetto divertito al preservativo usato che ancora Dave trattiene fra le dita.
Angosciato, mentre lo osserva abbandonare la stanza per tornare in camera propria, lasciandolo indietro con tutto il suo carico di ansia, terrore e imbarazzo, Dave non può fare altro che pensare che Blaine aveva ragione. Avrebbe preferito mille volte sentirsi dire qualsiasi altra cosa, piuttosto che quella.
A cena. Col signor Anderson. Sembra solo appena meno spaventoso dell’idea di buttarsi giù da una finestra con un doppio salto mortale.
- Ah, a proposito! – esclama Blaine, affacciandosi dalla porta, - Scegli uno dei miei cravattini e indossalo. È una cena formale. – annuisce, prima di sparire un’altra volta.
E adesso, il pensiero del doppio salto mortale è diventato addirittura quasi confortante.
Genere: Comico.
Pairing: Dave/Kurt, Dave/Blaine.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Onesided, (triplo) Drabble.
- "Dave non era proprio sicuro di sapere come si fosse ritrovato in quella situazione."
Note: Scritta in occasione della Notte della Talpa @ maridichallenge, su prompt "La fragola si mangiò il lupo".
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
CAPPUCCETTO ROSSO FRAGOLA

Dave non era proprio sicuro di sapere come si fosse ritrovato in quella situazione. Le sue orecchie e la sua coda non facevano che tremare incerte, mentre il ragazzo avvolto nel mantello rosso fragola con cravattino in coordinato si avvicinava con aria famelica. Avrebbe dovuto essere lui quello famelico. Avrebbe dovuto essere lui ad avvicinarsi, costringere il ragazzo a schiacciarsi contro il primo albero, magari con gli occhi pieni di lacrime, e poi ghignare contento quando l’avrebbe sentito implorare pietà. Avrebbe dovuto essere lui a stringere i suoi fianchi fra gli artigli, fino a strappargli quel ridicolo mantello di dosso, ed avrebbe dovuto essere lui ad azzannarlo.
E invece eccolo là che indietreggiava terrorizzato, mentre il ragazzo continuava ad avanzare.
- Chi diavolo sei tu? – domandò con voce tremante, tutti i sensi all’erta.
- Chiamami Blaine. – sorrise il ragazzo, - O anche Cappuccetto Rosso. Non importa.
- Tutto questo è ridicolo. – ringhiò Dave, stringendo i pugni lungo i fianchi, - Io quelli come te me li mangio a colazione.
Il ragazzo sorrise furbo e pericoloso, avvicinandosi ancora, così repentinamente che Dave, nella fretta di sottrarsi alla sua improvvisa vicinanza, finì per incespicare in una radice che spuntava fuori dal terreno, e rovinare a terra.
- Invece mi sa che stavolta sarai tu ad essere mangiato. – concluse il ragazzo con un piccolo ghigno affamato. Dave lo osservò chinarsi sulle ginocchia ed accovacciarglisi fra le gambe, il lungo mantello dispiegato per terra alle sue spalle, come una cascata rosso sangue.


Dave apre gli occhi nel buio della propria camera ed ha il cuore che batte tanto forte da sentirne l’eco nelle orecchie. Si alza a sedere e constata con disperazione-barra-imbarazzo di aver combinato un disastro. L’ennesimo, da quando i sogni sono gli unici luoghi in cui può permettersi certe libertà.
Stavolta, però, il problema è ben più serio. Se già essersi preso una cotta per Kurt Hummel poteva essere considerato un peccato praticamente mortale, come potrà essere considerato prendersene un’altra ugualmente devastante per il suo ragazzo?
Spin-off/seguito di Leonard Karofsky-Hummel Vs. The World.
Genere: Introspettivo.
Pairing: Blaine/OMC.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Underage, OC, Spin-off.
- Seven hundred and thirty days.
Note: Dunque, questa storia. *ride* Ignoratela tutti. Essa è il sequel di una storia che deve ancora essere postata, ed anche il prequel di un'altra storia che deve ancora essere scritta. Blaine è Blaine, Leo è il figlio di Kurt e Dave, cose meravigliose accadranno fra queste due persone ma voi ancora non potete saperle. Questo, però, è il momento che pone le basi per tutto il resto, ed io ne sono così immodestamente orgogliosa che mi prenderei a schiaffi da sola ♥
Sì intitola come si intitola perché mi piaceva l'attacco ("it's been seven hundred and thirty days") molto simile a quello dell'omonima (splendida) canzone di Sinead O' Connor ("it's been seven hours and fifteen days"). Voi ancora non potete saperlo, ma questa canzone parla di questi due ragazzetti, e io le voglio bene come voglio bene a loro. *ride felice e si allontana dondolando*
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
NOTHING COMPARES TO YOU

It’s been seven hundred and thirty days Leonard hasn’t seen Blaine. The last time he saw him, he hated the man. And he still does. Or so he thinks. It’s just more complicated, in ways he would have never expected it to be if anybody asked him when he was six. Or ten. Or twelve. Like he was two years ago.

Blaine hasn’t changed much. He probably never will – that’s what Leonard thinks, sitting between his parents on the couch, unable to look away – he’s probably always going to be just the same. The man who comes and sticks around for not more than a couple of days and then goes away, disappearing in a memory like he never was really there. The man who’s always smiling, but whose lips are practically untouchable, because when you hold out a hand and try to brush them with your fingertips, he’s already gone.

Not that Leo wants to touch him in any way. He still finds Blaine pretty creepy, with the hypnotics way he speaks and the soft voice he uses when he talks with anybody.

Leo’s not stupid, he knows Blaine’s a charmer. That’s why he hates him, that’s what he finds awful about him the most. He looks so fake, whenever he’s chatting with anybody, because every single word he says, every single gesture, even the smallest detail, Blaine works it out just for that purpose. He wants the world to adore him, to hang on his every word, and Leo hates him for that, because, well, who does he think he is? He’s nothing special. He’s not so beautiful and he’s not so smart at all.

He’s just a charmer, a damn good one. Like his kinds, he’s got nothing more than that. And it’s not nearly as enough to fool Leo.

But it’s been seven hundred and thirty days he hasn’t seen him, and he can’t take his eyes off him.

*

It’s been seven hundred and thirty days Blaine hasn’t seen Leonard. Last time he saw him, the kid hated him, and he probably still does. Or so Blaine thinks. Except now it seems harder to just let go of the unpleasant feeling he always gets whenever he thinks about the way that boy feels about him. He used to shrug it off with a light laughter, but now every time he looks at him, every time he sees his frown and the way his lips curl in a mask of hateful disgust whenever they make eye-contact, he can’t help but feeling like things are going the wrong way.

He used to be alright with being hated by Leonard, because he thought he had his reasons. He still thought that way nine years ago. Or five. Or two. He still thought that way two years ago.

He wouldn’t know how to explain this if somebody asked him – and that’s why he’s happy nobody does, because nobody even notices – and it’s probably for the best that he’s not sure he would even know how to explain himself, because what he feels when he looks at the boy is so definitely inappropriate he wouldn’t even have the guts to ask himself “what the hell am I thinking?”. It’s wrong, it has to be.

Not that he would ever touch him in any way. He’s still sane enough to know Kurt would never forgive him, and Karofsky would probably kill him, and by the way he shouldn’t be thinking about this taking for granted that Leo would let him do anything. Christ, it’s not like he even wants to do anything. Leonard is just a kid, he doesn’t even look older than he really is – probably only younger, which makes everything even more weird and awkward and generally creepy.

He knows he should just look away. Sitting on his armchair, beside the big Christmas Tree Kurt decorated for the party he’s throwing and to which he invited him because he always does, Blaine should just look away, concentrate on someone else, maybe some cute guy among the other guests, someone he could invite to his own hotel, someone he could kiss and touch and fuck until dawn, to kick the mental image of that boy’s lips out of his mind, hoping it won’t surface ever again.

But it’s been seven hundred and thirty days he hasn’t seen him, and he can’t take his eyes off him.
Genere: Drammatico.
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine, Kurt/Dave.
Rating: R/NC-17
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Angst, Non per stomaci delicati, Abuse, OOC, What If?.
- Kurt ha qualcosa di strano. Qualcosa che Dave non riesce completamente ad afferrare, e che allo stesso tempo non riesce neanche ad ignorare. Lo scoprirà, comunque, e una volta scopertolo non potrà fare altro che cercare di porre rimedio. A suo modo.
Note: Questa storia è l'agghiaccio. *ride* E', tipo, la classica storia che mai nella vita avrei pensato di poter scrivere. Va contro tutti i miei principi, e infatti si vede, perché è tremenda XD Che poi è il motivo per il quale di sicuro non le farò pubblicità e penso proprio che resterà qui, confinata sul Poly, di modo che solo i forti di stomaco possano trovarla. La tragedia. *sospira*
Insomma, gli avvisi (compreso l'OOC che mi è costato, sappiatelo) sono tutti lì. Prendetene accuratamente nota, prima di avventurarvi. XD
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
YOUR HEART IS AN EMPTY ROOM

