Chapter Text
Father and son didn't talk for a long while. Kurt could feel soft, hitching movements of the body under that oil-stained jumpsuit. His father didn't know whether to laugh or cry and so did both. "Dad," Kurt finally whispered, fingers knotting around the coarse material as he pleaded with himself not to wake up from some convenient dream.
"How did this happen?" Burt finally asked through a cracking voice. His hand clutched the back of Kurt's head. Below that, erupting from Kurt's back, were the two enormous wings that had led him to be sold into slavery. "Who was that boy?"
"My owner," Kurt said simply, but when he felt his father flinch at the word, added, "Blaine."
Angels were usually sold to billionaires with security teams and private jets. They were never sold back to the parents for the cost of a single nickel.
"Why did he...?"
"I don't know," Kurt said honestly.
His wings had appeared as school ended. The collar came soon after and he spent just under three weeks in a recovery cell. Kurt's life fell away from him on that narrow bed like pieces of colored glass dropping through his fingers: he would never see his father again. He would never find love. He would never again go to a movie with friends and make plans for the weekend. He would never again go shopping, sing on stage, graduate school, or even see a single face that had first known him as he was born.
People were stained glass windows, colorful and complex. When he'd been hauled out of that cell and shoved in a van for delivery, Kurt felt stripped bare of himself. Only a few bits of color remained. He clung to them fiercely while his name was stolen from him and his body was tortured, because it was the only possible victory he had left. He would last as long as possible before he ended up like the others he'd seen with wings: completely transparent.
Some of those scattered pieces of himself might be left for gathering. Some had been crushed to bright dust that blew away on the wind.
But there was one he had clasped in his hands. Kurt's perfect future of a fabulous life in New York City was gone forever. His name would never be cast in lights; he would always be a thing first. He didn't know if his friends would truly see him like they once had.
His father did, though. He had Kurt locked in his arms, still unwilling to let go.
If absolutely nothing else, Kurt had that.
It was a slow morning. It must be a weekday. Customers arrived for oil changes at a steady clip on Saturday; on Sunday, the garage was closed. Kurt didn't know what day it was beyond that. As for the month, it might be August. Whatever the reason for it, he was glad for the quiet.
"We're going home," Burt finally said. The words were muffled by Kurt's hair and his own emotions. "You're going home."
The words struck Kurt anew and he shivered as they threatened to overwhelm him. He tamped them down lest he lose control. It was over. It was all over.
He was going home.
It was harder than they expected.
The wings didn't fit in Burt's truck.
Such an unexpected problem, puzzling but harmless, actually made them laugh. The sound echoed through the garage and filled Kurt's heart with a lightness he hadn't felt since the days when the world called him human. He could have chosen to wallow at the reminder of those tremendous things that had lead to his torture. Instead, Kurt chose laughter.
He'd fit into the back seat of that boy's sedan, sprawled flat, but a pickup cab had no such option. The open bed would provide more than enough room, of course, but he'd be a parade float going through town.
Kurt's smile did diminish a bit at that thought. Wherever he went for the rest of his life, they would see the wings first. Shaking it off, he refused to let the unexpected joy of that day escape. "Do you have a tarp? I can just lie down."
Burt gawked at him. "You're not serious."
"These clothes are awful and I want to go home," Kurt said, realizing more with each passing moment how much he meant it.
"But there're no seatbelts. What happens if I need to slam on the brakes?"
Kurt opened his mouth, couldn't find it in him to tell the whole story, and settled instead on, "It really won't be a problem, Dad."
"But—"
"Do you remember how these grew back?" he asked, flicking one hand over his shoulder. Burt nodded, mouth a thin line. He'd clipped his son's wings in the most brutal manner possible, and they'd grown back even from under cauterized scars. "Just... trust me, Dad. It won't be a problem if you need to slam on your brakes. Please, I want to go home."
With a look that promised a future telling of the story behind that comment, Burt went to prepare the truck.
Soon Kurt was bumping along on a bare metal bed under a sheet of blue, wincing at each pothole his father couldn't avoid. Quite a homecoming. The clothes provided by the cartel as part of his purchase were picking up every speck of dirt in that truck. Good, he thought: let them. They could be filthy when he burned them.
He tried to map their trek by sound and the turns made, but quickly lost track. It took him by surprise when they were slowing not to turn at an intersection, but to roll up a short incline while a garage door clicked open. Then that door returned, the engine died, and Burt was pulling open the tailgate a seeming second later. Relief washed over him when he saw Kurt was unhurt; no, Kurt corrected, when he saw that Kurt was still there. With one strong, swift movement he helped him free and then his arms wrapped around his son once more.
As before, they stood there for a long while. Kurt eventually said into his shoulder, "So here's the garage." He expected Burt to laugh, but tears started anew. "Dad, it's okay," he promised. "I'm here. I wasn't that far away. I'm okay."
"Yeah," Burt managed. "But I didn't know that."
