Fic: Your Name Like a Song I Sing to Myself
Media: Fic
Title: Your Name Like a Song I Sing to Myself
Rating: R
Spoilers: Blaine is a junior and Ryan Murphy is cruel?
Warnings: angst, unbeta'd
Word Count: ~2000
Summary: The night after Kurt’s graduation Blaine walks into his room, flesh trembling with something wild, throws the calendar hanging above his bed out the storm bruised window and watches as the almost tornado turns the pages into an animal broken winged and tragic.
A/N: I started writing this before 317 but somehow it kind of works as a reaction fic. The title of the story is taken from a Richard Siken poem called Saying Your Names, which I'll post a excerpt from under the cut. I apologize for any mistakes or errors I might have missed, I do go over everything but I don't have a beta and am only human so I tend to miss a few things.
All night I stretched my arms across
him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing
with all my skin and bone Please keep him safe.
Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be
like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed
to pieces. Makes a cathedral, him pressing against
me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe
his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me
like stars. Names of heat and names of light,
names of collision in the dark, on the side of the
bus, in the bark of the tree, in ballpoint pen
on jeans and hands and the backs of matchbooks
that then get lost. Names like pain cries, names
like tombstones, names forgotten and reinvented,
names forbidden or overused. Your name like
a song I sing to myself, your name like a box
where I keep my love, your name like a nest
in the tree of love, your name like a boat in the
sea of love - O now we’re in the sea of love!
Saying Your Names (an excerpt)
The night after Kurt’s graduation Blaine walks into his room, flesh trembling with something wild, throws the calendar hanging above his bed out the storm bruised window and watches as the almost tornado turns the pages into an animal broken winged and tragic. When he falls asleep it’s to the sound of his old alarm clock, loud and unapologetic through the familiar void of his bedroom.
***
He tries not to count. Doesn’t open the calendar on his phone or worry about the date much, because it’s summer and he’s not supposed to, because the Ohio sun is merciless and he’s trying not to become just an old burn mark at the edge of Kurt’s spine or somewhere by his lips. A month before he has to leave Kurt says his name like he’s practicing for the emails they’ll be too busy to write, calls him dear the next day like it’s handwritten at the beginning of a letter, and on the drive home Blaine pulls over so he doesn’t become a less pathetic tragedy.
***
That’s how he keeps count, through Kurt. The next week Kurt pushes him into the old Hummel couch in the basement, tears his clothes like he’s trying to build a crime scene, moves on top of him like a man Blaine wouldn’t have recognized a year ago and when he says Blaine’s name like there’s a gun and too much blood on his hands Blaine knows, wants to scream, call 911, hey, hello, we have an emergency, because they’re down to three weeks, because he can hear his old alarm clock like bullet fires in his bedroom miles from here.
***
At two weeks Blaine walks into Kurt’s bedroom to find him sorting through photographs and stacking them into an old wooden box Blaine knows was Kurt’s mother. He’s singing something Blaine doesn’t recognize in its whispers, something special enough to be kept to himself, not shared with Mr. Hummel, who Blaine passed downstairs, or Carol in the kitchen, or Finn and Rachel in the next room. He catches Blaine at the corner of his eyesight, finishes the next verse with a soft smile on his face, then whispers his name with the dying melody like it’s a part of the song, secret and sacred and his, and Blaine falls in love for the thousandth time, and breaks, completely and wholly, for the first.
***
They reach one week and Kurt picks Blaine up from his house to take him to the crumbling dollar theater at the edge of Lima where they watch a movie that’s already on DVD, sitting in the back grasping secretly desperate hands, anchors, stealing kisses and saying little, trying not to drown -- in the dark of the movie theater, in the light that comes in waves from the screen, in the small distance Blaine still feels between them even when they’re this close, and in the miles between Lima and New York City.
Blaine notices the silence. He knows it’s down to one week because Kurt hadn’t said his name in the phone, not even in the quiet way he’d been accustomed to in the past few days, had just smiled at him when he’d gotten in the car, held his hand on the drive while he sang and Blaine listened.
When it’s time to drop Blaine off at his house Kurt parks by the cul-de-sac where he knows the house has been vacant, turns the car off and keeps his hands on the keys while he turns to look at Blaine. He has a kind, soft smile on his face like he can’t see where Blaine broke last week, is still breaking on his passenger seat, will continue to break once he leaves, and until they’re together, for good, again. He leans in, touches his lips to Blaine’s cheek, then unbuckles his seat belt and settles on the backseat with the rustling of clothes that sound loud against all the words they haven’t said.
