CHAPTER 6: The Matter Of Our Love's Defense

The hispanic cheerleader raises her eyebrow. "Way hotter in person."

Finn says, "Way shorter in person."

Then no one's saying anything, but twelve pairs of McKinley glee club eyes are trained straight on him and it's starting to get weird. It was weird enough not even managing to get a word in with Kurt before the rest of them showed up. But now it's just...weird.

"Hey," Blaine finally says, trying to make this as un-awkward as possible (though it's basically too late for that). "I just...wanted to come check on Kurt. You guys don't have to like me or talk to me or anything."

"We do if you and Kurt are going to be an item," Tina declares.

"Tina!" yelps Kurt. Blaine just kind of laughs.

"Tell you what, why don't we ah, try to work that out for ourselves first," he says. "And we'll - keep you posted." Finn's still huddled over Rachel, who looks kind of worse for wear, and Blaine catches on that and relaxes a little – something he can comment on, thank god. "Get – Rachel? – get Rachel cleaned up a little and go back to class. Or whatever."

The two blond cheerleaders and the Asian guy have already kind of lost interest, and most of them sort of flock away, though Mercedes lingers behind with a glance that says you owe me all the deets later and the mohawk guy loiters even longer.

"If you break Princess Hummel's heart," he spits, "I will break your face. Giving this kid shit is my job." He stalks away, clenching his fist, and Blaine isn't quite sure what to make of it. Fortunately, Kurt has already started laughing at how absurd the whole situation is.

And Kurt is pretty beautiful when he laughs.

"Oh my god, those guys are all just a bunch of idiots," he says. "Do you see what I have to put up with?"

Blaine rounds on him now that they're alone. "What about what I have to put up with, huh?" he says. "Where were you? Why didn't you text me back?"

"I was grounded," says Kurt.

"So grounded that you couldn't even get Mercedes or Tina to let me know what was going on with you?"

"Yes! That grounded! My dad gets crazy on stuff like this. He doesn't know how to handle it, because I don't usually break rules that he doesn't already think should be broken." Kurt fidgets with the cuff of his sleeve. "I couldn't even go to glee, and he locked my phone up in a box under his bed. I'm sorry. I didn't..." He swallows, and ducks his head. "I didn't realize you were going to care this much."

A hot flush creeps up Blaine's neck as he reminds himself that he probably shouldn't care this much. They're not even dating.

(Yet.)

"Of course I care," he says finally. "I just – I didn't know what happened to you." His tone changes and he screws his face up a little. "What did happen to you?"

Kurt flushes, too. Between them they're going to be awfully pink. "Dad caught me trying to sneak out of the house," he says.

"Sneak out – where were you going?"

"To see you." He tilts his head back up and catches Blaine's eye, and that is just it. Blaine is so, so screwed for this kid. "I'm never deleting that voicemail, you know."

Oh, crap. Blaine forgot about the Sugar Ray voicemail. "Seriously? Don't keep that. Please, christ don't keep that. It was two am and I was rambling and I was in terrible voice because it was two am and I just sort of...panicked."

"Well, even your panic sounds good," Kurt says, with a little laugh.

They stand there in the hallway of McKinley, awkwardly. The bell rings at some point, and other students start to mill past them, in increasingly thicker droves. The thing is, though, Blaine barely even sees the other students. He barely sees anything but Kurt, any more. Kurt's wearing a yellow mini-trenchcoat and enough hairspray to punch a hole in the ozone layer, and his eyes are bright and shining, and his lips are bright and red. Kurt's got the most beautiful countertenor Blaine has ever heard and sends grammatically correct text messages. And if Blaine peers closer, looks really hard at the one thing he can actually see clearly, Kurt is totally, absolutely looking back at him.

It's now or never. The hallways are filling up. Blaine bounces a little on the balls of his feet, terrified, and then reaches out for the collar of Kurt's jacket and yanks him across the small space between them to press their lips together in a quick, fierce, electric-charged kiss. He lets up before it can get too awkward for either of them, but his face stays mere inches from Kurt's, staring into his shock-wide eyes.

"Just...don't ever make me worry like that, again," he says. He lets go of the jacket collar, smoothes it out a little from where he was clinging to it for dear life. He turns to go before Kurt, standing motionless, can make him feel too terribly guilty about being making such a wild assumption.

But Kurt springs to life and snatches at his shoulders and yanks him back to slot their mouths together again. This kiss is...not quick. This one lasts and lasts – Kurt's hand sliding up from his shoulder across his neck to tangle in the hair behind his ear, and his own hands finding the small of Kurt's back somehow, and those flush-bright lips opening for Blaine's tongue in the smallest and sweetest way so that he can slip deep inside and tug this killer little sexy moan out of Kurt's throat – to the point that Blaine is worried Kurt will probably be late for class. The other McKinley students mill around them but the rest of the world is gone, so totally gone, because Kurt is here in his arms and Kurt is finally his to kiss like this and it only took everyone they knew figuring it out before they did to get them here.

They're just slipping apart for a little gasp of air and Kurt's breathy whisper of "Blaine" when they get shouldered into a stretch of lockers by a big beefy black dude in a football jacket. Blaine feels Kurt's hand smash between the metal slats and his own head and when they separate altogether to assess the damage, his knuckles are bleeding a little.