Speech failed them for a while. There were only the soft sounds of breathing, the hum of the air conditioner through the wall, the occasional creaks of the truck's engine block cooling. His car was next to that truck, Kurt realized, covered in a layer of fine dust. It should have been driven. He'd gone into hiding in early May, so it had to be three or four months with an idle engine... Kurt started laughing despite himself.
"What?" Burt asked.
"I'm thinking about all the repairs my car might need," Kurt said. "I was just sold out of slavery and I'm planning checks on fluid levels." He didn't know whether that was absurd or not. He had so many more important things to think about and he couldn't even sit in a driver's seat any more. But it was something to worry about that was home and his, and being able to do so filled him with a strange kind of joy.
"That's my boy," Burt chuckled, ruffling his hair and then resting his cheek against the mess he'd made of it. But his good spirits faded. "Are you... you're smiling. You're laughing... are you okay?"
He pulled back far enough to look at Burt's face. In his father Kurt saw a man aged ten years since he'd left him. If he knew all that had happened, he might never get those years back. "It wasn't as bad as it could have been," he said.
Burt looked torn: he clearly wanted to accept that simple answer, but... "You can tell me, you know. Anything you want to talk about, anything in the world... I'll just be happy that I'm around to hear it and help."
He'd been raped. He'd been treated as property, had his humanity stripped away from him, and humiliated. He'd been forced to say that he loved everything happening to him. And when he thought he'd finally found an escape, the crushing pain of his own death wasn't even enough to break his bonds.
But he'd never been passed around between party guests as a target for whatever they wished to dole out. Games hadn't been made of cutting his flesh. Nudity was never wanted, but it was in private. Left in that recovery room as he grew accustomed to his collar, Kurt had prepared himself for the worst. Awful things had happened, but the worst possible hadn't. He didn't feel like he was lying at all when he repeated, "It wasn't as bad as it could have been."
Angels, when collared, were sold all over the world. A boy from Jordan might be shipped to Paris, a girl from Alabama might wind up in Tokyo. They were never just down the road and they never, ever came home. If one impossible thing had occurred, then perhaps nothing truly bad really had happened to Burt Hummel's son when he was taken. With each moment that passed, he seemed to convince himself of the argument more and more. "I'm here," he repeated. "Okay? Anything you want to talk to me about, anything you need me for... anything. I will do it. You just let me know."
Kurt nodded. The next question felt stupid, silly, and childish, but it was something that he was choosing to do in his own home. "Can we watch a movie?"
Surprised, Burt actually laughed, but he choked on his emotions halfway through and the noise garbled in his throat. "Sure," he managed. "We can do that."
Asked later, Kurt didn't even know what they'd watched. He only remembered the sensation of being curled against his father's shoulder, tears of relief occasionally dampening the fabric against his cheek. He remembered relaxing, and he remembered feeling safe.
The elements of his life fell into a natural hierarchy as Kurt returned home. First had been the confirmation that he was with his father. For all that he hated wearing the symbols of his captivity, changing into his own belongings fell well behind knowing that his father was real and that he wasn't about to wake from a dream.
When the credits had played and the music for the DVD menu was looping, Burt nudged him. "Do you want to go get cleaned up or anything? Anything you want to do. You just say it, we'll do it." His voice wavered and he chuckled again as he wiped at his eyes. "Eventually I'll be able to keep a handle on this, promise."
Kurt kissed him on the cheek, promising that he didn't mind at all, and realized how much he did want to clean off the feeling of that place he'd left behind. "I'm going to go take a shower. A long shower. And then I will be back upstairs, okay?"
"Okay. I'll... I'll clean," Burt said. "I know you like a clean house."
Kurt nodded, making a point not to survey what his father must have let the house fallen into during the weight of his absence. He hadn't noticed upon entering, so it probably didn't matter. A lot of what he'd cared about before didn't matter, not really.
He got to choose what he wore, Kurt realized as he slowly walked downstairs. The last time he'd traveled those stairs, he'd been dragged up them by his captors. Shivering, he forced the memories away. Later. He'd deal with them later. The last time he'd been in that room, he'd been hiding for fear of his life. He'd deal with the memories later.
He got to choose what he wore, he corrected as he looked at his closet, inside a very limited range. He hadn't altered much clothing, yet; while he'd certainly had time during his hiding, cutting apart shirts to add two holes to the back meant accepting that the wings were real. The boy in hiding hadn't wanted to do that any more than he had to.
Kurt only knew how to work with woven fabric. Attempting to alter his favorite knits would simply unravel them. Every sweater he owned was destined for Goodwill. The boy people had called human owned a lot of sweaters, he thought as he picked between the few shirts he could wear, plucked out a pair of jeans that matched, and headed into the bathroom.
It was difficult to remember how he'd fit himself into the small shower they'd installed for the basement. Though he hated to think of anything good at that place, the bathrooms were ridiculously spacious. He never bumped against walls. But then, he reminded himself as he rinsed his shampoo and then turned his face to the water, in that house he'd been surprised in the shower. In that house, his owner's fascination with the wings had meant that his mouth said "yes" while his heart screamed "no."
