AN: warnings for blood

Chapter Three

When Quinn Fabray first spotted Kurt Hummel walking the hallways of McKinley High, he was a young, quiet little thing. Particularly shy and wary of the jocks with their bulging letterman jackets and matching buzz cuts.

At first, she had laughed at him—called him weak and pathetic in front of her friends.

But it was all a game, and hardly the truth.

Because the truth that she was more than sixty years their senior, and that every move she made was part of a game.

Until Kurt, that is.

She felt bad for him. So bad that it made her feel physically sick to her stomach. Not sick like when Noah Puckerman tried to touch her breasts or sick like when Finn sneezed on her "on accident", but sick as in physically weak. Sawing him drained her—reminded her too vividly of the past that she had so long ago left behind.

The poor boy's only friend was one energetic Rachel Berry, and she was an entire story all to herself.

Altogether, taking a detour to McKinley High had been both the best and worst decision of Lucy Quinn Fabray's entire life.

Their first conversation was short and clipped, like he was too afraid of her to say anything more than a few syllables.

"You could be something great you know," she told him, putting on her usual cheerleader charm as she walked up to his locker and watched him pull helplessly at the bag that was in his locker. "A real charmer. A real killer."

His eyes widened to the size of small plates when he looked at her, and it would have been funny if he didn't make her feel so damned sick. "What?"

"If you didn't make yourself so small, I mean. You can't walk around like you don't mean anything, Kurt. People will walk all over you if you do that."

He finally managed to pull his bag out, stumbling a bit but quickly regaining his balance, though with a pretty shade of pink staining his cheeks.

It was hard for her not to lick her lips in anticipation, because she suddenly knew very well what she planned to do with this cheap, pathetic scrap of what would otherwise pose huge potential.

"I'll talk to you later, Kurt," she said quickly, noticing both the approach of that Berry girl and the pack of jocks that followed her around the corner.

Though she somehow felt attached to Kurt, she couldn't risk being caught with him.

It would ruin the feeding schedule.

-3-

"You're not even surprising anymore," Kurt drawls, stepping out of the shower with nothing but a towel around his waist and instantly locking onto Quinn where she's perched on his bed.

She's sitting Indian-style, fingers tapping across her knee as she watches him with her head cocked to the side. Her eyes are dark, the irises stained red. The entire room reeks with the scent of blood.

He swallows hard, hands curling into fists at his side.

But before he can say anything, she cuts him off. "You know what we are, right, Kurt? A mutation. Our heart doesn't beat, but our bodies are still alive, somehow making blood even without an organ to pump it through our veins…" As if in awe, she holds her hands out in front of her face and wiggles her fingers.

"We can't help what we are, Kurt. Blame me, blame nature, but you're still a vampire and you still have to take responsibility for yourself." Her voice turns bitter, though she doesn't look at him as she spits out her next statement. "You need to leave, Kurt, before that pretty little toy of yours finds out and runs away screaming so loud that he brings back an army."

Three thoughts run through Kurt's head at the same time, all while Quinn watches him anxiously from the bed, poised to pounce if his response isn't what she's expecting.

First—Quinn is a bitch. "A cold-blooded reptile," he vaguely remembers a now-dead Noah Puckerman saying so many years ago, when she refused to sleep with him. Kurt whole heartedly agrees with that statement, though not necessarily for the same reasons.

Second—He's starving. He was on such a thorough diet before that it's hard to go even a day without sustenance. But he won't. He can't.

Third—The idea of Sebastian Smythe running away screaming is entirely too comical.

When he snorts, unable to fight back the sound, Quinn leaps.

A younger, more naïve part of him knows exactly what he's done wrong. To scoff at the one who created you is a mistake. This is a game, and you are owned wholly and completely by their presence.

But the older, independent part of him is more than willing to defy Quinn in every way possible, until she finally breaks and leaves him alone for good.

She pins him to the wall by his throat. It doesn't hurt, because she would never, but the pressure is enough to keep him there.

Her eyes are wild when they meet his, and the thrill of fear that shoots through Kurt's bloodstream is both dizzying and sickening.

"You're so fucking ignorant!" she snaps. "You act like you know everything, but you are still just a boy!"

"Quinn—"

"You'll die, Kurt, or do you not understand? A stake through the heart, an axe to the head, a room set on fire. You were human once, what would you have done if you found out the man fucking your brains out every night was a vampire?"

Her eyes turn sad, and he knows instantly what she's thinking of.

The perfect example for why he shouldn't still be here, falling further and further into a boy infamous for one night-stands and heartache.

Fifty years ago. McKinley High School.

Quinn found more than Kurt, that year.

Her grip loosens around his throat, and even though he doesn't need it, he sucks in a sharp pool of air.