Blaine doesn’t look back, doesn’t say anything, fumbles with the ring Kurt had given him a month before graduation, bites his lips so he doesn’t beg, promise me, promise me again you’ll wait for me, promise me we’ll be happy. He hears more rustling, quiet now under everything Blaine wishes he could say without being selfish, and sighs when Kurt settles on the compartment between the driver and passenger seat, left leg touching Blaine’s thigh, tucked in a way that lets him face Blaine. “Blaine,” he says it in a whisper, secret, a picture in a locket, safe, and Blaine doesn’t look at him, can’t look at him, feels a shiver, Kurt’s voice, an avalanche wrecking disaster through his body. “Hey, Blaine, look at me.” He lifts both arms to move around Blaine then, right arm behind Blaine’s neck and hand on his shoulder, left hand settling over Blaine’s chest. Blaine thinks there should be blood through his shirt, blood on Kurt’s hand where it’s lying over Blaine’s heart. “Hey,” Kurt settles his forehead against Blaine’s temple, kisses where the skin blooms into his ear, moves towards his cheek, “Blaine, hey,” lifts his left hand to Blaine’s chin so he turns and they’re face to face, kisses him light and teasing and everything tonight isn’t, “Join me in the back seat?”
Blaine sighs, whispers, “Kurt,” like it’s surrender, a cry for mercy, but Kurt only shakes his head small and hushing, kisses him again, says, “Come on,” like his voice isn’t wavering, like the blood on his hands isn’t some of his own too, “for old time’s sake?”
They end up naked in the backseat, and it’s not like the old times at all, quick and fumbling friction with a too thick layer of clothes between them -- it’s with Blaine bare skinned and bare boned on top of Kurt, burying bruises into every place his fingers meet Kurt’s skin, eventually not touching Kurt with his hands at all, touching himself with eyes closed while his hips move in a way only Kurt has seen, only Kurt understands, only Kurt can decipher, this is what I can give you, this is what you’ll be hundreds of miles away from, and this is what you’ll miss.
***
The night before Kurt leaves Blaine drives home at eight o’clock at night, because Kurt’s plane leaves early and he needs his rest, because Blaine has slept on the Hudson-Hummel couch for the past three nights anyway and because they have to get used, once again, to waking up empty handed, because Kurt is leaving and they have no clue how to be alone for more than three days straight, because they have to learn. Blaine tells himself this, repeats it on the drive home so he doesn’t turn back. He pulls over twice before getting to his house, hits the steering wheel so hard he has to wait to start driving again, and doesn’t break down until he’s at his doorstep.
He sits by the steps that lead to the second floor, holds himself because he knows if he doesn’t he’ll finish breaking and there’ll be no piece of him left that’s not sharp edged and hazardous. He tries not to break and forgets about his mother, who always reads in the living room at night, and his father, who’s always in his study, forgets that it’s not just Kurt, because inside of him it is, has been, will always be. But his mother approaches him, encircles her arm around his shoulder, and says, “Kurt needs you,” like Blaine’s not the one being left behind in the void of Lima, Ohio, like he’s not cutting into her palm where it’s resting on the sharp edge of his right shoulder, like he’s not the weak one.
He packs a bag, goes anyway, and when he pulls up Kurt is sitting the steps of the front door, face buried in his hands for a moment too long before looking up.
Neither of them say anything, but they sit outside until it’s late enough that cars are no longer driving by, Kurt’s arms around Blaine, Blaine’s head against Kurt’s chest, thinking that no two people that fit so effortlessly like this should ever have to say goodbye.
Back inside they ignore the couch where Blaine usually sleeps, and later when they’re both naked on Kurt’s bed, Blaine stays inside of Kurt for longer than either of them have ever been inside each other, slow and tamed desperation that they try to understand, get accustomed to, because this is how it’ll be from now, because this is what the distance will do.
Eventually, after too long, Blaine feels the way Kurt’s nails are bruising black holes across his body, places where in the morning they will just be voids and reminders of when Kurt was close enough to touch him. He inhales, runs the hand with Kurt’s promise ring down Kurt’s neck, allows the ring to leave its mark, and lets himself, finally, near the edge, leans down to whisper against Kurt’s skin, “I’m letting go because I know you’ll be waiting for me in New York,” and Kurt nods his head, “Yes, Blaine, yes,” kisses him with desperation that’s no longer slow and tamed and lets go, digging into Blaine’s shoulders, taking Blaine with him.
