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Kurt picks him up in a space port whilst his ship is refuelling. Santana sees him first, nudges Kurt with her elbow as he surveys a stall covered in asteroid crystals carved into the shapes of rare and exotic flowers and off-world birds. He tries ignoring her for a time, and then she pokes him hard enough that he drops a small firebird and pays far in excess of its value just to make the woman behind the stall stop glaring. “What?” he snaps, Santana’s persistence grating on his last nerve, and she bobs her head in the direction of the docks.
“Runaway,” she says. “Not your regular waif or stray. Looks like he could be worth something.” Kurt narrows his eyes to see what she’s talking about, takes the farseers from her when she offers them. There is a boy wandering between the ships, now that she points him out, and he doesn’t look like he should be this far from the inland palisades. His clothes are old, but they’re richly coloured, the reds and blues far too obvious amongst the dirty greys and sandy browns of the docks. It’s definitely a possibility that there’s a bounty for his return.
“Can you tell what he is?” he asks, handing her back the farseers, and she cants her head and stares before shrugging her delicate shoulders.
“Not from here. But if you wanted to trade with some of the captains in the port, I’ll do my best to get a lock on him?”
Kurt nods his head once and turns on one well-booted heel. “Come,” he says, and marches away. Santana trails after him with her dark eyes narrowed.
“Don’t treat me like one of your slaves, Hummel,” she calls after him. “You need my ass on your rickety boat far more than I need you. I keep you from flying into every damned trap in this sector. Let’s not pretend you’re not the one that’s on every wanted list accessible from a civilised planet, and I’m the one who knows how to maintain your perception filter and -”
“And I don’t have slaves, Santana,” Kurt says, over his shoulder. “And we’re all very grateful for your contributions. Please, tell me what you can about him.” He turns and bows to her, placating and sarcastic, and she rolls her eyes and crosses her arms beneath her breasts, huffing her annoyance and flicking her tight black ponytail over her shoulder.
She wants to keep her knowledge to herself, once they’re within range of her abilities. She wants him to be a standard runaway, someone’s son, utterly unimportant. She wants to tell Kurt to forget it, he’s a nobody, because she knows it will irritate him. She can’t, though. The boy’s soul screams at her to get him away from here. They watch quietly for a while, Kurt leaning against a wall, Santana with her hands planted firmly on her hips, as the boy throws himself on the mercy of every merchant in the port. He’s small,slim, and it’s hard to judge his age between the shaggy mess of his hair and beard and the exhaustion in his eyes. He seems young, though, or too young to be offering what he is for a way off of the rock. Kurt glances at Santana, and the pain drawing her mouth down tells him everything he needs to know.
Coming up behind the boy, he reaches out and takes his hand. The man the boy is talking to narrows his eyes at Kurt, but the boy’s fingers tighten in his grip and Kurt squeezes back gently. “I’ve been looking for you forever,” he says, gazing into the impossibly ancient depths of the boy’s golden eyes, and the boy flicks a smile.
“I lost you in the crowds,” he says, barely missing a beat. “I was trying to find my way back to the ship but they all look the same.”
“I know a shortcut,” Kurt smiles, and looks around for Santana. He sees the silver flash of her mirror in an alleyway behind them, and motions with his head for him to follow. The boy doesn’t let go of his hand as Kurt leads him away from the thoroughfare and then buys him a fresh tunic in a less conspicuous colour. Santana splits what’s left of a cold meat pie with him, and the boy tucks into it with relish. Kurt watches him silently, and Santana says, softly, “We can’t leave him here. We can’t - we can’t send him back. We can’t sell him back.” Kurt nods and watches the boy eat, and, when he stops to breathe, Kurt passes him his water and says there’s a spare bed on his ship for anyone as is willing to bunk down by the engines. The boy is slower to take the water, but says he’ll sleep anywhere there’s a pillow if they can get him away from the planet, and quickly.
It’s that simple. The boy allows himself to be guided through the maze of ships to Kurt’s vessel. “She’s not much,” Kurt says, gazing up at her with love in his eyes, “But she’s home.”
“She’s beautiful,” the boy breathes, and Santana barks a laugh and guides him aboard with a hand on his shoulder.
“That might be pushing it,” she says. “But you keep talking to her like that, and she’ll be good to you. And our engineer will probably love you.”
The boy lets out a breath and seems to sink slightly, relaxing into Santana’s arm. She presses her lips to his hair and says, for his ears alone, that he’s safe now. No one will find him, and no one will harm him again. Aloud, she says she’s going to show him his bunk and their shitty excuse for a bathroom, and no one had better disturb either of them because so help her, she has razors in her goddamned hair. Kurt smiles and bows and gestures for her to lead, and the boy only looks between the two of them and lets Santana help him aboard.
