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

Chapter 20

FUCK YES PHALANX

sobbing

asKFDHFSJLASSALKFD still stupidly adorable together! <3

LOOK AT HOW THE GHOST WATCHES HIM askldfasghfjaadlghjkf good times to be a phanghost like srsly *_*

WHERE WERE YOU DID YOU NEED TO GO REPLENISH YOUR POWERS OF CUTE FROM THE SOURCE OF ALL PRESH THINGS?? never leave us again ;_;

Oh god so relieved so relieved so relieved

My *babies* ;_;

I don't even ship it, I'm still glad for the Ghost. So long as someone's got your back, spooky <3

lololol mom just ran upstairs to find out why i screamed

Fly, my pretties, *fly* <3

Oh, this calls for a celebratory drabble . . .

I'm so glad, I was worried ^^

Looks like we're back to business as usual, with fandom keysmashing, capslocking, and crying, while I get myself a drink.

still no puckzilla :(

Stay safe, superboyfriends, take care <3

*

During the couple of days Blaine made Kurt take off after hitting his head, during which they mostly bummed around Cooper's apartment while Cooper was amused that the two of them could never seem to stay in one piece for more than a week at a time and Kurt hid in Blaine's room, blushing, Kurt murmured - quietly, looking out of the window over New York from Cooper's fancy spinny armchair while Cooper was out - "Maybe it would be nice, sometimes, to do more of the things that normal people do." He rolled his eyes. "'Normal' people."

They don't do much when they're not fighting crime, they're tired when they're not fighting crime, they nap together and fall asleep in front of the TV together and stay in bed together. And they're young, and very stupidly in love, and Blaine does want to do the things that people do; he wants to hold hands in a movie, go ice skating together, he wants to take Kurt dancing, god he wants to take Kurt dancing. But going dancing is not as simple as it sounds.

For one thing, there are clubs and there are clubs. There are the clubs people go to to dance and the clubs they go to to talk and the clubs they go to to find some flesh to rub against. Clubs have crowds, and Blaine doesn't know the New York scene well, and he wants it to be right, for Kurt. Then there's always the problem of straight clubs vs. gay clubs, which shouldn't be a problem but a night out with part of the mind always on edge, of what might happen if you press just a little too close to your boyfriend . . . he just wants it to be perfect, for Kurt, he wants everything to be perfect for Kurt.

But then, gay clubs do come with their own issues. The main issue being the problem of Kurt Hummel's beauty, and how utterly oblivious of it he is.

Blaine wouldn't rate himself a bad looking guy; he's never struggled to find company when he's wanted it, he's turned down advances from other guys while he's had a boyfriend before, and Kurt took the time to look twice at him so he can hardly not be worth looking at. So maybe it's that Blaine is biased but he doesn't think it's that, when he looks at Kurt and sees a problem, the problem of just how unaware of himself Kurt is, and how if Blaine takes Kurt into a room with his pick of other men, does Blaine know that he'll be the one Kurt walks out of it with . . . ?

And he's being stupid, and he's being paranoid, and he's being unfair, because Kurt is as loyal and loving as a child, it's Blaine he looks at, not anyone else. But Blaine looks at Kurt, Kurt who hasn't got a clue how lovely he is, Kurt who has all along attributed other men's attention to only one thing and he's never thought that thing was just his being worth people's attention. A guy gives him the up-and-down on the subway and Kurt's body leans, subtly, to Blaine's, Kurt's hand is so slightly tighter gripping the pole. Blaine puts an arm around his side and acts like he hasn't seen anything. It's not fair, Blaine thinks, Kurt not realising it. It's not fair that Kurt can't attribute attention to anything but aggression. It's not fair that Kurt has for so long wanted to be invisible, just to keep himself safe.

If Blaine ever meets the guy who did this to him he's scared of what he might find himself capable of doing.

He doesn't want any trouble, he doesn't want their 'night off' to be spent paranoid of even a dirty glance across a bar. He just wants to go dancing with him, to see Kurt looking young, flushed with fun and life. He just wants to make him smile like he's not aware of a single bad thing in the world.

He does his research, he picks a club. He's just going to have to trust that Kurt doesn't have a dance floor revelation about his own absurd hotness and wander off with a harem of besotted guys; he's just going to have to make sure that his boyfriend's dance card is all him all the time.

It should be okay. Blaine has some pretty attention-holding moves.

*

Kurt calls him as he reaches Cooper's apartment building, so Blaine's opening the door as he walks down the corridor and Blaine thinks, articulate as he is, Fuck.

He doesn't move anything like the Ghost when he's Kurt, though the Ghost is beginning to pick up some of Kurt's fluidity, beginning to work the way he moves like the most comfortable thing to wear in the world is his own muscles into his authoritative, composed, straight-backed poise. But Kurt, Kurt's all quickness and curves like a bird's wings, and in black jeans so tight he must have pulled them on inch by inch his hips look completely lethal. "Okay?" Kurt says, his cheeks bright from the cold outside, his hair casually, perfectly swept up, his jacket fitted close to his slim sides, and Blaine's tongue feels too big in his mouth.

