All the Other Ghosts (Boyxboy Superhero AU Fanfic (Klaine))

Chapter 18

It's a cold January night and in Kurt's bedroom Blaine is dropping little kisses along the back of Kurt's neck to try to distract him from the catsinghostcloaks site, to try to tempt him back towards the sheets; Kurt's fingers curl in his hair at the back of Blaine's neck, like catching a puppy up before it can chew at the important wires, and he says, "No. Going patrolling."

Blaine stops kissing, and breathes there with his nose jammed into Kurt's skin for a while. His hands shift and resettle at Kurt's waist, around the desk chair's back. Then he says, "After last night?"

Kurt says, slowly, "It's always going to be after last night. Tonight or tomorrow or next week, it's always going to be after last night, Blaine."

He tilts his head back and Blaine lifts his, so they can meet each other's eyes. Kurt says, "I always make a point of it the night after something awful happens. I always go right out again. Because - because if I didn't put the cloak on again then, I don't know when I would be able to do it again. I'm not saying you have to -"

"No," Blaine says. "If - if you are then I am. I don't want you . . . on your own. It's a bad world."

Kurt's gaze flicks downwards. He confirms, quietly, "It is a bad world."

Blaine settles his chin on his shoulder, stares in silence for a while at the gif of a tabby rolling manically onto its back, scrabbling to dislodge the cloak it really doesn't seem to want to be wearing. Kurt swallows, and his fingers pull at Blaine's hair a little. Gelled-down he can't stroke through it, can only stroke at it, so the fact that he's beginning to pick the flatness to pieces says that he knows Blaine's coming out with him tonight, and he's just, quietly, talking them through it.

"Three weeks after I started doing this, when I was nineteen and stupidly naïve, I called an ambulance for a homeless man I found outside a subway station. He died before they got there. I - it absolutely wrecked me. I'd never held anyone's hand while they died before. They wouldn't let me, when I was a kid, with my mom, um, they didn't want me to be there. I didn't know if I wanted to, I didn't understand what was happening. I was scared by how upset everyone was." He swallows again, and Blaine lets go of his waist to wrap his arm around it instead, and Kurt's head tilts a little to his. "The man by the subway, I didn't know his name, he had some kind of - I don't know, sore. Open sore. In his stomach. I could - smell how wrong it was. I couldn't even - peel his blankets out of the way to check, they were, um, they were stuck - in it." He wets his lips. "He was cold and fading and I guess commuters had been stepping over him for a while already. He didn't seem to mind me being there much either way. I knew - I didn't know what to do, I knew what was happening. I didn't carry the heat packs then, I didn't know, I could only put my cloak over him and try to warm his hands, I didn't . . . he tried to open his eyes a couple of times but his breath just wore out. Just got longer and slower until it stopped. And when the ambulance got there I, I just . . . disappeared."

Blaine turns his cheek a little closer to Kurt's, eyes open, waiting.

"I went home. I washed my costume and cried, pretty much the whole night. And the next night I put it back on and I went out there again. I went out again after the first night someone shot at me, after the first night someone got shot in front of me, after - after the first time I had to walk a woman to the rape crisis centre, and I think she only trusted me at all because I was almost as upset as she was. After the time that guy, um." He swallows again. "I just go out again, I have to. I think if I stop - if I ever think I can't do this for just one night - I'm scared I won't ever be able to again. And it's not like the world's going to get any nicer if I don't. So." He gives a small breath of almost-amused laughter. "It's not like it's anything to do with courage, really. I'm just scared of being too scared."

Blaine says, doesn't even think about it until too late, just murmurs out loud the thought always there, "I'm always scared."

Kurt says, "Then that makes you the bravest person I know."

And then he kisses his cheek, and stands up, opens his wardrobe and leans to click up the fake base he set in it. And Blaine closes his eyes, and sighs his breath out, and gives one last glance to the gif of a cat flicking its baffled ears inside a Ghost hood, and turns to help him.