3 months ago with 5,731 notes

chrisspiration:

blainersfabray:

chrisspiration:

blainersfabray:

chrisspiration:

blainersfabray:

“I can’t believe you would take that boy’s place, Blaine.” 

“It was his last year, Dad. His father is ill… I couldn’t just let him go.” Blaine protested, wringing his hands in his lap. 

“You should have, Blaine. This is ridiculous. Throwing your life away just to save some boy—” 

“I love him.” Blaine argued, standing straight, “He’s not just some boy. He’s the boy I love. Mom has Cooper and you to take care of her if I die but his dad doesn’t have anyone but him. How could I let him go knowing that?!” his fingers are clenched at his sides. He takes a deep breath, attempting to calm himself, and meets his father’s eyes. “What’s done is done. There’s no going back. So either make our last few minutes together happy ones, or leave please.”

His father sighed, turning for the door. “You can’t win, Blaine. You’re not your brother. You’re not strong. You’ll be killed before the first sun sets.” 

Blaine swallows around the lump in his throat, shoulders slumping. “Better me than Kurt.” he nearly whispers, but he knows his father hears him. The older Anderson leaves the room without another word. 

Blaine falls back into his chair, exhausted from the day’s activities. Not a second later Kurt is walking in, looking at Blaine with a broken expression, his eyes are red from crying. 

Blaine looks up, sighing when he sees Kurt, “You heard?” he asks. 

“Every word.” 

“Well, I—I meant it,” Blaine says, standing up from the chair because it feels uncomfortable with Kurt standing, but keeps his eyes on the ground. “I love you more than anything, Kurt.”

Kurt’s still sniffing back unshed tears, at least unshed to Blaine, and he nods a little, pressing his lips together. “I don’t want you to die.”

“I don’t want to die, either,” Blaine breathes out, a half-laugh, because it feels almost ironic, now that he’s here.

But Kurt’s stepped up, into his space, holding onto his upper arms tightly and locking their eyes together fiercely, a firm determination in the way he holds his gaze, and Blaine sees him swallow hard. “Promise me you’ll come home. Promise you’ll—you’ll do whatever it takes.”

Blaine keeps looking at him, lips parted, and can’t do anything but nod. Can’t deny Kurt this last request. “I’ll try.”

Another shudder of a breath and Kurt’s hands slide up Blaine’s arms to hook around his neck, pressing himself up against his, bodies close together and buries his face into his neck. “Promise me, Blaine,” he gasps, chest shaking with sobs, now that his face is hidden. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to you out there.”

“I’ll try,” Blaine repeats, gripping onto the back of Kurt’s elegant white coat, worn specifically for the reaping, and tries not to cry as well, voice tight. “I’ll really, really try. I swear it.”

They unscramble their arms from each other and Kurt’s tugging on Blaine’s arms again, this time to bring him over and crash their lips together, kissing him hungrily and fiercely and clinging onto that final wave of warmth shared between their mouths amidst a small, quiet, scared whimper from one of their mouths, Blaine’s not sure whose, before the peacekeepers are back, saying he has to go.

“No, wait!” Blaine pleads, suddenly not ready to say goodbye, suddenly not sure about anything at all. “Kurt!”

The peacekeepers have him around the shoulders, and Blaine stumbles forward, reaching out for him. “I love you!” he cries out, voice wrecked and fresh tears sprouting from his eyes, sliding down his cheeks, making them wet and hot as they feel.

Kurt’s resisting one last time at the door, nodding frantically at him. “I love you, too, Blaine, you take my breath away. I’m so proud of you, don’t forget—”

But he’s cut off as the peacekeepers manage to yank him away from the doorway, and it shuts with a loud bang behind him, leaving Blaine alone in the dark emptiness of the room. He sucks in a shuddering breath between his sobs and wipes at his eyes. “I hope so,” he whispers into nothingness. “I want you to be.”

As soon as Kurt steps into his home, he collapses. Sliding down with his back against the door and resting his arms on his knees. Tears threaten to fall from the corners of his eyes but he blinks them away. Crying won’t bring Blaine back, so what’s the point? 

The television is on, Kurt can just see it’s screen from where he sits against the door. He glares at the picture on the screen, it’s of a terrified looking Blaine. A freeze-frame from the reaping. “Why?” he asks his boyfriend’s picture, “Why would you do that you idiot?!” His voice cracks at the end, and he wipes away a stray tear. Standing, he walks toward the television, legs shaking. 

“Why would you do that?! Why couldn’t you just keep quiet and let me go?!” He asks, “You idiot. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t come back! Never. You promised you wouldn’t ever leave me. You promised me! You lied!” Kurt’s yelling at the screen now, tears that he had just told himself not to cry are streaming down his face, Blaine’s picture blurred through them. 

“I hate you! You promised me forever you idiot! Why would you do that?!” Burt Hummel chooses that moment to walk through the door, face stony. Upon seeing his son, he almost breaks down crying himself. He runs to Kurt, wrapping his arms around his son’s slight frame. As soon as Kurt is in his father’s arms he collapses against his father’s chest, crying and pleading into his chest through his tears. “Bring him back. Make him come back I don’t care what we have to do. This isn’t fair! It should have been me! BRING HIM BACK!” 

Burt says nothing, what can he say? Instead, he holds Kurt tight to him and rocks gently back and forth. Humming a melody that Elizabeth used to sing when Kurt would have nightmares. 

“I just want him back, Dad. I need him. Don’t they understand? I can’t live without him.” Kurt doesn’t stop crying until he falls into a dreamless sleep.