Kurt's hand clutched tighter around the puff of nylon netting he was using to slough away dirt, dead skin, and memories. Blaine liked how he looked in the water. He thought the drops were pretty when they clung to his eyelashes.
His hand scrubbed harder.
Blaine was much hairier than Kurt. When he ground against him in the shower, he could feel that water-matted hair against his skin.
Shivering from the memory, his hand clutched tighter around the netting and he worked it even harder as he scrubbed.
An owner's hands roamed all over his body, mapping out every inch of the gift he'd been given for his birthday....
Kurt jerked back when he realized he was bleeding. His hand had pressed so hard and curled so deep that his fingernails tore lines across his skin. Breathing hard, he watched as the flesh of his thigh knit back together.
The pain snapped him back to the present. The water beating down on his head was lukewarm; soon it would be cold. He'd been in there for a long time. Not bothering with conditioner, he turned the handle hard and fumbled beyond the curtain for the towels.
It really wasn't as bad as it could have been. Nowhere close to it.
Kurt kept telling himself that as he dried himself. He'd convinced his father. Maybe he could convince himself. He'd get over it, or he'd have one giant embarrassing breakdown that would take him ages to think of without blushing, and everything would be fine.
Standing in that bathroom was a gift. Whatever had gone on in that boy's head, he'd done something unthinkable. Kurt refused to be grateful to Blaine, not when he'd simply stopped doing something awful, but the situation itself... he should focus on how amazing it was and be glad for that. If he'd been sold to someone overseas, or even across the country, they couldn't have brought him home before their parents forbade them from making the trip. Blaine was probably in terrible trouble for wasting his parents' money. If the wings had come in at a normal age, he would have been trained for years before he ever went on the market. He never would have argued to keep his real name; he wouldn't have even remembered it.
That was what happened to Angels. That was what the people who bought them wanted.
Breathing too fast and too deeply, he raised the lid of the toilet and only put it down when he was sure he wouldn't vomit.
His dad was waiting for him. Kurt finished drying, poked just enough at his hair to keep it from being a complete wreck, and slid into his clothes. He'd been so shaky doing alterations that Velcro held closed the slits around his wings. A more elegant approach with buttonholes would be in his future, hopefully. Jeans that had clung to him when he left were loose now; he'd lost weight that he didn't really have to spare, but with his appetite he didn't know how he could gain it back.
So many changes, he thought as he studied his reflection. Perhaps it was the weight loss or perhaps it was the suffering, but he looked older. That would be the last aging he saw in himself for a long, long time. He'd lost the rosy flush to his cheeks to a soft, creamy color with hints of gold. Of course, he realized; one needed red blood under them to make cheeks pink. Blaine had occasionally commented how pale he was down there compared to his own ruddy erection.
Clutching the bathroom counter's edge in his hands, Kurt breathed hard again and forced back the urge to be sick.
Joy must have turned his father into some sort of cleaning dervish, Kurt thought as he forced himself to refocus on the present and return upstairs. He knew the house must have been a mess, but he could find very little to complain about. "Dad?" he said, and raised his voice when he realized he hadn't been heard over the vacuum. "Dad?"
The noise died and Burt hurried over to him. "Hey. How are you doing? Need anything?"
"I think I'm doing pretty good," Kurt decided on. When he was there, seeing Burt smile at him while trying not to acknowledge how openly he was fretting, the words really were true. "The house looks great. So much better than I was expecting." He shrugged awkwardly. "I guess I'm glad that you didn't... I don't know. Sink into some terminal depression."
"I almost did," Burt said softly. "I hardly moved for days. I finally had to talk to someone, and so I picked up and dialed Carole." He'd had to keep her away with increasingly short, implausible lies by the time Kurt was captured. Even in the basement, Kurt had picked up on the tension in that relationship as she clearly wondered what he was hiding. "And I said... 'They took him, Carole. They took him.' Then I lost it," he admitted. "She came right over. I told her everything. Sorry if you didn't want that, but...."
"It's okay." That explained why the house had been kept up and why his father had been stumbling through the motions of keeping the garage open. Carole Hudson had forced him to cling to life, probably against his will. Kurt wanted to kiss the woman.
"She'll really want to see you," Burt said. "She was crushed. Everyone was. She told Finn to come over and he just said...." Shaking his head, Burt almost whimpered out the quote. "This isn't fair."
It wasn't. Nothing about what happened to people like him was fair. Kurt shivered again.
"She'll want to see you," Burt said carefully. "They both will. Is that okay?"
"Not today," Kurt said. "It is, it's okay. Just not today."