*
The boy disappears into his bunk for almost a straight day and a half, and Kurt is just starting to worry that he’d been maybe a shared hallucination or that they’d arrived too late and the boy has died in his sleep when he appears in the doorway of the mess. Kurt only knows he’s there because Santana’s head turns, and their medic’s eyes light up. Kurt follows their eyes and feels his jaw literally drop. The boy they’d picked up from the docks is gone, replaced by a clear-eyed, clean cut young man. He’s trimmed his hair, and found a means of taming the wild halo of frizzy curls, and he’s shaved. He’s dressed in clothes that Kurt doesn’t remember ever seeing, but which make his shoulders seem broad and his belted waist narrow. He is, Kurt thinks dumbly, beautiful. He can almost feel Santana smirking at the back of his head, but any response is cut short by Rachel, his Navigator, bouncing to her feet and ushering the boy – man, Kurt amends, mentally – into a seat and placing a bowl in front of him.
“We’re on meal chips,” she says with an affected sigh. “No fresh vegetables in any of the markets for months, or so I’m told.”
“There were -” the man begins, and Kurt brushes his cup noisily from the tabletop and apologises loudly.
“No vegetables,” he declares, sitting back up. “There’s nothing in the markets, except for half rotten squashes and weird fungi that I’m still not sure are fit for human consumption.”
Maybe not human consumption,” Santana sighs, and the medic laughs with her.
“Besides,” Kurt says, setting his cup back down. “You’re safest doing fascinating things with food cubes and meal replacer. The last time you tried to flambé, you burned a hole in my damn boat.”
“Fire’s hot, Kurt,” Rachel sighs defensively, “And really flamey.” Then she turns her bright smile back to the stranger. “There’s plenty of replacer to go around, though. It’s awful, but it keeps you strong.” She touches his shoulders and runs her hands down his arms. “Not that you need the help. Goodness.”
“Get your man hands off of him,” Santana says. “And let him eat. Godawful meal replacer or not, he deserves something to eat before you start pawing at him. Besides, I don’t think he -”
“No. It’s – it’s fine,” the boy says, and smiles at Rachel, who shoots Santana a triumphant smile.
“It’s not fine,” Kurt barks. “Eat. No, first, tell us your name, and why we’re now home to one more stowaway. Rachel, put him down.”
He turns those pretty eyes on Kurt and blinks, and Kurt pushes his plate forwards and rests his elbows on the edge of the table. “Start with your name,” he suggests, and the man raises his chin and squares his shoulders.
“Blaine,” he says, and closes his mouth. Rachel indicates that he should eat, and Santana stamps on Kurt’s foot beneath the table, and hisses for him to be nice. Kurt glares at the side of her head. Turning back to Blaine, he smiles.
“Where are you from, Blaine?”
Blaine frowns at his plate and carefully arranges his food cubes into a pattern. “I was trained on the moons of Dalton. I told my mother I wanted to be like the boys who came to her parties. When I was 15, we arranged for my education. I honestly loved it. I was good at it. And then I graduated.” He smiles at the table and rearranges the crackers again.
“You’re an Entertainer?” Kurt says, tries to keep his voice neutral and can hear in his own ears that he fails. Blaine looks up sharply.
“No. I’m a fully qualified, sector registered Performance major,” he snaps. “Thank you.”
Kurt nods and looks at Santana, who arches her eyebrows and stares at him judgementally. “Okay. Well, good. Because Santana is too prickly and Rachel tends to overact, and sometimes we need good distraction. Can you do that?”
Blaine nods and flicks a smile, and finally puts a food cube in his mouth, pulls a face and chews quickly, swallows it almost whole and washes it down with water. “Oh my – that tastes like ass.”
Santana smirks at her plate. “You’d know, cupcake.”
*
As it turns out, Blaine is actually very good with his hands. He’s intelligent, and a quick learner, and Kurt is quietly pleased that he gets along well with his crew. Blaine insists on trading for fresh vegetables and meat, and he helps Rachel in the galley, shows her how to best prepare each item to maximise its potential. He notices that when Rachel is happiest, she literally shines. When he mentions it, she beams at him, light sparkling in her bright brown eyes. “I’m a star,” she says, and Blaine’s mouth makes an O of surprise. “When Kurt said he was going to see other planets, I said he should take a Navigator with him. And here I am.”
“So why are you in the galley?” Blaine asks, cautiously, and she waves a knife carelessly.
“We takes turns,” she says. “But no one else thinks that food cubes require preparation. I disagree.”
Blaine nods and turns back to the vegetables he was preparing. “I’ve never met a real Navigator,” he says. “I’m glad to know you now.”
He can feel the warmth of Rachel’s happiness behind him.
Other times, he can be found sitting in the engine room, tossing bolts and wrenches to Sam, their engineer. Blaine feels secure around Sam, who is expressive and unjudgemental in his acceptance. Blaine lets himself be free around him, lets himself be soft and unguarded in ways that haven’t been possible in years. Sam maintains an easy rapport with the crew, but Blaine is still surprised by the way everyone is with Kurt, who isn’t exactly cold but has layers that Blaine doesn’t understand yet. Sam will always invite him to join them, though, and Kurt roll up his sleeves and spend hours helping Sam eek another few days out of components in desperate need of replacing.