Quando Kurt comincia a cambiare, Dave se ne accorge subito, e la prima cosa che fa è ricacciare quel pensiero molesto in fondo allo stomaco, da dove è risalito in uno scatto violento non appena l’ha visto entrare nell’aula che il preside Figgins ha fatto adibire per gli incontri del PFLAG. Nasconde con stizza e ostinazione questa consapevolezza perché lui non è mai stato un osservatore, non è mai stato uno attento ai dettagli, o uno che notasse le sottigliezze, e tutte quelle cose che in genere rendono alcuni esseri umani sensibili – in barba allo stereotipo per cui gli omosessuali dovrebbero possedere almeno un briciolo di sensibilità, per essere credibili nel loro ruolo; be’, lui viaggia fuori dallo schema comune anche in quel senso, allora – e neanche Kurt è stato in grado di cambiarlo in quel senso – di Kurt ha sempre notato ben altro che i semplici dettagli, ed in genere già l’insieme da solo bastava a confonderlo abbastanza da non fargli neanche venire in mente di soffermarsi sui particolari – e perciò è strano, molto strano, quasi disturbante notare la diversità adesso.
Eppure c’è, palese in maniera quasi fastidiosa. È un dettaglio così insignificante che Dave non è neanche sicuro che riuscirebbe ad indicarlo se qualcuno glielo chiedesse, eppure stona così tanto, nell’insieme talmente perfetto che usualmente Kurt è ai suoi occhi, che a Dave riesce perfino difficile guardarlo.
Kurt non si comporta differentemente rispetto al solito. D’accordo, forse è un po’ più silenzioso di altre volte, quando non gli tocca piazzarsi al centro del circolo per animare un po’ la discussione che, senza la sua guida, ogni tanto finisce per arenarsi su argomenti troppo tristi perché i ragazzi ancora alle prime armi con questo genere di cose non decidano di tacere all’improvviso, lasciandola cadere nel silenzio. A parte questi momenti, in effetti sta un po’ sulle sue, in effetti si tiene lontano dal centro dell’azione, in effetti non tocca neanche gli stuzzichini che la signora Hudson ha portato prima che la riunione cominciasse, il che è strano, perché ne va matto, e non ci vuole un grande osservatore per saperlo, dal momento che usualmente Kurt non molla mai il tavolo sul quale sono poggiati i vassoi, per assicurarsene una fornitura continua nel corso delle due ore di durata dell’incontro.
Stavolta no, però, stavolta non lo fa e Dave si agita, perché se da un lato gli riesce difficile continuare a fissarlo – un po’ per quel senso di disturbo che questo fantomatico dettaglio invisibile gli provoca, un po’ perché sarebbe maleducato, e un po’ perché sarebbe come darsi via in un niente, ed è stato troppo bravo a nascondere almeno questo, fino ad ora, che non ci tiene proprio a rovinare tutto adesso, ora che è così vicino ad uscire dal liceo, non vederlo più e farsela passare definitivamente – dall’altro lato non riesce a smettere. Kurt è seduto dall’altro lato del cerchio, rispetto a lui, vagamente decentrato, ed ogni due, tre minuti Dave deve per forza voltarsi a guardarlo, come lo stesse controllando.
È un po’ preoccupato, non riesce a convincersi di non esserlo. E questa cosa è così stupida che quasi si prenderebbe a calci da solo.
Uno dei nuovi ragazzini entrati a far parte del circolo di recente è in piedi, adesso, e sta parlando a bassa voce. Dev’essere uno del primo anno, Dave non lo conosce. Forse non lo conoscerebbe neanche se fosse del secondo o del terzo, non sembra un tipo che frequenti la squadra di football e, a parte Kurt, Dave non ha amici all’infuori di quella ristrettissima cerchia. Comunque, il ragazzino sta parlando di quanto sia stato male per mesi prima di capire che era arrivato il momento di chiedere aiuto a qualcuno, perché da solo non riusciva a venire fuori dal casino che s’era combinato in testa da solo, e Kurt lo ascolta. Dave no. Dave fissa Kurt e nota particolari che non avrebbe mai notato, in condizioni normali. Tipo il lieve tremolio delle sue gambe accavallate, o il modo in cui si tortura le dita, o ancora la linea estremamente piatta e tesa delle sue labbra piene.
Quando il ragazzo smette di parlare, Dave non se ne accorge perché l’ha sentito smettere, o perché l’ha sentito cominciare a piangere, o perché ha sentito il trambusto attorno a sé, tutti i ragazzi e le ragazze che si sono alzati per andarlo a consolare – ma non Kurt, no, lui ci mette un po’ a ingranare col contatto fisico, e per quanto possa essere partecipe delle sofferenze di un ragazzo che ha affrontato il proprio calvario prima di uscire allo scoperto, non andrà mai ad abbracciarlo o a dargli una pacca sulla spalla solo perché qualcuno si aspetta da lui che lo faccia per educazione. No, quando il ragazzo smette di parlare, Dave se ne accorge perché tutti i muscoli tesi del corpo di Kurt si rilassano in un respiro, le sue mani tornano placide e intrecciate sul suo grembo, le sue gambe smettono di tremare, la linea delle labbra si scioglie nella curva dolce di un sorriso appena accennato.
Dave distoglie lo sguardo, arrossendo furiosamente. Intorno a lui, tutti applaudono perché il ragazzo è riuscito a condividere finalmente la propria esperienza dopo ben due settimane di incontri. Non può fare a meno di chiedersi cosa succederà quando sarà lui – che è lì dall’inizio, ufficialmente solo perché è obbligato a partecipare agli incontri per sviluppare un senso di tolleranza che, a quanto pare, non possiede – ad alzarsi dalla propria sedia ed annunciare al gruppo che ha qualcosa da condividere. Come lo guarderanno tutti? Quando quel giorno arriverà – se mai arriverà – come lo guarderà Kurt?
- Ehi. – lo saluta Kurt con un sorriso, e Dave solleva lo sguardo su di lui, accorgendosi del fatto che devono essere passati parecchi minuti dall’ultima volta che s’è guardato intorno, perché l’aula è quasi completamente vuota, eccezion fatta per la signora Hudson che recupera i vassoi semivuoti, - Pensi di restare lì a scaldare la sedia ancora a lungo? Dovremmo finire di riordinare.
- Uh, no. – scuote il capo Dave, alzandosi in piedi, - Cioè, sì, potete sistemare. Intendo, vi do una mano. – chiarifica, recuperando la propria sedia e riportandola a posto dietro un banco, e procedendo poi a fare lo stesso con le altre sedie del circolo. Nel mentre, guarda Kurt, che si aggira per la classe vuota rimettendo a posto sedie, riallineando banchi e ripulendo tracce di gesso dalla lavagna, e deglutisce. Vorrebbe chiedergli “c’è qualche possibilità, una su un milione, che io non sia pazzo nel pensare che ci sia qualcosa che non va in te? Stai bene?”, ma non lo fa, perché non è sicuro di come suonerebbe, e l’idea di esporsi troppo lo terrorizza.
- Siamo pronti? – domanda la signora Hudson, guardandosi intorno, - Possiamo andare?
Kurt annuisce sorridendole, e muove perfino un passo verso di lei prima di voltarsi nuovamente verso Dave.
- Tu hai come tornare a casa? – gli chiede. Dave, preso alla sprovvista dall’interessamento, distoglie lo sguardo e scrolla le spalle.
- Tornerò a piedi. – borbotta.
- Cosa? – quasi strilla la signora Hudson, sconvolta, - Ma neanche per sogno! Ha nevicato per tutto il pomeriggio e c’è un freddo glaciale! – scuote energicamente il capo, mentre Kurt si volta ancora a guardarla con un sorrisetto intenerito che, per qualche secondo, gli restituisce un’immagine più normale, quasi rassicurante, che Dave può guardare sentendosi riscaldare dentro senza dover necessariamente distogliere lo sguardo. – Casa tua è solo ad un paio di isolati dalla nostra, vero? – continua la donna, e Dave annuisce, più per educazione che per altro. – Bene, conclude lei, sorridendo soddisfatta, - Allora vieni con noi. Così mi aiuti a riportare in casa i vassoi con gli avanzi, e poi posso riportarti a casa tua in macchina.
Dave indietreggia, guardandosi attorno sulla difensiva, mentre la signora Hudson decide per lui, strillando che non lo lascerà tornare a casa da solo con questo tempaccio, e che quindi si diano entrambi una mossa a prepararsi, mentre lei porta la macchina più vicina all’ingresso della scuola.
- Non so se… - comincia Dave quando la vede sparire in corridoio, ma Kurt si copre la bocca con una mano e lascia andare un risolino divertito che lo spiazza, lo ipnotizza e lo confonde al tempo stesso.
- È inutile resistere, - lo avverte, - non si rassegnerà fino a quando non ti avrà riportato sano e salvo a casa tua.
Dave arrossisce incerto, guardando altrove.
- Sicuro che non è un problema? – domanda a bassa voce.
Kurt scuote il capo, sorridendogli incoraggiante, e quando lo vede esitare ancora sbuffa, appendendo una mano al fianco e sporgendolo un po’ lateralmente, in una posa vagamente insofferente.
- Oh, andiamo, David, - dice, usando il suo nome per esteso come ogni volta in cui sente il bisogno di essere severo con lui, - se io ho deciso di provare a darti fiducia, potresti usarmi la cortesia di farlo anche tu con te stesso? Un po’ di sicurezza non ti farebbe male, ti aiuterebbe anche ad aprirti. – si interrompe un secondo, riflettendo sulle proprie stesse parole, e poi precisa, - Non è che stia cercando di forzarti a fare coming out, - dice in un sussurro, - ma…
- Ho capito, ho capito. – si affretta a interromperlo lui, agitando le braccia ed annuendo freneticamente, - Dio, Hummel, potresti provare ad essere un po’ più discreto. – borbotta, e Kurt risponde con un ghignetto divertito e supponente, inarcando un sopracciglio.
Non hanno il tempo di portare a termine la conversazione, perché la signora Hudson rientra in aula, stringendosi in un abbraccio protettivo, piena di fiocchi di neve fra i capelli.
- Suggerisco il cappuccio. – annuisce rabbrividendo. – Allora, andiamo?
*
Durante il viaggio in macchina, Dave è silenzioso, ma nessuno se ne stupisce. Le riunioni del PFLAG lo rendono sempre di umore cupo e scontroso, e sia Kurt – col quale si ferma sempre a chiacchierare un po’ dopo ogni riunione, essendo lui l’unico col quale si senta vagamente libero di parlare di quello che ha provato ascoltando gli altri – sia la signora Hudson – che è sempre lì intorno a recuperare stuzzichini e, quindi, ha avuto modo di osservarne il comportamento – sanno bene che spingerlo a parlare controvoglia non sortirà alcun effetto oltre al costringerlo a chiudersi ancora di più in se stesso, perciò non lo forzano. Kurt, d’altronde, riempie da solo il silenzio abbastanza efficacemente, raccontando nei dettagli alla donna chi è scoppiato a piangere, come, quando, perché e da chi è stato consolato.
Le lacrime mettono Dave a disagio, specie in un contesto come quello delle riunioni del PFLAG. Ogni volta che qualcuno racconta la propria storia e le emozioni diventano tali da non poterle più contenere, e magari qual qualcuno si mette a piangere e qualche altro, commosso, lo segue a ruota, lui non può fare altro che sentirsi fuori posto, come se non appartenesse a quella categoria di persone. Non è una questione di razzismo e non si tratta di qualche parte del suo cervello più ostinata delle altre che cerca di convincerlo di non essere gay – Dave ha superato quello scoglio, ormai, anche se questo ancora non lo sa neanche Kurt – è una cosa diversa, è una questione emotiva. Ogni volta che pensa a come si sentirebbe se raccontasse tutto dall’inizio, di come si sente, di quello che ha fatto per nasconderlo e tutto il resto, tutto ciò che riesce a percepire è una grande rabbia, un grande senso di perdita e, giusto in fondo, una sensazione pulsante e luminosa di liberazione che però gli sembra troppo piccola e lontana per poterne attingere a piene mani per provare a sentirsi meglio. Non è sicuro che queste sensazioni lo porterebbero a piangere, e quindi non può fare a meno di pensare che forse c’è qualcosa di sbagliato, in lui. Forse lui dovrebbe piangere, dovrebbe sentirsi spinto a farlo, d’altronde cosa c’è di male nelle lacrime? Niente, no? Ha pianto, quando si è scusato con Kurt. Be’, forse non ha proprio pianto-pianto, forse non gli sono scese proprio lacrime lungo le guance, ma lui si sentiva compresso e imbarazzato proprio come se lo stesse facendo, per cui non è che ci sia molta differenza, in fondo.
Non sente nessun bisogno di piangere, però, quando pensa ad un probabile coming out. Forse, pensa, il bisogno verrà quando effettivamente farà coming out, ma se così non dovesse essere? Magari lui sarà lì, in piedi davanti alla propria seggiolina, e racconterà tutto, e alla fine i suoi occhi saranno asciutti e la gente non saprà come prenderlo, perché tutti si aspetteranno da lui che pianga, e lui invece non lo farà.
Dave sospira, guardando fuori dal finestrino. Kurt sta ancora parlando di quel ragazzino e della sua storia, e dice a Carole “mi sono così commosso!”, e Dave vorrebbe dirgli “però non sembravi commosso, sembravi teso”, ma non ha il tempo di farlo e, anche se l’avesse, probabilmente non ne avrebbe le palle, e comunque la macchina si ferma e non nevica nemmeno più, e davanti casa di Kurt c’è un’automobile che Dave ha imparato a conoscere e odiare, un’automobile che fa brillare gli occhi di Kurt in un modo che Dave odia, che ancora oggi, nonostante tutta la strada che ha fatto, gli fa stringere i pugni e tremare le mani tanta è la voglia di fare del male a qualcosa che lo prende quando la vede.
L’automobile di Blaine.
- Ehi! – cinguetta Kurt, catapultandosi fuori dalla macchina nel momento in cui si ferma completamente. Dave non vorrebbe guardare, ma guarda. Lo vede planare allegro fra le braccia di quel tipo, e trattiene il respiro per non ringhiare.
- Mi dai una mano, Dave? – domanda la signora Hudson con un sorriso, e Dave annuisce, scendendo dalla macchina e recuperando i vassoi, tutti e tre insieme. Non sono proprio facilissimi da maneggiare, perché sono mezzi vuoti e faticano a stare in equilibrio, un po’ come lui che fatica a stare in equilibrio sul vialetto lastricato bagnato di neve che conduce alla porta d’ingresso, ma è nauseato dalla sola idea di fare tre volte avanti e indietro per recuperarli ad uno ad uno, ed essere costretto a posare gli occhi ogni singola volta su Kurt e Blaine che parlano fitto e si stringono l’uno all’altro e ogni tanto, solo ogni tanto, si sfiorano le labbra in un bacio appena accennato che lo disturba anche più di quanto lo disturberebbe un bacio vero, perciò si concentra e cerca di non combinare nessun disastro; quando i vassoi sono al sicuro sul tavolo della cucina, e la signora Hudson recupera nuovamente le chiavi della macchina per riaccompagnarlo, lui tira su un sorriso grato ma imbarazzato, e scuote il capo.
- Ha smesso di nevicare, preferisco tornare a casa a piedi. – si giustifica.
- Ma fa ancora così freddo… - prova la donna, ma lui scuote il capo un’altra volta.
- Sul serio, lo preferisco. – insiste, e poi la saluta educatamente, tornando fuori.
Kurt e Blaine sono ancora lì, naturalmente. Non perché Blaine non abbia il permesso di entrare in casa – figurarsi, è stato accolto come un figlio dal primo giorno – ma perché probabilmente ad entrambi piace prendersi un po’ di tempo per stare da soli senza dover per forza a che fare con tutto il resto della variopinta famiglia di Kurt. Dave distoglie lo sguardo, inspirando ed espirando profondamente per cercare di mantenere la calma, e prova a passare loro a qualche metro di distanza, per imboccare la strada di casa senza che lo notino, ma naturalmente ciò non avviene.
- Dave! – lo chiama Kurt, correndogli dietro e trascinando con sé anche Blaine, la mano del quale stringe nella propria con forza, come fosse intenzionato a non lasciarla andare per nessun motivo al mondo, - Cosa fai, vai via senza salutare? – lo prende in giro in un borbottio giocoso, fingendo di essersi offeso per il suo tentativo di fuga.
- È che sono già in ritardo… - si giustifica lui, stringendosi nelle spalle. E poi, visto che sa ce comunque deve farlo, aggiunge, - Ciao, Blaine.
Il ragazzo risponde con un mezzo sorriso partecipe, ma Dave non riesce a non vederci dentro anche una scintilla di superiorità. È convinto che Blaine sappia – Blaine non è come Kurt, Kurt certe volte pur di continuare a ignorare una verità scomoda è disposto a mentire a se stesso fino al ridicolo, ma Blaine no; Blaine capisce, Blaine probabilmente sa perfettamente che a Dave Kurt piace, che non l’ha baciato solo perché era l’unico ragazzo gay nei dintorni, che la sua non era solo una richiesta di aiuto, ma di qualcosa di ben più preciso e specifico. Blaine sa, e sorride in questo modo perché sa anche che Dave non ha nessuna speranza. Perché a Kurt non potrà mai piacere un tipo come lui, e perché lui, in ogni caso, non avrà mai il coraggio di confessargli i propri sentimenti.
- Allora ci vediamo domani? – domanda Kurt, incoraggiante. Per un secondo, Dave si sente preso alla sprovvista: non c’è nessun incontro del PFLAG in programma per domani, quindi per quale motivo Kurt dovrebbe dargli appuntamento? Poi ricorda: i Bully Whips, i turni di sorveglianza, deve accompagnarlo da un’aula all’altra. Si sforza di sorridergli e annuisce, e Kurt ridacchia della sua incertezza. – Bene. A domani. – sorride, per poi voltarsi nuovamente in direzione di Blaine, e cominciare a condurlo verso casa.
Ora che non ha più fretta di scappare, Dave può permettersi di rimanere lì sul marciapiedi, a due passi dalla cassetta della posta, ad osservarli camminare elegantemente lungo il vialetto e poi entrare in casa, e finalmente riesce ad individuarlo. Quel particolare, quella stranezza che ha reso Kurt difficile da guardare per tutto il pomeriggio. È un marchio scuro. Sul collo.
*
Quando Kurt si presenta a scuola con dieci chili in meno addosso, non serve poi essere un grande osservatore per accorgersene, e ciononostante sembrano tutti ben determinati a non farlo, cosa che rende Dave vagamente inquieto. Kurt sparisce dentro i propri vestiti, ma siccome sorride tanto e non fa che strillare di essere felice, così felice che più felice non si può, sono tutti disposti a passare sopra al particolare, come se non contasse niente.
Ma Kurt è così magro che sembra fragile il doppio, e già prima non è che desse una grande idea di solidità, e la sua pelle è ancora più bianca e trasparente del solito, e i suoi sorrisi sono più ampi, sì, ma sembrano plastificati, e Dave si ritrova nuovamente in condizione di non riuscire a guardarlo e contemporaneamente non riuscire a staccargli gli occhi di dosso quando gli capita di intravederlo da qualche parte.
La riunione è appena finita, e gli studenti ancora emotivamente molto scossi – ormai sono quasi in trenta, fra ragazze e ragazzi, e Dave comincia a sentirsi un po’ stupido quando pensa che non fa ancora davvero parte del gruppo; per questo, cerca di non pensarci troppo spesso, dal momento che comunque sa che di fare coming out, almeno per ora, non se ne parla nemmeno – e Kurt, in genere sempre primo ad alzarsi per congedare il gruppo, resta seduto al proprio posto, come facesse fatica ad alzarsi.
In condizioni normali, Dave non troverebbe mai il coraggio di chiedergli qualcosa, ma Kurt è davvero troppo magro, troppo pallido e troppo strano per impedirselo, perciò gli va vicino e gli si siede accanto, mentre anche gli ultimi studenti abbandonano l’aula, dandosi appuntamento per il giorno dopo o per la riunione successiva.
- Ma stai bene? – domanda senza la minima delicatezza. Kurt si volta a guardarlo, spalancando gli occhi, e solo in quel momento Dave capisce che sostanzialmente non si scambiano una parola da giorni e la prima cosa che ha fatto lui è stata sedersi al suo fianco e ficcare il naso nei suoi affari, peraltro con una brutalità che come unica risposta meriterebbe solo che Kurt si alzasse e lo mollasse lì per andarsene.
Kurt, però, resta lì. Accavalla le gambe e incrocia le braccia sul petto, sulla difensiva, e guarda altrove, ma risponde.
- Come mai me lo chiedi?
Dave scrolla le spalle, appoggiandosi allo schienale della sedia e guardandosi intorno a propria volta, giusto per non tenere gli occhi incollati al profilo di Kurt.
- Sembri strano. – risponde, inumidendosi le labbra e schiarendosi la voce per farsi coraggio, - Intendo, non sembra che tu stia bene.
- Cosa vorrebbe dire questo? – domanda Kurt, lanciandogli un’occhiata brevissima e poi tornando a fissare ostinatamente la parete di fronte a sé, dall’altro lato della stanza.
- Be’, ce li ho gli occhi, lo vedo quando qualcuno sta male, intendo, fisicamente male! – sbotta Dave, infastidito dalla sua freddezza.
- Cosa domandi a fare, allora, se conosci già la risposta? – insiste Kurt, alzandosi in piedi. – Lasciami in pace. – conclude, dirigendosi a grandi passi verso la porta, diretto probabilmente all’auditorium.
- Ehi! – lo ferma Dave, scattando in piedi a propria volta ed allungando una mano per afferrargli un polso, - Mi sto solo preoccupando, potresti—
- Ahi! – soffia Kurt, ritraendo la mano. Le dita di Dave non si erano ancora neanche chiuse attorno a lui, e per questo gli riesce molto facilmente di sottrarsi alla sua stretta. Per lo stesso motivo, però, è decisamente improbabile che sia stato lui a fargli male, e nel momento in cui lo realizza Dave si ferma a metà di un passo, guardando Kurt con gli occhi sgranati, mentre Kurt gli restituisce lo stesso sguardo, solo un po’ più spaventato, stringendosi la mano al petto.
- Che ti sei fatto? – domanda, indicando il polso con un cenno del capo. Nota solo in questo momento che indossa uno di quei maglioncini dalle maniche lunghissime che spesso portava fino a un paio di anni fa. È quasi interamente coperto dalla spalla alla punta delle dita. Cerca di ripetersi che probabilmente è solo per il freddo, ma non può fare a meno di trovarlo strano.
- Niente. – risponde subito Kurt, scuotendo il capo, e poi, rendendosi conto che non può mentire, aggiusta il tiro. – Me lo sono slogato. Mentre ballavo. Non è un gran problema, ma non stringerlo.
- Oh… - riprende a respirare più tranquillamente Dave, tornando anche a rilassare i muscoli tesi delle spalle e delle braccia, - Ok. Comunque, ero solo preoccupato. Non c’è bisogno di rispondermi male solo perché mi interesso. Sei stato tu a dirmi che dovrei essere più sicuro, o no?
Kurt sospira, passandosi una mano fra i capelli ed ostinandosi a tornare a guardare altrove.
- Scusa. – dice a bassa voce, - Sono un po’ teso.
- Stai anche diventando trasparente. – insiste Dave, acido, ma quando Kurt scatta a guardarlo, gli occhi nuovamente spalancati e pieni di paura, si rende conto di aver passato un confine, e si tira subito indietro. – Scusa, non volevo… intendo, non sono fatti miei.
Kurt apre e chiude la bocca un paio di volte, come stesse sforzandosi di cercare qualcosa da rispondergli, un qualche commento sarcastico che possa rimetterlo al suo posto, o qualcosa del genere, ma evidentemente non trova nulla, perché dopo qualche secondo di silenzio preferisce voltargli le spalle ed abbandonare l’aula, rifugiandosi nell’auditorium ben prima dell’inizio delle prove del glee club.
A Dave non resta molto addosso, se non la sensazione di essersi spinto troppo in avanti ed aver combinato un casino, come gli servissero altri motivi per sentirsi a disagio attorno a Kurt.
Cerca di lasciarsi rassicurare dalla scusa che Kurt ha usato per giustificare quel dolore al polso, ma la verità è che non può fare a meno di pensare che se il ballo è anche la causa di tutti i chili che ha perso, allora Kurt dovrebbe andarci più piano. E in generale, in realtà, se anche la causa non fosse il ballo, probabilmente Kurt dovrebbe andarci più piano comunque.
*
Poi un giorno succede che Kurt non viene a scuola, e questa cosa non solo rovina tutta l’attenta programmazione della giornata che Santana aveva approntato per Dave perché tenesse bene a mente anche gli orari in cui doveva portare in giro Kurt da un’aula all’altra, ma è anche strano, perché Kurt non si assenta mai. È uno degli studenti col numero di presenze più alto di tutto il liceo, e Dave non può fare a meno di preoccuparsi. Per qualche motivo, i vestiti troppo larghi, il pallore, la generale tristezza e il polso dolorante di Kurt non lo lasciano in pace. È ben consapevole che potrebbe semplicemente essersi preso un raffreddore, ma questo non riesce a tranquillizzarlo del tutto.
Si giustifica con se stesso dicendosi che è sicuramente un effetto collaterale del senso di responsabilità che percepisce per tutta la questione dei Bully Whips, ma la verità è che sa perfettamente che non è vero, e l’imbarazzo che prova nei confronti della situazione generale non è comunque sufficiente a tenerlo lontano da casa Hummel, quando la giornata scolastica finisce. Deve comunque passare per quella strada, e lo fa ripetendosi che non deve fermarsi, non deve attraversare il vialetto, non deve suonare il campanello e non deve restare lì per chiedere informazioni a chiunque gli apra la porta, ma sono esattamente le cose che fa quando la casa entra nel suo raggio visivo, e non riesce a impedirselo.
- Oh, Dave. – gli sorride la signora Hudson, - Sì, Kurt non sta bene. Il problema è che non è qui. – Dave aggrotta le sopracciglia, preso alla sprovvista, e lei lo rassicura con una risatina. – È andato a trovare Blaine alla Dalton, ieri, ma poi non s’è sentito bene, e visto che ha la febbre non se l’è sentita di tornare indietro, per cui è rimasto lì. Gli dirò che sei passato, gli farà piacere.
Dave annuisce, la saluta e riprende a camminare per la propria strada, ma non riesce a togliersi dalla testa il pensiero che dovrebbe controllare. È un pensiero ridicolo e idiota, insomma, Kurt è con Blaine, se davvero sta così male di sicuro non è da solo a prendersi cura di se stesso, ma questa consapevolezza non impedisce a Dave di chiedere in prestito la macchina a suo padre – ed ottenerla, complice l’acquazzone che si riversa giù dal cielo mentre lui è ancora per strada – e guidare direttamente fino alla Dalton.
Arriva verso metà pomeriggio, e ha già smesso di piovere. Quando varca il cancello principale, è sconvolto dall’enormità di quello che vede: solo l’edificio scolastico sarà grande il doppio rispetto al McKinley, ed i due edifici che suppone siano i dormitori si estendono per decine e decine di metri in lunghezza, dando a chi li guarda l’illusione di poter contenere una quantità di stanze molto superiore – Dave ne è sicuro – rispetto a quelle che servono per una scuola privata come questa.
Si intrufola direttamente in uno dei dormitori, dove un ragazzo di poco più grande di lui sta seduto dietro un tavolo con due registri aperti di fronte a sé. Dave non li guarda neanche, sta già cominciando a sentirsi molto più nervoso di quanto non dovrebbe e comunque non è più tanto convinto – se mai ne è stato – che venire fin qui sia stata una buona idea.
- Blaine Anderson… - dice a bassa voce. Il ragazzo sta leggendo una rivista di motociclismo, e non solleva neanche gli occhi su di lui, si limita a gettare un’occhiata svagata ad uno dei registri e poi sfogliare un’altra pagina della rivista.
- È a lezione. – risponde atono, - Ripassa più tardi.
- Veramente io starei cercando il suo ragazzo. – insiste allora Dave, parlando velocemente, per evitare di interrompersi a metà perché si è pentito di averlo detto. Cosa che comunque fa quando il ragazzo, finalmente, gli solleva gli occhi addosso, inarcando un sopracciglio. – Kurt Hummel… - si sforza di dire Dave, deglutendo pesantemente, - Dovrebbe trovarsi qui.
Il ragazzo mette via la rivista e controlla più accuratamente l’altro registro, che dev’essere quello degli ospiti. Lo scorre con un dito e poi batte quello stesso dito un paio di volte in corrispondenza di una riga in cui, in effetti, è segnato il nome di Kurt.
- Sì, è in camera sua. – ammette, - Ma probabilmente non dovresti disturbarlo. Né essere qui, in questo momento.
Dave aggrotta le sopracciglia, perché sa che è vero.
- Mi ha chiamato lui. – mente, sperando che questo sia sufficiente ad eliminare ogni sospetto, di qualsiasi tipo possa essere, - Se non mi vede arrivare, si preoccuperà.
Il ragazzo sembra stupito dalla sua affermazione, ma allo stesso tempo si ferma a riflettere abbastanza a lungo da far capire a Dave che la trova plausibile. Quando, alla fine, il ragazzo scrolla le spalle e gli comunica il numero della stanza ed il piano al quale deve recarsi, indicandogli gli ascensori in fondo al corridoio, Dave non può fare a meno di tirare un sospiro di sollievo, ringraziando distrattamente.
Quarto piano, stanza 109. Dave controlla scrupolosamente le targhette numerate sulle porte, per essere sicuro di non sbagliare, e quando la trova bussa lievemente, un paio di volte. Il silenzio che si protrae dopo quel gesto dura anche troppo, per i suoi gusti, ma alla fine Kurt risponde.
- Blaine non c’è. – dice, la voce distante e molto più nervosa di quanto dovrebbe essere.
- Kurt… - lo chiama Dave, bussando ancora, ed evidentemente Kurt non deve riconoscerlo, perché la sua risposta è raggelante per quanto è assurda e incomprensibile, al punto che Dave non riesce quasi nemmeno ad assimilarla.
- Per favore… - dice in un pigolio esausto, - Sono stanco, per oggi basta.
- Che…? – biascica Dave, talmente preso alla sprovvista da entrare in confusione, - Kurt, sono Karofsky! – precisa, bussando ancora una volta, e dall’interno della stanza giungono chiarissimi i suoni ora più frenetici, ora più quieti e ovattati, di qualcuno che si scaraventa giù dal letto e si veste in fretta e furia.
Kurt apre la porta qualche secondo dopo, col fiatone, una camicia spiegazzata ed un paio di pantaloni addosso e i capelli tutti in disordine.
- Che… che ci fai qui? – domanda, gli occhi spalancati, pieni di terrore.
Dave non sa neanche cosa dovrebbe fare. Kurt potrebbe anche invitarlo a entrare, ma Dave non è sicuro di volerlo. Non sa neanche se accetterebbe.
- Ero preoccupato. – deglutisce, ed è la cosa più sincera che può dire, in questo momento, - Sono passato da casa tua, ma…
- Lo so che sei passato da casa mia, Carole mi ha chiamato poco fa. – lo interrompe lui, stringendo convulsamente le mani attorno allo stipite della porta, - Perché sei venuto?
- Ero preoccupato, ti ho detto. – ripete lui, aggrottando le sopracciglia e sentendo già montargli nello stomaco la familiare sensazione di rabbia frustrata che Kurt è sempre capace di generare in lui ogni volta che, dopo una piccola apertura, torna a richiudersi a riccio.
- Ho capito che sei preoccupato, ma dovresti cominciare a preoccuparti di meno. – ribatte Kurt, gelido, - Sto benissimo.
- Lo vedo. – soffia Dave, - Non sembra neanche che tu abbia la febbre, in realtà, quindi direi che non mi voglio certo fare i fatti tuoi, ma qui qualcuno sta dicendo cazzate a qualcun altro.
- Quello che dico ai miei genitori non sono fatti tuoi. – risponde Kurt, spalancando gli occhi, oltraggiato, - Ora, se non ti dispiace, tornatene da dove sei venuto, grazie.
Dave stringe forte i pugni lungo i fianchi, trattenendo un ringhio di gola.
- Sicuro… - dice cupo, voltandogli le spalle e camminando svelto verso l’ascensore. Si ferma a metà percorso, però, voltandosi indietro repentinamente, e Kurt è ancora lì, che lo guarda dalla soglia della porta. – A cosa ti riferivi, prima? – domanda. Kurt inarca un sopracciglio.
- Non ho idea di cosa tu stia parlando. – dice freddamente, e Dave ritorna verso di lui in un paio di ampi passi rabbiosi.
