𝐒𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐂𝐇

𝟏𝟏. 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞

𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝟏𝟑𝐭𝐡, 𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟖

When you could finally bring yourself to move, you staggered to your feet and lifted your injured ankle to hop awkwardly toward the door. Shining your flashlight through the trees, you realized that Tommy was really, honestly, genuinely gone. 

You wanted to sit down on the outhouse steps and cry but there were so many other things that you had to be doing instead. You could cry on the bus, you could cry in the hospital, you could cry at home. Not here. Not now.

You debated calling out for Nick again now that you were sure Tommy didn't want anything to do with hunting you down and chopping you up into itty bitty pieces. But somehow that still felt like a terrible idea so you sucked in a painful breath and began hobbling down a barely-beaten path with your flashlight weaving back and forth between the thick wooden trunks peeling with mossy bark.

It wasn't for a few hundred paces that the light caught something other than a fixture of the forest. Out from the corner of your eye, you spotted what appeared to be a person standing impossibly still behind an outcropping of bushes. 

Your heart nearly gave out when you first assumed that it was Tommy. Maybe he did want you dead after all, choosing to wait for the thrill of chasing you through the woods instead of cornering you effortlessly against the back of the outhouse. But when a twig snapped underneath the heel of your sneaker, they whipped around and you realized with a startled inhale that it was only Kurt.

 At the time, you barely considered the irony in the fact that you were actually happy to see him.

"Kurt," you gasped, catching your breath as he marched toward you out of the brush. "You scared the bejesus out of me."

As he stepped closer, you realized that his face was painted bright red. You might have thought it was blood before remembering the whole reason you were trampling out in the woods instead of sitting all cozy in the mess hall with the rest of the campers. Color War. He was absolutely lathered in war paint.

"Show's over, Sunnyside," he barked, plunging the pointed tip of his walking stick into the wet earth. Was he planning on spearing any campers tonight? Christ. "No flashlights allowed. That's an automatic disqualification."

You tried to step closer but your leg gave out suddenly and made you fall against him rather ungracefully. As if expecting it, Kurt quickly tossed his walking stick aside and supported you in his arms. His face fell—the boyish, competitive gleam in his eye fading as he inspected you with concern. "Shit—(Y/N)?"

In the furthest reaches of your mind—tucked neatly in same place that had yet to catch up to all of the torment you had gone through in the last few hours—you were crossing 'have Kurt address you by your actual name' off of your summer bucket list.

"I'm not fucking around. You need to...to go to the mess hall. The kids need you. Tell them I'm fi-fine. I need to go find Nick."

When he made it obvious that he was too shocked to reply, you made a fist in the front of his sweat-soaked Color War shirt and yanked the collar down to force him into looking you in the eye. "Please, Kurt."

All of those times that he made someone else deal with a camper's bloody knee were finally catching up to him. You spent practically the entire summer training for stressful scenarios like this one while he took long, languid naps in the lifeguard chair.

You weren't entirely confident that he processed a single word you said as Kurt lowered you to the forest floor and laid you over his knee. "Oh fuck, oh holy fucking shit, (Y/N). What the fuck is that?"