The Habits of a Broken Clock (10/10)
Title: The Habits of a Broken Clock (10/10)
Author: blasthisass / lookingforever
Rating: PG-13
Summary: dw!Klaine: Kurt Hummel has a strange, inexplicable obsession with time, but he never have imagined that such an insignificant thing as a pocket watch and a mysterious boy with a blue box would change his life forever.
Word Count: 1944 (this chapter)
Previous Chapters: Here
Disclaimers: No one is mine. Move along now.
Spoilers: None
A/N: Enjoy and comment away! They're like crack to me :)
November 4, 2015
New York City, New York
“You suck, you know that?” Rachel declared, dropping her bag onto a plush window seat in the intercity Starbucks and marched off to acquire herself some coffee, though it seemed fairly certain that she did not need anymore.
Kurt snorted to himself in amusement and continued to glide his highlighter carefully over various locations and times for play auditions in the NYADA newsletter. He waited until his friend had flopped down in the armchair across from his before replying,
“Are you aware of the extent to which you behave as a broken record?”
“Stop looking exactly the same as you did when you were seventeen and then maybe we’ll talk.”
“Oh, yeah, Rachel, because at 21 you look absolutely ancient. God, you’ll never get those young roles now. Best accept the fact that the only part you’ll ever play is that of someone’s grandmother,” Kurt drawled sarcastically, settling back against the old leather of his armchair. “Just be grateful that you’re not constantly carded when you go to clubs.”
Rachel let out another huff of annoyance, for lack of anything more to say, and buried herself in stacks of potential audition sheet music.
His concentration broken, Kurt laid the newsletter down on his lap and shifted his position with a small, victorious smirk. He rested his booted feet on the windowsill, looking out on the busy New York street, allowing the warm sunlight to filter in through the window and warm the sleek curves of his cheekbones. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the smell of coffee engulfing him, the light, heart-beat-like pulse of his pocket watch warm and ever present in the confines of his vest, pressed against his heart.
The smile was partially at her jealousy (one of the main highlights for him in their relationship was his ability to send her into a jealous rage over anything). It was partially at the thought of what her reaction might be if she ever knew the fact that he might always look the way he did at seventeen. It was a strange, vague notion that he’d had since junior year when Mr. Schuester had announced their sectionals competition, when time had felt like it should have diverged from true events, but never quite actually did so. He felt as tough he should be feeling an odd, constant feeling of anxiety about the fact, as though waiting for the catalysis of the divergent of two existent timelines. He didn’t though, really.
But he did feel like he was waiting. But it wasn’t consciously and it was with an impossible sense of calm, supported by the warm weight of the pocket watch that he’d had for as long as he could remember. The little pocket watch that couldn’t actually tell time.
He opened his eyes a moment later, blinking against the harshness of sunlight, glittering against the dust in the air. He smiled suddenly, catching the eye of a man that had been busy perusing the menu hung outside the window. As soon as their eyes met, the man’s crinkled up into a smile and he winked, disappearing out of the frame of the street-facing window. Kurt was flooded with relief at the tension in his shoulders that hadn’t even made itself present to him until it was gone.
He sat up instantly in his chair and flipped the pages of the newsletter closed, sliding it and his highlighter and pens swiftly into his messenger bag.
“Where are you going?” Rachel demanded, head flying up from where it had been bent over scores. “You were supposed to help me pick an audition song!”
Kurt grinned, swinging his bag over his shoulder. “Anything you sing will be fantastic and you know it,” he replied cheerfully and squeezed past her out of the coffee shop, ignoring her yelling and grinning cheekily at her wild gestures as he passed the window.
The streets were full of people, but the object of Kurt’s interest was no longer anywhere in sight. But that feeling was present again, that warm glow about his heart and he couldn’t bring himself to feel agitated. He walked with a purpose, not even sure of where he was going, but knowing instinctively which turn would lead him to the object of his pursuit.