***
In the morning they have breakfast together and the table feels empty without Finn and Rachel, who are both already in New York. It’s quieter too, Blaine thinks, without Finn. He looks at Carole and sees her in the night, tip toeing to Finn’s empty and too clean room, touching the dusty dresser and breaking. It’s more subtle, Blaine thinks, the way mothers break, tentative and considerate, not the way Blaine’s been bleeding everywhere, careless with stains and bloody fingerprints on the carpet and on every furniture across the house.
He looks at Burt, too, who doesn’t seem to be doing much better, and then Kurt - Kurt, who has had the New York City skyline behind his eyelids since Blaine’s known him, Kurt, who looks at him and blinks too fast, like he doesn’t want to keep his eyes closed for too long so he doesn’t have to see what he’s been keeping behind it, Kurt, who looks just as broken as Carole and just as miserable as Burt. Blaine laughs, then, startles everyone, and says, “You’re going to New York, Kurt,” like it’s unbelievable and makes perfect and complete sense simultaneously, like it’s the wonderful thing that Blaine knows it is, like it’s New York City, and they smile, and laugh, and Kurt grabs his hand, leans his cheek against Blaine’s palm, closes his eyes, inhales deeply, and smiles when he opens his eyes like he can’t believe Blaine is still there.
***
At the airport they kiss for the first time in public, because Kurt initiates it, because Blaine knows Kurt wants to give him a taste of what they’ll have when Blaine visits for the first time, and second, and third, then finally for the last time, to stay.
It’s clean, a long press to each other’s lips, hard enough to bruise. When they part Kurt doesn’t pull away, whispers, “There’ll be a boy by the central park steps,” and Blaine remembers Dalton and the stair case, and I’m new here, “he’ll be lonely and a little bit lost. Go get him, okay?” And Blaine nods, doesn't understand yet, and kisses him again, a little bit dirty because he wants Kurt’s lips to ghost and linger afterwards. He doesn’t understand until Kurt is yards away, Blaine's phone ringing in his pocket, and Kurt in the other line saying, “I’m in love with you, Blaine Warbler,” like he used to before Blaine transferred, like it’s only the beginning, and Blaine half laughs, half sobs, and nods, says, “I’m in love with you,” because he understands that it is.
Title: Your Name Like a Song I Sing to Myself
Rating: R
Spoilers: Blaine is a junior and Ryan Murphy is cruel?
Warnings: angst, unbeta'd
Word Count: ~2000
Summary: The night after Kurt’s graduation Blaine walks into his room, flesh trembling with something wild, throws the calendar hanging above his bed out the storm bruised window and watches as the almost tornado turns the pages into an animal broken winged and tragic.
A/N: I started writing this before 317 but somehow it kind of works as a reaction fic. The title of the story is taken from a Richard Siken poem called Saying Your Names, which I'll post a excerpt from under the cut. I apologize for any mistakes or errors I might have missed, I do go over everything but I don't have a beta and am only human so I tend to miss a few things.
All night I stretched my arms across
him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing
with all my skin and bone Please keep him safe.
Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be
like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed
to pieces. Makes a cathedral, him pressing against
me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe
his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me
like stars. Names of heat and names of light,
names of collision in the dark, on the side of the
bus, in the bark of the tree, in ballpoint pen
on jeans and hands and the backs of matchbooks
that then get lost. Names like pain cries, names
like tombstones, names forgotten and reinvented,
names forbidden or overused. Your name like
a song I sing to myself, your name like a box
where I keep my love, your name like a nest
in the tree of love, your name like a boat in the
sea of love - O now we’re in the sea of love!
Saying Your Names (an excerpt)
The night after Kurt’s graduation Blaine walks into his room, flesh trembling with something wild, throws the calendar hanging above his bed out the storm bruised window and watches as the almost tornado turns the pages into an animal broken winged and tragic. When he falls asleep it’s to the sound of his old alarm clock, loud and unapologetic through the familiar void of his bedroom.
***
He tries not to count. Doesn’t open the calendar on his phone or worry about the date much, because it’s summer and he’s not supposed to, because the Ohio sun is merciless and he’s trying not to become just an old burn mark at the edge of Kurt’s spine or somewhere by his lips. A month before he has to leave Kurt says his name like he’s practicing for the emails they’ll be too busy to write, calls him dear the next day like it’s handwritten at the beginning of a letter, and on the drive home Blaine pulls over so he doesn’t become a less pathetic tragedy.