The next time Kurt sees Blaine’s face is a couple of days later, when the entire district is forced to gather at the main plaza—most of them don’t have television sets at home, and the Hummel-Hudsons certainly don’t, to watch the parade of tributes.

It’s every moment of torture, standing there, between Finn and his father, clutching their hands tightly. There is a hush over the people of the district—an unspoken mourning for the life of a boy and a girl they’ve known all their lives, a boy and a girl sent to die for a crime neither committed.

The Panem Anthem plays, loud and booming over the speakers, meant to entertain and rejoice in these games of death, and Kurt’s face is stony, unreadable, as it has been since Blaine’s departure.

The District One tributes go out first, sheathed in something shimmery and almost translucent, but Kurt can’t keep his attention on them for long; to him, they are the enemy. They’re children, but they could harm Blaine. Blaine, who took his spot when he didn’t have to, who put his life on the line for him, and another roll of nausea sweeps over him like it has every time he thinks about the guilt he feels for it.

Finn squeezes his hand as the District Eleven tributes roll out on their carriage. “He’ll be okay, dude. He’s small, but…he’ll make it.”

Kurt thinks he might have intended for it to be reassuring, but he can’t let himself be reassured. Can’t afford that; not yet.

Then Blaine rolls out, side by side with Brittany Pierce. She shouldn’t be there, either, not by a long shot, but she is. Blaine looks minuscule beside her, small and dark next to her, lean and blonde and flowing hair that’s been braided intricately between threads of red and orange, but Kurt can’t keep his eyes on her for long.

Blaine looks fierce. There’s a hard set to his jaw and a dark look in his eyes as they round the circle. He’s in an entirely black outfit that shimmers left and right like coals burning when he moves, dark eyeliner smudged under his honey eyes…eyes that make Kurt swoon and sigh and his stomach clench tight with passion.

He looks confident.

He probably isn’t, but he looks it.

And for the first time in the past few days, Kurt believes he can win.

Blaine wishes he could feel as confident as he looks. His stylists had told him to sit straight, look strong, look like someone who could pose a threat. and they insisted that he did. 

He certainly doesn’t feel like it. 

He feels tired. And broken. And terrified. He hates the capitol for putting them through this. He hates himself for being so scared. He hates that Brittany is there with him because she’s so sweet and she doesn’t deserve this. 

But mostly he hates that he wont spend his last days with Kurt. He’d promised Kurt that he would win for him. That he would go back home. But for once, just once, he’s almost positive he can’t keep this promise. There’s a part of him that knows he’ll die in that arena. The same part that reminds him Kurt will have to watch him. 

He thinks about his death, about what it might be. Whatever it is, he hopes that it is quick and painless. He also hopes it’s uninteresting and that the cameras won’t bother to show it. He doesn’t care that he’s going to die. He resigned himself to that the moment he volunteered. He only cares that Kurt will have to watch. He doesn’t want Kurt to see him die. He doesn’t want Kurt to watch the life fade out of his eyes and for him to give up. He would rather Kurt never know what that looked like. He’s seen many others die in the games before. It isn’t pretty and it isn’t forgettable. You remember every face. 

He doesn’t want to be another one of those faces. 

Blaine just wants to fade. He wants to die peacefully, where no one can see him. And he wants to fade until the world forgets him. He doesn’t want to be a painful memory for Kurt the way his mother had been. 

If there’s one thing Blaine wants, he wants Kurt to forget him completely. 

But he can’t do that.

Because he promised. So Blaine takes his stance, readying himself for the interview with Caesar Flickerman. He adjusts his tie properly and straightens the black blazer with red piping his stylist had chosen for him. It’s simple, unadorned, and reminiscent enough of coal that it works for his district.

After all, District Twelve isn’t particularly enchanting.

Brittany goes first; she’s herself, clueless and sweet and doesn’t seem to have a clue what’s in wait for her as she talks about her life back home, and her cat, Lord Tubbington, and Blaine briefly wonders how she managed to keep a cat alive when most people were struggling to feed themselves.

But he relents, and waits, patiently, hands folded over his front before his name’s called, and he comes out, walks towards the armchair in front of Caesar’s, doesn’t smile at the crowd and keeps up the fierce demeanor his mentor said would work for him.

The interview is down to the point and light enough. He’s asked some things about home, about the arena, and answers as best as he can. Then—“So, tell us, Blaine. You volunteered to come to the games instead of a boy, Kurt Hummel. Is he someone special?”

Blaine swallows, his throat tightening and flicks his eyes to the camera in front of them, even though his mentor had said not to do that, because he knows Kurt’s watching. Knows that behind screens and screens and cameras and electric signals, his boyfriend’s bright blue eyes are meeting his own. He takes a deep breath. “He’s my boyfriend.”

A murmur goes through the crowd, some people ‘aw’ apprehensively, others turn their nose away in disgust at the fact that he’s gay. Blaine ignores them, and Caesar seems to do the same. “And what did you say to your boyfriend when you volunteered at the reaping? What was that like? He seemed quite stunned after your outburst.”

Blaine presses his lips together, for a moment, before looking back up at the interviewer, eyes open and honest. “I told him that I’d try to win for him.”

Caesar smiles at him reassuringly, softly, and nods. “And try you will.”

And try he will, indeed.

“Blaine Anderson, from District Twelve!” Flickerman announces, lifting Blaine’s arm up and the crowd cheers, claps, wolf-whistles. But Blaine’s smile is empty, a little, as he waves back before he stands up to leave.

#so much fic aaaaaaahhhhhh #fanfiction #otp #person: goober #person: porcelain