- Prima di aprire, quando ho chiamato il tuo nome. – dice, la voce che quasi gli trema dall’irritazione, - Hai detto “sono stanco, per oggi basta”. Non credo proprio che tu stessi parlando con me. Con chi credevi di stare parlando? E che volevi dire con quella frase?
- Ero ancora mezzo addormentato! – si difende Kurt, stringendosi nelle spalle e provando a chiudere la porta per lasciarne aperto solo uno spiraglio, cosa che Dave gli impedisce di fare piantando una mano contro la superficie liscia in legno scuro, - Non lo so nemmeno cos’è che ho detto! David, devi andartene. – dice quindi, più serio, e nella sua voce c’è una traccia di preoccupazione che Dave non è sicuro di riuscire a interpretare correttamente.
- Kurt? – domanda qualcuno alle spalle di Dave. Non ci mette molto, a riconoscere la sua voce. – È tutto a posto?
- Blaine! – sorride immediatamente il ragazzo, - Sei tornato.
Blaine gli ricambia il sorriso, avvicinandosi di qualche passo, e Dave istintivamente indietreggia, allontanandosi dalla porta.
- Karofsky, stai ricominciando? – domanda con fare minaccioso, per poi voltarsi a guardare Kurt. Dave lo vede chiaramente essere sul punto di dire qualcosa con aria preoccupata, qualcosa tipo “ti stava infastidendo?” o qualcosa del genere, puoi sempre prevedere quando qualcuno sta per dire una frase simile, perché le espressioni della gente spesso sembrano preimpostate in un dato modo. Specie quando non sono sincere. In ogni caso, l’espressione di Blaine diventa immediatamente molto più sincera, e per questo anche molto più spaventosa, quando si incupisce all’improvviso. – Ma come sei conciato? – domanda, e Kurt, arrossendo violentemente, si stringe la camicia al petto con una mano, coprendosi dove i due bottoni aperti lo lasciavano scoperto.
- Dave stava andando via. – dice Kurt, parlando a bassa voce, come stesse giustificandosi, - Ha saputo da Carole che non stavo bene ed è voluto passare per salutarmi, ma ora va via subito. Vero, Dave? – domanda, lanciandogli un’altra occhiata piena di quella preoccupazione che prima era stata solo accennata.
Dave ne ha paura, perché è qualcosa che non dovrebbe trovarsi negli occhi di Kurt. È qualcosa che non dovrebbe trovarsi negli occhi di nessuno, eppure è lì. La sensazione di essersi tirato sulle spalle una situazione molto più complessa di quanto lui possa gestire è spaventosamente intensa, al punto da costringerlo ad annuire velocemente e correre via lungo il corridoio, rifugiandosi nell’ascensore il prima possibile.
Non è per niente sicuro di aver capito cosa sia successo. In realtà, non è neanche sicuro di volerlo scoprire.
*
Quando Kurt torna a scuola, due giorni dopo, è ancora più magro di come lo ricordava. Solo a guardarlo si sente fisicamente male, e perciò evita di farlo per la maggior parte del tempo, ma è costretto a farlo quando, durante la riunione del PFLAG, Kurt si siede proprio di fronte a lui. Non fa che tremare per tutto il tempo, e Dave ne è terrorizzato. Kurt è l’ombra del ragazzo che era fino a sei mesi fa, è l’ombra del ragazzo al quale bastava lanciargli un’occhiata impietosa da un lato all’altro del corridoio per farlo sentire in pericolo, vulnerabile, esposto.
Vorrebbe avvicinarlo, subito dopo la conclusione della riunione, ma Kurt non gliene dà il tempo. Scappa in auditorium, e lì Dave non può seguirlo, perché quelli del glee club, nonostante tutta la situazione con Santana – forse, in parte, proprio per quello – non lo vedono ancora di buon occhio, e lui in realtà non è che abbia faticato più di tanto per entrare nelle loro grazie, per cui preferisce tenersene alla larga. Lo cerca, dopo gli allenamenti di football, ma non riesce a trovarlo, e suppone che se ne sia già tornato a casa, motivo per il quale anche lui va via.
Sulla strada, comunque, il suo sguardo viene attirato da un drappello di persone raggruppate attorno a tre coppie di ballerini. Si avvicina, attirato dalla scena, perché è piuttosto strano vedere dal vivo persone come loro, che prima di quel momento ha visto solo in televisione, a quelle gare di danza delle quali sua madre sembra non poter fare a meno. indossano costumi particolari, molto colorati, e la gente attorno a loro batte le mani al ritmo della musica nell’osservarli volteggiare elegantemente sulla piattaforma circolare in legno che hanno montato su uno slargo del marciapiede.
- Ciao, - lo saluta un ragazzo con un ridicolo cravattino colorato coordinato con un cappello ugualmente ridicolo, - ti interessano due biglietti? Magari per portarci la tua ragazza. – offre con un sorriso.
Dave a stento lo guarda, impegnato com’è a scrutare interessato le mosse dei ballerini. Due in particolare attirano la sua attenzione. Hanno la pelle scura, sembrano portoricani, o qualcosa del genere. Lei ha capelli lunghi e ricci e si stringe a lui sensuale e abbandonata. Lui le posa una mano alla base della schiena, guidandola nei movimenti mentre lei ancheggia docile, premendosi contro il suo corpo.
- Che stanno facendo…? – domanda curiosamente.
- Ballano la lambada. – risponde il ragazzo, divertito. Dave scuote il capo e lo fissa in cagnesco.
- Sì, lo vedo anch’io, questo. – sbotta, - Perché lo stanno facendo qui in mezzo alla strada? – precisa.
- Questo ci riporta al nostro principale argomento di conversazione. Quella che cercavo di intavolare mentre tu non mi ascoltavi. – annuisce il ragazzo, ridacchiando e sventolandogli i biglietti davanti alla faccia. – C’è uno spettacolo, stasera, stiamo vendendo gli ultimi biglietti.
- Uno spettacolo di che tipo? – domanda lui, e il ragazzo inarca un sopracciglio.
- Sai, credo che tu non avresti comunque nessuna ragazza da portare a vederlo. – commenta, - Mi sembri un po’ lento. Uno spettacolo di danza, no? È rimasto qualche biglietto invenduto e stiamo facendo un po’ di promozione per vedere se riusciamo a fare il tutto esaurito. Sarebbe una gran cosa, riusciremmo a pagarci il viaggio per la finale a New York. Sai, un concorso. Abbiamo passato le semifinali e tutto. Per cui, se sei interessato—
- Hai detto uno spettacolo di danza? – domanda Dave, riportandogli gli occhi addosso dopo un altro paio di secondi passato ad osservare i ballerini in scena, che nel mentre hanno cambiato costume e anche tipo di ballo. Non ha neanche bisogno di pensarci su, le associazioni mentali si fanno da sole. Danza. Kurt. Kurt non sta bene. Lui ha bisogno di tempo di passare in sua compagnia. Lo porterà allo spettacolo.
Compra due biglietti, e quasi si spacca una gamba rischiando di scivolare per terra quando imbocca di corsa la strada per casa di Kurt.
*
Kurt non sembra entusiasta dell’invito, ma per la verità non sembra neanche infastidito. È un po’ difficile inquadrare il suo stato d’animo, se continua a fissarlo come non riuscisse a capacitarsi della sua esistenza in vita, ma Dave è abbastanza sicuro che lo sgomento che gli legge negli occhi non sia dovuto al fastidio di sentirsi invitare ad uscire proprio da lui, quanto più ad un senso di stupore generale legato sì al fatto che non si aspettava che Dave potesse mai invitarlo ad uscire – per assistere a uno spettacolo di danza, poi – ma anche ad una sorta di sorpresa nel riscoprirsi lusingato da una richiesta simile.
- Stasera? – domanda, - Ma non so neanche… ma perché hai deciso di invitare me?
- Non è che avevo i biglietti in mano e ho pensato a te a caso, Hummel, li ho comprati apposta. – borbotta Dave, salvo arrossire furiosamente quando si rende conto di ciò che le parole che ha appena detto implicano. – Intendo… - prova a salvare la situazione, ma Kurt si stringe nelle spalle e ridacchia, divertito, e il suono è sufficiente a confondergli i pensieri abbastanza da non riuscire a trovare neanche una scusa plausibile da rifilargli, motivo per il quale, alla fine, preferisce stare zitto.
- Credo di aver capito. – dice con un sorriso, - E grazie. Sei molto gentile.
- Significa che verrai? – domanda subito lui, ansioso. Kurt arrossisce ed indietreggia di qualche centimetro, esitando vistosamente. Si mordicchia il labbro inferiore e guarda in basso, riflettendo per qualche secondo, mentre il cuore di Dave batte così forte che lui lo sente fisicamente spingere contro la sua cassa toracica, probabilmente intenzionato a sfondarla per andarsene, incapace di sostenere il carico di emozioni che gli confonde il cervello.
- Sì. – dice Kurt alla fine. È un sussurro talmente impercettibile che Dave schiude le labbra per chiedergli di ripetere, giusto per essere certo di non aver preso un abbaglio colossale, ma Kurt lo anticipa, ripetendolo più ad alta voce. Sul suo volto pallido, le guance arrossate spiccano come se si fosse versato addosso un barattolo di salsa di pomodoro. È adorabile.
Dave non riesce a smettere di sorridere come un idiota, per tutto il tragitto fino a casa.
*
Quando Dave torna a sedersi al suo fianco, portandogli la bibita che ha chiesto ed un hot dog da sgranocchiare in attesa dell’inizio del secondo tempo dello spettacolo, Kurt ridacchia, imbarazzato.
- Sei sempre stato così gentile, quando non mi spintonavi contro tutti gli armadietti della scuola, e io non me ne sono mai accorto, o è una cosa che hai cominciato a fare solo di recente? – domanda, accettando l’hot dog con un cenno di ringraziamento e posando l’enorme bicchiere contenente la bibita sulla panchina di legno sulla quale sono seduti. Dave distoglie lo sguardo, arrossendo vistosamente.
- Non è molto carino da parte tua fare battute su questo argomento. – borbotta.
- Perché no? – domanda Kurt, le labbra piegate in un sorriso sereno e rilassato, il primo che Dave gli veda fare da troppo tempo per non essere felice di rivederlo, - In fondo, sono io quello che dovrebbe esserne traumatizzato, no? Tu dovresti subire la tua punizione e basta.
- Mi sembra che qua si stiano ponendo le basi per un rapporto piuttosto sbilanciato… - borbotta ancora Dave, ma gli salta il cuore in gola quando sente Kurt irrigidirsi all’improvviso al suo fianco, stringendo le dita attorno al suo hot dog con tanta forza che quasi si sporca con la senape. - …ho detto qualcosa di sbagliato? – domanda ansioso, e Kurt si affretta a scuotere il capo ed avvolgere meglio il panino nella carta, per scongiurare pericoli eccessivi.
- No, scusa. – sorride ancora, - Sono solo un po’ nervoso.
- E perché? – domanda Dave. Kurt si volta a guardarlo, inarcando un sopracciglio.
- Secondo te? – ritorce, - Mi hai chiesto di uscire…
Dave arrossisce furiosamente, scuotendo il capo.
- Sì, ma non in quel senso! – gracchia, preso alla sprovvista. Kurt ride.
- No? – lo prende in giro, - Dai, scherzo. Sei stato carino a portarmi fuori, specie visto come ti ho trattato ultimamente.
Dave distoglie lo sguardo, incapace di obbligare al suo flusso sanguigno di riprendere a scorrere in modo da non fargli illuminare la stanza col rossore delle proprie guance, specie ora che la sala, nel brusio della gente attorno a loro, torna buia, e i tecnici lasciano accese solo le luci che illuminano la pista da ballo.
- Mi hai trattato in maniera particolare? – chiede, - Non me ne sono accorto.
Kurt ride ancora, gli occhi già incollati alla pista.
- Adesso la gentilezza si sta trasformando in stupidità, e non sono tanto sicuro che tu non stia flirtando. – commenta con un ghigno.
- Ma piantala! – sbotta Dave, arrossendo ancora, - Ma ti diverti?
- Sì. – ammette Kurt, stringendosi nelle spalle. Dave sospira, e cerca di rilassarti contro lo schienale della panca, mentre due ballerini entrano in pista. – Oh, il tango! – squittisce Kurt, giungendo le mani sotto il mento. Dave lo guarda, inarcando un sopracciglio.
- Come fai a capirlo? Non si sono ancora neanche mossi.
- Dave, è evidente da come sono vestiti, via. Lei in nero, gonna con spacco che in qualsiasi altro contesto le porterebbe solo guai, calze a rete, capelli appuntati sulla nuca… lui pantaloni neri, camicia rossa, una rosa in mano… non ti dice niente? – sbuffa Kurt, quasi sconvolto dalla sua palese ignoranza in materia, quando lo vede scuotere il capo. – Sono ancora convinto che, più che le riunioni del PFLAG, a te servano un paio di pomeriggi alla settimana da passare a casa mia a guardare DVD o facendo shopping al GAP.
- Sì, certo. – sospira Dave, scuotendo il capo e concentrandosi sui ballerini. Sono bravi, almeno, per quanto può saperne lui, cioè molto poco. Mentre osserva la ragazza girare attorno al ragazzo, aggrapparsi alle sue spalle e poi lasciare che lui la afferri per un polso per riportarla di fronte a sé e premersela contro, muovendo un paio di passi in avanti e poi un paio di passi indietro, prima di cominciare a ballare sul serio, Dave non può fare a meno di sperare che questi ragazzi vincano qualsiasi cosa debbano andare a vincere, a New York. Si sente molto grato nei confronti del mondo intero perché adesso può stare seduto al fianco di Kurt a sentirlo sospirare innamorato per ciò che vede, ma in special modo crede di dovere un ringraziamento a questi ragazzi, che l’hanno reso possibile, perciò, fra una sbirciatina rubata al profilo sereno di Kurt e l’altra, si concede anche di augurare loro buona fortuna.
Poi, la luce biancastra del cellulare di Kurt si diffonde nell’ambiente, e Dave ne è allo stesso tempo attirato e infastidito. Si volta per chiedergli di spegnerlo, ma l’espressione che gli vede cristallizzata sul viso è sufficiente a fargli trattenere il fiato: Kurt ha gli occhi spalancati, pieni di paura, ed una mano a coprirsi le labbra. L’ha già visto così una volta, ma è abbastanza sicuro di non essere il motivo per cui lo sta venendo così adesso, perciò gli si avvicina.
- Kurt…? – sussurra, e senza volerlo sbircia lo schermo del cellulare.
Il messaggio recita “so dove sei”. C’è scritto “Blaine”, proprio sopra il testo. Le due cose messe insieme fanno scorrere un brivido talmente lungo e intenso, lungo la schiena di Dave, che deve per forza raddrizzarsi, per scrollarselo di dosso, mentre Kurt spegne frettolosamente il cellulare e se lo stringe al petto.
- Kurt, ma che diavolo—
- L’hai visto? – domanda Kurt, la voce che trema, - Dio… devo andare. – biascica, alzandosi in piedi e cominciando a chiedere permesso alle persone sedute nella loro stessa fila, per uscire di lì il più in fretta possibile.
- Kurt! – lo chiama lui, bisbigliando per non dare fastidio, - Aspetta!
- Non seguirmi! – lo avverte lui, prima di sparire oltre la porta d’ingresso. Dave impreca sottovoce, e poi si alza, decidendo di non seguire il suo consiglio e venendo perciò sommerso dagli insulti e dalle lamentele della gente quando a propria volta si fa strada nell’intricato groviglio delle loro ginocchia, per andargli dietro.
Lo cerca ovunque, attorno all’edificio, e quando non riesce a trovarlo decide di dirigersi verso la macchina, per cercarlo più velocemente nelle strade intorno. Probabilmente ha già ripreso la via di casa, se si muove in fretta dovrebbe riuscire a recuperarlo prima che arrivi. La situazione non gli piace, vedere Kurt così teso e sconvolto non gli piace e decisamente non gli piace il contenuto del messaggio che ha intravisto poco fa. Quale razza di fidanzato scrive una cosa simile al proprio ragazzo? È una cosa così inquietante che solo a pensarci la schiena di Dave si riempie nuovamente di brividi.
Individua la propria automobile, si avvicina e fa per aprire lo sportello, ma quando sente il singhiozzo minuscolo che proviene dal lato opposto rispetto a quello in cui si trova non ci mette molto a capire che Kurt dev’essere ancora lì. Gira attorno alla vettura e, non appena lo vede seduto lì per terra, tutto raggomitolato su se stesso, le spalle scosse dai singhiozzi e la schiena appoggiata allo sportello della macchina, si inginocchia al suo fianco.
- Kurt… - lo chiama piano, - Ma che ti è preso? Cos’era quel messaggio?
- Dave, devi andartene. – singhiozza Kurt, scuotendo energicamente il capo ma continuando a nascondersi dietro le proprie stesse braccia, - Per favore, vattene via.
- Non posso! – sbotta Dave, poggiandogli una mano su una spalla, - Cioè, non voglio, ma anche se volessi non potrei, visto che se stai seduto qui rischio di metterti sotto appena parto.
- Non sapevo dove altro andare! – strilla in risposta Kurt, sollevando lo sguardo. Ha gli occhi arrossati e gonfi di lacrime, e i capelli tutti scompigliati sulla fronte, - Carole deve avergli detto dov’eravamo, avevo bisogno di nascondermi, se lui mi trova…
- Se lui ti trova?! – esclama Dave, sconvolto, - Kurt… senti, mi sembra evidente che qui c’è qualcosa che non va. Già quando sono venuto alla Dalton non mi è sembrato che la situazione fosse del tutto normale, ma adesso stai dicendo delle cose che o non hanno senso… - si interrompe, deglutendo faticosamente, - …o ne hanno uno che non mi piace per niente. – Kurt distoglie lo sguardo, mordendosi un labbro e continuando a piangere in silenzio, forzandosi orgogliosamente e testardamente a tenere gli occhi aperti il più possibile, per cercare di farsi scivolare fra le ciglia meno lacrime. Ma quelle sono così tante, e si gonfiano così in fretta, che continuano a rotolargli lungo le guance anche se lui cerca di fare l’impossibile per trattenerle. – Kurt, ascoltami… - sospira Dave, rassegnandosi a sedersi per terra al suo fianco, - voglio aiutarti. Tu hai aiutato me anche quando io non volevo, ed ora mi sembra che sia tu quello che non vuole essere aiutato per nessun motivo al mondo. Il punto è che me ne frego del fatto che tu non voglia essere aiutato, come te ne sei fregato tu quando la situazione era invertita. Quindi adesso prendi un bel respiro e raccontami tutto, fin dall’inizio.
Kurt tira su col naso, asciugandosi gli occhi con i palmi di entrambe le mani, e poi appoggia la testa contro la portiera alle proprie spalle, chiudendo gli occhi e lasciandosi accarezzare la pelle accaldata e arrossata del viso dalla brezza tagliente e fredda della sera, per cercare un po’ di sollievo.
Quando riapre gli occhi, Dave stringe i pugni, perché qualcosa dentro di lui pulsa insistentemente per avvisarlo che, molto probabilmente, qualsiasi cosa Kurt gli racconterà adesso gli darà molti più brividi di quanti gliene abbia già dati quel messaggio sul cellulare.
Dave non è sicuro di sentirsi pronto, ma il punto è che non gl’importa di esserlo.
*
Comincia quando Kurt dice a Blaine che vorrebbe tornare al McKinley. “Posso farlo,” gli dice, “non c’è bisogno di preoccuparsi. La situazione è sotto controllo. Santana si è occupata di Karofsky.”
Blaine però non sembra preoccupato. Blaine è cupo, scontroso, aggrotta le sopracciglia e mette il broncio come un bambino al quale abbiano rotto il giocattolo preferito. Kurt non capisce cosa stia succedendo. Non lo capisce nell’immediato, quando Blaine smette di farsi sentire la sera per la buonanotte per lunghissimi periodi e poi riprende a comportarsi normalmente, facendogli pensare di essere ammattito, di avere solo immaginato le stranezze e il malumore e il disinteresse che gli attribuisce.
Questa è la cosa peggiore, a ripensarci adesso. È la cosa peggiore, dice a Dave, pensare di aver creduto, anche solo per un istante, di essere stato quello in difetto. Di essersi immaginato tutto, di aver perfino trattato Blaine in maniera ingiusta, facendogli notare quando sembrava trascurarlo o ignorarlo del tutto mentre invece Blaine magari stava solo avendo qualche altro problema che, sul momento, gli impediva di stargli dietro coccolandolo come al solito. Aver pensato di essersi comportato solo come uno stupido, ingrato, viziato, capriccioso. Mentre invece era vero. Mentre invece Blaine lo faceva apposta, ad accorciare ed allungare il cordone ombelicale che li univa, solo per giocare con la sua testa. Per metterlo nella posizione di non capire più cosa fosse reale e cosa no, cosa vedesse perché era lì e cosa immaginasse perché pensava che fosse lì per davvero quando invece non c’era affatto.
Kurt non capisce cosa stia succedendo in quell’istante, e non lo capisce nemmeno giorni dopo, quando Blaine gli dice che d’accordo, lui non ha nulla in contrario al suo trasferimento, che continuerà ad amarlo anche se potranno vedersi molto meno spesso, che tutto ciò che vuole è che lui sia felice.
E poi gli chiede di fare l’amore. Glielo chiede, come non ha mai fatto prima. “Fai l’amore con me,” gli dice, “fallo per me.” E Kurt non riesce a trovare neanche un motivo valido per dirgli di no, o forse un motivo ci sarebbe, ed è che non si sente ancora pronto, ma dopo tutto quello che Blaine gli ha detto, davvero, come può rifiutarlo?
Kurt non capisce cosa sta accadendo neanche in quel momento. Non lo capisce quando, dopo aver fatto l’amore, Blaine non si fa sentire per una settimana intera. Kurt prova a chiamarlo ininterrottamente, e lui non risponde mai, e Kurt cerca di distrarsi con l’emozione che prova per essere ritornato a casa, al McKinley, coi New Directions, impegnato nelle mille attività che il ritorno a scuola gli ha permesso di intraprendere, ma non è mai abbastanza per fargli smettere di pensare a lui, e fa sempre troppo male non sentirlo per tanti giorni consecutivamente.
Poi è Blaine a chiamarlo, e la felicità che Kurt prova nel sentire anche solo la sua voce è sufficiente per farlo scoppiare a piangere. Gli chiede perché l’abbia ignorato così a lungo, forse perché ha fatto qualcosa di sbagliato? Forse l’ha fatto arrabbiare?, e Blaine ride di tutte le sue paure. “No, tesoro, sono solo stato impegnato. Fai lavorare troppo il cervello,” gli dice, e Kurt si vergogna così tanto che vorrebbe sparire. Si è immaginato tutto, non era vero niente, è solo uno stupido ragazzino in cerca di continue attenzioni, e Blaine dovrebbe stare lontano da lui, perché lui non se lo merita.
Quando si incontrano, due giorni dopo, Kurt piange per ore. Non sa spiegarsi neanche perché. Stretto fra le sue braccia piange e piange, vergognandosi come un criminale, e Blaine asciuga tutte le sue lacrime in punta di lingua, e poi glielo chiede ancora. “Fai l’amore con me, fallo per me,” e Kurt non deve neanche più dire di sì. Blaine chiede, lui dà. Tiene gli occhi chiusi e il viso nascosto dietro l’avambraccio per tutto il tempo, sentendosi male, quasi nauseato, per ogni minuto che Blaine passa piantato in profondità dentro al suo corpo.
Ancora una volta, Blaine non si fa più sentire. Passano due settimane, e di lui nessuna traccia. Kurt piange ogni giorno. Inizialmente si dice che prima o poi le lacrime cominceranno a diminuire, ma non è vero. Non è mai vero. Alla fine, prende la macchina e guida fino a Westerville. Blaine lo accoglie in camera propria sorridendo, come non fosse successo niente. E Kurt sa già cosa significa quel sorriso. “Ma che sciocchezza, ti sei immaginato tutto,” si dice. Blaine non ha più neanche bisogno di chiedergli di fare l’amore con lui, Kurt lo bacia e tutto il resto viene da sé, troppo facilmente per pensarci, troppo per non fare almeno un po’ male.
Stavolta, Blaine non smette di farsi sentire. Riprende a chiamarlo ogni giorno, riprendono le ore passate su Skype a parlare del più e del meno quando non riescono a vedersi, riprendono le telefonate fiume del weekend, riprendono gli sms della buonanotte, riprende l’abitudine a trovare ogni scusa plausibile per evitare gli altri impegni e potersi vedere più spesso. Riprende tutto come prima, e Kurt si sente sempre peggio. Ormai non capisce più nemmeno perché. Qualsiasi cosa Blaine faccia lo fa sentire colpevole. Ogni volta che lo guarda, si sente disgustoso per avere anche solo provato a pensare qualcosa di cattivo su di lui. Non riesce quasi a stargli accanto, ma non potrebbe stare senza, e non ha la minima idea di come sia riuscito ad arrivare a questo punto immaginando tutto da solo.
La richiesta, poi arriva all’improvviso. “C’è questo mio amico…” dice Blaine, e poi glielo chiede. “Fai l’amore con lui, fallo per me,” e Kurt spalanca gli occhi e dice no. Dice no con violenza, si allontana da lui con uno scatto furioso e recupera la borsa, oltraggiato, indietreggiando verso la porta. Gli chiede cosa gli passi per la testa, ma Blaine non risponde. Aggrotta le sopracciglia, scrolla le spalle. “Era solo un favore,” dice. La frase da sola è sufficiente a sconvolgere Kurt ben oltre le sue capacità di sopportazione. Gira sui tacchi e va via, e per i primi giorni, quando ovviamente Blaine non si fa più sentire, Kurt riesce perfino a pensare che va bene così. Chi se ne frega, è pazzo, non lo merita.
Poi, la morsa allo stomaco comincia a farsi sentire. È nostalgia, è bisogno, Kurt ha voglia di Blaine e il solo pensiero lo disgusta, ma è così. Ha voglia di sentirsi addosso le sue mani, ha voglia di sentire la sua voce, ha voglia perfino di sentirsi come si sente mentre scopano. Che non è mai un sentimento piacevole. Ma gli manca perfino quello. Perciò torna da lui. Torna da lui e lo fa senza pensare alle conseguenze. Forse perché le immagina, e preferisce non farlo.
Le conseguenze sono quelle che si aspetta. Quando Blaine gli parla nuovamente del suo amico, “sicuramente lo conosci, è nei Warblers anche lui”, Kurt sa già cosa aspettarsi. Se dice no, saranno altre due settimane di assenza. Forse anche di più. Al solo pensiero, il suo corpo non regge. Gli si annoda lo stomaco, gli si attorcigliano le viscere, si sente nauseato, svuotato, stanco e non vuole, non vuole, non può. Perciò dice sì. Lo dice una volta, e poi due, e poi tre. E gli amici aumentano. Uno per volta, due o più insieme. Kurt perde il senso del limite, non ricorda più come si fa a negargli qualcosa, e Blaine lo sa. Blaine lo sa perché è stato lui a portarlo fin lì. L’ha fatto consapevolmente, e questa è la seconda cosa peggiore, così dice a Dave, piangendo così forte da farsi dolore il petto. Questa è la seconda cosa peggiore. L’essersi messo nelle sue mani spontaneamente. Non essere stato capace di frenarlo in nessun modo.
Essere stato tanto stupido da credere all’amore solo perché per la prima volta qualcuno l’aveva fatto sentire amato.
*
- Sapevo che vi avrei trovati qui a rivangare. Siete un cliché. Molto più di quanto non lo fossimo io e te, Kurt. E immagino che non ci sia modo di sistemare questa storia senza che qualcuno ne pianga le conseguenze, giusto? – dice Blaine, in piedi di fronte a loro, ancora seduti per terra, - Prima di ogni cosa, non ho tempo per le sciocchezze. E non ho tempo per te, Karofsky. Vai a farti un giro, devo parlare con Kurt.
- Neanche per idea. – ringhia Dave, scattando in piedi, - Tu ora scompari. Per sempre. E non ti avvicini a Kurt mai più finché sei vivo. E io potrei prendere in considerazione l’idea di non prenderti a sprangate sulla nuca e non denunciarti alla polizia.
- Oh, sì, prendimi a sprangate sulla nuca e poi vai alla polizia, sono sicuro che saranno molto interessati alla tua storia. – ride Blaine, - O alla tua, - aggiunge, voltandosi a guardare Kurt, - della quale non puoi dimostrare niente. Per dire la verità, non sono neanche sicuro di aver fatto qualcosa di realmente illegale. Ti ho sempre chiesto cosa volevi fare, sei sempre stato tu a rispondermi di sì. – dice con un mezzo ghigno che però non sembra affatto realmente divertito. Kurt non riesce nemmeno a guardarlo. Si copre il volto con entrambe le mani e Dave non ha bisogno di molto altro, per decidere cosa deve fare.
La spranga potrebbe non essere necessaria.
*
Kurt ritorna di corsa, rosso in volto, trafelato, imbarazzato oltre ogni dire. Scarta il ghiacciolo che ha comprato dal chiosco in fondo alla strada e lo appoggia sull’occhio già gonfio e giallastro di Dave, inginocchiandosi al suo fianco e sospirando pesantemente.
- Non avevano del ghiaccio vero, mi sono dovuto accontentare. – gli spiega, - Sarai un po’ appiccicoso, ma almeno la tua faccia non diventerà il doppio più grossa.
- Visto che lo è già abbastanza… - commenta Dave con una risatina, e Kurt arrossisce ancora più violentemente, tirandogli uno schiaffetto contro una spalla.
- Non fare ironia, cretino. – lo rimprovera, e poi sospira ancora. – Non pensavo che sarebbe riuscito a colpirti. Certo che sei un idiota, sei alto e largo il doppio e ti fai prendere così a pugni in faccia…
- Un solo pugno. – borbotta Dave, quasi offeso, - Mi sono distratto per un secondo e la sua statura ridicola gli ha permesso di muoversi più velocemente di quanto pensassi. Ma a lui è andata comunque peggio.
Kurt si lascia andare ad un sorrisetto divertito, e Dave sa che lo fa perché sta pensando al labbro ed al sopracciglio spaccato di Blaine e a quanto sangue perdeva mentre si allontanava zoppicando e piangendo in maniera ridicola.
- Sai cosa? – dice, - Mi sento ancora più stupido, adesso. Ti sono bastati dieci minuti di botte per farlo fuggire via in lacrime. Ti rendi conto di quanti mesi abbia passato io piangendo disperatamente perché non sapevo cosa fare? È imbarazzante. – sbuffa contrariato, sedendosi al suo fianco. – Toh, continua a premerti il ghiacciolo contro l’occhio. – si raccomanda, passandogli il ghiacciolo tenendolo saldamente per il bastoncino di legno.
- Dovresti sentirti fortunato, invece, perché almeno hai trovato uno come me che aveva la soluzione a portata di mano. – borbotta Dave, ubbidendo all’ordine. C’è tanto di quel freddo che il ghiacciolo neanche si scioglie. Gli rimarrà appiccicato alla faccia.
Kurt lancia un’occhiata alle mani di Dave, e fa una smorfia addolorata. Quando Blaine si è allontanato e lui ha potuto avvicinarsi per guardarle, le nocche erano così scorticate da sanguinare. Le hanno avvolte in due pezzetti di stoffa che Kurt ha strappato da una camicia che improvvisamente sembrava molto meno di valore di quanto non apparisse quando, una settimana prima, l’ha comprata per un prezzo allucinante durante lo shopping del venerdì, ma Kurt non riuscirà a levarsi la loro immagine dalla testa tanto facilmente.
- Mi dispiace per le tue mani. – dice a bassa voce, - È… è assurdo che tu abbia dovuto farlo. Mi dispiace moltissimo.
- Oh, per piacere. – sbotta Dave, scrollando le spalle, - Cercavo solo una scusa per prenderlo a pugni da mesi. Sono io che dovrei ringraziare te. La Furia decisamente si sente molto grata, in questo momento. Un po’ ammaccata e dolorante, ma grata in ogni caso.
- La Furia… - Kurt sorride appena, stringendosi nelle spalle e sedendosi abbastanza vicino da potergli sfiorare un fianco col proprio, - Sono contento che tu l’abbia presentata prima a Blaine che a me. – aggiunge con una mezza risatina.
Dave gli lancia un’occhiata e si sente arrossire così tanto che perfino il ghiacciolo comincia a sciogliersi.
- Mi sa che al ritorno dovrai guidare tu. – gli dice per cambiare argomento, lanciando un’occhiata al cielo limpido e ghiacciato sopra di loro. Kurt annuisce. Non sembra granché infastidito dall’idea, e Dave si concede un sorriso sollevato. Poteva andare peggio, o forse no, ma comunque non importa. L’importante è che sia passata.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico.
Pairing: Darren/Max.
Rating: R/NC-17.
AVVISI: Slash, Lemon, Angst, Language, Crack.
- Di come Dave si sia sempre pentito di aver cominciato a spiare qualcuno, e di come ciò l'abbia portato a un vicolo cieco e sbarrato con un cavalletto di legno.
Note: Qui.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
PARALLEL LINES, SEPARATE LIVES