He finds a smile, says, "Yeah, everything's okay." and kisses him his greeting. Kurt tugs at the lapel of Blaine's jacket, runs his hand down it, murmurs, "I love this on you." and steals one more smiling kiss, then pulls at his hand. "Come on, then. Where are we going?"

"Ah, um, this place I heard about. I haven't been dancing in months."

They stop for the elevator, hand in hand. Kurt says, "You like dancing?"

"It's fun. Do - you?"

"I don't know. I, um, I don't know if I've ever actually danced, like that. I know how to waltz. Just, I've never, you know, just, in a club . . ."

"How'd you learn to waltz?"

"I had a teacher." Inside the elevator Blaine glances in the mirror, and keeps his hand in Kurt's, notes the contrast and complement of the two of them side by side, paler and darker and taller and shorter and poised and relaxed. Caught unaware by the sight of them he thinks they make a handsome couple, blinks and that's what he'd like other people to see when they look at them, not damn that guy is hot but the two of them, very much together, and very much fitting together. Kurt's tongue presses between his teeth with amusement as the doors close. "Madame Mop was very tender and patient when I was a clumsy jeune homme learning the difference between a gauche et a droit. How did you learn?"

"God, at far too many cotillions. Don't even ask."

"I know what a cotillion is, Blaine. Madame Mop ensured I was properly educated for all areas of polite society, for which you can reap the genteel rewards."

Blaine can't not smile at the image of a solemn young Kurt teaching himself to dance with a mop because well-bred young men know how to dance, shaking his hand in his a little as the elevator doors open again. "I think you'll be a great dancer. You really know how to move."

". . . I don't think it's like being in a fight. Is it? That could get nasty."

That's not the only way Kurt knows how to move; his hips genuinely are lethal, he makes Blaine beg and babble and whine, Blaine happens to think that Kurt might turn out to be almost too good at dancing . . .

In the short queue outside the club it's biting spring cold, and Blaine huddles his arms around Kurt from behind, puts his hands into Kurt's jacket pockets. Kurt laughs, nose bumping Blaine's cheek pressed over his shoulder, slipping his hands in over Blaine's and knitting their fingers together. "You need gloves."

He can smell Kurt's cologne, warm on his skin where he nudges his nose closer. He doesn't wear it in costume, that scent is all Kurt. "Mm, you're warmer than gloves."

Kurt just tips his head against his, closes his eyes, stands quite happily being held in the queue, and Blaine wonders if other guys can smell his own rising possessive Mine pheromone, secreted into the night as a needy, angry warning. People mostly just keep on talking. Every time the door opens a gust of a bass line swirls out into the cold, and Blaine feels it rise a little in his belly, excitement like walking into a funfair, because for once it's Saturday night and the worst they might face is a hangover . . .

They have to disentangle to enter, after shuffling like caught crabs down the line together, and Blaine takes Kurt's jacket to the cloakroom because he's a gentleman. He looks back to Kurt standing near the entrance still, Kurt in a very carefully casual t-shirt cut some clever way across the shoulders, Blaine doesn't even dare to ask the intimidating origins of some of Kurt's clothing, one arm crossed across his chest to hold his own bare arm, head warily low, watching the dark interior of the club. Blaine has watched Kurt stride right into the middle of a gang fight and send people scattering in terror, and now he looks at a thumping-lit roomful of dancers like he's completely out of his depth, and when Blaine walks back he slips his fingers between Kurt's, and squeezes. Kurt presses back.

He has to raise his voice for them to speak now, as they wait at the scramble around the bar, over Lady Gaga thudding loud. "When did you last take a Saturday night off?"

He raises his hand in a shrug, eyes genuinely clueless. "College?" he suggests. "Freshman year."

Blaine squeezes his hand again. "Thank you for doing this for me."

Kurt leans closer so he doesn't have to yell so much; "Thank you for doing it for me."

He's going to miss yoga tomorrow, they're going to sleep in. They are genuinely having a normal night out like normal people. All those people Kurt's helped heading to and from clubs over the years, going about their happy ordinary business, this is the first time he's ever been one of them. Blaine squeezes his hand again, and Kurt squeezes back, and eyes the bar uncertainly.

"I don't really . . ." he says, and Blaine tips his head to hear better, he forgot how loud clubs get. "What doesn't taste awful?"

He knows Kurt's taste by now. "I'll get you a cocktail. Trust me."

"What do you think I'm doing?" Kurt says, and it's sort of a joke but he has one eyebrow raised a little too wry, and Blaine does know that Kurt is trusting him with a lot, tonight. Because Kurt doesn't drink and Kurt doesn't go out and Kurt certainly doesn't put himself in a room full of people who might be interested in him. Or he didn't. It's only become safe to do so because Blaine's there.

Shields, he thinks, and holds his hand as they shuffle to the front.