Nodding, Burt steered him back to the couch. Perhaps in some subconscious avoidance of what had made his son suffer, his hands never came near the wings; Kurt was glad of that, as it meant he wouldn't have to make an awkward explanation after an even more awkward groan. They fell into watching Kurt's favorite movies, the ones Burt would normally complain about, until a growling stomach interrupted them. With an apology for the interruption, Burt stood and began making himself a sandwich. His hand stilled in the fridge. "Are you still...?"
"I don't know what it is, Dad," Kurt said. "Meat just smells like... like death. I can't explain it. But I really can't be anywhere near."
"Not a problem," Burt easily said. "I'll just make a grilled cheese or something."
"Dad," Kurt said automatically. "You need to eat healthier." They grinned at each other as they realized how easily they'd recaptured that old dynamic. The world might only see the wings, but in that house, father saw son. "I'm just looking out for you," he added.
And he was looking out for himself, he had to admit.
His controller was tied to the thumbprint of one Mr. Burt Hummel. Kurt didn't know what would happen if his dad... when his dad.... A full body shudder caught him, amplified in the longest flight feathers so much that Burt saw it from across the room. He was there in a second, promising that he didn't need to eat right then. "Let me make some food for you, Dad," Kurt whispered, clutching him. He didn't want to think about that. There was so much he couldn't think about, not yet.
"Kurt, you don't—"
"Please."
A vegetable soup, hearty with potatoes and carrots, passed without complaint. Kurt smiled over the dish they could share and put in another movie. He'd see Carole and Finn later. He'd see Mercedes later. He'd see all his friends later, deal with a plan for the rest of the year later, and come to terms with everything that had happened later. He'd worry about that controller later.
On that day he only wanted to fall asleep against his father, secure in the knowledge that for that moment, things were okay.
Though he'd wanted to sleep in his own room, reveling in the privacy, the plan didn't pan out. Kurt returned downstairs with an eye for more than a shower only to realize that the basement was a time capsule of his departure. Magazines lay open. An empty drinking glass sat on the desk. On everything rested a layer of dust matching the one that coated his car in the garage. The room was a historical monument to the boy who had lived there, including the sheets that hadn't been changed for months.
Wrinkling his nose at the musty surroundings, Kurt thought momentarily about cleaning. He was exhausted, though. It could wait until tomorrow. After changing into sleeping clothes he padded back upstairs, cast one glance at the couch, and walked past it.
"Dad?" he asked as his knuckles rapped on the doorframe. "Can I sleep in here?"
Settling in, he couldn't help but flash back to the last time he'd fallen asleep on that bed. The mutilation of slicing off his wings had still filled his mind. Despite that pain, things had seemed okay when he curled up next to his father like he had when he was a small boy hiding from nightmares. They weren't okay. He'd woken to sensations that he shouldn't be feeling, because they could only come from a part of his body they'd completely severed.
At that moment he was safe. During that night months ago, though, he'd thought he was safe. Would he wake up into some fresh hell like he had then?
"Hey," Burt said as he saw Kurt's quiet fear. "It's okay. It's gonna be okay from here on out." His larger hand sought out Kurt's and squeezed it; Kurt squeezed back. "Get some real sleep tonight. Tomorrow we'll get your room all fixed up."
"Okay," Kurt said, hoping his body would take that hint and fall asleep rather than running a constant feedback loop of anxiety. "Night. I love you."
"I love you so much," he heard in return, and the anxiety did ease some tiny bit.
Burt's snoring should have kept him awake. Instead it was an anchor keeping him in that house, with his family, and Kurt trusted it to keep away any unwanted dreams. Sleep finally came, deep and restful. When he woke Kurt knew it had been the right sleeping decision, as he immediately saw his father. He could feel wings, but a quick check of his throat said the collar was securely in place. He'd experienced hell but he was out the other side. He was still home, it wasn't a dream, and things could only get better.
"Go call the garage," Kurt prompted his sleepy father when he saw the time on the clock. Burt ignored the words in favor of smiling at him like he was the sun risen after a long winter. "I'm here," he laughed. "Go call work."
He could hear Burt's voice floating down the stairs when Kurt made an effort at his old morning routine in his bathroom. He needed Jim to head things up for a while at the garage. Nothing bad, he promised. It was a family thing, and important, but it was good. He'd fill everyone in on things later.
Kurt's hand stilled as he brushed his hair. Eventually the guys at the garage would hear. Would they want to see him? They'd known him for years, ever since he started coming by there with the freedom granted by a bicycle. They'd probably want to see him. And in their eyes he'd be different.
"Carole," Burt said in amazed disbelief, and Kurt flinched again. He wanted to see the woman. But he could only count on his father, really, to see him before the wings. It'd hurt a little every time someone took a while to meet his eyes. "He's back."
There was a short pause.
"Yes, Kurt. He's back!" Laughter floated down the stairs. "It's really him!" Another pause. "Yeah, he still has them."
Kurt shifted uncomfortably.
"I don't know how. It's like some miracle or something. Sure, come on over! Hmm? Just yesterday. He was really tired, but he said today was okay. See you soon. Love you, too." Soon Burt was halfway down the stairs, happily saying that Carole was coming over and she was waking up Finn, too; that was okay, right?