Darren e Max si scambiano un “cinque” prima ancora di fare lo stesso con Naya e Chris, quando la ripresa si interrompe e un «Buona!» risuona contemporaneamente dalle due parti opposte del set: l’episodio sta procedendo a gonfie vele, ancor più di quanto non sia accaduto nei giorni passati, come se Prom Queen fosse il gran finale dell’intera stagione anziché l’interludio alla conclusione della serie.
«Spuntino!» grida Max agli altri tre, avviandosi di gran carriera verso il bordo del set prima ancora che uno degli altri si accinga a fare lo stesso. Darren deve correre, per raggiungerlo.
«Vacci piano, per oggi non abbiamo ancora finito» dice, tentando di far somigliare quelle parole a un rimprovero e fallendo miseramente. «Ti stai divertendo come mai prima.»
«Già.» Max è davvero su di giri, al punto da essere tra i pochi a non aver accusato la fatica di una settimana di lavoro più intensa del solito, per girare tutte le scene prima di trasferirsi a New York. «Già» ripete, e strizza Darren in un abbraccio da orso per trascinarlo fino al bar.

«Forse dovresti prendere esempio.»
David non prende bene l’allusione, esattamente come previsto: incrocia le braccia con uno sbuffo e distoglie ostentatamente lo sguardo. «Non me ne può fottere di meno.»
«Può darsi. Ma il tuo problema non è Kurt- almeno, non da un certo punto di vista» si affretta a specificare Blaine, protendendo le mani aperte in avanti in segno di scusa quando l’occhiataccia di David tenta di incenerirlo sul posto. «Tu hai problemi a relazionarti con chiunque.»
«Prova a ripeterlo di nuovo e ti mischio le ossa fino a non farti riconoscere il femore dal fegato.»
Blaine scrolla le spalle, lisciandosi la giacca e scrollando inesistenti granelli di polvere dalla sua spalla. «Stavamo dicendo?» replica, un sorriso furbo a increspargli le labbra. David lo pianta in mezzo al corridoio, furibondo, senza neanche dargli il tempo di aggiungere che, comunque, il fegato non è un osso.

«Cosa prendi?» domanda Max, sedendosi su uno degli sgabelli e facendo cenno alla ragazza che si occupa del catering perché si avvicini. Darren si arrampica sul proprio sgabello al suo fianco con qualche difficoltà, imprecando sottovoce per poi lasciarsi andare contro il bancone con uno sbuffo stremato ed esibirsi in un gesto vago al quale Max risponde con una risata e un’ordinazione per due.
«Come facevi a saperlo?» chiede Darren, sollevando la testa, e Max si volta a guardarlo con aria un po’ stupita.
«Sapere cosa?»
«Cosa avevo voglia di mangiare» risponde Darren con un sorrisino, e Max si stringe nelle spalle.
«Ho tirato a indovinare» risponde.
Darren si lascia andare ad un sogghigno complice e si avvicina a lui, strisciando lo sgabello sul pavimento. «Dici che possiamo portare via i sandwich e la Coca ed andare a fare un giro dove non va a guardare nessuno?» propone. Il rossore improvviso che colora le guance di Dave è sufficiente a costringere le sue labbra ad aprirsi in un sorriso perfino più sfacciato.

«Che fai?» chiede Blaine, individuandolo appoggiato contro il muro e raggiungendolo circospetto. David sbuffa, guarda altrove, sembra tremendamente annoiato e infastidito dalla semplice consapevolezza di averlo ancora intorno nonostante le minacce di poco prima, ma comunque risponde.
«Li tengo d’occhio» borbotta, «Non si sa mai.»
«Cos’è che non si sa mai?» domanda Blaine, inarcando un sopracciglio. «Non che è avresti il potere di fermarli, se anche decidessero…»
«Possiamo non parlarne?» sbuffa lui, cambiando posizione, in modo da fissare con più insistenza il proprio sguardo altrove, ignorando Blaine ormai vicinissimo al suo fianco.
«Ma ormai dovresti esserci abituato» sospira quest’ultimo, sollevando gli occhi al cielo in una silenziosa supplica di misericordia e scrollando le spalle, «Non è mica la prima volta che…»
«Cos’è che non ti è chiaro dell’espressione “possiamo non parlarne?”, esattamente?» sbotta Dave, voltandosi a guardarlo di scatto, gli occhi pieni di rabbia, le labbra piegate in una smorfia gonfia di irritazione e fastidio.
Cercando di dar fondo a tutta la propria pazienza, Blaine sospira ancora.

Max bacia Darren con la naturalezza di chi lo ha fatto molte altre volte, prendendosela comoda nell’assaporare le sue labbra piene e sempre atteggiate a qualche smorfia, lasciando che le sue mani si spingano dove meglio credano, gli palpino i muscoli degli avambracci, gli massaggino le spalle, sfiorino le sue guance chiazzate di rosso e scostino lembi di stoffa per accarezzargli la schiena; e per quante volte si siano detti l’un l’altro che non c’era bisogno di impegni, tra loro, Max non fa fatica ad ammettere che il tocco di Darren tra le sue gambe, a volte, è più soddisfacente della sua stessa mano.
Incurante della polvere e del pericolo che qualcuno possa effettivamente gettare un occhio lì dietro, Darren sfugge al bacio di Max con uno schiocco voluttuoso, gli sfiora ancora le labbra, poi scivola alla stretta del suo abbraccio fino a finire con le ginocchia ben poggiate per terra.
«Che fai?» gli chiede, sinceramente ignaro dei suoi pensieri.
«Qualcosa che ti piacerà.» Darren non può fare a meno di arrossire, ma slaccia la cintura dei pantaloni di Max con una decisione che neanche pensava di possedere.

Se non fosse Dave quello che si passa le mani tra i capelli una decina di volte in pochi secondi, arruffandoli in una maniera che risulta tenera e comica insieme, Blaine avrebbe più pietà di lui e lo lascerebbe da solo di fronte a ciò che sta succedendo. In ogni caso, lui non ha mai brillato né per delicatezza né per senso della tempistica (e sì che, in quanto cantante, dovrebbe essere in possesso di entrambi), così gli si avvicina e appoggia i gomiti al cavalletto che Max e Darren hanno spostato di traverso all’imboccatura di quella traversa, così da avere una visuale, seppur parziale, di ciò che chiaramente sta accadendo.
«È inutile fare quella faccia schifata.» Blaine studia di sottecchi i suoi occhi stretti come quelli di un gatto irritato e pronto a colpire. «Non ci credo, che non hai mai visto un porno.»
«Nessuno con la mia faccia.»
«Dovresti venire a patti con una cosa molto semplice, Dave.»
«Non voglio p-»
«Nessuno ti ha chiesto di farlo. Dimostra di essere poco più di un animale dotato di orecchie e ascolta.» Blaine lo spintona, proprio come ha fatto poco meno di mezz’ora prima nei corridoi della McKinley, e lo costringe a fare qualcosa di più che minacciarlo di una sana legnata. «A loro piace, David Karofsky. A. Loro. Piace. E non hai un solo fottuto diritto nel prenderti male per questo, perché senza di loro, noi non esistiamo.»
Dave gli tira un calcio abbastanza forte da fargli piegare un ginocchio fino a terra, ma non va via abbastanza in fretta da evitare di vedere qualcosa di orribilmente familiare colare dalle labbra compiaciute di Darren.

Darren ride, divertito dall’apparente incapacità di Max di allontanarsi da lui. Hanno già stabilito di darsi appuntamento per quella sera più di venti minuti fa, ma ogni volta che si sono ripromessi di baciarsi un’ultima volta e poi uscire da quella tana improvvisata - dai, Naya e Chris saranno preoccupati, ormai - per qualche motivo non risultava altrettanto automatico lasciarsi andare, sciogliere l’abbraccio e tornare dagli altri.
Max sospira, mandando giù il proprio sapore misto a quello di Darren per l’ultima volta, prima di appoggiare la fronte alla sua e sorridere con aria un po’ persa.
«Stasera ricambio il favore» promette con un ghigno carico di allusioni. Darren ridacchia, scuotendo il capo.
«Io non te l’ho chiesto» precisa, tirando fuori la lingua. Max lo prende per un invito, e lo bacia ancora.
«Ma io voglio farlo lo stesso» ribatte, scrollando le spalle e decidendosi finalmente a lasciarlo andare. Nel momento in cui lo fa, per un secondo Darren si sente incerto sulle gambe. Non si era neanche reso conto di essersi appoggiato a lui così tanto, e il pensiero è vagamente inquietante – inquietante? No, non è la parola giusta. Spaventoso - ma tutto sommato piacevole.
«D’accordo» concede, come si trattasse di chissà che permesso speciale. E poi saltella all’improvviso, riuscendo a stento a trattenere un urletto stupito, quando per salutarlo Max gli pizzica il sedere.

Lo trova seduto su una panchina, appena fuori dagli studi. Sospira e si siede al suo fianco, pensando che ci vuole davvero troppa pazienza, con questo ragazzo, e lui probabilmente non ne ha a sufficienza.
«Volevo prendere una limonata» comincia a sorpresa Dave, sospirando, e Blaine si volta subito a guardarlo, concedendogli istantaneamente tutta la propria attenzione, «Per rinfrescarmi, sai. Ma poi ho pensato che nessuno poteva vedermi.»
«E me lo stai dicendo perché…?» domanda, sinceramente curioso, strisciando sulla seduta della panca per avvicinarsi un po’. Dave sospira un’altra volta, stringendosi timidamente nelle spalle.
«Non ne sono sicuro» ammette in un sussurro, «Forse ho solo voglia di parlare.»
Blaine sorride, appoggiandogli una mano sulla spalla per attirare la sua attenzione.
«Io ho tempo» si offre, appena riesce a incrociare gli occhi di Dave, «Essere un personaggio fittizio aiuta, in certi casi.»
Dave si morde un labbro, distogliendo nuovamente lo sguardo, e Blaine potrebbe giurare di averlo visto arrossire appena.
«Non so neanche cosa ti voglio dire» borbotta imbarazzato. Blaine non può fare a meno di lasciarsi sfuggire una risatina divertita.
«Comincia dall’inizio» lo invita, «Coraggio.»
Faticosamente, Dave schiude le labbra, e comincia a parlare.
Genere: Commedia.
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine.
Rating: R.
AVVISI: Slash.
- Kurt Hummel is online.
Note: Dunque, stavo vagando per i vari prompt sfidanti del MDF @ it100, cercando in realtà una cosa che col Klaine non c'entrava un benemerito niente, quando all'improvviso mi imbatto in questo prompt: Connessione altalenante durante una sessione di sesso online (squadra 4). Non ho idea del perché, ma mi ha ispirato Klaine. E quindi ho scritto Klaine. *ride* #leviedelfangirlingsonoinfinite
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ON/OFF

“Non mi piace quello che stiamo facendo,” digitò Kurt, risentito, lanciando occhiate di fuoco all’immagine di Blaine che appariva a scatti sul suo schermo, “E la connessione fa schifo. È come guardare un filmino registrato col cellulare. Dieci anni fa.”
“Kurt, ne abbiamo già parlato,” rispose Blaine, mentre la sua webcam si bloccava su di lui nel momento esatto in cui esalava un sospiro stanco e rassegnato, cristallizzandolo per un paio di minuti in una posa così totalmente ridicola da far pensare a Kurt che mai nella vita, mai, in nessuna situazione e per nessuna occasione, avrebbe potuto intrattenersi in passatempi di tipo sessuale con lui. “Ed eravamo d’accordo,” aggiunse, mentre la webcam tornava lentamente in funzione.
“Lo so,” rispose Kurt, piagnucolando pietosamente, intimamente sollevato dal fatto che Blaine non potesse sentirlo, “Ma è tutto così squallido… e poi non posso neanche sentire la tua voce! È frustrante.”
“Forse sarebbe meglio aprire i microfoni?” domandò Blaine, senza neanche aspettare la risposta per allungare una mano a cercare lo spinotto da attaccare al pc. Kurt si lanciò a peso morto sulla tastiera, cercando di fermarlo il prima possibile.
“No!” scrisse, picchiando con violenza sui tasti per conferire una certa nettezza al proprio rifiuto, anche se Blaine non avrebbe avuto modo di notarla, “Mio padre potrebbe sentirci! Questa casa ha le pareti di cartapesta!“
Blaine sospirò ancora, ma stavolta la webcam non si bloccò. Kurt poté vedere ogni sfumatura della sua rassegnazione, pixel più, pixel meno, e si sentì in colpa. Quando sotto al box per i messaggi apparve l’avviso che annunciava che Blaine stava scrivendo qualcosa, Kurt trattenne il respiro. E lo trattenne. E lo trattenne. E lo trattenne ancora.
E poi l’avviso scomparve e non apparve nessun nuovo messaggio da parte di Blaine, e quando Kurt tornò a guardare la webcam si accorse che era spenta, e tutto ciò che riuscì a fare fu inarcare un sopracciglio con aria vagamente nevrotica, prima che Blaine tornasse online, e il suo viso tornasse a invadere il suo schermo.
“Scusa, sono caduto,” scrisse il ragazzo, “E non ricordo più cosa… ah, sì. Mi manchi, piccolo. E non ci vedremo prima di sabato, e manca una settimana a sabato. Ti prego.”
“Ok, ok…” sospirò Kurt, stendendosi meglio contro lo schienale della sedia e lasciandosi scivolare una mano addosso, mentre osservava Blaine fare lo stesso nella finestrella della webcam. “Mi manchi tanto anche tu…” scrisse con qualche difficoltà, infilando le dita oltre l’orlo dei pantaloni.
“Sì…” rispose Blaine, mordendosi un labbro ed imitandolo, “Fammi vedere, Kurt…” lo invitò, sollevando appena il bacino per liberarsi dei propri pantaloni, e poi bloccandosi a mezz’aria, come paralizzato. Per un minuto intero.
“…Blaine?” domandò Kurt, tornando a sedersi compostamente e preoccupandosi quando non ricevette risposta. “Blaine?!”
L’immagine di Blaine scomparve improvvisamente dal suo schermo, per riapparire pochi secondi dopo.
“Scusa, sono caduto di nuovo,” scrisse Blaine, cercando di tenersi in equilibrio sulla sedia nonostante i pantaloni calati per metà lo impicciassero, “Riprendiamo da dove ci siamo interrotti?”
Kurt Hummel is offline.
“Kurt?”
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico, Commedia.
Pairing: Dave Karofsky/Kurt Hummel/Blaine Anderson. In tutte le combinazioni possibili.
Rating: R.
AVVERTIMENTI: (raccolta di) Drabble, Slash, Threesome, What If?.
- Il piano di Dave è molto semplice. E' anche molto stupido, considerevolmente irrispettoso e potenzialmente fatale, è vero, ma sul momento lui non ci pensa. Dovrà farlo per forza, comunque, quando lo vedrà andare a rotoli, portando con sé la peggiore conseguenza possibile. (Ma è davvero la peggiore?)
Note: Benvenuti. Io mi chiamo Liz. *saluta e apre una porticina* Da questo pertugio si entra nella mia palese pazzia. Se volete, posso accompagnarvi in questo viaggio. Altrimenti, potete ignorare questo post per intero, e forse sarebbe meglio. XD
No, dunque, a parte gli scherzi. Non mi è ben chiaro cosa sia successo, suppongo semplicemente che Glee mi abbia wtfaccato il cervello più di quanto non credessi possibile (RM, dillo, era questo il tuo piano fin dall'inizio! *agita pugnetto*), e insomma, è finita che BOH. Il Klainofsky, come voi tutti sapete, per me rappresenta il Bene Supremo, ma non avevo mai considerato che per arrivarci si potesse passare anche dal Blainofsky. (UNFest thing ever, giusto per.)
E quindi è venuta fuori questa roba. *ride* Per il cui meraviglioso titolo devo ringraziare la Tab. Che per ora è a Londra e domani vedrà il Glee Live Show. *agita manina salutando la Tab e anche la Meg, già che c'è* E... niente. *si nasconde sotto un sasso*
Ogni drabble è ispirato a un prompt del MDF @ it100, ma siccome sono dodici mi culopesa linkarli. Aaaamen. *sospira*
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THE BEST WAY TO REACH A BOY’S HEART
(IS THROUGH HIS BOYFRIEND’S ASS)
atipico manuale di istruzioni in dodici punti

i.
Non riesce a non essere nervoso. Sa che non dovrebbe, insomma, sa che per raggiungere il suo scopo deve tenere maggiormente sotto controllo la situazione, ma non c’è modo di riuscirci, non questa sera, non con tutto il carico di ansia e angoscia che porta con sé il semplice fatto di trovarsi lì in casa di Rachel Berry a cercare di portare avanti il proprio piano malvagio.
È profondamente convinto del fatto che andrà tutto a rotoli. Ne è certo. E non può permetterselo.
Deve calmarsi, calmarsi e basta.
- Karofsky, rilassati. – butta lì Puckerman, passandogli accanto e battendogli una generosa pacca contro una spalla, - Non c’è motivo di avere paura, non ti mangeremo vivo. Inoltre, la festa è approvata dall’associazione astemi e vittime dell’alcool del liceo McKinley. Puoi stare tranquillo, nessuno ti salterà addosso in preda al delirio.
- Divertente. – sbotta lui, lanciandogli un’occhiata infastidita ed incassando maggiormente la testa nelle spalle per cercare di sparire nella poltrona di cui ha preso possesso appena è arrivato.
Il punto, vorrebbe dirgli, è proprio questo, Puckerman. Ma presto lo scoprirai anche tu.
David Karofsky ha programmato tutto fin nel dettaglio. Ha messo da parte la naturale insofferenza che, anche adesso che è entrato nel giro dei New Directions pur non facendone parte, usualmente lo affligge ogni volta che quel gruppo di squinternati cerca di coinvolgerlo in qualche festaccia delle loro, ha portato la boccetta d’alcool da casa, l’ha versata nell’enorme contenitore del beverone senza nome dai misteriosi ingredienti che Rachel ha preparato seguendo chissà che ricetta, e ora deve semplicemente aspettare che l’additivo abbia effetto. Quando tutto sarà avvolto nel caos e nell’oscurità, quando tutti saranno così ubriachi da non capire più nemmeno cosa succede loro attorno, agirà. E nessuno lo saprà mai.
Dave attende, attende ansiosamente, e quando vede che la serata comincia a prendere la piega che si aspettava, sorride fra sé. Tutti bevono di gusto, inizialmente neanche si accorgono che c’è dell’alcool nel beverone, e quando se ne accorgono è troppo tardi.
Kurt, però, non beve.
- Non mi va. – dice con un sorriso ogni volta che qualcuno cerca di offrirgli qualcosa, ed ogni volta che Kurt declina un’offerta Dave si lascia sfuggire un’imprecazione. Tutto ciò è profondamente sbagliato. Tutti dovevano bere, anche lui doveva bere, soprattutto lui doveva bere. E invece non sta bevendo.
Sospirando pesantemente, Dave abbandona i suoi piani di conquista. Si procura un bicchiere di beverone e si lascia un po’ andare. Quantomeno, riuscirà a rilassarsi.
Capisce che s’è rilassato anche troppo solo una mezz’ora dopo.