***
That’s how he keeps count, through Kurt. The next week Kurt pushes him into the old Hummel couch in the basement, tears his clothes like he’s trying to build a crime scene, moves on top of him like a man Blaine wouldn’t have recognized a year ago and when he says Blaine’s name like there’s a gun and too much blood on his hands Blaine knows, wants to scream, call 911, hey, hello, we have an emergency, because they’re down to three weeks, because he can hear his old alarm clock like bullet fires in his bedroom miles from here.
***
At two weeks Blaine walks into Kurt’s bedroom to find him sorting through photographs and stacking them into an old wooden box Blaine knows was Kurt’s mother. He’s singing something Blaine doesn’t recognize in its whispers, something special enough to be kept to himself, not shared with Mr. Hummel, who Blaine passed downstairs, or Carol in the kitchen, or Finn and Rachel in the next room. He catches Blaine at the corner of his eyesight, finishes the next verse with a soft smile on his face, then whispers his name with the dying melody like it’s a part of the song, secret and sacred and his, and Blaine falls in love for the thousandth time, and breaks, completely and wholly, for the first.
***
They reach one week and Kurt picks Blaine up from his house to take him to the crumbling dollar theater at the edge of Lima where they watch a movie that’s already on DVD, sitting in the back grasping secretly desperate hands, anchors, stealing kisses and saying little, trying not to drown -- in the dark of the movie theater, in the light that comes in waves from the screen, in the small distance Blaine still feels between them even when they’re this close, and in the miles between Lima and New York City.
Blaine notices the silence. He knows it’s down to one week because Kurt hadn’t said his name in the phone, not even in the quiet way he’d been accustomed to in the past few days, had just smiled at him when he’d gotten in the car, held his hand on the drive while he sang and Blaine listened.
When it’s time to drop Blaine off at his house Kurt parks by the cul-de-sac where he knows the house has been vacant, turns the car off and keeps his hands on the keys while he turns to look at Blaine. He has a kind, soft smile on his face like he can’t see where Blaine broke last week, is still breaking on his passenger seat, will continue to break once he leaves, and until they’re together, for good, again. He leans in, touches his lips to Blaine’s cheek, then unbuckles his seat belt and settles on the backseat with the rustling of clothes that sound loud against all the words they haven’t said.
Blaine doesn’t look back, doesn’t say anything, fumbles with the ring Kurt had given him a month before graduation, bites his lips so he doesn’t beg, promise me, promise me again you’ll wait for me, promise me we’ll be happy. He hears more rustling, quiet now under everything Blaine wishes he could say without being selfish, and sighs when Kurt settles on the compartment between the driver and passenger seat, left leg touching Blaine’s thigh, tucked in a way that lets him face Blaine. “Blaine,” he says it in a whisper, secret, a picture in a locket, safe, and Blaine doesn’t look at him, can’t look at him, feels a shiver, Kurt’s voice, an avalanche wrecking disaster through his body. “Hey, Blaine, look at me.” He lifts both arms to move around Blaine then, right arm behind Blaine’s neck and hand on his shoulder, left hand settling over Blaine’s chest. Blaine thinks there should be blood through his shirt, blood on Kurt’s hand where it’s lying over Blaine’s heart. “Hey,” Kurt settles his forehead against Blaine’s temple, kisses where the skin blooms into his ear, moves towards his cheek, “Blaine, hey,” lifts his left hand to Blaine’s chin so he turns and they’re face to face, kisses him light and teasing and everything tonight isn’t, “Join me in the back seat?”
Blaine sighs, whispers, “Kurt,” like it’s surrender, a cry for mercy, but Kurt only shakes his head small and hushing, kisses him again, says, “Come on,” like his voice isn’t wavering, like the blood on his hands isn’t some of his own too, “for old time’s sake?”
They end up naked in the backseat, and it’s not like the old times at all, quick and fumbling friction with a too thick layer of clothes between them -- it’s with Blaine bare skinned and bare boned on top of Kurt, burying bruises into every place his fingers meet Kurt’s skin, eventually not touching Kurt with his hands at all, touching himself with eyes closed while his hips move in a way only Kurt has seen, only Kurt understands, only Kurt can decipher, this is what I can give you, this is what you’ll be hundreds of miles away from, and this is what you’ll miss.