"Of course," Kurt said around a smile he didn't wholly feel. The more excited he let himself become, the worse it would be if someone let him down. "I'll come upstairs in just a second."
"Okay." Burt grinned at him. "Love you."
"I love you too, Dad," Kurt said, smiling more genuinely. "I'm still here."
"Just checking. I'll go make breakfast."
"Remember, I don't want much!" he yelled after him, but suspected his words would be ignored. Determined to make the best impression possible, to look like he'd used to rather than some suffering ex-slave, Kurt continued working in front of the mirror. His outfit would be as stylish as possible, given the small selection. His hair would be perfect.
When the doorbell rang, a frisson of fear rooted Kurt to the spot. He had his dad. If he had to make it with absolutely nothing else in the world, he could. But oh, it would hurt each time he learned he couldn't recapture some piece of his old life. Swallowing hard, he dug deep within himself and ascended the stairs.
The door was open. He could hear excited conversation at the far end of the hall.
Feeling as if he was ready to flee if things didn't go well, even though running was the one thing he could never truly do, Kurt edged around the corner and put himself into the sightline of the front entry. Finn, with his clear view over Burt's shoulder, was the first to go silent. Carole soon followed.
Please, Kurt begged, though he knew fate had no love for him. Please, let them see him.
"Kurt!" Carole yelled, and pushed her way past Burt. She took the intervening distance with surprising speed. Before she pulled him into a hug, he had time to record her appearances in flashes: no makeup. Hair half-styled. Misaligned buttons on her shirt. It was the appearance of someone who'd dropped everything to bolt out her front door. Her embrace was so firm and fast that it knocked the wind out of his lungs, and he had to regain his breath before he processed that tears were running down her face.
"Hi," he managed. Looking over her shoulders revealed that the others had joined them. Finn looked disbelieving, but happy even as he cried. Burt's kneejerk emotions had caught up with him, too. "Everyone's crying."
"We're just so happy, sweetie," Carole promised him. "How did this happen?"
"I don't know," Kurt said. He didn't know if he ever really would. He hadn't been lying when he'd said he'd gone through all the stages of grief, including acceptance. Forced onto a pet's bed, he'd never expected anything more from his life than that.
"Was it bad?" Finn asked in a rush. Everyone tensed.
"Not as bad as it could have been," Kurt said in the same smooth tone he'd used for Burt, who clearly noticed the repetition. Whether it was unsettling or comforting, his father didn't quite seem to know. Finn accepted it completely, though, and his smile seemed to crack his face in half.
Only then did Carole pull back just enough to look past Kurt, and her desperate embrace loosened. "They're so big," she said faintly.
"Thanks," Kurt landed on for an answer. She seemed bemused by that, and he clarified, "For not saying anything about them until now."
Thanks, he added in his head, for seeing him as a person first.
"I made breakfast!" Burt said proudly. "We can all eat breakfast together, okay? All of us."
But they couldn't. Burt had made pancakes, clearly thinking they'd be suitable, but they looked heavy and unappetizing. Watching the three of them pile on butter and syrup made Kurt's nerves fire again. A bite there meant one minute less on some future deathbed; soaking up the sweet streaks on the plate might be two or three minutes lost. He plucked nervously at an orange and forced himself to eat his fill, which still wasn't much.
"Sorry," Burt said, swiping away a drop of artificial maple syrup from where Finn had done a poor job of capping it. "I thought you would like this."
Shrugging, Kurt forced a smile. "More for you guys."
The first Angel had appeared in 1959. She, soon it, was from Italy. At first she was a sign from above, a miracle. That little girl was respected as she aged.
Then a little girl grew wings in India, and a little boy got them in Rhodesia. That girl from the land of Sophia Loren had been a miracle, but the elite of the world had been more willing to view children elsewhere as things that they wanted. Just as tourism offices painted their homes as strange, exotic attractions filled with no people better than scenery, the rich found it very easy to stop calling the third and second children 'human.'
Rights began to drip away like water, and soon it was easier to do the same to that girl in Italy. The most popular explanation in those first days was something to do with the Space Race. Mutants. Aliens. As more children—Angels—were found each year, and they became a badge of luxury like yachts, people stopped bothering with any explanation at all. No one tried to explain why some animals were fortunate enough to have beautifully soft fur; who cared why they made such wonderful coats?
Kurt knew all of that history.
He knew that the first little girl from Italy had looked nineteen years old since the Sixties.
He wondered if her parents were still alive. They might be, if they were very old.
"Kurt?" he heard Carole ask, and he realized he'd zoned out. Everyone was looking at him with concern.
"I was just thinking about how I need to clean my room," he said with false cheer. "And I need to start adding some things to the grocery lists again, and do laundry, and... oh, lots of things."
"I can run some errands," Carole promised. "I called in to work. Anything you need to me to pick up, you just let me know."