There's nowhere to sit already, the place is packed, so they lean over the railings above the dance floor, Kurt playing with the straw in his drink and watching everyone dancing with his cat-quiet eyes, looking genuinely curious about this peculiar anthropological phenomenon of people enjoying themselves. Blaine bumps his hip off his, calls, "You okay?"

"Mm," Kurt says, not taking his eyes off the dance floor, plucking his straw from his mojito to suck the end of it. Blaine doesn't think not to stare. "I don't know if I can do that."

"What?"

"I don't know if I can do that!"

"Do what?"

Kurt gestures at the dance floor with his hand and his drink. "Like nobody's watching. Like they are."

"Nobody will be watching."

"We're watching right now."

"Okay, but, nobody's going to be . . . Kurt, it'll be fine, the only person who's paying attention to you is me."

Kurt glances across, at Blaine's hands before he reaches his eyes. Blaine strokes with his knuckles at Kurt's bare arm for a second, twitching his smile, and Kurt twitches one back, eyes dropping again. "Did you do this with, um. Other guys?"

"Two boyfriends, Kurt. Two."

But Kurt just looks at the dance floor, and nothing Blaine ever says to him can convince him that Blaine is not incredibly wisely sophisticated in the ways of men, because to Kurt two actual boyfriends is practically Casanova. It feels very weird sometimes to be treated as some kind of dating Jedi master when Blaine knows that really he's a fumbling over-lucky Ewok at best. "They weren't you." he says. "It wasn't the same."

Kurt leans his forearm on the railing, licks his lips. "How do you just let go like that?"

"Kurt, you know that half of them are completely wasted and the other half are on their way there, right?"

Kurt's glaring at them, now. "I'm not getting drunk."

"I know. I'm not asking you to."

". . . I like this one though." He lifts his glass and gives Blaine a little grin, and Blaine leans across to kiss him on it because he has to. He tastes of sugar and lime, Blaine wants to lick his lips for him. "Blaine," Kurt says, and Blaine says, "Mm?"

But Kurt just smiles, eyes almost closed, mouth a little open and ready, so Blaine just kisses him again.

They finish their drinks, and their arms nudge now and then on the railings, their hips bump now and then as they shift, as Blaine moves unconsciously to the beat and Kurt's intent eyes follow the dancers like he's trying to learn simply by staring hard enough. The fact of sharing this with Kurt makes Blaine feel drunk already, one beer and everything he's ever wanted and this is the best evening ever. "Come on," he says, bumping Kurt's side harder this time. "They're playing our song."

Kurt looks at him, listens looking confused and then - the way he grins, god Blaine adores him, as Rihanna sings, "SOS please someone help me-"

Blaine takes his hand to lead him down the two steps to the floor. "Blaine, I don't -"

"Forget everything else. Okay?" He tugs Kurt in close to his body, so Kurt has to look at his eyes, and puts his hands on Kurt's hips as his own find the beat. "Just the music. Okay?"

Kurt's hands are anxiously tight in the sides of Blaine's polo shirt. "I don't know if I -"

"You jump off the side of buildings, you can do this."

"No-one sees me doing that!"

"Don't look at them." Blaine says, harder, as Kurt's eyes attempt to rove. "Look at me, and focus on the music. It's not even the beat, listen to the rhythm, like - this."

Kurt is awkwardly self-conscious, though his eyes do stay on Blaine's now, looking mostly sort of mystified. Blaine lets a hand slip around to press his lower back closer, trying to lead his body to flow with his, to the heart-heavy pulsing of the beat. "It's supposed to be fun," Blaine points out, illustrating this by a more forceful left-right swing of Kurt's body on the song's boom-boom, and Kurt grabs harder at his sides for balance and - laughs, more shocked than anything.

Blaine leans in, sings up under his ear, "I'm out with you, you got me head over heels -"

"You are -"

Blaine wraps his arm properly around his hips, bops Kurt about with his side-to-side swagger and Kurt's hand closes in the back of his shirt, he says right to Blaine's ear over the deafening music, "You are ridiculous, Blaine Anderson."

"Yes?"

"Yes." Kurt says, and his hips swing of their own volition under Blaine's arm, boom-boom. "I would not do this for a single other person on the planet, just so you know."

Sometimes when he understands how much of an exception Kurt has made for him, how much of an exception he is for Kurt, he doesn't even know how to understand what he feels. But he's really glad he did pick this club, where no-one is going to mind how he kisses his boyfriend on the dance floor, Kurt's fingers dug into his shirt, Blaine tucking Kurt's body still closer in his arm.

Kurt's heart beats quick close to his, and he's not looking at anyone but Blaine. Why did he think it was dangerous to show Kurt his other options? He can't conceive of Kurt looking at anyone else like that, Kurt staring at him like he doesn't know how he does this, like Blaine has shocked the ground sideways, like Blaine rewrote the world, like he's only just realised that Blaine is the centre of his universe. He doesn't know what to do, to be looked at like that.

So he holds him, and he dances, and wiggles Kurt's body for him to make him laugh, and takes what opportunities he can to catch in every breath that smells of his skin, silvery under the stream of the lights.