Genere: Comico.
Pairing: Dave/Kurt/Blaine.
Rating: PG-13.
AVVERTIMENTI: Slash, Flashfic, Crack.
- "Ma neanche per scherzo!"
Note: Non ricordo neanche per quale motivo volevo scrivere questa storia X'DDD Probabilmente stavo parlando con la Tab di qualcosa ed è venuta fuori l'idea. Pazzia. Ciò che poi ne è venuto fuori, compresa la Tab che ne scrive un sequel... X'D Va be'. Io non voglio la responsabilità di niente, a parte del fatto che almeno in questo modo faccio punti per la mia squadra al MDF @ it100, scrivendo su prompt Sei fastidioso/a come una gomma attaccata sotto le scarpe (squadra 3).
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SCHEDULE IS OUT
we’re all going to die
take 1

- Allora, io lo prendo il lunedì, il mercoledì e il venerdì. – annuisce coscienziosamente Blaine, scorrendo la propria agenda con occhio critico ed esperto. Seduto sulla poltrona di fronte a lui, mentre Kurt – sdraiato sul divano – fissa il soffitto con aria annoiata, Dave spalanca gli occhi e inorridisce.
- Ma neanche per scherzo! – sbotta, tirando fuori il proprio calendarietto portatile, - Io il martedì e il giovedì ho gli allenamenti di football! Non finisco mai prima di ora di cena! Cosa fai, te lo tieni nei giorni in cui io potrei vederlo e me lo lasci in quelli in cui non posso? Sei fuori.
- Be’, non è colpa mia se sei così indaffarato. – ghigna Blaine, soddisfatto, - Inoltre, il martedì e il giovedì io ho le prove coi Warblers. Vuoi che me lo prenda quando non posso nemmeno farlo più entrare in sala prove, perché per colpa tua è tornato al McKinley?
- Non è stata colpa mia, è stato merito mio. – precisa Dave, aggrottando le sopracciglia, - Lui voleva tornare.
- Sì, sì, certo. – lo liquida Blaine, con un gesto disinteressato, - Ma ciò non risolve il problema. Se io ho le prove coi Warbler, non posso certo tenerlo con me. Si sentirebbe trascurato.
- Allora, punto primo, - comincia ad elencare nervosamente Dave, gesticolando, - se “ho da fare, non posso tenerlo” vale per te, perché non può valere anche per me? E punto secondo, com’è che a te toccano tre giorni ed a me solo due?!
- Be’, tu puoi avere il sabato. – propone Blaine, segnando qualcosa sull’agendina, - Così poi io lo riprendo domenica e posso portarlo al parco.
- Ma così tu continui a tenerlo un giorno in più rispetto a me! – sbotta Dave, spalancando gli occhi, e Blaine si lascia andare ad uno sbuffo infastidito, accavallando le gambe.
- Oh, insomma, Karofsky, la settimana è composta da sette giorni, - gli ricorda, - e sette è un numero dispari, qualcuno dovrà pur sacrificarsi.
- Ma perché dovrei sacrificarmi io?! – strilla Dave, tirando in aria il suo calendarietto in un moto di stizza, - Prendilo tu il martedì, il giovedì e la domenica e lascia a me tutti gli altri giorni!
- Ma sei impazzito?! – strilla a propria volta Blaine, inorridendo, - Significherebbe non vederlo praticamente mai tranne la domenica! Non oseresti!
- Oso!
- Non te lo permetto!
- Dio, Anderson, sei fastidioso come una gomma attaccata sotto le scarpe, scompari, estinguiti, evapora e dissolviti nell’aria sotto forma gassosa!
- Ragazzi! – li interrompe Kurt, sconvolto, saltando in piedi e guardandoli con disapprovazione evidente, - Adesso basta urlare! Siete allucinanti! – sospira pesantemente, voltando loro le spalle e dirigendosi verso la camera da letto. A un passo dalla porta, torna a guardarli, sorridendo malizioso. – Intanto, chi di voi intende prendermi per la prossima mezz’ora? – domanda divertito.
Blaine e Dave si guardano negli occhi, e poi gettano via le loro agende, correndogli dietro. Risolveranno la questione successivamente.
Genere: Introspettivo, Romantico.
Pairing: Blaine/Kurt/Dave.
Rating: R/NC-17
AVVISI: Slash, Lime, Threesome, Angst.
- Blaine, Kurt e Dave, che ormai vivono a Cleveland da circa una decina d'anni, tornano a Lima per trascorrere le vacanze di Natale in casa Hummel. Ma la loro relazione è fermamente intenzionata a non far passare a nessuno dei tre una felice e serena permanenza nella loro città natale.
Note: POTERE AL KLAINOFSKY \O/ Non capirò mai per quale oscuro motivo le fangirl si ostinino a litigare fra Klaine e Kurtofsky quando è evidente che la soluzione sta nel sandwich, come spesso, d'altronde, accade. Comunque, questa storia è-- non lo so, potrei dire OOC, ma sarebbe come dire che in Glee esista un IC, e sarebbe un po' azzardato, dal momento che neanche gli scrittori originali della serie lo rispettano. Uhm. Quindi diciamo che è solo una fic un po' fuori dai canoni. Per tutta una serie di motivi che sicuramente scoprirete se vi andrà di passare una mezz'oretta immersi nella lettura. *ride*
Ah, comunque. *stava per dimenticare* Scritta per la quinta settimana del COW-T, Missione 1, prompt: tre personaggi.
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CLOSER TO THE HEART