Nodding, he went to put together a list of some staples for himself, then added some ingredients he could hopefully foist on the rest of them. That was turned over to Burt for approval, though; he'd have to move slowly on this, and give him some room to add in unhealthy things so he wouldn't complain. He put together a second list for a fabric store. Buttons, edging tape, scissors... he had a lot of work ahead of him.
"No," he said when they looked at the lists and asked him if he just wanted to take it easy and not think about all the minutia of daily living. "No, I want to do things. It feels good to be home, doing something productive." His mind dabbled in dangerous waters when it was allowed to sit unoccupied.
"Finn," Burt said. "Go down and help him. I'll get the rest of the stuff up here handled while Carole's out shopping, okay?"
"Yeah, I'll help. But... this sounds dumb, but seriously, how? How are you here?" Finn asked. He seemed confused and slow, like he was recovering from a long illness.
"The boy I was sold to," Kurt explained. "He drove me here and sold me back to Dad. I don't know why."
"Burt owns you?" Finn said, gawking at the concept, but then caught up and smiled. "You own him!" he said more brightly. "So no one else can!"
"Bingo," Burt said as he beamed.
"It's a little weird," Kurt admitted. "But there's no one else I'd trust more in the world, of course." Burt kept smiling at him like he was a miracle, and it was simultaneously sweet and overwhelming. "I'm going to go downstairs, now. Just thinking about those sheets is practically giving me hives."
So that was how Kurt wound up in the basement, avoiding Finn's open stare as they pulled back the covers on his bed. He was very interesting, he supposed. The vast majority of the world would never see an Angel, not even from a great distance. They were in photographs, nothing more, and photographs couldn't capture the real size of the wings or the way the light wrapped softly around each individual feather. He knew they were beautiful. It was why everyone dreamed about them, and why the bodies to which they were attached were a secondary concern.
"You've gotta admit," Finn said as he began stripping sheets. "It's a little weird that your dad owns you."
"Someone has to," Kurt shrugged as they worked on cleaning his room. As much as he hated to admit that, it was true.
Finn didn't seem to like it any more than he did. "So you're coming back to school, right? Everyone freaked when they heard you were gone. Big, giant tears everywhere. But now you're back," he said as his voice turned up in pitch and a smile returned, "and so it'll be like nothing happened!"
"Finn," Kurt sighed as he held out a laundry bag and Finn stuffed in the sheets, "I can't."
"It'll be okay! If anyone tries to mess with you, they'll have to go through all of us." He stepped back and looked Kurt over critically. "I guess it might be hard for you to fit in a desk, but they've got those laws that say they have to work with Artie, right? They've got special desks and stuff. I bet they can—"
"Finn," Kurt cut in loudly when his pointed looks didn't work. "I literally cannot go back to school."
"Why not?" Finn asked.
"Because I can't register for classes. They can't award me a diploma." Seeing Finn's confusion, Kurt dropped the laundry bag and folded his arms across his chest, hugging himself. "The cartel started the process as soon as they took me. They told me everything they did, so I'd know there was nothing left but my sale. My birth certificate has been shredded in the state files. The DMV has deleted me. I don't have a Social Security Number any more."
"Seriously?" Finn gawked. "But that's...."
"I know." Kurt's fingers plucked at his collar. It was a nervous habit in the making, he could tell; he needed to stop. "In the eyes of the law, my dad never had a son. All he has now is a piece of property. Like his truck."
Sounding wholly, heartbreakingly confused, Finn said, "But that's not fair."
He'd used that line a lot, it seemed.
"Not disagreeing with you," Kurt shrugged, and gathered his laundry. When he straightened he saw Finn typing at his phone, and the clothes and sheets wound up on the floor again as he lunged. "No!"
Finn stared in confusion at his empty hands. "I was just telling people you were back."
"Did you send any of them yet?" Kurt asked intently.
"Just Rachel."
"God," Kurt mourned, rubbing at his eyes. "I'm not ready for this yet." He could hear his phone begin to buzz on the nightstand, where it had sat plugged-in for months, and felt tension wrap around him like wires. "Will you tell them not today, at least?"
"But everyone'll be so excited to see you," Finn said, sounding younger with each word. "Don't you want to see everyone?"
"I do, I promise, I just... I have to space it out, in case they don't see me."
"They'll want to see you!" Finn insisted.
That wasn't what he'd meant, but Kurt suspected he couldn't explain it to Finn. "I'm just tired, still," he said instead, and Finn nodded and reached for his phone. When Kurt returned it, a quick series of taps followed and the cacophony of texts soon fell away from Kurt's nightstand.
"You're tired? Are you okay?" Finn asked, reaching out to him, and Kurt skittered away.
"Don't touch them," Kurt said reflexively.
Holding up his hands, Finn gulped that he wouldn't. "Sorry. Do they hurt? No? That's good." He bit at his lip. "Are they heavy?"