He finally turned into a street adjacent to Central Park, one in aesthetic features almost similar to a British residential lane. All he had to do was take one look at the rows of buildings and he knew, even before he saw the blue police box at the far corner and its ancient owner leaning casually against it, grinning cheekily.
Kurt mirrored the grin and though each inch of his body was suddenly inclined to surge forward, he flicked his hair out of his eyes with every air of coolness and walked forward slowly. Only those who would have gotten close enough to see the passionate blaze in his eye would have known him to be something other than a regular New Yorker on his daily route.
“My dear Doctor, what the hell have you got on your head?” Kurt called out cheerfully when he got close enough.
The Doctor’s brow furrowed and he adjusted the hat he was wearing. “It’s a fedora,” he called back, looking slightly defensive. “I wear Fedoras now. Fedoras are cool.” The pride in his voice almost cracked Kurt’s cool façade.
“Well, your fashion taste has certain changed for the better, though once you hit that awful blazer I suppose the only direction to go is up,” Kurt commented, coming to a stop. “Nice bowtie.”
“Bowties are cool, too.”
“Did I ever say anything to the contrary?” Kurt replied swiftly and, as though one entity, they broke out into identical grins, fuller still than the ones they’d first had when they’d spotted one another, their joy practically radiating sunshine. They stared at each other for a beat before Kurt lost any sense of self control and launched himself at the Doctor in an embrace that nearly knocked him over.
“I can’t believe you remembered me,” the Doctor murmured softly as Kurt buried his grin in the Doctor’s shoulder. “You never cease to amaze me.”
“Of course I did!” Kurt replied, pulling back and looking into his Doctor’s eyes.
“Well, technically you never met me, did you?” the Doctor shrugged. “Not this version, anyway.”
“Yeah . . .” Kurt murmured, tilting his head. “Explain to me what happened?”
“I thought it was obviously, Kurt Hummel, savior of the universe.”
“Doctor.”
“Fine, fine. Essentially, time got reversed to the point at which the universe started dying to ensure that everything was put back the way it was meant to be.”
Kurt rolled his eyes, growing seriously, because it had felt like a dream he’d had and he’d thought about it periodically and had never been able to figure it out. “You know what I mean, though? Why did everything resolve itself the way it did?”
The Doctor chuckled and ran a hand through his hair and that was the first moment that Kurt actually paused to take in his full appearance. The old Dalton uniform had been discarded and replaced by a black polo, red pants, a bowtie and the fedora that had been knocked off his head, revealing hair that, while still gelled, curled thickly instead of being plastered to his head.
And then there was the twinkle in his eye, a natural sunshine that hadn’t been there before, but that seemed like such an integral part of the Doctor that Kurt was almost bothered by the fact that its absence was never noticed.
“Honestly, I can’t pretend to fully understand it, because there’s something about being at the center of events that yields less certainty than standing at the perimeter,” the Doctor admitted, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “But as far as I can understand it, piecing it together from hints and whispers, the universe intricately connects itself to the oldest beings in creation, whether they be stars or planets or living creatures.”
“You’re not that old, though,” Kurt interrupted, his brow furrowing.
“Well, thanks.”
“I mean comparatively, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” the Doctor repeated cheekily. “But my people are some of the oldest in creation and I’m the last one left. So somewhere along the way, we became paradoxically linked.”
“Paradoxically in that you could save both by saving one, but none if you saved the other?” Kurt asked.
“I suppose. You, though . . . sometimes I fail to understand how you fit in. A fixed point in time and space, just becoming so on its own accord. The fact that you always seemed to be there. why falling in love with you would be the thing that was supposed to save me.”
Kurt inhaled sharply, his eyes widening as though he seriously hadn’t considered the possibility.
