fic: final destination (13/16)
Title: Final Destination (13/16)
Rating: R for language, mature content, sexuality, strong violence, horror, gore
Spoilers: Through Furt but everything to be safe. All Final Destination movies.
Summary: A Kinn spin on Final Destination. On their senior trip, Kurt has a vision and when several students are saved from a tragedy because of it, Death haunts the Glee Club and circles back to claim its victims. Horror/Romance/Drama. AU.
Warnings: Character death! This is *horror*. There *will* be a body count. Nothing too graphic, but characters *will* die throughout the story. Also, suspend your disbelief. This franchise is a black comedy as much as it is horror, and it rolls the way it rolls.
Disclaimer: Tragically, I own nothing. Glee and Final Destination do not belong to me. The only character I’m using from FD is Death….and I don’t own that guy either. Or the songs.
A/N: So sorry for the ridiculous wait! December *completely* got away from me! There are three more chapters of this fic after this, and I promise to wrap it much faster than the last update. :S Happy Friday the 13th, everyone! Here's my contribution to the spookiness. :P
1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11 // 12
13
The rain was still pounding outside when Rachel walked out to Puck’s back yard in her knee length black dress and pink umbrella from the funeral. His mom let her in and pointed her outside, the exact opposite of where she wanted to go. It would be nice to be indoors and warm, but she went anyway. She had lost Puck somewhere after the burial, and he hadn’t shown at the wake.
She trudged through the moist grass, the rain soaking her feet in her thin flats. Puck was standing under a tarp near the trees at the edge of the property line. A ghostly leech sucked the spirit out of her and sent her pulse racing as she spotted him lift an axe and slam it down across a chunk of wood resting on a short stump. It split and the wood shot off in opposite sides. Rachel stepped under the big tarp and tentatively lowered her umbrella.
“Noah, what are you doing?” Her voice almost got lost in the storm.
“I lost my girlfriend.” Puck stabbed another chunk of wood on the stump in front of him. “Lost my baby mama.” The axe rose high and a forceful swing sliced the block in half.
Rachel flinched. “N-Noah.” She shook herself and fixed him with her bossiest tone. “Stop that this instant. Kurt says that you’re next. You really shouldn’t be-”
“So what if I am?!” Puck bellowed, having no trouble being heard over the cacophonous thunder, sounding closer with every boom. “Everyone’s dropping like flies, and I’ve always been a joiner.” The axe plowed downward in a wide arc with a heavy thud.
“Noah, don’t be an idiot. Come inside, and we’ll call Rabbi Chaim.” Rachel implored.
“This isn’t going to be fixed with prayer, Berry. Lauren and Quinn are gone, and combining our Jew power isn’t going to change that. So why don’t you march your little ass back home before my Death shit drags you down with me.” He walked over to the pile of wood behind him and hauled a stack back over to the stump. “It already skipped you or whatever, right? Go write a Grammy winner or go flash Ben Israel. Live a little. If Death wants me it can come and get me. I’d like to see the fucking punk try!”
“Noah!” Rachel exclaimed. “Death isn’t something you can punch in the face and ‘out-man’! Stop. You know, if Lauren were here-”
“Don’t.” He stopped on his way to pick the axe back up to point at her warningly.
She snapped her mouth shut, lips in a tight line for a couple of seconds before hurriedly getting out what she wanted to say anyway.
“All I’m saying is she was a tough girl who knew how to keep you in line, and you need someone to keep you in check because you are eternally making horrible life choices. I may not be your girlfriend or the mother of your estranged baby, but I am your friend. I value our time together even if the primary foundation of our friendship is based on our shared religious affiliations. You tolerate me very well, and I understand and appreciate your value underneath the many layers of crass misogyny. You’re my friend, perhaps the best one I’ve ever had. And I believe Kurt, so even though I may not rank all that high to you, I hope you’ll take your significance to me into consideration while you debate whether or not to get yourself killed. I know you’re in pain, Noah.” Her voice slowed and softened. “It will get better. Please give yourself the time you need to see that.”
“Listen to her, man.”
Rachel turned to see Finn had walked up behind her. He lowered his umbrella when he reached the tarp, changed out of his suit into a pair of jeans and a hoodie. He looked pained but forced a thin smile as he looked over at Puck.
“An axe, dude?” Finn chided. “I love you, man, but that’s pretty dumb. And…that’s coming from me.”
Puck took a couple of steps back, a wispy broken exhale almost lifting his lips. “Both of you suck.” He jutted his chin out with a glare, and Rachel raised hers haughtily. He pulled his hand away from the handle of the axe and hunched in a lazy way as he looked over at them. “I don’t know how to do this. This has been the shittiest few weeks of my life, and that’s saying something because my life is crap.”
Rachel watched and held back tears as Finn walked over and engulfed Puck in a hug. It looked like Puck was trying to pull away, but the urge quickly left him and his arms went around Finn tightly. Rachel shifted for a few moments wanting to make it a group hug but figuring that was pushing it.