***
The night before Kurt leaves Blaine drives home at eight o’clock at night, because Kurt’s plane leaves early and he needs his rest, because Blaine has slept on the Hudson-Hummel couch for the past three nights anyway and because they have to get used, once again, to waking up empty handed, because Kurt is leaving and they have no clue how to be alone for more than three days straight, because they have to learn. Blaine tells himself this, repeats it on the drive home so he doesn’t turn back. He pulls over twice before getting to his house, hits the steering wheel so hard he has to wait to start driving again, and doesn’t break down until he’s at his doorstep.
He sits by the steps that lead to the second floor, holds himself because he knows if he doesn’t he’ll finish breaking and there’ll be no piece of him left that’s not sharp edged and hazardous. He tries not to break and forgets about his mother, who always reads in the living room at night, and his father, who’s always in his study, forgets that it’s not just Kurt, because inside of him it is, has been, will always be. But his mother approaches him, encircles her arm around his shoulder, and says, “Kurt needs you,” like Blaine’s not the one being left behind in the void of Lima, Ohio, like he’s not cutting into her palm where it’s resting on the sharp edge of his right shoulder, like he’s not the weak one.
He packs a bag, goes anyway, and when he pulls up Kurt is sitting the steps of the front door, face buried in his hands for a moment too long before looking up.
Neither of them say anything, but they sit outside until it’s late enough that cars are no longer driving by, Kurt’s arms around Blaine, Blaine’s head against Kurt’s chest, thinking that no two people that fit so effortlessly like this should ever have to say goodbye.
Back inside they ignore the couch where Blaine usually sleeps, and later when they’re both naked on Kurt’s bed, Blaine stays inside of Kurt for longer than either of them have ever been inside each other, slow and tamed desperation that they try to understand, get accustomed to, because this is how it’ll be from now, because this is what the distance will do.
Eventually, after too long, Blaine feels the way Kurt’s nails are bruising black holes across his body, places where in the morning they will just be voids and reminders of when Kurt was close enough to touch him. He inhales, runs the hand with Kurt’s promise ring down Kurt’s neck, allows the ring to leave its mark, and lets himself, finally, near the edge, leans down to whisper against Kurt’s skin, “I’m letting go because I know you’ll be waiting for me in New York,” and Kurt nods his head, “Yes, Blaine, yes,” kisses him with desperation that’s no longer slow and tamed and lets go, digging into Blaine’s shoulders, taking Blaine with him.
***
In the morning they have breakfast together and the table feels empty without Finn and Rachel, who are both already in New York. It’s quieter too, Blaine thinks, without Finn. He looks at Carole and sees her in the night, tip toeing to Finn’s empty and too clean room, touching the dusty dresser and breaking. It’s more subtle, Blaine thinks, the way mothers break, tentative and considerate, not the way Blaine’s been bleeding everywhere, careless with stains and bloody fingerprints on the carpet and on every furniture across the house.
He looks at Burt, too, who doesn’t seem to be doing much better, and then Kurt - Kurt, who has had the New York City skyline behind his eyelids since Blaine’s known him, Kurt, who looks at him and blinks too fast, like he doesn’t want to keep his eyes closed for too long so he doesn’t have to see what he’s been keeping behind it, Kurt, who looks just as broken as Carole and just as miserable as Burt. Blaine laughs, then, startles everyone, and says, “You’re going to New York, Kurt,” like it’s unbelievable and makes perfect and complete sense simultaneously, like it’s the wonderful thing that Blaine knows it is, like it’s New York City, and they smile, and laugh, and Kurt grabs his hand, leans his cheek against Blaine’s palm, closes his eyes, inhales deeply, and smiles when he opens his eyes like he can’t believe Blaine is still there.
***
At the airport they kiss for the first time in public, because Kurt initiates it, because Blaine knows Kurt wants to give him a taste of what they’ll have when Blaine visits for the first time, and second, and third, then finally for the last time, to stay.
It’s clean, a long press to each other’s lips, hard enough to bruise. When they part Kurt doesn’t pull away, whispers, “There’ll be a boy by the central park steps,” and Blaine remembers Dalton and the stair case, and I’m new here, “he’ll be lonely and a little bit lost. Go get him, okay?” And Blaine nods, doesn't understand yet, and kisses him again, a little bit dirty because he wants Kurt’s lips to ghost and linger afterwards. He doesn’t understand until Kurt is yards away, Blaine's phone ringing in his pocket, and Kurt in the other line saying, “I’m in love with you, Blaine Warbler,” like he used to before Blaine transferred, like it’s only the beginning, and Blaine half laughs, half sobs, and nods, says, “I’m in love with you,” because he understands that it is.