“Don’t you look like that, like you didn’t know,” the Doctor laughed. “Granted, I didn’t know until I was willing to die so that you wouldn’t have to spend all eternity attached to that machine. Because, hero that people might call me,” he murmured almost bitterly to himself, “I’d let so many people die for me. But you . . . I thought that letting you sacrifice yourself for me like that would have killed me anyway. I thought . . . before I met you I lost someone incredibly special to me, someone that I had really never expected to and . . . I’ve had a long, hard life. Begin the last of the Time Lords is like a curse, confining you to meeting people only to lose them and River . . . River seemed like the final straw. But then you came along and you warmed my spirit and I just . . . losing you would have just torn everything to shreds, so . . .” he paused, his eyes widening, as though he’d spoken words he’d never considered before, though logically they seemed completely obvious. “But you. You knew, which is why you made the choice you did. How?”
Kurt opened his mouth, but closed it before saying anything. A moment later he spoke. “She hinted actually. Your TARDIS,” he said, glancing at the majestic blue box. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t know what to do, you know. But something she said in all her hints and all her riddles and some part of me . . . took a guess, took a chance and hoped that it was the right one.” He shrugged, glancing down at his shoes before looking back up. “And it’s funny because when everything restarted itself, I had this sense of a whole other lifetime and I felt that if I just waited long enough, it would eventually catch up with me.”
“Oh, yeah?” the Doctor inquired, raising an eyebrow, his eyes twinkling playfully. “You were so sure that I would come that you didn’t even bother reenacting romantic comedy montages of waiting at the place and on the date that you ran into my other regenerations? You were that sure I would come looking for you?”
“Yup,” Kurt smiled, winking. “Guess I know you better than you know yourself, huh?”
The Doctor snorted and took as step forward until they were almost nose to nose. Kurt inhaled and stiffened when he felt the Doctor’s fingers against his side. “What’re you-”
“So you stealing my hobb watch did absolutely nothing to boost your confidence?” the Doctor interrupted, grinning mischievously as he dangled the pocket watch that he had somehow recovered from Kurt’s pocket. “You were very subtle about it, by the way. I was impressed.”
“It may have factored in somewhat, yeah,” Kurt smirked as the pocket watch, after one final swing on the wind between them, ended up in the Doctor’s pocket where it rightly belonged. Kurt continued to look at the Doctor, at the crinkles of laughter in the corners of his eyes, at the glow in them.
“You look younger.”
The Doctor smiled, his face lighting up affectionately in the warm stream of fall sunlight. “You haven’t aged a day since I met you,” was his soft reply.
“And my friends never let me forget it. The perks of being a ‘fixed figure,’ eh?” Kurt laughed.
The Doctor raised an eyebrow, his amusement stalled as though he’d gotten a sudden, spur-of-the-moment idea, though the everlasting twinkle in his eye implied that whatever he was about to utter had been at the forefront of his mind for quite some time.
“I can name some other benefits.”
Kurt’s eyes widened and he leaned in to murmur in a whisper, “Is that supposed to sound dirty, Time Lord?”
The Doctor smirked and leaned in further still, his breath glossing over Kurt’s ear. “If you want. But it’s not entirely what I had in mind. All of time and space I once offered you, Kurt Hummel, with your morality at the very back of my mind. I offer it to you now with no restrictions. Every century, every planet and the both of us able to spend unlimited time to experience it. What do you say . . . Kurt?”
Kurt held his breath at the closeness of the Time Lord, his eyes trained on the blue of the police box, the prospects, unconsidered up until that point, making his soul tingle.
“Do you honestly think I would ever turn you down?” he breathed out.
He could feel the Doctor’s smile, somehow, and when they separated the Doctor simultaneously laid one hand on the TARDIS door to open it and the other intertwined with Kurt’s.
“Let’s go, then,” he replied, his eyes glowing with affection, as he started backing into the magical box.
“Where?” Kurt inquired.
The Doctor pulled a face of mock concentration. He stepped out of the TARDIS and, winding an arm around Kurt’s waist, pulled him closer until their sides were flush against each other and their cheeks almost touched as they both directed their gazes toward the sky.
“How about . . . there?” The Doctor’s hand picked an arbitrary spot on the cloudless sky.