Puck pulled back and frowned at Finn, shoving his shoulder away. “All right. Let’s go inside. If I start grabbing your ass I’ll know you gave me the gay.”
Finn chuckled, and Rachel shook her head. Boys.
***
Kurt checked his phone for the tenth time since Finn left. Nothing. Not that he was expecting anything. He was just afraid while he was busy not getting any supernatural warnings that the phone would ring with bad news about Puck. With any luck, Finn would convince Puck to come spend the night at their house to keep a closer eye on him. It hadn’t helped with Quinn, but it had to be better than just hoping he would get a message in time if Kurt got something in the middle of the night.
Or maybe he could go spend the night over there. He really didn’t like the idea of Finn on the road with Puck in this weather. Too much bad could come from that. He woke his phone up to send Finn a quick text just to check in, but the abused battery blinked at him in a thin red line. Sighing, he walked it over to his dresser and paused as his eyes caught on the framed photo sitting in the corner. Finn had tacky rainbow beaded necklaces on with one arm slung around Puck’s shoulders and the other around Kurt at the pride parade they road tripped to last semester. Puck’s t-shirt said ‘Team Gay’ on the front (and unseen in the picture, ‘No Homo’ on the back, “to keep them at bay,” he had said). Kurt sighed and bent down to the outlet beside the dresser. He grabbed the blow dryer by the cord to make room for the charger, but as the metal prongs pulled free, a static crackle burned the outlet and a sharp painful jolt snaked through the cord and shocked Kurt with a jarring shot of electricity.
He stumbled sideways, bumping the bookshelf and knocking a hardback off the top. He tripped backward over it and went down against the wall, banging into the potted bonsai tree and knocking it over on the floor. The hair on his arms was up, and he gasped for air in short, light pants. Across the room, a dark shadow glided over the window and the lightning storm outside.
***
Rachel’s phone sang ‘Defying Gravity’ and she fished it out of her purse while she watched the boys stack the unchopped wood and cover it up with another tarp. Puck’s mom swung the back door open and yelled at her son to get in out of the storm.
“Yeah, I’m coming, Mom!” He hollered back.
“Hello?” Rachel answered the phone, holding both hands over it at one ear to protect it from the spray of rain being blown sideways by the wind.
“Rachel, it’s Puck!” Kurt screamed in her ear. “He and Finn aren’t answering their phones! Do you know where Puck is?!”
Oh no. “I’m with him.” Rachel held her arm up and waved the phone, calling to him over the rain. “Noah!” The boys turned. “It’s Kurt!”
Finn squinted uneasily.
Lightning flashed like a sudden burst of sunlight, illuminating the back yard in a bright ray of momentary clarity. Behind the thick sheets of pouring rain, a bolt gutted through a nearby tree, shattering the bark with a deafening roar. Rachel felt it through the trembling ground, screaming and flinching backward out of the cover of the overhead tarp. Rain beat down on her in a rapid splatter as the struck tree tipped and tore through the tarp on its way down.
Puck slipped over the slick grass directly into the falling tree’s path, but Finn shoved him hard out of the way, slipping forward himself. Puck fell back on the ground with a harmless thump while the huge old tree barreled down on Finn at an angle. The unmistakable sound of snapping bones cut over the storm, and Finn bellowed in pain. The torn tarp sloped, draped over him, and blocked out the damage.
“Finn!” Rachel rushed forward, hunching and slapping the tarp off of her head as she got closer, finally dropping to her knees and crawling over to him under it.
She barely reached him when Puck grabbed her by the waist and moved her aside, scrambling on his knees beside Finn. He punched at the tarp to see, and Rachel flashed her phone over there for light with shaking hands. She was distantly aware of a small voice coming from the speaker. Finn’s forearm was trapped under the tree trunk, and he was gritting his teeth. Puck seized him, anchored his foot against the tree and yanked Finn as hard as he could. His arm released with a loud half-groan, half-scream from Finn, in tact but clearly broken.
Rachel cried as she and Puck hefted and assisted Finn out from under the fallen tarp and across the back yard to the house, but the storm raged around them and flushed her tears with rain. Her phone lay fallen and forgotten in the mud behind them.
***
If there were nurses or metal medical shelves in Kurt’s way, they were left behind him as rubble as he cannonballed through the hallways. He was so over the hospital. Over rushing there for Finn. Over his heart rate jumping so high he felt horribly lightheaded and dizzy like the time Finn convinced him Project Runway was canceled by getting Artie to help him Photoshop a press release with the AfterElton header on top to spook him on April Fool’s Day. He was that kind of shaky, only times a million.
Rachel’s phone went straight to voicemail when he tried calling her back repeatedly and several minutes later he received a text from Puck himself, ‘Finn hospital tree fell’. Leave it to Puck to be as vague as possible and not answer the phone when he tried to call him right back. He had rushed out of the house only stopping for his keys.