- Vi dico come faremo. – esordisce Dave dopo dieci minuti di intenso e corrucciato silenzio, - Kurt, se non ricordo male casa tua ha il garage.
- Dave, piantala! – strilla Kurt, al quale i dieci minuti di intenso e corrucciato silenzio di cui sopra non sono serviti a riordinare le idee e placarsi dopo la lite furibonda che ha coinvolto lui e una metà del resto della sua dolce metà, - Sono cinque anni che ti lasciamo a casa per tutte le feste comandate! Mi sono rotto! Abbiamo un bambino in arrivo e io non intendo continuare a tenere nascosta questa cosa a mio padre ed a Carole.
- Se posso intromettermi… - comincia Blaine, alla guida della macchina sportiva che, da Cleveland, li riporterà a casa, a Lima, Ohio, possibilmente in tempo per la cena.
- No. – strepita Kurt, saltellando sul sedile passeggero, isterico. Blaine sospira.
- Non importa, m’intrometto lo stesso. – continua con un sorriso, - Kurt, d’accordo avere un bambino in arrivo, sai che ne sono felice e lo urlerei ai quattro venti, e d’accordo anche che negli ultimi anni in materia di giustizia e adozioni anche per le coppie gay gli Stati Uniti hanno fatto passi da gigante, ma non sono proprio sicuro di cosa penserebbero i servizi sociali se sapessero che non siamo in due ma in tre, per cui—
- E io comunque col bambino non voglio avere niente a che fare. – grugnisce Dave, rintanandosi nell’angolo più lontano da Kurt sul sedile posteriore, incrociando le braccia sul petto e guardando fuori dal finestrino con stizza.
Blaine sospira, scuotendo il capo con evidente rassegnazione, mentre Kurt strilla come un’aquila agitando le braccia.
- David Jonathan Frederic Karofsky, ne abbiamo già parlato! – ruggisce, - Questo bambino sarà tuo quanto nostro, e non importa se geneticamente è solo mio e legalmente sarà solo mio e di Blaine!
- Io non mi chiamo David Jonathan Frederic! – sbotta Dave, agitando le braccia a propria volta, - Smettila di inventarti secondi o terzi nomi per me e per Blaine a seconda di come ti suonano meglio mentre ci rimproveri!
- È il minimo che possa fare, se conti che, quando ci siamo conosciuti, per mesi tu non hai avuto un nome e tu, - si volta, indicando Blaine, - non hai avuto cognome!
- Ora non mi sembra il caso di rivangare vicende antiche e che peraltro non sono mai state un problema per nessuno. – suggerisce Blaine, mantenendo contemporaneamente il controllo sulla strada, sulle proprie emozioni e sulle proprie facoltà intellettuali, - Piuttosto, Dave, sono addolorato, ma temo di dover concordare con Kurt: all’assistente sociale potrebbe non far piacere sapere che il bambino che adotteremo avrà in realtà tre padri…
- Due padri!
- Tre padri. – precisano in sincrono Kurt e Blaine, - Dicevo, - prosegue Blaine da solo, mentre Kurt torna a stropicciare nervosamente la mappa che tiene in grembo e sulla quale segue la strada per Lima senza che nessuno gli abbia mai chiesto di farlo, dal momento che Blaine è ormai pratico del tragitto e, anche se non lo fosse, avrebbe il navigatore satellitare ad aiutarlo, - i signori Hummel prima o poi dovranno pur sapere la verità su di noi. Io ai miei genitori l’ho detta.
- E allora sono fortunato, perché i miei sono morti. – sbotta Dave, lanciandogli un’occhiata infastidita attraverso lo specchietto retrovisore. – E comunque non intendo minimamente sottopormi a una cosa simile con Burt Hummel. Quell’uomo mi odia.
- Ti odiava, e con tutte le ragioni di farlo, dieci anni fa, Dave! – precisa Kurt, appallottolando la cartina e tirandogliela in faccia. – Mio padre è molto cambiato, molto aperto e molto felice della mia felicità, quindi, visto che, anche se la cosa sembra allucinante a me per primo, della mia felicità fai parte anche tu, ti dispiacerebbe smetterla di fare lo stronzo e dire sì, una buona volta?!
Sull’automobile calano altri dieci minuti di intenso e corrucciato silenzio, del tutto identico a quello che ha preceduto quest’ultimo scoppio d’ira, e perciò, quando Dave apre di nuovo bocca, sia Blaine che Kurt sanno esattamente cosa aspettarsi.
- Vi dico come faremo. – ripete, - Io ho ancora la proprietà della casa, era nell’eredità e non l’ho mai venduta. Potrei—
- Io ci rinuncio. – sospira Kurt, abbattendosi contro il proprio sedile e guardando fuori dal finestrino con aria un po’ malinconica. Blaine fa un paio di calcoli e decide che arrivare con mezz’ora di ritardo sarà comunque meglio di arrivare con un Kurt in meno perché durante il tragitto s’è disciolto nella disperazione del non riuscire a far quadrare i conti del triangolo amoroso in cui vive immerso da ormai un lustro, e quando adocchia una stazione di servizio si affretta ad imboccare la stradina sterrata che dall’autostrada devia verso il piazzale semivuoto.
- Vi dico io come faremo. – comincia con un sorriso conciliante, fermando la macchina al riparo di un grande albero frondoso che getta un’ombra lunghissima sull’asfalto, - Io adesso entro e vado a comprare un po’ di cioccolata, qualche panino ed un paio di bottigliette d’acqua. Abbiamo tutti bisogno di una pausa. – e io per primo, pensa uscendo dalla macchina e chiudendosi lo sportello alle spalle, ma questo non lo aggiunge ad alta voce.
Kurt si ostina a rimanere in silenzio, motivo per il quale è Dave che, dopo un paio di minuti passati a sperare che Blaine esca di corsa dalla stazione di servizio strillando “velociraptor!” per poi infilarsi in macchina e riprendere la strada per Cleveland a ritroso lasciando Lima e tutti i suoi problemi in balia di spietati dinosauri assassini estinti ormai da milioni di anni venuti fuori da chissà dove, si fa avanti e sospira pesantemente, aggrappandosi al sedile passeggero per scavalcarlo e lasciarsi ricadere con uno sbuffo contrariato al posto guida, dietro il volante.
- Kurt. – lo chiama a bassa voce, osservandolo richiudersi ancora di più su se stesso al solo sentire la sua voce, - Kurt, andiamo. – sospira, allungando una mano verso il suo viso. Kurt incassa la testa nelle spalle, strizzando gli occhi e gonfiando le guance. Dave sospira ancora, lanciando un’occhiata supplice al cielo terso del quale s’intuisce una fetta oltre il parabrezza. – Coraggio, fiorellino, non vorremo mica ricominciare dall’abc? – sbotta, senza però azzardarsi anche solo a provare a toccarlo senza il suo consenso.
- Ti ho già detto mille volte che odio quel soprannome. – sbuffa Kurt, lanciandogli un’occhiata infastidita.
- Sì, e tutte e mille le volte era una bugia. – sorride Dave, inclinando appena il capo. – Andiamo. – Kurt lo guarda ancora, emettendo una sorta di ringhio di gola, basso e lamentoso, - Andiaaaamo. – insiste Dave, schiudendo le braccia. Il mugolio di Kurt si fa più alto e lagnoso, mentre lui cede, rotea gli occhi e si sposta, scavalcando la leva del cambio per planare spensieratamente fra le sue braccia, sistemandoglisi in grembo mentre Dave si assicura di non lasciarlo scivolare e di stringerlo a sé, dondolandolo piano, non appena le operazioni di trasloco da un sedile all’altro sono completate.
- Non capisco perché sei così ostinato. – borbotta, appoggiando il capo contro la sua spalla.
- I bambini non sono la mia cosa. – ribatte Dave, accarezzandogli lentamente i capelli.
- E io e Blaine? – insiste Kurt, lanciandogli un’occhiata risentita, - Neanche io e Blaine siamo la tua cosa?
- Direi che sono cinque anni che scopiamo. – sospira Dave, - Mi sa che siete la mia cosa eccome, tutti e due.
- E allora perché non vuoi dirlo in giro? – sbuffa Kurt, allontanandosi appena per guardarlo meglio ed incrociando le braccia sul petto mentre le labbra gli si arricciano in una smorfia contrariata.
- Perché la poligamia è ancora vietata negli Stati Uniti d’America? – tenta Dave, ricambiando il suo sguardo con un’occhiata tonda e un po’ persa, ma Kurt sbuffa, inarcando le sopracciglia, e Dave capisce che questo, per lui, non è ancora sufficiente. – Perché non è una cosa normale, Kurt. – sbotta, - T’insegnano che quando ti innamori è di una persona sola, no? Quella giusta, con la quale passi il resto della tua vita.
- Be’, mi pare che a te avessero insegnato che questa persona giusta potesse essere solo una femmina, e invece… - sbuffa Kurt, con l’aria severa di chi sta difendendo una questione di principio ed è fermamente intenzionato a non retrocedere di un passo finché non avrà visto le proprie ragioni trionfare.
- No, adesso non confondiamo. – sospira Dave, mettendo le mani avanti, - Non voglio risalire fino alla creazione del mondo con questi giochini mentali. Sai benissimo che stiamo parlando di due cose diverse.
- Invece magari non lo so! – esplode Kurt, tornando sul proprio sedile e guardandolo con astio. Al solo sentirlo allontanarsi Dave ha la chiara percezione del punto verso il quale questa conversazione sta andando. E sa anche di non poterlo evitare. – Spiegamelo! Magari ti capisco meglio, magari ti do perfino ragione!
- Sto solo dicendo – sospira pesantemente Dave, massaggiandosi le tempie, - che l’amore dovrebbe essere una questione fra due persone, quelle giuste l’una per l’altra. Non è normale che di persone giuste ce ne siano due. – si interrompe per un secondo, trattenendo il fiato. Vorrebbe riuscire a trattenere anche il resto del proprio pensiero, ma per qualche motivo non ci riesce. – E forse non è nemmeno vero.
Kurt sembra pietrificarsi sul posto.
- È così che la pensi? – chiede, retorico e teatrale come diventa sempre quando si sente vittima di un’ingiustizia troppo enorme per poter essere tollerata, cosa che capita molto più spesso di quanto uno non possa pensare, visto che perfino la marmellata d’arancia al posto di quella alla ciliegia sulle fette biscottate al mattino è per lui una gravissima ingiustizia, quando aveva pensato di fare colazione con l’una e si ritrova sotto il naso l’altra.
Dave sospira, sedendosi più compostamente ed appoggiandosi al volante. È già così stanco. Ma l’aveva previsto, che sarebbe finita così. Per questo voleva restare a Cleveland, come l’anno scorso, e l’anno prima, e tutti gli anni precedenti. Ma Kurt no, Kurt ha insistito, e Blaine mai che riesca a porgli un freno davanti, neanche quando è indispensabile, e ora eccoli lì, persi nel niente a metà strada fra Lima e il resto del mondo, sul punto di mandare a puttane la storia della loro vita per incompatibilità di base che chissà da che anfratto oscuro delle loro menti scombinate sono venute fuori del tutto a caso.
Certe volte Dave pensa a Blaine e si chiede perché non si sia trovato un ragazzo normale con cui stare. Uno che non lo costringesse a stare per ore chiuso in una cazzo di stazione di servizio a comprare cibo inutile solo per concedergli tempo per risistemarsi la testa prima di diventare nevrotico, ad esempio. Blaine è un bel ragazzo, non solo nel senso specifico, anche nel senso generale del termine. È simpatico, moderatamente spigliato, divertente e intelligente. ‘Cazzo sta a fare con due casi persi come loro?
- Kurt… - prova a stemperare la tensione poco dopo, massaggiandosi la fronte, - Non lo so come la penso, dico solo che—
- No, perché ti sei svegliato un po’ tardi per capire tutto all’improvviso che una storia a tre non funzionava, per te. – esplode Kurt, senza lasciargli il tempo di finire la frase, come ha sempre fatto e come probabilmente sempre farà finché continueranno a stare insieme, periodo di tempo che, rispetto a mezz’ora fa, sembra essersi tragicamente ridotto, - Dico, dopo cinque fottuti anni di cui tre di convivenza e con un bambino in arrivo, non ti pare di essere un attimino fuori tempo massimo per tirarti indietro?
- Non ho firmato nessun contratto. – ribatte lui, aggrottando le sopracciglia con fastidio. Kurt solleva entrambe le mani, chiudendo gli occhi. Trema un po’. Dave lo osserva rimettersi a sedere composto e incrociare nuovamente le braccia sul petto.
- Lasciamo perdere. – dice quindi, - Facciamo come dici tu. Vai pure a stare nella tua vecchia casa. Non ne parliamo più.
- Ho portato il gelato! – esulta Blaine, spalancando lo sportello posteriore automaticamente quando vede che Dave è passato davanti, - Non c’era nient’altro di buono. – aggiunge in un lamento che diventa un mormorio quando scorge le facce scure dei due compagni. - …e forse dovrei tornare dentro e cercare meglio, chissà! – si propone, fingendo entusiasmo, ma Kurt lo ferma con uno sbuffo rassegnato.
- Lascia stare, Blaine. Il gelato andrà benissimo. – dice cupo, tendendo la mano all’indietro senza neanche guardarlo. Blaine sospira e gli passa la vaschetta e uno dei cucchiaini di plastica che ha comprato, osservandolo mentre sfila il tappo e affonda il cucchiaio nel gelato alla crema. – Metti in moto. – dice a Dave, prima di cominciare a mangiare.
Il resto del tragitto lo passano in silenzio.
*
- Sicuro che starai bene? – chiede Blaine a Dave, accompagnandolo fino alla porta. La casa è enorme, Dave non ci mette piede dentro da anni ma la ricorda ancora alla perfezione. La guarda da fuori, rovistando all’interno dello zaino che porta appeso al braccio per cercare l’enorme anello attaccate al quale tintinnano le chiavi della porta d’ingresso, di quella in cantina, della soffitta e del garage, per non parlare del recinto dei cani nel giardino sul retro, ormai vuoto da tempo immemore.
- Certo che starò bene. – sbuffa scorbutico, - È casa mia, no?
- No. – ribatte Blaine con un sorriso. – Ti verremo a trovare presto.
- Dio mio, non sto mica partendo per la guerra! – sbotta Dave, esasperato, - Sono qui a Lima, a pochi chilometri da voi! Basterà uscire per incontrarsi! Non farne un dramma!
Blaine ride cristallino, sporgendosi verso di lui e baciandolo lievemente sulle labbra.
- Mi occuperò di Kurt, mentre non ci sei. – lo rassicura pacifico. Le braccia di Dave scivolano inerti lungo i suoi fianchi, mentre fissa Blaine con aria allucinata. Poi sospira e scuote il capo, lanciando un’occhiata alla figurina corrucciata di Kurt ancora in macchina. Non è neanche sceso a salutarlo.
- Va bene, va bene. – concede con un altro sospiro, - Andate.
Blaine sorride ancora e lo saluta con un altro bacio, al quale stavolta Dave risponde, prima di voltargli le spalle e tornare alla macchina. Dave riesce appena a scorgere l’occhiata triste e risentita che Kurt gli lancia attraverso il finestrino, prima che l’automobile parta sfrecciando lungo la strada vuota verso casa Hummel.
Sospirando per l’ennesima volta – e chiedendosi se sarà questa la sua occupazione principale, assieme a immaginare cosa possa succedere a Blaine e Kurt mentre lui non c’è, per le prossime ore fino a quando quei due non si faranno risentire dopo essersi sistemati – entra in casa, richiudendosi immediatamente la porta alle spalle e guardandosi intorno. Le stanze sono tenute bene, sicuramente molto meglio di quanto non si aspettasse. È ormai sfitta da più di un anno, ma l’ultima famiglia che l’ha abitata sembra averla trattata con riguardo. Dave ne è contento, nonostante non tutti i ricordi che ha di quelle stanze siano piacevoli. La maggior parte, per la verità, coincide con una cupa sensazione di inadeguatezza e paura che, durante gli anni della sua adolescenza, l’ha accompagnato a lungo, dovunque andasse. Immagina che proverebbe esattamente la stessa sensazione se adesso facesse un giro alla McKinley, o da Breadstix, o in qualunque altro posto. E trova abbastanza fastidioso il pensare che una sensazione simile possa essere identica se si parla della sua vecchia casa o di posti che in teoria dovrebbero essere decisamente meno importanti. Gli dà l’idea di quanto poco si sentisse a casa fra queste mura. E la situazione non sembra essere cambiata granché.
Sale le scale verso quella che un tempo era camera propria, passando attraverso stanze piene di mobili coperti da lunghi e polverosi teli bianchi. Giunto davanti alla porta, si intrattiene per qualche attimo ad osservare le venature del legno, cercando in esse un qualche cambiamento, ma la verità è che quando era ragazzino e viveva qui non si è mai soffermato ad osservare niente con una tale attenzione – niente che non fosse il viso di Kurt, o i vestiti che indossava, o il modo in cui i suoi pantaloni sempre aderentissimi fasciavano le sue gambe e il suo sedere rendendolo appetibile come il frutto proibito del suo personalissimo paradiso terrestre – perciò se anche il legno fosse cambiato, se fosse invecchiato, se si fosse spaccato, lui non avrebbe mai modo di accorgersene.
Scacciando via questi inutili pensieri, si decide a spalancare la porta ed entrare in camera. Qualche cambiamento è stato fatto, il letto ha cambiato posizione, non c’è più il computer sulla scrivania e con lui, ovviamente, neanche tutti i chili di porno gay che stipava nelle cartelle nascoste dando loro finti nomi di finti programmi che naturalmente non esistevano e delle quali nessuno avrebbe mai chiesto niente perché suo padre di informatica non si intendeva minimamente, e sua madre meno che mai, ma il solo camuffarle in quel modo bastava a farlo sentire tranquillo, assieme alla scorta di playboy che teneva nascosti-ma-non-troppo nell’armadio per fornire una scappatoia e un alibi alla sua coscienza, anche se poi nemmeno li apriva, e che immagina siano spariti anche loro, buttati via dai suoi genitori dopo la sua partenza per il college o da uno degli inquilini della casa quando l’ha messa in affitto dopo la loro morte.
Per prima cosa, comunque, apre la finestra. Poi appoggia le valigie sul letto e le apre. Sistema la roba nei cassetti vuoti, nell’armadio e sul comodino, e infine fa il conto degli spicci che ha nel portafoglio.
Con un lieve sorriso, esce di casa e passeggia pigramente fino al mini-market in fondo alla strada. Ne viene fuori con delle lenzuola nuove, un paio di birre, un po’ di prodotti per le pulizie e un’ottima idea per far passare il tempo.
*
Blaine non dice niente a Kurt, se non altro perché non avrebbe la minima idea di cosa dirgli, in realtà. Comprende le sue ragioni e, in parte, le condivide, ma pur non condividendole affatto comprende anche le ragioni di Dave, e non può negare che per lui sia sempre stato un po’ diverso, rispetto a com’era per loro. Soprattutto perché sostanzialmente è stato Dave ad inserirsi in un rapporto pre-esistente, che loro avevano e che era già rodato da un buon paio d’anni.
Blaine e Kurt non avevano mai avuto bisogno di Dave per ravvivare un rapporto che s’era fatto noioso, sebbene Dave stesso inizialmente avesse creduto qualcosa di simile. L’avevano semplicemente voluto, entrambi e contemporaneamente e con una tale intensità che inizialmente li aveva spaventati.
Quando l’avevano incontrato, al college, avevano stentato a riconoscerlo. Dave non si era mai scusato nel senso proprio del termine, ma il suo pentimento era stato evidente fin da subito, e quando avevano cominciato ad uscire tutti e tre insieme per la prima volta Blaine e Kurt si erano sentiti in competizione l’uno con l’altro per attirare la sua attenzione. Un qualcosa che aveva del surreale, una situazione che si era protratta per settimane fino a quando Kurt non era esploso, trascinandoli Blaine e se stesso nella prima vera litigata che la loro storia ricordasse, e che s’era conclusa con un’ammissione di interesse nei confronti di Dave da parte di entrambi.
Kurt aveva delirato su una sorta di stravagante diritto di mettergli le mani addosso per primo che si arrogava travestendolo come una specie di risarcimento di tutte le umiliazioni subite in passato, e Blaine aveva risposto in malo modo dandogli del pazzo, se credeva che essere stato spinto contro degli armadietti lo rendesse in qualche modo “primo nella lista degli eventuali aspiranti a portarsi a letto Dave Karofsky”. Ma l’implicazione più importante di quella litigata non era stata tanto quella di cercare di stabilire chi dei due avesse più diritto a provarci col ragazzo – che per parte propria lanciava sguardi di fuoco ad entrambi, apparentemente incapace di decidere in prima persona verso chi pendessero maggiormente i suoi interessi in quel momento – quanto più il fatto che per la prima volta dopo anni Blaine e Kurt avevano messo in dubbio la possibilità di essere ancora interessati l’uno all’altro.
Forse era semplicemente passata, avevano pensato tutti e due. Forse Dave è solo l’allarme che ce lo fa notare.
Avevano deciso di prendersi una pausa l’uno dall’altro. Non da Dave, però, e questo aveva portato il continuare a girarsi intorno. In qualche modo, continuare a vedersi quando non tornavano più a casa insieme la sera, non andavano più a dormire nello stesso letto e non si risvegliavano più l’uno fra le braccia dell’altro, li aveva avvolti in una sorta di patina opaca e nostalgica che li costringeva a sorridersi con una tristezza infinita ogni volta che si incrociavano, ed aveva dato modo ad entrambi di comprendere che Dave non era un allarme, perché loro si amavano ancora.
No, evidentemente Dave era qualcosa di diverso. Qualcosa che sono stati in grado di scoprire solo quando si sono finalmente decisi a sotterrare l’ascia di guerra per riesumare quella complicità perfetta che li aveva sempre tenuti legati, per muoversi come un unico corpo verso l’obiettivo finale. Averlo.
Blaine non ha nessun dubbio che Kurt voglia ancora Dave. Così come non ha alcun dubbio di volerlo a propria volta. E men che mai è in dubbio la questione di chi o cosa Dave voglia, solo che è improvvisamente tutto diventato molto più complicato, ultimamente.
Il bambino può esserne la causa, ma Blaine è quasi sicuro che non sia per quello, o comunque non solo per quello, che tutte le inquietudini di Dave – roba che tutti e tre consideravano morta e sepolta ormai da secoli – sono tornate a galla così all’improvviso, in massa, rendendo la loro stramba relazione più tesa di quanto non fosse mai stata – e per la prima volta in senso tutt’altro che piacevole.
Fermando la macchina di fronte a casa Hummel, mentre il sole gioca a nascondino fra le nubi pesanti che coprono il cielo fino alla linea dell’orizzonte, Blaine sospira profondamente e si volta a guardare Kurt, schiudendo le labbra per parlare.
- Non dire niente. – lo interrompe lui, sollevando una mano e spalancando lo sportello per scivolare giù dall’autovettura in un gesto fluido, aggraziato ma, soprattutto, incredibilmente frettoloso, come di qualcuno terribilmente ansioso di cavarsi d’impaccio in una situazione poco piacevole.
- Kurt… - sospira lui, uscendo a propria volta e raggiungendolo dietro il portabagagli, - Dovremo pur parlarne, prima o poi.
- Prima o poi è una bellissima espressione. – annuisce Kurt, chinandosi a recuperare due delle sue quattro valigie quando Blaine apre il portabagagli per lui, - Sai perché è una bellissima espressione? Perché è così meravigliosamente vaga. – risponde con aria fintamente sognante. – In pratica, - conclude tornando ad aggrottare seriamente le sopracciglia, - non vuol dire niente.
- Il mio “prima o poi” era tremendamente circostanziato, Kurt. – sospira Blaine, imbracciando il borsone a tracolla e facendosi carico delle restanti valigie stipate nel portapacchi, - Dove il prima indicava un momento genericamente identificabile con adesso, mentre il poi si riferiva a un più vago, te lo concedo, ma ugualmente pressante fra una ventina di minuti.
- Blaine, senti, non fare così con me, d’accordo?! – scatta Kurt, infastidito dal suo tono, solcando a grandi passi il vialetto verso la porta di casa, - Non sono stupido e non sono un bambino, se ti dico che prima o poi mi piace perché è un’espressione vaga, lo so che il tuo prima o poi non coincide col magari mai che sto pensando io, ma sempre un magari mai resta quello che sto pensando, ti pare?
- Molto maturo, da parte tua. – commenta Blaine con un mezzo sorriso ironico.
- Be’, non ho mai detto di essere una persona matura. – sbuffa Kurt, e Blaine gli si para davanti, tagliandogli la strada fino a costringerlo a piantare le scarpe con forza nella ghiaia del vialetto, rovinandone la vernice nera e lucida, per impedirsi di franargli addosso con tutti i bagagli.
- Sì, l’hai detto. – dice Blaine, guardandolo dritto negli occhi, - Forse non esplicitamente, ma quando hai perdonato Dave, quando hai deciso che senza di lui la nostra relazione era incompleta e soprattutto… - si interrompe, posando le valigie per terra per stringere il suo volto fra le mani, costringendolo a continuare a guardarlo negli occhi anche se tutto ciò che Kurt vorrebbe fare in questo momento è fissare la ghiaia come se i sassolini che si accavallano l’uno sull’altro sotto le loro scarpe fossero lo spettacolo più interessante di tutto l’intero universo, - …soprattutto, quando hai deciso che eri pronto per diventare padre, l’hai detto. Hai fatto una scommessa, hai scommesso sul tuo essere maturo abbastanza. E ora?
Kurt si allontana da lui con un gesto secco, guardandolo con rabbia.
- Forse l’ho persa. – risponde tagliente, girandogli attorno e proseguendo il proprio cammino senza più degnarlo di uno sguardo.
Con Burt e Carole, quando li accolgono sulla porta pochi istanti dopo, Kurt si comporta in modo perfettamente normale. È felice di rivederli, li stringe in un abbraccio particolarmente dolce – d’altronde, fra una cosa e l’altra, non si vedono da Natale scorso – e si dimostra dispiaciuto quando Carole gli dice che Finn non potrà essere dei loro, quest’anno, che lui e Quinn hanno programmato un viaggio all’estero o qualcosa di simile, e che Finn gli manda i suoi saluti.
Sul suo volto non resta traccia di quanto gli pesi dover mentire a suo padre. Eppure Blaine sa che quel peso Kurt lo sente, lo sente moltissimo, così tanto che ha passato non solo tutto il viaggio, ma tutte e due le settimane precedenti allo stesso a cercare di convincere Dave riguardo alla possibilità di dire tutto a Burt e Carole, per alleggerirsi la coscienza.
Quando scendono al piano di sotto, in camera di Kurt – che è rimasta camera di Kurt nonostante tutto il tempo che è passato e nonostante quelle pareti ritornino ad essere sue solo un paio di volte all’anno, ormai – Blaine sospira pesantemente quando lo vede abbattersi a pancia in sotto sul letto, affondando il viso nel cuscino.
- Lo chiami? – gli chiede, senza premurarsi di sollevare il viso per rendere la propria voce più comprensibile. Non ne ha bisogno, d’altronde. Blaine sorride, sedendosi al suo fianco sul letto e tirando fuori il cellulare dalla tasca dei jeans, perché sapeva esattamente che questo momento sarebbe arrivato.
- Perché non lo chiami tu? – domanda, porgendogli il telefono col nome di Dave già pronto per essere selezionato dalla rubrica.
- No. – mugugna Kurt, affondando più profondamente nel cuscino, - Chiamalo tu.
Blaine scuote il capo, incapace di trattenere un sorriso ed uno sbuffo fra il divertito e il rassegnato, e poi, obbediente, chiama Dave.
*
Quando riceve la telefonata, Dave è fermo in mezzo al salotto, guarda il pavimento e la mobilia che risplendono alla luce del lampadario che pende alto dal soffitto e cerca di convincersi che non esista niente di più bello al mondo che stare in quella casa con le maniche tirate su fino ai gomiti, accaldato nonostante il freddo, a rimirare il frutto del suo lavoro pomeridiano mentre culla la sola prospettiva che si apre per la serata, cioè quella di lasciarsi cadere a peso morto sul divano con una lattina di birra in una mano e il telecomando nell’altra per sfondarsi di tv spazzatura fino al sopraggiungimento del sonno, della morte cerebrale o di entrambi.
La suoneria spezza la monotonia del silenzio che avvolge la casa, e Dave recupera il cellulare dalla colonnetta sulla quale l’ha lasciato con occhi che si riempiono di gratitudine e si fanno, se possibile, ancora più grati quando scorgono chi è che lo sta chiamando.
- Oh, mio Dio, grazie. – geme rispondendo, - Credevo di morire.
Blaine si mette a ridere, e Dave accoglie nelle orecchie e sotto la pelle il suono della sua risata come la benedizione che usualmente è. Una risata di Kurt è un miracolo che va conservato e gustato nel tempo, perché non la si sente così spesso, soprattutto nella sua sfumatura più infantile e sincera, ma Blaine, oh, Blaine ride abbastanza per tutti e tre insieme, e suona sempre così naturale, quando lo fa. Così dolce e giusto.
- Ti annoi? – chiede intenerito, e Dave si appoggia alla parete, passandosi una mano sulla nuca per sciogliere i muscoli tesi e affaticati del collo.
- Questo sarebbe un bel modo per dirlo, sì. – annuisce, - Sai come sarebbe anche meglio? Dire “mi annoio così tanto che ho pensato di suicidarmi solo per vedere se almeno così il tempo passava più in fretta”. – borbotta, e Blaine ride ancora. – Usciamo? – gli chiede con un mezzo sorriso, quando sente la sua risata affievolirsi e poi spegnersi in un sospiro divertito.
Blaine confabula per qualche secondo col borbottio avvolto in cachemire targato D&G che entrambi hanno per ragazzo, e poi torna a rispondergli.
- Temo di no. – ride, - Sua maestà non vuole uscire. È depresso.
- Non prendermi in giro! – strilla la voce sottile e un po’ lontana di Kurt, mentre qualcosa di morbido e piumoso si abbatte su Blaine e sul suo cellulare, riempiendo le orecchie di Dave di un thump che gli fa bruciare nello stomaco la voglia di essere lì con loro. – Dammi qua. – borbotta quindi, e pochi secondi dopo, in seguito ad una serie di scricchiolii e fastidiosi rumori metallici, la voce di Kurt prende il posto di quella di Blaine. – Vieni. – dice seccamente. È ancora arrabbiato.
- Vuoi che venga? – ribatte Dave, astioso, - E dove mi nasconderai? Sotto il tappeto? Magari la cabina armadio è abbastanza spaziosa da ospitare un sacco a pelo.
Kurt ringhia basso, Dave riesce a vederlo mentre stringe convulsamente i pugni lungo i fianchi per cercare di trattenere la risposta acida che gli cola fra le labbra.
Ci riesce.
- Vieni. – ripete in un sibilo, - Troveremo un modo per farti entrare. – conclude.
Dave lo odia. Odia questa situazione e odia l’essere stato strappato a forza da una segretezza all’interno della quale si sentiva al sicuro, per finire catapultato in una segretezza completamente diversa che invece non fa altro che disturbarlo profondamente.
Ma non riesce a costringersi a dirgli di no.
*
Dopo dieci minuti passati a considerare seriamente la possibilità di passare attraverso il condotto d’areazione smontando la ventola che sbuca nel bagno privato di Kurt, Blaine sbuffa esasperato ed ordina a Kurt di andare da suo padre e da Carole ad intrattenerli parlando del suo argomento preferito – se stesso – mentre lui fa passare Dave dalla porta sul retro. Kurt si lagna un po’ per una serie svariata di motivi completamente randomici, utilizzando peraltro anche la scusa del tutto folle e delirante che “non gli piace accentrare troppo l’attenzione su di sé”, ma Blaine sa che l’unico motivo per cui non vuole andare di là a distrarre Burt e Carole è che lo infastidisce il pensiero di non poter rivedere subito Dave quando entra in casa.
Lo bacia, stringendoselo contro per zittirlo, e poi gli accarezza una guancia.
- Kurt, - dice quindi, sorridendo serafico, - non te lo stavo chiedendo per favore.
Kurt avvampa, oltraggiato, ma pur sbuffando come una teiera si piega ad obbedire. Blaine lo osserva risalire sculettando le scale e sbuffa una mezza risata mentre tende l’orecchio per percepire l’esatto momento in cui irrompe in cucina, dove Carole sta preparando da mangiare e Burt le sta dando una mano sperando di non mozzarsi un dito mentre taglia le carote à la julienne, strillando “indovinate chi ha avuto la parte di Puck nell’adattamento in musical del Sogno di Una Notte di Mezza Estate che dovrebbe uscire l’anno prossimo?”, e solo dopo che li sente entrambi gioire e congratularsi con lui si azzarda a venire fuori da quel lussuoso sotterraneo, per raggiungere la porticina sul retro.
- Ehi. – lo saluta Dave, già lì in attesa da chissà quanto tempo, stretto nel giaccone imbottito e nella sciarpa e nel cappello che gli avvolgono quasi completamente la testa, lasciando spazio solo per gli occhi che, per compensare la mancanza di un riparo, sono semichiusi e sottili fin quasi a non riuscire a distinguerne il colore, - Mentre venivo qui pensavo, non è ironico? Sono uscito da un armadio dieci anni fa apposta per rientrarci adesso. Ti sembra una cosa corretta? La vita si sta prendendo gioco di me.
- Piantala. – ride Blaine, scostandosi dall’uscio per lasciarlo entrare, - Non abbiamo intenzione di chiuderti in nessun armadio. La semplice attuazione fisica della metafora potrebbe essere devastante per te, a livello psicologico. E fa’ silenzio, o ti sentiranno.
Dave annuisce, lanciandogli un’occhiataccia, ma non può fare a meno di concedersi un commento acidulo quando gli fa notare che quello che blatera di contraccolpi psicologici e armadi è lui.
Quando riesce finalmente ad essere ammesso alla corte sotterranea di sua maestà, comunque, non può fare a meno di mettere da parte il fastidio per qualche secondo, mentre si guarda intorno trattenendo il respiro: non è mai stato in quella stanza, non l’ha mai vista. Non ne ha naturalmente mai avuto l’occasione quando ancora vivevano entrambi a Lima e frequentavano la McKinley, e dopo essersi trasferito a Cleveland è tornato qui solo un paio di volte all’anno, mai con Kurt e solo per vedere i suoi genitori. A casa Hummel non si è mai nemmeno avvicinato – i ricordi più freschi che ha sono di un se stesso vagamente più grasso e decisamente più arrabbiato che scruta le finestre di quella casa sperando di riuscire a spiare all’interno mentre passa per quella strada sfrecciando sulla propria macchina nel tentativo di sparire il più in fretta possibile – e la camera da letto all’interno della quale Kurt viveva e studiava e dormiva non è mai stata niente più di un’idea, un qualcosa che doveva esistere per forza ma della quale lui non possedeva nessuna immagine. Una specie di leggenda.
Quante volte si era chiesto come fosse il suo letto? Quante volte aveva immaginato come avrebbe potuto essere spingerlo lentamente su quel materasso, insinuare un ginocchio fra le sue cosce per obbligarlo a dischiuderle e baciarlo affamato mentre lui si aggrappava alle lenzuola tirandole fino a strapparle dagli angoli?
- Bella, mh? – commenta Blaine, accompagnandolo fino a quando Dave si siede sul letto, saltellando un po’ sul posto per saggiare la consistenza del materasso.
- Tu ricordi com’era prima? – chiede dal nulla, sfiorando le lenzuola con le mani bene aperte senza osare sollevargli addosso lo sguardo.
- Prima? – domanda Blaine, un po’ stupito, - Prima quando?
- Prima del coming out. – risponde Dave, e Blaine inarca un sopracciglio.
- Pensavo che la storia dell’armadio fosse una provocazione, non un desiderio. – commenta. Dave sospira profondamente.
- No… - biascica, - O forse sì. Non lo so. È solo che… - si prende un secondo per riordinare le idee, gesticolando come se questo potesse aiutarlo a mettere insieme le parole adatte, - Non smette mai di essere difficile, ecco.
- Se proprio dobbiamo dirla tutta, - ridacchia Blaine, sedendosi al suo fianco e piegandosi fino ad appoggiare i gomiti sulle ginocchia, per poter incrociare il suo sguardo, - la tua vicenda umana è stata parecchio più complicata della media, d’accordo, ma davvero pensi che sarebbe stato meglio se non avessi mai fatto outing? – gli domanda, inarcando un sopracciglio.
- Non lo so. – ripete Dave, scrollando le spalle, - Ma so che me lo chiederò per sempre. Ogni tanto immagino la mia vita e faccio delle associazioni mentali alla Sliding Doors, e—
- Il solo fatto che tu abbia citato questo film ti rende già molto più gay di quanto non si possa pensare. – ride Blaine, spintonandolo appena con una spalla, - Gran donna, la Paltrow.
- Piatta come una tavola. Almeno prima del chirurgo estetico. – annuisce comprensivo Dave.
- E con quei capelli corti… - aggiunge Blaine. Entrambi fissano il vuoto per un paio di secondi, condividendo il momento. – In ogni caso! – riprende Blaine, mentre Dave si concede una risata divertita, - Prima di fare outing io non mi sentivo tanto meglio di come mi sono sentito dopo. Neanche tanto peggio, a voler essere onesti. Insomma, in qualche modo il silenzio mi proteggeva. Ma mi limitava, anche. Non avrei mai potuto imbarcarmi in una relazione con Kurt, e poi con te e Kurt, se fossi rimasto in silenzio. Non avrei questo bambino in arrivo.
Dave abbassa lo sguardo, annuendo lentamente.
- In ogni caso, - sospira, - quello che è fatto è fatto. – commenta rassegnato. Blaine si appoggia nuovamente contro di lui, strusciando il naso contro il suo collo e costringendolo a un mugolio compiaciuto quando posa il più lieve dei baci sulla curva della sua mascella.
- Non proprio. – gli sussurra, - Se stai male, puoi sempre tornare indietro. Sai quello che hai e sai ciò che ti aspetta. Nessuno può tenerti imprigionato in qualcosa che non vuoi.
- E questo me lo dici mentre mi infili una mano dentro i pantaloni esattamente perché…? – geme Dave, e Blaine ritrae la mano, ridendo divertito.
- Tecniche di dissuasione. – risponde con un’alzata di spalle, - Puoi dirmi che vuoi lasciarci, ma non impedirmi di fare tutto ciò che è in mio potere per cercare di trattenerti.
- Vedo che vi divertite un sacco anche senza di me. – li interrompe tetra la voce di Kurt. Blaine continua a sorridere, voltandosi a guardarlo. Dave non sorride, ma si volta a guardarlo lo stesso. Sta scendendo le scale, in pochi passi sarà davanti al letto. Non riesce a non temere il momento in cui sarà abbastanza vicino da mollargli uno schiaffo, perché è sicuro al novanta percento che sarà questo ciò che Kurt farà, prenderlo a schiaffi. La parte più protettiva ed egocentrica di lui è molto in disaccordo con questo, non pensa di meritarsi niente del genere. Tutto il resto del suo cervello cerca di ricordargli che, dopo quello che ha detto in macchina, Kurt ha tutti i diritti di avercela con lui, magari perfino di odiarlo, di sentirsi preso in giro, deluso e pieno di desiderio di prenderlo a calci, ma l’opinione della sua parte più razionale al momento non gli interessa granché. Vorrebbe soltanto che fosse tutto più semplice, vorrebbe essere capace di sentirsi meno inadeguato, meno fuori posto, vorrebbe che Kurt e Blaine fossero una persona sola perché così sarebbe più facile, ma allo stesso tempo è consapevole del fatto che se non fossero due persone diverse sarebbe tutto diverso, probabilmente gli piacerebbe di meno, probabilmente nemmeno riuscirebbe ad amare il loro fantomatico mash-up come ama loro due, ma in questo momento non riesce a pensare a tutta questa situazione come a qualcosa di risolvibile. Tutto quello che vede è una grande macchia indistinta di enormi problemi che gli ingombra il cervello, impedendogli di pensare.
Kurt si ferma esattamente di fronte a lui. Dave abbassa gli occhi perché non riesce a guardarlo. Blaine gli stringe una mano sul ginocchio e lui inspira profondamente, giungendo le mani in un gesto nervoso e schiudendo le labbra per scusarsi.
Ma Kurt si inginocchia ai suoi piedi in un movimento lento, aggraziato, quasi regale, e poi gli accarezza una guancia mentre si sporge verso di lui, baciandolo lievemente sulle labbra, e Dave dimentica qualsiasi cosa abbia voluto dirgli, qualsiasi cosa abbia potuto pensare in queste ultime settimane ed ogni tipo di problema si sia mai presentato alle porte del suo pensiero lucido quando, negli ultimi giorni, ha riflettuto sulla condizione in cui vive chiedendosi se fosse quella giusta.
Semplicemente non importa, perché non può esserci niente di più giusto della sensazione di quelle labbra premute contro le proprie mentre le dita di Blaine disegnano ghirigori irregolari sulla sua nuca. Non può esserci niente di più giusto che allungare le mani ed incontrare la resistenza di entrambi i loro corpi, quello più solido di Blaine, quello più morbido di Kurt. Niente di più giusto del sapore dei loro respiri mescolato sulla sua lingua, niente di più giusto della sensazione fisica di entrambi i loro corpi pressati contro il proprio. Qualsiasi altra condizione sarebbe quella sbagliata, non sarebbe sufficientemente bella.
Dave si chiede se questo potrà mai essere abbastanza per smettere di avere paura. Ma l’idea di darsi una risposta in quel momento non gli va proprio giù, perciò si annega nel corpo di Kurt mentre Blaine lo bacia così profondamente da stordirlo, e decide di non pensarci.
*
L’incapacità di accettare quello che sta vedendo dev’essere tanto forte da impedirgli perfino di mettere a fuoco l’imbarazzo che normalmente lo porterebbe a girare sui tacchi e fuggire in un’altra stanza – o in un altro stato, magari. È questo che Kurt pensa, tremando di paura mentre il peso che sentiva sulle spalle vola via in un soffio, quando apre gli occhi sullo sguardo sconcertato e vuoto di suo padre che, da metà della rampa di scale, con addosso ancora il suo grembiule a righine gialle e rosse, li fissa senza emettere un fiato.
- …papà. – lo chiama a bassa voce, ma Burt non sembra neanche sentirlo, contrariamente a Dave, che schiude gli occhi, lo vede seduto e poi, voltandosi verso le scale, sbianca. Blaine si prende qualche secondo in più per svegliarsi, ma quando finalmente ci riesce ha bisogno di stropicciarsi gli occhi almeno due volte prima di rassegnarsi.
- Signor Hummel. – dice piano, e Burt si volta a guardarlo in un movimento lento, meccanico, spaventoso. Non ha ancora sbattuto le palpebre neanche una volta. È inquietante e fa paura. Dave sta tremando dalla testa ai piedi ed è pallido come non è mai stato in vita sua.
Kurt vorrebbe riuscire a prendere in mano la situazione come tante volte ha sognato di fare. Vorrebbe alzarsi in piedi e, ben dritto davanti a suo padre, spiegargli tutto. Ma non riesce. Ha la lingua incollata al palato, i suoi occhi saettano da Dave che sembra sul punto di farsi venire un infarto a Blaine che non ha la minima idea di cosa dovrebbe dire o fare a suo padre che resta lì immobile come una statua di cera con quel ridicolo grembiule addosso, e sente il profumo della cena che vien giù dal piano di sopra e il calore delle coperte che ancora avvolge i loro corpi, e ha le mani sudate, e vorrebbe fuggire in un altro mondo – in un'altra vita, magari? – e per la prima volta gli sembra di capire di cosa Dave avesse così paura, della vertigine spaventosa che sembra volerti ribaltare per terra anche quando sei seduto, e che adesso lui sta provando sulla sua pelle così intensamente da volersi mettere a urlare.
Non avrebbero dovuto mettersi a dormire, dopo aver finito di fare l’amore. Non avrebbero dovuto, ma erano stanchi per il viaggio e tutti e tre sentivano così forte il bisogno di ritagliarsi un paio d’ore semplicemente per sentirsi l’uno fra le braccia dell’altro, che non sono stati capaci di rifiutarsi quella piccola parentesi di serenità in una giornata che la serenità non l’ha vista neanche arrivare da lontano.
E lui avrebbe dovuto essere più attento, avrebbe dovuto pensare che suo padre sarebbe sceso a chiamarlo per la cena. Avrebbe dovuto pensare ad un posto in cui nascondere Dave. Avrebbe dovuto pensare a chiudere a chiave la porta.
Avrebbe dovuto, ma nonostante la paura il senso di libertà che lo avvolge in questo momento è talmente forte da fargli pensare le cose più assurde.
Come, ad esempio, la possibilità di averlo fatto apposta.
- Vestitevi. – dice Burt all’improvviso. La sua voce è gelida e raggelante. – La cena è pronta. – conclude, prima di voltarsi e risalire le scale, chiudendosi la porta alle spalle.
Blaine e Dave restano in silenzio mentre scivolano fuori dal letto e cominciano a cercare i loro vestiti. Kurt li ringrazia mentalmente. Nemmeno lui ha tanta voglia di fare conversazione.
*
In salotto non si sente altro che il tintinnare delle posate sui piatti fino a quando Carole non decide di essere la prima a parlare, per dire che le dispiace se le porzioni delle pietanze che ha preparato sono state un po’ ridimensionate, ma erano state pensate solo per quattro persone e l’aggiunta di un eventuale quinto ospite non era mai stata contemplata, per cui l’unico modo che aveva per tappare il buco era cercare di ricalibrare le quantità di cibo perché tutti potessero avere qualcosa, ma così facendo naturalmente le quantità dei piatti di ognuno sono diminuite. Ci mette dieci minuti a dirlo, fra un’esitazione e l’altra. Insiste tanto, nello spiegare i dettagli del suo ragionamento, che se si fingesse di poter ignorare il contenuto del suo discorso si potrebbe supporre che stesse parlando di una qualche questione di principio, o esponendo un ragionamento di interesse politico, o un parere su qualche controverso film visto al cinema di recente. E invece no, parla delle porzioni di cibo. Di quanti maccheroni sono finiti nel piatto di ognuno, di quanto pollo spetti a ciascuno dei presenti, di quanto sia triste di non potere offrire a tutti un’altra bottiglia di vino, perfino di quanto la imbarazzi il fatto che ora anche il dolce dovrà essere tagliato in fette più piccole di quelle che aveva preventivato.
Non lo fa con l’intenzione di mettere in imbarazzo nessuno, anzi, il suo è palesemente un modo per cercare di riempire il silenzio che sta rendendo soffocante l’aria nella stanza da pranzo, ma l’unico effetto delle sue parole è quello di caricare Dave di ulteriori sensi di colpa, Kurt di ulteriore imbarazzo e Blaine di ulteriore preoccupazione.
Se Finn fosse qui, le direbbe sicuramente di tacere. Odia quando sua madre straparla, perché lo fa solo quando è nervosa, e lui odia vederla nervosa. Ma Finn non c’è, e Kurt vuole bene a Carole, è in confidenza con lei, ma non si sente in diritto di intimarle di stare zitta, e perciò lascia che lei continui a parlare, cercando di ignorare la sua voce per concentrarsi sul silenzio duro e ruvido di suo padre, che non alza gli occhi dal piatto nemmeno per bere e cerca di muoversi il più lentamente possibile per non produrre il minimo rumore, come se questo potesse bastare a illudere se stesso per primo e tutti gli altri poi di non essere davvero presente a quel tavolo. Di non avere davvero visto quello che ha visto quando è sceso in camera di Kurt mezz’ora fa.
- Non si preoccupi, - cerca di rassicurarla Blaine, sorridendo in una perfetta imitazione di serenità, quando lei decide finalmente di darsi pace e smettere di parlare per ricominciare a respirare, - è tutto abbondante e buonissimo, come al solito.
Carole risponde con un piccolo sorriso imbarazzato, annuendo in segno di ringraziamento. Dave non ha toccato cibo, sono ormai dieci minuti che rimesta le polpette senza azzardarsi a portarne alle labbra nemmeno una, ed è al centoventesimo tintinnio della sua forchetta contro la ceramica del piatto che Kurt sente distintamente che se non parla adesso esploderà.
- Adesso basta. – dice, cercando di mantenersi calmo, ma la voce gli esce dalla gola in un mugolio strozzato che denota quanto invece sia impaurito, e non c’è proprio nulla che lui possa fare per nasconderlo. – Papà. – chiama piano, - di’ qualcosa.
Burt smette di mangiare, posando la forchetta in bilico sul bordo del piatto e pulendosi celermente la bocca prima di appoggiare i gomiti sul tavolo e giungere le mani davanti al naso, prendendosi un paio di secondi per riflettere. Poi guarda Kurt negli occhi ed inspira profondamente.
- Che cosa dovrei dire? – chiede. La sua voce è calma, ma sostenuta da una corrente sotterranea di rabbia che la riempie di un certo tremore impossibile da percepire se la si ascolta solo distrattamente. Ma Kurt non è distratto, per cui se ne accorge.
- Non lo so. – risponde, - Quello che ne pensi.
- E ti interessa quello che ne penso? – incalza Burt, aggrottando le sopracciglia, - Io non credo, perché se ti fosse interessato me l’avresti detto, invece di fare entrare quel tizio in casa mia senza neanche informarmi.
Dave accusa il colpo, e non solleva gli occhi dal piatto. Carole gli lancia un’occhiata preoccupata, ma non riesce davvero a dispiacersi per lui. Blaine vorrebbe poter fare qualcosa, ma per la prima volta in vita sua si rende conto che semplicemente non può, perciò resta in silenzio.
- Papà, è della mia vita che stiamo parlando. – gli ricorda Kurt, - E dei miei ragazzi, per cui—
- I tuoi ragazzi! – scatta Burt, alzandosi in piedi e rovesciando la sedia sul pavimento. Carole fa quasi un salto indietro.
- Burt… - prova a chiamarlo, - Non ti agitare troppo.
- Ma lo senti?! – strilla lui, voltandosi verso di lei, i lineamenti stravolti dalla rabbia, - I suoi ragazzi! Come se fosse normale organizzare le orge in casa dei tuoi genitori quando torni a casa per Natale!
- Io non organizzo orge! – strilla a propria volta Kurt, alzandosi in piedi e seguendolo quando Burt gira attorno al tavolo per allontanarsi il più possibile da lui, - Io sto con due persone che amo e dalle quali aspetto un figlio! – insiste. Quando Burt si ferma ancora e si volta a guardarlo negli occhi con una tale confusione da sembrare addirittura comico, Kurt si ferma. – Intendo, - precisa, - il figlio ovviamente lo aspetto dalla donna che ha messo a disposizione il suo utero per noi, ma lo crescerò con loro. Con entrambi. Quindi loro saranno i padri, tanto quanto me.
Burt boccheggia, lanciando un’occhiata a Carole come volesse conferma di aver sentito proprio bene. Lei è così sconvolta che lui non può che dedurre di aver capito perfettamente.
- Tu sei pazzo. – esala cupo, tornando a rivolgersi a suo figlio, - Tu sei pazzo e hai un problema Kurt.
- Ah, sì? Ho un problema? – grida Kurt, avvicinandoglisi minaccioso, - E ce l’ho perché aspetto un figlio, perché siamo in tre o perché uno dei tre è Dave Karofsky?
- Per tutte e tre le fottute cose! – ritorce Burt, gridandogli in faccia ed agitandogli un dito di fronte al viso, - Tutte e tre! È normale, secondo te? Questa è una cosa normale?!
- Non me ne frega un fottuto accidenti di niente se è normale o no! – strilla Kurt, e si spinge talmente in avanti da impattare contro suo padre, petto contro petto, costringendolo a indietreggiare. – Hai capito?! Non me ne frega un cazzo! Non è normale? Non m’importa! È quello che voglio! È quello che avrò. – conclude in un mezzo ringhio, indietreggiando di un passo di fronte allo sguardo confuso, impaurito e ferito di Burt. – Che ti piaccia o no.
Burt rimane in silenzio per qualche secondo, fissandolo come se si aspettasse di vederlo scomparire da un momento all’altro.
- Io non so nemmeno che dire. – soffia alla fine, sollevando entrambe le braccia in un gesto di resa e lasciandole poi ricadere inerti lungo i fianchi, - Non so che dire, davvero. – borbotta confusamente, dando loro le spalle ed avviandosi lungo il corridoio.
- Burt! – lo chiama Carole, correndogli dietro. Quando giunge all’ingresso, seguita da Kurt, Blaine e Dave, lo trova già con addosso la giacca e due dita sulla maniglia della porta. – Non uscire, c’è freddo fuori. – lo implora preoccupata.
- No. – dice lui, voltandosi a guardarla e lasciando poi scorrere un’occhiata allucinata sul suo impossibile seguito. – No, senti, devo uscire. Non riesco più a stare qua dentro. Tornerò presto. – dice soltanto, spalancando la porta ed uscendo di corsa.
Quando la porta si richiude alle sue spalle, ripiombando la casa nel silenzio, Kurt tira all’attaccapanni un calcio talmente forte da mandarlo lungo disteso per terra, sparpagliando cappotti, cappelli e sciarpe per tutto il pavimento. Dopodiché, volta a tutti le spalle e fugge in camera propria.
Blaine e Dave si lanciano uno sguardo in seguito al quale Blaine imbocca immediatamente il corridoio dietro di lui, per seguirlo e stargli accanto, e Dave stringe i pugni lungo i fianchi, inspirando ed espirando faticosamente per darsi coraggio prima di voltarsi verso Carole e rivolgerle un piccolo cenno del capo in segno di scuse.
- Mi dispiace molto per aver rovinato la vostra cena. – dice piano, - Vorrei seguire suo marito per parlare un po’ con lui. – aggiunge. Carole annuisce lentamente, ma il suo è un gesto vago, dettato più dall’educazione che dall’effettiva comprensione di ciò che sta accadendo.
- Dave! – lo chiama, quando lui è già per metà fuori dalla porta, - Ti chiami Dave, vero? – domanda. Lui si volta appena per annuire. – Che cosa intendi dirgli? – gli chiede. Dave si inumidisce le labbra, lanciando uno sguardo pensoso al pavimento.
- Non lo so con certezza. – risponde quindi, - Ma qualcosa dovrò pur dirgli.
Carole annuisce ancora, e Dave ricambia il cenno, prima di uscire. Rimasta sola, lei non può fare altro che tornare in cucina e mettersi a tagliare il dolce, sperando che quando si siederanno nuovamente a tavola per mangiarlo saranno ancora in cinque.
*
- Oh, no. – lo ferma Burt, mettendo le mani avanti quando se lo vede apparire di fronte sul porticato, - No, davvero, non ho la minima voglia di parlare con te, per cui abbi almeno la decenza di lasciarmi in pace.
- Signor Hummel, - sospira Dave, ignorando il suo invito ed avvicinandosi un passo dopo l’altro, per non intimidirlo, - volevo scusarmi per aver rovinato la serata.
- La serata?! – strilla Burt, guardandolo con rabbia, - Tu non hai rovinato la serata, Karofsky, tu hai rovinato la vita di mio figlio. Due volte.
Dave si stringe nelle spalle, mordendosi l’interno di una guancia.
- Signor Hummel, io capisco la sua rabbia. – dice conciliante, - E mi creda, capisco anche il suo sconcerto. In realtà non credo che esista qualcuno in questa casa che possa comprenderla meglio di me.
Burt inarca un sopracciglio, guardandolo con diffidenza.
- Cosa vorresti dire? – domanda scettico. Dave si appoggia alla parete accanto a lui, fissandosi ostinatamente la punta delle scarpe mentre tutto attorno a loro la temperatura si abbassa e comincia silenziosamente a nevicare.
- Anche io spesso ho dei dubbi sulla normalità di questa relazione. – sospira, - A Kurt non piace la parola, la inquadra soltanto in un’ottica di giusto o sbagliato per la società, ma normale può significare tante altre cose.
- Esatto. Come per esempio sana. – suggerisce Burt. Dave annuisce.
- Infatti. – dice, stringendosi nelle spalle. – Sa, il più delle volte io sono convinto al cento percento che questa relazione sia tutto meno che sana. Perché siamo in tre ed è sempre difficile incastrarci… - si ferma un secondo, notando l’ombra di raccapriccio che cala sul viso di Burt, - Non in quel senso! – si affretta a precisare, anche se l’ombra permane, - In senso generale. Nella vita. Tre caratteri sono difficili da conciliare. Tre stili di vita, trentamila abitudini diverse… è tutto molto complicato.
- Sì, e allora perché non te ne tiri fuori e sparisci?! – sputa astioso Burt, e Dave si concede un sorriso minuscolo, piegando appena il capo per distogliere lo sguardo da lui.
- Io li amo. – risponde semplicemente.
Burt fatica a digerire l’affermazione, è evidente dal modo in cui lo guarda.
- Tutti e due? – chiede incredulo. Dave annuisce. – Come è possibile?
- Non lo so. – risponde lui, scrollando le spalle, - D’altronde, io gioco a football, non sono un cazzo di psichiatra. – aggiunge, guardandolo con aria un po’ stupita. Burt gli ricambia l’occhiata e poi, controvoglia, si lascia sfuggire una risata dalle labbra.
- Questa cosa mi sembra… così assurda. – commenta, grattandosi confusamente la sommità della testa, - E questa storia del bambino?
- Io ero contrario. – borbotta Dave, - Non sono proprio convinto che sia il caso di mettersi ad allevare parchi di infanti estesi fin dove batte la luce del giorno, nella situazione in cui siamo. – Burt lo guarda atterrito per qualche secondo, e Dave si concede un risolino imbarazzato. – Sto scherzando. – lo rassicura, - Però comunque Mercedes è incinta e—
- Mercedes? – sbotta Burt, le braccia che cascano nuovamente lungo i fianchi, - Mercedes?!
- È stata un’idea di Kurt! – ribatte immediatamente Dave, stringendosi nelle spalle e scuotendo il capo, - Io e Blaine abbiamo a malapena avuto modo di prendere atto della cosa, che lui in pratica aveva già concluso.
- Mio nipote sarà mulatto e figlio di tre padri. – esala Burt, fissando il vuoto con aria persa, - Spero che almeno non abbia le antenne. – sbuffa, ridendo un po’. Ride anche Dave, ed anche se quasi neanche riescono a guardarsi negli occhi, la temperatura attorno a loro sembra farsi lievemente meno fredda, anche se entrambi sanno che è solo un’illusione. – Senti, rientriamo. – suggerisce infatti Burt poco dopo. – Questo discorso possiamo farlo anche mentre riprendiamo a mangiare, suppongo.
- È sicuro? – domanda Dave, - Perché io non vorrei mai ritrovarmi a parlare con mio figlio dei suoi altri due fidanzati e del bambino mulatto che sta per avere con la sua migliore amica, mentre sono seduto a tavola per la cena di Natale.
Burt ride ancora, scuotendo il capo.
- Andrà bene. – annuisce, e poi si ferma sulla soglia, un attimo prima di aprire la porta. – Posso chiederti com’è successo? – domanda con una punta di imbarazzo, voltandosi a guardarlo.
Dave si inumidisce le labbra, riflettendo qualche secondo.
- È successo che ci siamo voluti. – risponde quindi. – Capita troppo spesso di sentirsi rifiutati, per non prendere al volo l’occasione quando qualcuno che ami ti ricambia.
- E questo vale anche quando ad amarti sono in due? – domanda Burt con un’altra mezza risata, alla quale Dave fa eco con una propria, incredibilmente simile.
- A maggior ragione.
*
In realtà, Kurt non vuole essere toccato né consolato, al momento. È in quella fase ciclica dopo ogni litigio per la quale ha bisogno di avere qualcuno accanto nel caso gli vada di sfogarsi, ma non gli piace che quel qualcuno lo forzi a farlo. Blaine l’ha ormai imparato alla perfezione, perciò si limita a stare seduto sul letto accanto a lui mentre Kurt continua a guardare fisso il pavimento con gli occhi che ardono di rabbia, ed accoglie con una certa gioia l’arrivo di Burt in camera, perché vuol dire che, quantomeno, le cose si stanno muovendo.
Accoglie con gioia perfino maggiore la figura di David che appare dietro le spalle dell’uomo, e che lo invita con un cenno del pollice a seguirlo al piano di sopra.
- Kurt. – dice Blaine, schiarendosi la voce, ed aspetta che lui gli abbia sollevato gli occhi addosso per proseguire, - ti lascio solo con tuo padre.
Kurt scatta in piedi, sulla difensiva, veloce come un gatto. Quasi Blaine lo sente soffiare e tirare fuori gli artigli, mentre si appiattisce contro la scrivania con gli occhi di uno che non ha proprio la benché minima voglia di riprendere a litigare, e che, piuttosto che rimettersi a discutere delle proprie preferenze nella propria vita e nel proprio letto, preferirebbe finire in galera per parricidio.
- Kurt, calmati. – dice piano Burt, sollevando le mani ed avvicinandosi a lui quando Blaine è sparito al piano di sopra al seguito di Dave, chiudendosi la porta alle spalle, - Voglio solo parlare.
- Per dirmi cosa? – lo attacca subito lui, sprezzante, - Quanti problemi ho e quanto fa schifo il modo in cui conduco la mia vita?!
- No! – lo interrompe Burt, appoggiando entrambe le mani sulle sue spalle e stringendolo con una certa forza, come volesse tenerlo ancorato al terreno per impedirgli di perdersi nei suoi stessi pensieri e prendere il volo. – No… - ripete più dolcemente, - Per dirti che sono felice per te.
Kurt sgrana gli occhi, fissandolo incredulo.
- Non credo di aver capito. – mormora, e Burt sorride, traendolo a sé per un abbraccio un po’ impacciato, ma caldo e dolce.
- Sono felice per te, Kurt. – ripete, cullandolo un po’.
Non ha nemmeno bisogno di spiegargli perché.
*
Il dolce, diviso in cinque parti, riempie forse un po’ di meno. Ma è ugualmente buono.
Genere: Comico, Erotico.
Pairing: Blaine/Kurt/Dave.
Rating: NC-17
AVVISI: Threesome, Slash, Crack, What If?, Lemon.
- Giocatori di football, militari, marinai e unicorni volanti. Che cinguettano.
Note: La pazzia. X'D Niente, in realtà l'idea per questa fic nasce quei due secoli addietro, parlando con la Meg e la Tab. Si giocava a "litigare" per le coppie, e naturalmente la nostra mente ha pensato bene di non scontentare nessuno stabilendo che 3some iz better perché ne escono tutti contenti XD A quel punto io ho suggerito che avrei potuto scriverla, e naturalmente la Meg mi ha detto "la voglio *_*", motivo per il quale ho atteso che arrivasse l'idea, ed essa fortunatamente s'è presentata grazie al congiungersi di Maritombola e P0rn Fest ♥ Fandom = Love.
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plots are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
POUR A DAYDREAM IN A CUP
(a spoon of sugar sweetens up)
GLEE Blaine/Dave Karofsky/Kurt Hummel, mediazione
Crack @ Maritombola