“Perfect.”
Author: blasthisass / lookingforever
Rating: PG-13
Summary: dw!Klaine: Kurt Hummel has a strange, inexplicable obsession with time, but he never have imagined that such an insignificant thing as a pocket watch and a mysterious boy with a blue box would change his life forever.
Word Count: 1944 (this chapter)
Previous Chapters: Here
Disclaimers: No one is mine. Move along now.
Spoilers: None
A/N: Enjoy and comment away! They're like crack to me :)
November 4, 2015
New York City, New York
“You suck, you know that?” Rachel declared, dropping her bag onto a plush window seat in the intercity Starbucks and marched off to acquire herself some coffee, though it seemed fairly certain that she did not need anymore.
Kurt snorted to himself in amusement and continued to glide his highlighter carefully over various locations and times for play auditions in the NYADA newsletter. He waited until his friend had flopped down in the armchair across from his before replying,
“Are you aware of the extent to which you behave as a broken record?”
“Stop looking exactly the same as you did when you were seventeen and then maybe we’ll talk.”
“Oh, yeah, Rachel, because at 21 you look absolutely ancient. God, you’ll never get those young roles now. Best accept the fact that the only part you’ll ever play is that of someone’s grandmother,” Kurt drawled sarcastically, settling back against the old leather of his armchair. “Just be grateful that you’re not constantly carded when you go to clubs.”
Rachel let out another huff of annoyance, for lack of anything more to say, and buried herself in stacks of potential audition sheet music.
His concentration broken, Kurt laid the newsletter down on his lap and shifted his position with a small, victorious smirk. He rested his booted feet on the windowsill, looking out on the busy New York street, allowing the warm sunlight to filter in through the window and warm the sleek curves of his cheekbones. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the smell of coffee engulfing him, the light, heart-beat-like pulse of his pocket watch warm and ever present in the confines of his vest, pressed against his heart.
The smile was partially at her jealousy (one of the main highlights for him in their relationship was his ability to send her into a jealous rage over anything). It was partially at the thought of what her reaction might be if she ever knew the fact that he might always look the way he did at seventeen. It was a strange, vague notion that he’d had since junior year when Mr. Schuester had announced their sectionals competition, when time had felt like it should have diverged from true events, but never quite actually did so. He felt as tough he should be feeling an odd, constant feeling of anxiety about the fact, as though waiting for the catalysis of the divergent of two existent timelines. He didn’t though, really.
But he did feel like he was waiting. But it wasn’t consciously and it was with an impossible sense of calm, supported by the warm weight of the pocket watch that he’d had for as long as he could remember. The little pocket watch that couldn’t actually tell time.
He opened his eyes a moment later, blinking against the harshness of sunlight, glittering against the dust in the air. He smiled suddenly, catching the eye of a man that had been busy perusing the menu hung outside the window. As soon as their eyes met, the man’s crinkled up into a smile and he winked, disappearing out of the frame of the street-facing window. Kurt was flooded with relief at the tension in his shoulders that hadn’t even made itself present to him until it was gone.
He sat up instantly in his chair and flipped the pages of the newsletter closed, sliding it and his highlighter and pens swiftly into his messenger bag.
“Where are you going?” Rachel demanded, head flying up from where it had been bent over scores. “You were supposed to help me pick an audition song!”
Kurt grinned, swinging his bag over his shoulder. “Anything you sing will be fantastic and you know it,” he replied cheerfully and squeezed past her out of the coffee shop, ignoring her yelling and grinning cheekily at her wild gestures as he passed the window.
The streets were full of people, but the object of Kurt’s interest was no longer anywhere in sight. But that feeling was present again, that warm glow about his heart and he couldn’t bring himself to feel agitated. He walked with a purpose, not even sure of where he was going, but knowing instinctively which turn would lead him to the object of his pursuit.