"Shit," he hisses. "Kurt – "

"No, don't apologize," says Kurt, staring hard at him with the hottest fiercest look of want Blaine has ever seen (and it's all mine, he thinks, his heart skipping a couple beats). "It was worth it."

-xxx-

Rachel splashes her face with water from the sink a final time and then stares at herself in the girls' room mirror. She almost looks like she was never crying, and as long as she acts like she was never crying then she'll probably be okay. She can touch up her mascara in physics and –

Santana walks in.

They have a good bit of staredown action through the mirror and then Rachel turns around. "Congratulations, Santana," she says. "You've had your bit of fun but now it's over and I hope you enjoyed yourself."

"You seem awfully smug about it for someone who just lost herself a boyfriend," says Santana, eyebrow cocked into what is basically its default position.

"See," says Rachel, passion building now that she knows she's right, "that's where you're wrong. Finn and I are still perfectly happy to be dating and have actually come to a somewhat better understanding of one another from this whole ordeal. This joke seems to be on you."

"What?" says Santana dryly, still utterly convinced she's in the right. "He was about to cheat on you. With me. And you're not in here contemplating suicide?"

Rachel just keeps going. She's on a roll now. "No, because I forgave him. Forgiveness, Santana, because that's what people in real relationships do. Which you wouldn't understand because you've never been in a real relationship, have you?"

"And why," says Santana, "would I want to do that?"

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I hate seeing people happy, okay?" she spits out. "It makes me sick. Especially when it's freaks in love like the two of you. If I can't be happy and I'm hot shit then there's no way you and Neander-tall deserve it."

"Are you unhappy, Santana?" says Rachel. "Is that what this is about?"

"Whoa, no one asked you to go all Barbara Walters on me, bitch! Finn's got needs, okay? And if you're not going to drop your panties and help a brother out, then I will. I'm here for him." But she's starting to sound less and less like she's trying to convince Rachel, and more and more like she's trying to convince herself. "For the record," she says, "it didn't mean anything."

The bell rings, and Rachel scoops up her books and her purse, and crosses past Santana to go to class. "Exactly."

-xxx-

Artie stares, for a few good minutes, at the chalkboard. He has to at least kind of look like he's paying attention to Mrs. C, especially since he sit so near the front because of his chair. He makes note of how her eyes pass over him as she's lecturing. But the instant she has her back turned to the room to write something more about Shakespeare, he taps his phone to life and texts Tina, who is about four seats across the room and three rows back. (Tina hates sitting near the front.)

To: TINA CC sry sat. nite was so craycray.

She, of course, can text back pretty easily, being so far away.

From: TINA CC not ur fault. thx 4 answerin.
To: TINA CC it was fun tho. u & me should go sometime. go out & stuff.

There's hesitation. Artie risks a glance back at her, and her black-and-purple head is hunched over her phone, down between her and the desk with her big Norton reader blocking it out. She's studying on it, hard. She's thinking.

From: TINA CC mike. :(

Artie agrees. Mike. Frownyface.

To: TINA CC doesnt have to be a datedate. just as friends. were friends, rite?
From: TINA CC course we r.
From: TINA CC & the mike thing...we can work that out l8r.

Mrs. C sweeps the class again and Artie can't answer. But it probably would have taken him a few minutes anyway, because he's going to have to get the smile off his face first.

Or, well, maybe he won't.

To: TINA CC B)

-xxx-

Before they start, Kurt hands his phone off to Mr. Schue, and when they finish, they all crowd around to watch it back. It's good. They're good. And considering just how good they are, Kurt figures he owes the Warblers one. It takes freaking forever to upload, but then he emails Blaine the link from his phone, and waits patiently for the response.

It starts with Artie.

"Did you get my message? the one I left
When I was trying to condense everything that I meant
In a minute or less when I called to confess
And make all of my stresses go bye-bye"

Then Tina cuts in –

"Did you get my message? You didn't I guess
'Cause if you did you woulda called me with your sweet intent
And we could give it a rest, instead of beatin' my breast
And making all of the pressure go sky-high"

"Do you ever wonder what happens to the words that we send?" sings Puck.

"Do they bend, do they break from the flight that they take
And come back together again
With a whole new meaning and a brand new sense
Completely unrelated to the one I sent?"

Sam and Finn's harmony on the last line of the prechorus is Warbler-worthy, and when they hit the chorus's crooning refrain of did you get my message? and the girls start their ooh-ooh part, Kurt's pretty sure that Blaine's going to be kicking himself and wishing he weren't at an all-boys school.

Kurt can only get through about half of it himself before Blaine's text pops up and interrupts.

From: Blaine 3
sectionals is gonna be insaaaane yo

To: Blaine 3
Whoever loses takes the winner to Breadstix.

From: Blaine 3
youre on.

And Kurt totally is.

-xxx-

Santana, later, sprawled alone on her huge-ass bed, watches through to the end. Her part.

"Did you get my message, love
That I wanna reconnect with you?"

She calls Brittany.

"Hello?"

-xxx-

the end!

(AN: thank you so much to everyone for reading and reviewing! I jumped into writing for this fandom kind of out of nowhere and it means a lot to me to have gotten such positive feedback. I love you guys! Keep on gleekin' out!)