They weren't. They were taller than he was, and although much of the surface was nothing more than sleek feathers, the structure below those was strong. Physically they weren't heavy at all, even though that shouldn't be so. "Practically weightless," Kurt answered.
They weren't heavy like they should be because he wasn't normal any more. On someone with red blood, something that size would be heavy. Gold blood meant they were impossibly light, even as they stole his future and freedom from him. In terms of pounds they might be nearly weightless, but to Kurt's heart they were so heavy he could barely move.
"Will you go help my dad for a while?" Kurt finally asked when they'd stood there for a while in awkward silence.
"Do you want to take a nap? You said you were tired. You should sleep," Finn decided. "I'll let you sleep. Wait, we need to put on sheets first. Then you can sleep."
The more Finn said 'sleep,' the more appealing it sounded. But when they'd prepared the bed and Kurt had collapsed onto it face-forward, answering Finn's question of how he arranged himself with, you know, those, it didn't come.
His schedule had been strictly regimented. Kurt woke at an appointed time, was available to Blaine as desired, and, unless told to offer himself then, sank into bed at a regular hour. Occasionally Blaine changed his mind in the middle of the night and wanted Kurt to join him in his human bed. Those nights had been the worst. Blaine was a deep sleeper, and so was heavy and awkward when he stirred. Not wanting to get out of bed to wake Kurt, he just grabbed the controller off his nightstand and shocked his body into awareness with the feeling of electricity coursing through his body.
Blaine's mother had complained once about the screaming.
Her son promised her that they would both be better: he would try to get up and wake him with his hand, and in return 'Jophiel' would be quieter on the nights when he didn't want to put his feet on the cold floor. Kurt had bitterly commented on his 'alarm clock,' once, but Blaine seemed genuinely confused. He always used the lowest setting. No one would think twice about getting an Angel's attention with a controller, and certainly not at the lowest setting. It was nothing more than tugging on a dog's leash.
Kurt had hated those parents even more than Blaine. He didn't know if he could hate Blaine, now, not after what he'd done, though he knew the boy would always be associated with horrific memories. Those parents, though... it was all their fault in the first place.
There was probably a lot of yelling in that house, Kurt thought as he waited futilely for sleep. He wondered where the house was. Blaine's car had an Ohio license plate on it, but he didn't know the town. He didn't even know the family's last name; a pet had no need of it.
He'd managed a few shallow naps against Burt the day before, but that attempt was useless. The effort to sleep only left him irritated and groggy, and it was in that mood that he eventually walked upstairs for dinner. Finn intercepted him and began telling him that Mercedes had claimed the first visit, and everyone said that was okay, but then people would just come over when she said she was done. Maybe that way, Kurt could see all his friends at once!
Burt caught the way Kurt's expression dropped and cleared his throat. "Call 'em back, Finn. Tell them Kurt will say it's okay to come over when he's ready."
"But everyone's really excited," Finn said, confused and frowning.
"I'm just tired," Kurt said, and thankfully the excuse worked again. A bag from the craft store sat on the coffee table, he saw. When he wasn't busy telling people that nothing was as bad as it could have been, and watching them stare at his wings rather than meet his eyes, then he could work on cutting apart his wardrobe to fit his new life.
He felt immature and ungrateful, but Kurt wanted to demand of the world why things couldn't be fixed. He had his dad, and Carole and Finn had both stared at his face for a blessedly long time before they ever looked at his shoulders. But his words from earlier returned to him: the state, in accordance with federal law, had shredded his birth certificate.
The person known as Kurt Hummel never existed.
He was like his father's truck.
One day, that father would die.
Things were so much better than the life to which he'd resigned himself, but they were nowhere near fixed.
"Kurt?" Carole gently asked when he picked at a bowl of wild rice. "You can talk to us, you know. We know you must have been through a lot."
Kurt glanced at Burt. Life was starting to flood back into the man's face. "It was just hard hearing myself referred to as property," he said. "I'm tired. I'm glad I get to rest at home, but it wasn't that bad."
"Really?" Finn asked, like he knew it couldn't really be true but desperately wanted it to be. The comforting lie was like a security blanket in that house, it seemed, and it got passed around.
"Really." What would he do if one of his friends called him 'it?' Was he going to have to tell each and every one of them that no, he couldn't come back to New Directions, since that was for students at that school and the law said he could never return? He might have to tell all of them not to touch his wings, and explain why. It would be unspeakably humiliating.
And there would be the conversation with Rachel.
She'd be the worst.
"We're staying here, if that's all right," Carole said hopefully. "I picked up our bathroom stuff when I was out. Finn said he'll take the couch."
Well, he supposed that made a final decision about whether he was sleeping in the privacy of his room or next to his snoring father, Kurt thought. "Of course." He smiled. "It'll be nice to have everyone around." Both of them had seen him.
"Leave your door open," Finn suggested. "I'm totally wired, so if you just call up for water or anything I bet I'll wake right up. I'll get it for you, okay?"