Nonostante sia perfettamente conscio di quanto un mugolio simile possa suonare indecente, provocatorio e quasi eccessivamente malizioso (un po’ come quelli delle attrici nei porno, quei gemiti gonfi e rumorosi che sai per certo essere finti e vuoti), Kurt mugola. Mugola perché gli piace svegliarsi così, mugola perché non vuole aprire gli occhi e mugola – sorridendo – perché Blaine lo sta accarezzando piano e le sue mani sono calde, dolci ed esperte, ed incredibilmente piacevoli. Le dita un po’ ruvide – lo ricorda solo la sera prima, seduto sul letto con addosso una maglietta bianca e i pantaloni del pigiama, gli occhi chiusi e i capelli per una volta liberi dal gel coi quali li tiene a posto durante il giorno, perso nel suono che si diffondeva nell’aria ogni volta che pizzicava le corde della chitarra, accompagnando la voce con un mormorio musicale costante e melodioso che vibrava sulle sue labbra chiuse, invitandolo a baciarle – scivolano lungo il suo petto e la sua pancia, sotto le lenzuola, esitando appena sotto l’ombelico mentre Kurt si spinge involontariamente – involontariamente? – verso l’alto, cercando di andare incontro alle sue carezze.
Nonostante gli inviti impliciti – i movimenti del bacino – ed espliciti – i mugolii ora più dolci, ora più urgenti e lamentosi – la mano di Blaine resta lì, appoggiata alla sua pancia, il pollice che disegna ghirigori insensati premendosi con forza sulla pelle morbida dei suoi fianchi, e Kurt sbuffa insoddisfatto mentre sente l’altra mano del ragazzo appoggiarsi dolcemente alla sua guancia ed accarezzarla con devozione.
- Blaine… - lo chiama, gli occhi ancora chiusi, sollevando le mani per poggiarle sul suo petto liscio e definito, - Blaine, per favore.
Lui sbuffa una mezza risata a pochi centimetri dalle sue labbra, e Kurt si protende per un bacio in un gesto infantile ed irrequieto le cui ardenti intenzioni riesce a trattenere solo per un paio di secondi, prima di sentire altre due mani scivolare svelte sotto le lenzuola e sul suo corpo, lungo le sue gambe, e dita forti e grosse che decisamente non appartengono a Blaine stringersi con impeto attorno alla sua erezione già svettante e bollente, mentre la voce di Blaine gli sussurra addosso, carezzevole, “tesoro, hai mai avuto voglia di provare qualcosa di nuovo?”.
Kurt spalanca gli occhi, cacciando un urlo col quale probabilmente avrebbe avuto più possibilità di vincere le selezioni alla Dalton per un ruolo da solista che non cantando Don’t Cry For Me Argentina altre cinquecento volte avvolgendosi in drappi di seta lunghi fino a terra, e si ritrae in un angolo del letto, fissando davanti a sé con aria orripilata mentre tira il lenzuolo su fino al collo per coprirsi pudicamente.
- Karofsky! Che ci fai tu qui?! – chiede con voce disperata, prima di voltarsi a cercare Blaine. A questo punto, se può credere a Karofsky apparso improvvisamente seminudo sul suo letto mentre lui dormiva, può perfettamente credere anche di essersi inventato la presenza di Blaine fino a quel momento. Forse la stava solo sognando! Forse Karofsky stava fingendo di essere il suo ragazzo imitandone la voce e il tocco! Forse ha rapito Blaine e l’ha legato in un sotterraneo dal quale lo lascerà uscire solo dopo aver approfittato a sazietà del suo corpo! Forse lo ucciderà!!! E invece Blaine è lì, al suo fianco, e gli sorride serafico, i capelli scompigliati a incorniciare il volto pallido e i soliti, dolcissimi occhi scuri a brillare colmi d’amore. – Blaine! – lo invoca, stringendoglisi al petto, - Che ci fa lui qui?
Blaine lo accoglie fra le proprie braccia coccolandolo con fare protettivo, e Kurt, nonostante Karofsky sia ancora troppo seminudo e troppo vicino per i suoi gusti, non può fare a meno di sentirsi istantaneamente più tranquillo, avvolto nel calore rassicurante di quella stretta.
- L’ho incontrato per strada. – gli spiega zuccheroso, e Kurt è convinto che, se non fosse adagiato sul materasso, cadrebbe a terra, schiantandosi contro il pavimento e frantumandosi un buon numero di ossa.
- Co-Cosa? – chiede incerto, sollevando lo sguardo a cercare il suo. Blaine gli sorride con più convinzione, tenendolo saldamente fra le braccia mentre Karofsky si avvicina con uno strano sorriso sul volto. – Come sarebbe a dire che l’hai incontrato per strada?
- S’era perso. – precisa Blaine, come se questo servisse a chiarire le cose, - Dentro l’armadio. Non riusciva più a trovare la strada per venirne fuori, così ho pensato che magari potevo dargli una mano.
- Cosa?! – strilla Kurt, stavolta balbettando decisamente meno e piantando entrambe le mani sul petto di Blaine per spingerlo lontano da sé. – Blaine, se questa è una qualche metafora per dirmi che ci sei andato a letto, ti spacco la testa! – lo minaccia, prima di lanciare un urletto nel sentire le mani di Karofsky chiudersi a coppa attorno alle sue natiche, - La spacco anche a te se ti avvicini ancora una volta senza permesso! – strilla ancora, schiaffeggiandogli le dita come farebbe con un bambino piccolo colto sul fatto a pucciarle nella panna della torta in frigo.
Blaine, comunque, ride divertito, afferrandolo per le spalle e rigirandoselo fra le mani come una bambola di pezza, per poi schiacciarselo contro in modo da farlo aderire con la schiena al proprio petto, intrappolandolo e rendendogli difficile ogni movimento.
- Non è una metafora. – gli sussurra all’orecchio, - S’era davvero perso nell’armadio. È un posto oscuro e misterioso, non pensi? Ti ci perderesti anche tu, se ti ci avventurassi dentro. – annuisce, indicandogli l’armadio in fondo alla stanza con un cenno del capo. Kurt lo osserva e vede lo sportello spalancato oltre il quale si apre una strada che dà su un tramonto ed un enorme prato pieno solo di giocatori di football che si danno pacche sul sedere mentre militari in divisa fanno le flessioni e marinai in casacca scamiciata prendono il sole pulendo con lo straccio pontili di navi invisibili.
- Ma che roba è?! – sbotta Kurt, agitando le braccia per quanto può, ancora affondato contro il petto di Blaine, mentre cerca di chiudere le gambe in tempo per evitare che Karofsky possa sistemarvisi in mezzo. Le chiude con quel secondo di ritardo che le porta a serrarsi attorno ai suoi fianchi torniti, piuttosto che di fronte al suo corpo, a mo’ di protezione. – Karofsky, sta’ attento, eh! Potrei denunciarti! Potrei tirarti una ginocchiata nelle palle qui ed ora! Potrei—
- Potresti stare un po’ zitto, tesoro. – gli sussurra Blaine, carezzevole, e nello stesso istante le sue dita lunghe e affusolate si chiudono attorno alla sua erezione ormai quasi dolorosa, che ha resistito e, anzi, è sembrata crescere prospera nonostante la paura e l’agitazione e Karofsky ancora eccessivamente seminudo di fronte agli occhi.
Kurt geme, chiudendo gli occhi e voltando il capo per nascondersi quanto può contro il collo e i capelli di Blaine, imbarazzato oltre ogni limite. Si vergogna da morire, al punto che gli viene quasi da piangere, ma non può fare a meno di mollare un po’ la presa attorno ai fianchi di Karofsky, permettendogli di avanzare fra le sue cosce mentre segue i movimenti della mano di Blaine con piccole spinte del bacino.
- Blaine… - lo chiama lamentoso, respirando affannosamente, - Che cosa hai intenzione di fare?
Blaine gli sorride sulla pelle, tempestandogli il collo e le spalle di piccoli baci umidi.
- Aiuto un bisognoso a ritrovare la strada di casa. – conclude, prima di afferrare Kurt da sotto un ginocchio con la mano libera per aiutarlo a spalancare le cosce.
Karofsky sorride ancora quando lo vede arreso ed esposto davanti a lui, e quello che gli schiude le labbra è un sorriso vagamente ebete di cui Kurt sicuramente riderebbe se la situazione non fosse drammatica come in realtà è. Sente le guance avvampare e tutto il resto del corpo diventare caldo a livelli difficilmente sopportabili quando le sue mani grandi e ruvide gli si chiudono attorno ai fianchi, saggiandone la consistenza. Dura solo qualche attimo, perché Karofsky si allontana quasi subito, per liberarsi dei boxer, prima di tornare a premersi contro di lui. Kurt adocchia con terrore la sua erezione dura e tesa verso di lui quasi come un’arma, e porta le mani al viso, nascondendovisi dietro.
- Non posso credere che stia succedendo davvero… - mugola Kurt in un gemito spezzato quando la punta di quella stessa erezione dalla quale vorrebbe solo fuggire preme delicatamente contro la sua apertura.
- Prova a rilassarti. – lo blandisce Blaine, stringendosi con più decisione attorno a lui nello stesso istante in cui Karofsky fa breccia all’interno del suo corpo, penetrandolo in un gesto fluido e svelto. Kurt geme con forza, abbassando le braccia per aggrapparsi al lenzuolo, stringendo i pugni attorno al tessuto bianco che sa di pulito quando sente il ventre contrarsi in uno spasmo di piacere.
- Mi… mi inquieta che stia sempre zitto. – commenta incerto osservando Karofsky piegarsi su di lui ed entrare nel suo corpo fino alla base prima di cominciare a muoversi freneticamente dentro e fuori dal suo corpo, mandando lungo la sua spina dorsale scosse di piacere quasi dolorose da quanto sono intense.
- Sssh. – sussurra Blaine, stringendogli il mento fra due dita ed invitandolo a voltarsi verso di lui, - Lo preferisci così. – conclude baciandolo con forza. Kurt non può fare a meno di ammettere quantomeno con se stesso, che Blaine ha ragione, e si lascia conquistare dalla sua lingua che accarezza devota la propria, dalle sue dita che lo accarezzano dalla base alla punta e dalle spinte concitate con cui Karofsky continua a scavarsi un posto dentro di lui, come volesse essere sicuro di guadagnare abbastanza spazio da raggiungerlo nella sua parte più profonda e lasciare un segno del proprio passaggio anche lì, e per quanto fino a questo momento Kurt non abbia fatto altro che pensare con orrore a tutti i segni che Karofsky gli ha lasciato addosso nella loro pur saltuaria e lontana conoscenza, in questo momento è tutto diverso, c’è Blaine a dargli calore e sicurezza e Karofsky stesso è così tranquillo e sereno da sembrare quasi un’altra persona, e mentre i giocatori di football, i militari e i marinai che prima stavano dentro l’armadio si affacciano da dietro le ante spalancate, e fanno festa, intonando cori angelici e scandendo il ritmo delle spinte di Karofsky con incitazioni trionfanti, mentre l’aria si riempie del cinguettio assurdo e inquietante di unicorni alati dalle criniere color arcobaleno e dagli occhi azzurri come il cielo estivo, mentre tutto si confonde in una sinfonia confusa e allegra, da festa campagnola, e lui si sente esplodere e si abbandona sul materasso pronto a mettere piede in paradiso non appena sarà giunta la sua ora, mentre viene con più forza di quanta non ricordi in nessuna delle scopate precedenti a questa, Kurt apre gli occhi e la stanza è immersa nel buio, non c’è nessun Karofsky da nessuna parte, l’armadio è chiuso e Blaine dorme profondamente nel letto accanto a lui, i capelli davanti alla faccia e il respiro pesante e regolare.
Scatta a sedere istantaneamente, i lineamenti contratti dallo sconcerto, e solleva il lenzuolo solo per confermare l’impressione bagnata che l’ha accompagnato da quando s’è svegliato: è davvero venuto nel sonno, senza che apparentemente nessuno dovesse toccarlo, mentre il compendio degli stereotipi omosessuali cantava e ballava in suo onore e il suo peggior nemico se lo scopava col benestare del suo ragazzo. Deve essere del tutto impazzito.
Lentamente, quasi con timore, si china oltre il bordo del letto, spiando al di sotto come in attesa di veder spuntare Karofsky dall’ombra come i mostri delle fiabe, ed espira sollevato quando – naturalmente – non trova niente acquattato nell’oscurità e pronto a scattare per abusare di lui.
Torna a distendersi, per un secondo dimentico del disastro che ha fra le cosce mentre tutto ciò a cui riesce a pensare è quanto perfetto e completo si sentisse con addosso quattro mani invece delle solite due, e si inumidisce le labbra mentre cerca invano di trattenere un sorriso.
- Blaine, - dice poco dopo, voltandosi a scuotere il suo ragazzo, - Blaine, svegliati.
Lui mugola una lamentela indefinita, ma si rassegna immediatamente ad aprire almeno un occhio per guardarlo.
- Che c’è, Kurt? – chiede con aria ancora assonnata, massaggiandosi stancamente il viso in uno sbadiglio vagamente infantile.
Kurt sorride, sporgendosi a lasciargli un bacio sulle labbra ancora dischiuse.
- Tesoro, - comincia, stringendosi maliziosamente nelle spalle, - hai mai avuto voglia di provare qualcosa di nuovo?
Genere: Introspettivo, Drammatico.
Pairing: Kurt/Dave, Kurt/Blaine (accennato).
Rating: NC-17
AVVISI: Slash, Angst, Violence, What If?.
- "Kurt stabilisce che la rabbia è un sentimento piacevole."
Note: ...dunque :D Suppongo che dovrei dare una qualche giustificazione per l'esistenza in vita di questa storia, ma la verità è che non voglio darla XD Sarò dannata il giorno in cui mi sentirò in dovere di giustificare per quale motivo shippo una determinata coppia piuttosto che un'altra. Dirò dunque soltanto che l'idea di un'interazione più approfondita fra Kurt e Karofsky mi ha affascinata al punto che alla fine ne è venuta fuori una storia piuttosto corposa, motivo per il quale la posterò in quattro parti, ciascuna formata da sei ficlet, ognuna ispirata da un tema dei set Varie A e Varie B per Dieci&Lode. Tenete ben presenti i warning là sopra, la coppia principale e leggete solo se è quello che volete davvero ^O^ E andremo tutti d'accordo.
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WE’RE FUCKED UP LIKE THAT