Blaine is easy to get along with. In part, it’s the training he received at the Academy, but it’s also very much him and his personality. Santana takes him under her protective wing, and Kurt allows him to join the two of them when they discuss potential jobs. During one discussion, when it becomes apparent that Santana has abilities that Blaine isn’t entirely aware of, Kurt tells him she is a Patheian telepath, and shows him how to construct mental walls to keep her from his deepest secrets. He says that Santana has been running for ten years now from the Patheian Authority, and she says anyone would run. “I like women,” she says easily. “And that’s just not the way things work on Patheia. When they found out I was seeing a low born, untrained but naturally gifted girl, they threatened to circumcise and lobotomise me. They were going to cauterise my abilities and my pleasure. I’d have been - I’d have ended up like him.” She nods to Kurt, and Blaine turns and stares, as if this information explains everything.
“You’re -?” Blaine falters, and Kurt inclines his head.
“My mother was. But I can’t do the mind thing.”
“And he won’t do the sex thing.” Santana laughs, and rests her fingers lightly on Blaine’s skin, and they both watch as a shiver races through him and the hairs on his arms prickle. Kurt doesn’t say anything.
It’s as part of a routine medical that Blaine finds out about Tina. He’s sitting on the bed whilst Tina checks his joints and reflexes when he thinks there’s something about her eyes that doesn’t seem quite right, something in the slight delay of her reactions to jokes, in her abrupt manner, that makes him wonder where she’s from. She steps back from him and pronounces him healthy, and then says, “Kurt didn’t tell you, did he?”
“Tell me?”
“I think he forgets.” Blaine doesn’t say anything, only shrugs his tunic back on. Tina clicks her tongue and puts her instruments away. “I’m a Class 1 Galactic Medic. I know you’ve noticed. You’re sharp. Most people don’t see. They don’t want to see.”
“I’m - it’s part of our training. We’re supposed to read body language and moods. You don’t really have either. I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s fine. It’s nice to think someone sees me. You start to feel a little like wallpaper around here if you’re not great at something. These guys are all different. I’m not even real.”
Blaine hums his dissent and offers her a sunny smile. “If I can help you, Tina, let me know.”
She smiles and blushes and her eyes crinkle into non-existence, which makes Blaine laugh. “You remind me of my mom,” he says, and huffs out a breath when he’s enveloped in a hug he doesn’t see coming.
*
Blaine finds his home on aboard Kurt’s ship on a job that goes south. They’re on an asteroid, trading rare gems and fabrics that Kurt acquired nefariously on a spice planet. They’re outside of the sector, there should be no problems off-loading the cargo, but it’s just Kurt’s luck that the trader he’s introduced to is equally far from home. Before he knows what’s happening, he’s been stripped of his weapons and both he and Sam are being held under armed guard on the bridge of a ship they’re unfamiliar with. Kurt isn’t a religious man, but he offers a prayer to every god he knows and anyone that is listening to get the two of them back to his ship and back in the air. He’s convinced himself he’s going to die, that he’s going to be killed over a box of crystals and some ugly fabric, when he hears Blaine’s voice, low and smooth, outside of their prison, and Santana slips into the room with her legs encased in tight leather and her breasts pushed up in a tight leather vest.
“Quickly,” she says, picking the locks on their cuffs with rapid efficiency. “I don’t know how long we have.”
Kurt rubs his wrists and glances at her as she helps Sam. “How’s he doing?”
“Have you ever seen a Dalton boy?”
Kurt nods, flashes back to the times he and his father attended the grand parties for town and planet Officials. He remembers the first boy he kissed, a scruffy blonde off-worlder with a strange accent that Kurt had found delightful. He hadn’t known it then, but the more parties he attended, and the more boys he saw, the more he understood. It had been a young man with skin that glimmered and shone who had explained it to him, sitting next to him in on the stairs and watching the people dance before taking his hand and dancing with him himself. He’d told him they were trained for these events, that Performance was a skill, and that maybe Kurt should consider it himself. He certainly had the look. Kurt had laughed and blushed and ducked his head, but he’d remembered the Dalton boys of his adolescence ever since.
Santana inclines her head and smiles, “Then you know he’s fine. He’s in a better position than we are. Move.”
Blaine finds them later in a tavern in the port. He slips into a seat beside Kurt, sits marginally too close and brushes the length of his thigh against Kurt’s own. Santana smirks into her cup, and Kurt slams up a wall in his head to keep her up. He can only hope that Blaine has done the same, but from the way Santana downs her drink and coughs into her hand before grabbing Sam and making a rush for the door, there’s a chance he perhaps did not.
When he risks looking at Blaine, Blaine is staring right back at him. His smile is easy, and his eyes alight, and Kurt can’t take his eyes from the angle of his jaw or the width of his shoulders. When Blaine’s hand touches his cheek, it’s surprisingly dry.
“There you are,” he says, softly, almost lost in the din of the tavern if Kurt didn’t have ears only for him. “I feel like I’ve been looking for you forever.”
Kurt swallows hard, takes Blaine’s hand in his own. He doesn’t have the words to say, only nods his head up and down, just once. “Come with me,” he says, “Stay with me.”
It’s Blaine’s turn to nod. “Forever,” he says. “Forever.”