"I think about her sometimes, you know," she whispers, eyes dropping to his chest. "About the way she used to smile at me. About the way she used to say my name, like she was so happy to see me…"

For a split second, Quinn could almost be human.

A screwed up, broken shell of a person, but a human none the less.

She looks back up at him, sea foam green bleeding through the red of her gaze. "You remember it too, don't you? The way she screamed when she found out what I was? I think the whole school heard it…" She shakes her head, and he almost feels bad for her. If his heart was still beating, it would lurch in his chest.

Of course he remembers.

The scream of one of the only real friends Kurt Hummel ever had. The scream of a girl who was losing her mind, falling apart helplessly as the girl she thought she loved revealed her true colors.

Red, red, red, it was all red, Kurt. Blood, blood, I swear to god I'm not lying. I'm not going crazy Kurt I swear I swear I swear—

He closes his eyes; blocks it out. "It wasn't your fault—"

"And he won't be yours," she whispers, dropping her hand from his throat completely and tracing her pointer finger down the planes of his chest. "You think you know a person, Kurt, but fear changes the brave ones.

"You think Sebastian won't run away screaming. You think he won't tell the whole world. You think people won't call him crazy. You think people won't lock him up in some mental institution for the rest of their lives…but they will. They will, Kurt, only this time? People are going to believe him, and they are going to kill you."

Her expression is earnest, but soft, when she looks back up at him. She drops her hands down to his towel, twisting her fingers through the material anxiously.

It's in this moment that Kurt knows it's not just a game to her. Not just a claim of master over slave.

She actually cares about him.

He doesn't know what to say, what to think.

He feels oddly as if he's falling to pieces, crumbling to useless chunks of porcelain. Nothing but ashes. Soft remembrances of a person who died fifty years ago.

A ghost.

He straightens quickly, suddenly wanting nothing more than to stop thinking.

He tilts his neck until his head is against the wall, wet hair leaving faint watermarks across the wallpaper. "Bite me," he whispers, sounding just as defeated as he is. "Make it hurt, Qunnie. Make me forget." He almost smiles at the old nickname, using it more out of old habit than nostalgia.

She doesn't look to him for permission, doesn't ask if he's sure.

She just dives right in, canines tearing through weak flesh.

He claps a hand over his mouth to dampen the sound of his screams.

-3-

Quinn finds Kurt sitting by himself in the boy's locker room, Finn Hudson's jersey clamped tight between his hands as his nose gushes blood without any hint of stopping soon.

Ignoring the tang of blood that hits her nose, she grabs a clean towel off of the shelf holding deflated basketballs and takes it too him with a sigh loud enough to announce her presence.

"Real jerks, huh?"

Kurt doesn't even jump in surprise. He just flinches in fear.

She feels her unbeating heart soften. "Only here to help, Little Bird."

She hands him the towel, smiling that sweet, innocent smile that she still remembers from her day as a good Christian girl who followed obviously in her father's footsteps. He takes it quickly, if not with a bit of mistrust in his eyes, and presses it to his nose.

"Why Little Bird?" he asks, tugging at the material caught between his fingers.

Frowning, she reaches for it, tugging it out of his grip easily. No need for him to beat himself up over yet another inevitability. Another person who will only ever hate him for who he chooses to be when he wakes up in the morning.

"You remind me of a bird that fell out of its nest."

He looks down, muscles shifting as he presses the towel even harder against his face. But he doesn't say anything, just stares down at the way his free fingers flex against his thigh.

Folding her red-and-white Cheerio's skirt beneath her, she slides down the bench until she's right beside him. She swats his hands away from the towel and takes his place, smiling kindly when he looks at her in surprise.

"Don't worry, Kurt. I'm not like the rest of them. I'll take care of you."

-3-

When Quinn finally leaves, Kurt falls to his knees on the floor, naked and covered in his own blood.

His eyes droop tiredly as he reaches up to scratch uselessly at his own arms, like maybe it will somehow help him burst from the skin of the monster he's become.

(It doesn't.)

He has to leave. That truly is the only option left.

He thinks of poor, sweet, now-old Rachel Berry, bent over in a hospital chair beside a window, dreaming of the day when somebody finally decides to believe her. Momentarily, he wonders if Finn Hudson still visits her, or if he gave up when she kept babbling on and on about monsters that supposedly didn't exist, even when they were flesh and blood, every day citizens.

He lets out a sob that only intensifies when wiping his eyes spreads crimson over and under his eyes.

Curling over himself, he wraps his arms tight around his middle and lets out a quiet whimper.

It's been a long time since he's let the pain settle in.

Like creeping thorns, like some sort of disease. It completely consumes him, becoming him.

So much so that he doesn't even register the knock on his door or the sound of it opening.

He doesn't even notice until he hears the soft gasp and looks up to find Sebastian standing in his doorway, jaw slack and eyes wild with fear.