He finally turned into a street adjacent to Central Park, one in aesthetic features almost similar to a British residential lane. All he had to do was take one look at the rows of buildings and he knew, even before he saw the blue police box at the far corner and its ancient owner leaning casually against it, grinning cheekily.
Kurt mirrored the grin and though each inch of his body was suddenly inclined to surge forward, he flicked his hair out of his eyes with every air of coolness and walked forward slowly. Only those who would have gotten close enough to see the passionate blaze in his eye would have known him to be something other than a regular New Yorker on his daily route.
“My dear Doctor, what the hell have you got on your head?” Kurt called out cheerfully when he got close enough.
The Doctor’s brow furrowed and he adjusted the hat he was wearing. “It’s a fedora,” he called back, looking slightly defensive. “I wear Fedoras now. Fedoras are cool.” The pride in his voice almost cracked Kurt’s cool façade.
“Well, your fashion taste has certain changed for the better, though once you hit that awful blazer I suppose the only direction to go is up,” Kurt commented, coming to a stop. “Nice bowtie.”
“Bowties are cool, too.”
“Did I ever say anything to the contrary?” Kurt replied swiftly and, as though one entity, they broke out into identical grins, fuller still than the ones they’d first had when they’d spotted one another, their joy practically radiating sunshine. They stared at each other for a beat before Kurt lost any sense of self control and launched himself at the Doctor in an embrace that nearly knocked him over.
“I can’t believe you remembered me,” the Doctor murmured softly as Kurt buried his grin in the Doctor’s shoulder. “You never cease to amaze me.”
“Of course I did!” Kurt replied, pulling back and looking into his Doctor’s eyes.
“Well, technically you never met me, did you?” the Doctor shrugged. “Not this version, anyway.”
“Yeah . . .” Kurt murmured, tilting his head. “Explain to me what happened?”
“I thought it was obviously, Kurt Hummel, savior of the universe.”
“Doctor.”
“Fine, fine. Essentially, time got reversed to the point at which the universe started dying to ensure that everything was put back the way it was meant to be.”
Kurt rolled his eyes, growing seriously, because it had felt like a dream he’d had and he’d thought about it periodically and had never been able to figure it out. “You know what I mean, though? Why did everything resolve itself the way it did?”
The Doctor chuckled and ran a hand through his hair and that was the first moment that Kurt actually paused to take in his full appearance. The old Dalton uniform had been discarded and replaced by a black polo, red pants, a bowtie and the fedora that had been knocked off his head, revealing hair that, while still gelled, curled thickly instead of being plastered to his head.
And then there was the twinkle in his eye, a natural sunshine that hadn’t been there before, but that seemed like such an integral part of the Doctor that Kurt was almost bothered by the fact that its absence was never noticed.
“Honestly, I can’t pretend to fully understand it, because there’s something about being at the center of events that yields less certainty than standing at the perimeter,” the Doctor admitted, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “But as far as I can understand it, piecing it together from hints and whispers, the universe intricately connects itself to the oldest beings in creation, whether they be stars or planets or living creatures.”
“You’re not that old, though,” Kurt interrupted, his brow furrowing.
“Well, thanks.”
“I mean comparatively, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” the Doctor repeated cheekily. “But my people are some of the oldest in creation and I’m the last one left. So somewhere along the way, we became paradoxically linked.”
“Paradoxically in that you could save both by saving one, but none if you saved the other?” Kurt asked.
“I suppose. You, though . . . sometimes I fail to understand how you fit in. A fixed point in time and space, just becoming so on its own accord. The fact that you always seemed to be there. why falling in love with you would be the thing that was supposed to save me.”
Kurt inhaled sharply, his eyes widening as though he seriously hadn’t considered the possibility.