"Okay," Kurt said. It almost felt like he was letting everyone down by not being cheerful and perpetually overjoyed to be home. His one role in life, after all, was to be what people expected of him. He couldn't be a person, so he was supposed to be a fantasy.
They seemed confused and worried when sadness rolled across his face, but Kurt waved it off with a line about missing choir that year. It had the ring of truth to it and so they told him good night, said they'd see him tomorrow, and watched him descend the stairs like a family holding onto the last possible seconds of someone at an airport.
It was the appointed hour at which he was allowed to sleep, and exhaustion came on quickly. So did dreams, and Kurt fell into them like a canyon.
It was difficult to see Blaine as he truly was. In reality he was a pleasant-looking boy with a solid but unremarkable build. Free, Kurt would have looked at him in different ways, he imagined. As his property it was difficult to see anything good about him.
His lips curled not into smiles but into cruel sneers, and his unremarkable body was muscled heavily enough to be a threat. His hands cradled the instrument of Kurt's torture. Not a day went past without Kurt's collar firing, and even the lowest setting felt like electrical current being run through his head or legs or groin or hands. The higher settings felt like he was being burned alive. Flayed. Cut open. If Kurt dared repeat his behavior he would face that suffering again; if he gave in, he would be stroked like a pet and given a bit of food or praise that would suffice for an animal.
In the fortunate moments he was treated like an animal.
In the unfortunate ones he was treated like a sex toy. Kurt's expression shifted in his sleep as he flashed back to the feeling of Blaine's hands stroking him. The collar imprisoned his body, but his body imprisoned his heart and mind. He was cursed into slavery because of the damned wings, but it was as if they weren't satisfied with that. No, they had to turn his own body into a way to torture him.
This torturer, this owner could simply touch him... and Kurt was left begging for more. A sliver of awareness screamed at him to stop. It wasn't enough to override the pleasure from Blaine's touch. It was enough to make him remember.
Blaine had kept touching them when he pulled out that controller, forced Kurt to the ground under its pain and....
Kurt twitched on the bed. His breath came in unsteady hitches as he dreamed.
Blaine came in fast. Something tore inside Kurt and he could feel the pressure of Blaine's thrusts tear it open over and over even as his own body tried to heal. Pain fired through Kurt, worse than anything the collar could ever do... because it was real. The falsehood of skin peeling off would make for nightmares, nothing more. The reality of Blaine filling him, hot and hard and unwelcome, would last forever. That was his reality. That was his life. Pain, violation, humiliation. He'd been reduced to a hot tunnel of flesh around a slaveowner's cock. That would always be his first time and nothing in his life would be any different.
And because Blaine kept his hands on those fucking wings, through all the terror and agony Kurt still felt pleasure. It coursed through his veins and pooled in his stomach like bile.
When Blaine walked out after, Kurt stumbled to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. He had little inside him; soon only acid came up. It burned.
He'd known this was coming. He'd long since accepted that this would be his life.
Never had Kurt thought that his own body would force him, at least in part, to enjoy it.
Shakily, Kurt stood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It was cold in the bathroom, even in summer. The tiles seemed to reflect his own exhaustion onto his naked, trembling form like a hall of mirrors. Hand wavering like a leaf in the wind, he moved to turn on the water so that he might wash out his mouth.
That hand froze on its way and instead closed around a small pair of nail scissors.
Paintings. Blaine kept talking about paintings, about how he thought Kurt was pretty and perfect and his fantasy that he'd always wanted. He was his gift, meant to be his forever and ever.
Kurt's hand stopped shaking when he flipped open the scissors, exposed one sharp edge to the air, and drew it across his face. He pressed hard. Flesh split below his hand. He gritted his teeth, determined not to cry out, and when he'd marked himself from forehead to chin he moved to cut himself on a different angle.
It was futile. The cut on his face was a line of gold, not red, and it vanished as he considered a second cut. Not even a scar marked its short life, just as his arm looked untouched where Blaine's friend had sent a blade against his bone earlier.
Imprisoned in his body in every possible way.
Kurt had thought he was prepared for that day. He thought he'd accepted it. When he collapsed onto his small bed along one wall, clothes pulled loosely on and hair a shambles, tears burst free. They didn't stop for hours.
"Kurt!"
He jerked up but there was someone on top of him, pressing on the space between his shoulder blades and trying to keep him down. "No!" he almost shrieked, scrambling toward the headboard so frantically that he ripped a sheet corner out from under the mattress. "No, no, no," he choked out, hoping that this time it would work, and soon he was knotted around that single word as he leaned against the headboard like a wall in a bunker.
It took that long to realize Finn was staring at him. His hand still hung in the air from where he'd jostled Kurt awake. "Kurt?" he asked like the name might set off a bomb.
For a few seconds breaths moved in and out. He was awake. He'd been dreaming. That was all. "It wasn't as bad as it could have been," Kurt said automatically.
It was the middle of the night, but only then did Finn look tired.