#01 – Rabbia
Kurt stabilisce che la rabbia è un sentimento piacevole.
Ok, forse no. Non è propriamente piacevole, quanto più necessario. Sì, è così che la descriverebbe se qualcuno si azzardasse a chiederglielo proprio in questo momento. Forse prima gli staccherebbe la testa dal collo a morsi, ma poi risponderebbe che ciò che sta provando in questo momento non è esattamente piacevole, perché brucia troppo, gli stringe lo stomaco in una morsa asfissiante e gli comprime i polmoni lasciandogli appena lo spazio per respirare a fatica, però è necessario, ne sente proprio il bisogno. Avverte il desiderio spasmodico di sentirsi esattamente così, preda di qualcosa che non riesce a comprendere né in tutto né in parte e preoccupantemente senza scampo.
Si lascia guidare dalla sensazione, se ne lascia trasportare, vi si affida, la rincorre perfino. Si affretta per starle al passo, e quando, dopo averlo spinto contro gli armadietti per l’ennesima volta, per l’ennesima volta Karofsky si infila nello spogliatoio senza degnarlo di un altro sguardo, lui lo insegue.
La rabbia di Kurt Hummel è qualcosa di molto fisico, perlomeno in questo momento. È come se, toccandolo per mandarlo a sbattere, Karofsky gli avesse lasciato addosso qualcosa, un arpione, un amo, e poi avesse continuato per la propria strada senza nemmeno accorgersene, ma la lenza è ancora lì, ben stretta attorno al suo polso da un lato e al gancio dell’amo conficcato nel petto di Kurt dall’altro. È quello che lo attira, è quella la misura fisica della sua rabbia. Kurt riesce quasi a vederne i riflessi brillare nella luce al neon biancastra del corridoio prima, e in quella più calda dello spogliatoio dopo.
- Devi piantarla. – dice tutto d’un fiato. La sua mente è annebbiata, confusa. La figura di Karofsky è una macchia rossa e gialla dai contorni indistinti. Kurt si sente bene. – Dirò a tutti che mi hai baciato. Se non la smetti— Karofsky, - esita un attimo, e gli trema la voce, ma non per paura, bensì per l’emozione, - Karofsky, ti giuro che se non la smetti te la farò pagare cara. Più cara di quanto immagini.
Karofsky fa per ribattere. Schiude le labbra, lo fissa incredulo. Gli occhi di Kurt tornano lucidi in tempo per permettergli di osservare quella sua patetica espressione smarrita, e goderne intimamente.

#05 – Desiderio
Non prova neanche un po’ di paura quando Karofsky gli si avvicina. È minaccioso, lo è nel modo in cui avanza, nel modo in cui lo guarda, nel modo in cui le sue labbra si piegano, distorte dal disgusto e dal fastidio, e Kurt sa che, se fosse solo appena più presente a se stesso, sarebbe terrorizzato, forse addirittura scapperebbe, anche se ha come l’impressione che non sarebbero le botte a preoccuparlo, e nemmeno il dolore. Forse solo l’incertezza, il buio imperscrutabile che scorge nelle pupille scure di Karofsky, la tensione agitata e ansiosa che avverte attorno a loro, quel silenzio surreale che li avvolge.
Karofsky lo afferra per le spalle, lo sposta come non pesasse niente e lo scaraventa contro un armadietto. La botta è forte, un brivido di dolore puro scivola lungo tutta la schiena di Kurt, parte dalla nuca e si propaga lungo tutta la sua spina dorsale. Lui fa una smorfia, soffia infastidito, chiude gli occhi e la sua testa rimbalza un po’ avanti e indietro per il modo oggettivamente increscioso in cui il bullo lo sta maneggiando. Senza il minimo riguardo. Ma d’altronde, non è che si aspettasse niente di diverso.
Il pugno di Karofsky si solleva, alto fin sopra la sua testa. Kurt lo fissa, sembra che lo stia puntando proprio in mezzo agli occhi. Adesso sì che la paura monta, comincia a farsi sentire e gli brucia lo stomaco e i polmoni, ma c’è qualcosa nel fondo della sua pancia che invece semplicemente si annoda e stringe, e non si scioglie nemmeno quando il pugno di Karofsky va a scaraventarsi contro l’armadietto a due centimetri dalla sua tempia, mentre le sue labbra, invece, si scaraventano contro le proprie.
Kurt si dice che non si sta tirando indietro solo perché non può, perché è schiacciato fra il suo corpo e l’armadietto, ma nel momento esatto in cui la lingua di Karofsky si fa avanti ad accarezzare la sua – e lui glielo lascia fare – il nodo sul fondo della pancia si stringe ancora e tira tira tira, tira così tanto che Kurt si sente mancare il fiato, perciò lo ruba dalla bocca dello stronzo che lo sta baciando, perché almeno così pareggia il conto, o almeno crede, ed anche se così non fosse, chi se ne frega.

#10 – Dovere
Si separa da lui solo perché deve, e non sa quanto tempo sia passato da quando hanno cominciato a baciarsi. Il pugno di Karofsky non è più piantato contro l’armadietto, ma appoggiato mollemente sulla sua spalla, mentre l’altra sua mano si è poggiata sulla guancia di Kurt quasi subito, e lì è rimasta per tutto il tempo, fino ad adesso.
Kurt è senza fiato. Non ricorda più come si fa a respirare, e ha i polmoni talmente compressi che se prova a riempirli d’aria gli fanno male, al punto da convincersi che la procedura giusta non dev’essere quella. Ha sicuramente dimenticato come si fa.
Karofsky si allontana di qualche centimetro e lo guarda come fosse assurdo, come se fino a due secondi prima fosse convinto di stare sognando ed avesse aperto gli occhi per accorgersi troppo tardi che invece no. Kurt deglutisce a vuoto un paio di volte e per qualche secondo si chiede se tornerà a farsi avanti un’altra volta per provare a baciarlo ancora come ha fatto qualche giorno fa, ma Karofsky non si muove. Forse questo gli è sembrato molto più reale, forse ne ha avuto abbastanza della sua bocca.
Kurt non riesce a fare a meno di passarsi la lingua sulle labbra gonfie e accaldate. La sensazione è piacevole, gli sfregamenti continui con quelle di Karofsky le hanno rese incredibilmente sensibili. Lecca via quell’ultimo residuo di piacere in un gesto lento, in qualche modo volutamente provocatorio. Gli occhi di Karofsky gli scorrono addosso e si fermano lì per molto tempo. Una delle sue mani è ancora poggiata mollemente sulla sua spalla, l’altra pressa ancora il pollice nella sua guancia, proprio sopra al mento.
Kurt non lo bacia ancora solo perché non deve.

#01 – Colore
La mano di Karofsky ha cambiato colore. Kurt se ne accorge solo quando lui si allontana, perché solo allora la scosta dalla sua spalla e la lascia ondeggiare goffamente lungo il fianco. Ha le nocche a chiazze di un rosso vivo, incredibilmente acceso, e circondate da un alone violaceo tendente al giallastro man mano che si allontana verso il dorso. Vorrebbe chiedergli che cos’è che fa più male, se dov’è rosso o dov’è giallo, se si fa più schifo per averlo baciato o per aver provato a rifarlo, per averlo fatto ancora o per non essersi fermato in tempo. Sono domande che gli piacerebbe poter porre anche a se stesso, peraltro. Invece, mentre Karofsky si allontana e si guarda confusamente intorno, come dovesse riprendere le misure del mondo circostante per capire dove si trova, Kurt schiude sì le labbra, ma per dire tutt’altro.
- Dovresti andare in infermeria, per quello. – dice, indicandogli la mano ormai gonfia. Nota che trema un po’. Deve fare male sul serio. Si rende conto solo vagamente della voragine che s’è aperta sulla superficie dell’armadietto accanto al suo viso. Non vuole guardarla, non vuole pensare che, se Karofsky avesse voluto baciarlo solo un po’ meno di quanto non abbia voluto in realtà, quella voragine enorme si sarebbe aperta sulla sua faccia.
Lui si volta a guardarlo con aria allucinata, boccheggiando a vuoto un paio di volte prima di riuscire a proferire parola.
- Non ti impicciare. – gli risponde sgarbatamente, aggrottando le sopracciglia. Kurt lo imita, accigliandosi immediatamente.
- È colpa mia se ti sei fatto male, no? – dice con disprezzo, - Perché ti faccio schifo, giusto? Allora ho tutti i diritti di impicciarmi. E di consigliarti di andare in infermeria.
Karofsky gli si avvicina ancora, schiacciandolo contro l’armadietto. Kurt trattiene il fiato. Baciami ancora, pensa incontrollabilmente, baciami, baciami, baciami. Karofsky solleva il pugno – baciami – poi sembra desistere – baciami – ringhia sommessamente – baciami, baciami, baciami! – è a due centimetri dalla sua bocca quando gli sussurra “quanto mi fai incazzare, Hummel”, senza aggiungere altro, prima di allontanarsi ed uscire di gran fretta dagli spogliatoi.
Kurt si morde il labbro inferiore, nasconde il viso fra le mani e si lascia scivolare a terra, senza forze. Sei una vergogna, si dice senza pietà, sei una vergogna, peggio di lui. Non riesce a dirsi in alcun modo che non è vero, e sta ancora pensando fermati e baciami, torna indietro e baciami, baciami, baciami baciami baciami.

#12 – Osservazione
Kurt lo guarda, ed impiega pochissimi giorni a capire che Karofsky, oh, sì, lo guarda anche lui. Lo guarda continuamente, in realtà Kurt sospetta che Karofsky guardi lui più di quanto lui non guardi Karofsky, il che per certi versi lo preoccupa. E per certi altri no. Ma è una cosa che non riesce completamente a spiegarsi, è una cosa che sente più di quanto non la capisca, perciò il più delle volte si limita a prendere atto della sua esistenza e cercare di fare finta di niente. Si chiede ma da quant’è che va avanti, da quanto tempo Karofsky mi guarda? e poi sa che dovrebbe aggiungere e da quanto tempo io guardo lui?, ma non lo fa mai. E sa che per ora è meglio così.
- Che ti prende? – gli chiede Mercedes, schioccandogli le dita di fronte alla faccia per attirare la sua attenzione. Lui sussulta appena, voltandosi a guardarla e dicendosi che dovrebbe proprio parlarne con qualcuno, di tutto quello che gli sta girando per la testa in questo momento, e chi meglio di Mercedes? È la sua migliore amica, d’altronde, no? Gli vuole bene, e continuerà a volergliene anche quando lui le avrà detto – vergogna – che vuole essere – vergogna – che vorrebbe – sei una vergogna, una vergogna peggio di lui – continuerà a volergliene, giusto? Qualsiasi cosa lui possa dirle.
In realtà c’è una sola persona al mondo con la quale Kurt probabilmente si sentirebbe a proprio agio nel confessare una cosa simile. Ma non può parlargliene, non può tirare in mezzo Blaine, non così, non ora, soprattutto non per questo motivo. Quando guarda Blaine negli occhi ci vede riflesso un mare di possibilità, e lui una cosa simile non ha mai potuto vederla. Vuole conservare quelle possibilità intatte, vuole ancora poterlo incontrare e sorridergli e pensare chissà, forse… non vuole assolutamente che il calore che prova quando Blaine lo sfiora e gli parla e lo fa sentire al centro del vortice affettuoso delle sue attenzioni svanisca in un lampo, gli scivoli via fra le dita.
Trattiene il fiato e si morde la lingua finché la voglia di sputare il rospo non passa. Gli occhi di Karofsky puntati contro di lui gli bruciano sulla pelle come un raggio di sole amplificato da una lente d’ingrandimento e puntato contro una formica nel mezzo di un prato da un gruppo di bambini sadici. Smettila, smettila, smettila, pensa con tutte le sue forze, se non vuoi baciarmi almeno smettila.
Quando si volta, Karofsky non c’è più.

#09 – Rischio
Prima ancora che dal sapore delle sue labbra o dall’odore così tipico della giacca che indossa, o semplicemente dal fatto che lo vede, Kurt riconosce che è Karofsky il ragazzo che lo trascina sul fondo di un vicolo appena dietro la scuola dalla sua stretta attorno al proprio braccio. E questo è già dannatamente sufficiente a dargli una misura molto fisica di quanto assurdo, malato e perverso sia tutto ciò. Non per il sapore, non per l’odore, non per il suo aspetto. Per riconoscere Dave Karofsky basta il dolore che gli provocano le sue dita quando si chiudono con la forza di una tenaglia attorno al suo braccio magro, appena sotto la spalla, e lo trascinano via dalla strada senza la minima accortezza.
Karofsky lo getta contro la prima parete che incontra con una violenza talmente esibita da fare più male del dolore stesso. C’è tanta di quella rabbia, nel modo in cui lo tratta, che se Kurt non sapesse che a schifarlo di più è l’effetto che ha su di lui, penserebbe davvero di avergli fatto qualcosa di incredibilmente grave. Così non è, però, e Kurt lo sa: Karofsky lo vuole, lo vuole possedere più di quanto il suo cervello non riesca a processare, la parola in sé è già così forte che a Kurt tremano le gambe nel ripetersela – possedere, rendere proprio, possiedimi, fammi tuo – si sente quasi cedere ed è certo che, se non fosse il corpo di Karofsky stesso a schiacciarlo contro la parete che ha alle spalle, rovinerebbe a terra.
Si aggrappa con tutta la forza che riesce a trovare al risvolto della sua giacca, e onestamente non saprebbe dire chi dei due sia il primo ad avvicinarsi alla bocca dell’altro. Cerca di appigliarsi ad una scusa qualsiasi, stabilisce arbitrariamente che Karofsky s’è avvicinato per primo – ma sai che non è vero, lo sai che non è vero, sei una vergogna, che vergogna sei, Kurt Hummel – e che quindi è colpa sua se – lo sta baciando – è colpa sua se – Dio, baciami ancora – è colpa sua se sta perdendo il controllo in questo modo, schiacciandosi il più possibile contro di lui, tirandoselo addosso per la giacca, la maglietta, il collo, mordendogli le labbra ed accarezzandogli la lingua con la propria.
Lì dove sono c’è il rischio che qualcuno li veda, sono praticamente in mezzo alla strada, niente porte, niente pareti a separarli dal resto del mondo, ma Kurt è confuso, la sua vista è annebbiata – chiude gli occhi e non ci pensa, è molto meglio così – ed il pericolo non assume una consistenza che meriti dell’attenzione fino a quando Karofsky non si allontana, afferrandolo per il collo e schiacciandolo contro la parete. Kurt getta indietro il capo, geme e si sente soffocare, si morde un labbro perché prova troppo dolore in troppi sensi per poterli contare, e gli occhi di Karofsky brillano di una furia che non ha niente di umano, e Kurt si dà dello stupido, perché il pericolo non è fuori, il pericolo non sono le altre persone, il pericolo non è nemmeno Karofsky stesso, no, il pericolo è solo uno, ed è quello che lui gli lascerebbe fare.
Quando Karofsky lo lascia andare e si allontana ringhiando come una bestia ferita, Kurt si tocca il collo dolorante e sa, lo sa profondamente, che se è ancora vivo è solo per pura fortuna. E perché Karofsky lo vuole ancora troppo.

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