“Don’t you look like that, like you didn’t know,” the Doctor laughed. “Granted, I didn’t know until I was willing to die so that you wouldn’t have to spend all eternity attached to that machine. Because, hero that people might call me,” he murmured almost bitterly to himself, “I’d let so many people die for me. But you . . . I thought that letting you sacrifice yourself for me like that would have killed me anyway. I thought . . . before I met you I lost someone incredibly special to me, someone that I had really never expected to and . . . I’ve had a long, hard life. Begin the last of the Time Lords is like a curse, confining you to meeting people only to lose them and River . . . River seemed like the final straw. But then you came along and you warmed my spirit and I just . . . losing you would have just torn everything to shreds, so . . .” he paused, his eyes widening, as though he’d spoken words he’d never considered before, though logically they seemed completely obvious. “But you. You knew, which is why you made the choice you did. How?”
Kurt opened his mouth, but closed it before saying anything. A moment later he spoke. “She hinted actually. Your TARDIS,” he said, glancing at the majestic blue box. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t know what to do, you know. But something she said in all her hints and all her riddles and some part of me . . . took a guess, took a chance and hoped that it was the right one.” He shrugged, glancing down at his shoes before looking back up. “And it’s funny because when everything restarted itself, I had this sense of a whole other lifetime and I felt that if I just waited long enough, it would eventually catch up with me.”
“Oh, yeah?” the Doctor inquired, raising an eyebrow, his eyes twinkling playfully. “You were so sure that I would come that you didn’t even bother reenacting romantic comedy montages of waiting at the place and on the date that you ran into my other regenerations? You were that sure I would come looking for you?”
“Yup,” Kurt smiled, winking. “Guess I know you better than you know yourself, huh?”
The Doctor snorted and took as step forward until they were almost nose to nose. Kurt inhaled and stiffened when he felt the Doctor’s fingers against his side. “What’re you-”
“So you stealing my hobb watch did absolutely nothing to boost your confidence?” the Doctor interrupted, grinning mischievously as he dangled the pocket watch that he had somehow recovered from Kurt’s pocket. “You were very subtle about it, by the way. I was impressed.”
“It may have factored in somewhat, yeah,” Kurt smirked as the pocket watch, after one final swing on the wind between them, ended up in the Doctor’s pocket where it rightly belonged. Kurt continued to look at the Doctor, at the crinkles of laughter in the corners of his eyes, at the glow in them.
“You look younger.”
The Doctor smiled, his face lighting up affectionately in the warm stream of fall sunlight. “You haven’t aged a day since I met you,” was his soft reply.
“And my friends never let me forget it. The perks of being a ‘fixed figure,’ eh?” Kurt laughed.
The Doctor raised an eyebrow, his amusement stalled as though he’d gotten a sudden, spur-of-the-moment idea, though the everlasting twinkle in his eye implied that whatever he was about to utter had been at the forefront of his mind for quite some time.
“I can name some other benefits.”
Kurt’s eyes widened and he leaned in to murmur in a whisper, “Is that supposed to sound dirty, Time Lord?”
The Doctor smirked and leaned in further still, his breath glossing over Kurt’s ear. “If you want. But it’s not entirely what I had in mind. All of time and space I once offered you, Kurt Hummel, with your morality at the very back of my mind. I offer it to you now with no restrictions. Every century, every planet and the both of us able to spend unlimited time to experience it. What do you say . . . Kurt?”
Kurt held his breath at the closeness of the Time Lord, his eyes trained on the blue of the police box, the prospects, unconsidered up until that point, making his soul tingle.
“Do you honestly think I would ever turn you down?” he breathed out.
He could feel the Doctor’s smile, somehow, and when they separated the Doctor simultaneously laid one hand on the TARDIS door to open it and the other intertwined with Kurt’s.
“Let’s go, then,” he replied, his eyes glowing with affection, as he started backing into the magical box.
“Where?” Kurt inquired.
The Doctor pulled a face of mock concentration. He stepped out of the TARDIS and, winding an arm around Kurt’s waist, pulled him closer until their sides were flush against each other and their cheeks almost touched as they both directed their gazes toward the sky.
“How about . . . there?” The Doctor’s hand picked an arbitrary spot on the cloudless sky.
“Perfect.”