His warm change of clothes from earlier were a complete waste since he hadn’t even thought about an umbrella as he rushed from the house to his Escalade and did the same from the parking garage to the hospital. He hadn’t even thought to stop and tell Carole until he was already on the road, and his cell phone’s worn battery gave out after that short exchange.
He rushed past the nurses station in the ER now until he spotted Rachel standing in front of a curtained off area biting her nails and looking like a rat that got caught in a drainage pipe. Puck was sitting on the floor along the wall and got to his feet as he spotted him.
“He’s fine. Broke his arm.” Puck said instantly.
“He what?!” Kurt exclaimed shrilly, the rubber soles of his crutches barely able to keep him from toppling over. Rachel hurried over to them.
“The tree landed on him when he pushed me out of the way.” Puck explained. “I haven’t seen a break that gnarly since Coach Sylvester tried to double the size of her pyramid and Brittany landed on her ankle freshman year. My boy saved my life.”
His boy?! Kurt pushed past him in frustration and ripped back the curtain of the partitioned area. If Finn belonged to anyone it wasn’t the guy smirking about broken bones. Finn was sitting on the edge of a cheap cot, a wheeled tray pushed up to him as a female doctor managed his injured arm. His wince was slightly dimmed as he noticed Kurt with relief and joy and a dawning hesitation as his eyes tracked up and down his frazzled, wet, harried state.
Kurt’s hair was a flat dripping helmet, his long brown sweater sleeves were glued to his thin arms, and his skinny jeans clung to his legs like a layer of black paint. Finn looked like he was contemplating the best way to say, ‘You look like a drowning victim,’ without getting slapped when he broke into another wince as the doctor adjusted him.
“Your arm is broken?” The question passed through numb lips flatly.
Finn grinned at him, actually grinned. “Yeah, I’m fine though.”
“No, you’re not!” The feeling returned to Kurt’s voice with a high screech that would have been embarrassing if his boyfriend wasn’t currently being prepped for a cast. The doctor turned in surprise. “Your arm is broken!”
Finn shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s on my burned hand’s side. It’s my throwaway arm.”
Kurt gaped. Giant blazing white stars spotted his vision. His fists were viselike around the handles of his crutches and his teeth nearly ground into powder. “Appendages are not disposable, Finn!”
“Well, if I hadn’t been there it probably would have smashed Puck and Rachel like grapes, so I’m not complaining.” He countered.
Puck looked at Rachel as he considered the grape analogy. “Puckleberry juice.”
Rachel looked like she swallowed an egg.
“Really, I’m-”
Kurt knocked the words out of Finn, flinging his arms around his neck and carefully avoiding his hurt side, making his crutches tumble noisily to the tiled floor. Finn’s good arm went around him. It was such a Finn thing to do to get skipped by Death and go stand in front of it later to protect a friend. Why couldn’t Kurt love someone with a smaller sense of good will who selfishly thought only of himself and didn’t care about anyone else? Oh yeah. Because then he would love Azimio and would be forced to jump off the nearest cliff.
“You must be Kurt.” The doctor lifted a brow as he pulled back delicately and collected his crutches. “He’s been asking for you nonstop. Thought he might have hurt his head too and gotten stuck on repeat.”
Finn blushed. “I was worried.” He gave Kurt a significant look, and oh yeah…
Now that he saw Finn was hurt but fixable his one track mind began to clear out the fog and make room for the giant flashing billboard in his brain. The one he had ignored as he sped dangerously through a storm to get there. His ‘one step at a time’ philosophy had reached a particularly nasty step.
He was next.
Sinking into the plastic chair next to the cot, he reached for his pounding head and forgot all about the good posture he trained his body to assume at all times to showcase dignity and self-respect. Right then he was just a rain soaked lump sitting at the top of Death’s list. He signaled the doctor.
“Do you think I could get checked out too?” Kurt asked, tired voice heavy with defeat and exhaustion. He slumped low enough in his seat to drop his head back against the chair. “I got somewhat electrocuted earlier.”
A beat of silence passed before his words sunk in and Finn nearly fell off the side of the bed, jerking so hard the tray rattled and the doctor jumped.
“WHAT?!”
Rating: R for language, mature content, sexuality, strong violence, horror, gore
Spoilers: Through Furt but everything to be safe. All Final Destination movies.
Summary: A Kinn spin on Final Destination. On their senior trip, Kurt has a vision and when several students are saved from a tragedy because of it, Death haunts the Glee Club and circles back to claim its victims. Horror/Romance/Drama. AU.
Warnings: Character death! This is *horror*. There *will* be a body count. Nothing too graphic, but characters *will* die throughout the story. Also, suspend your disbelief. This franchise is a black comedy as much as it is horror, and it rolls the way it rolls.
Disclaimer: Tragically, I own nothing. Glee and Final Destination do not belong to me. The only character I’m using from FD is Death….and I don’t own that guy either. Or the songs.
A/N: So sorry for the ridiculous wait! December *completely* got away from me! There are three more chapters of this fic after this, and I promise to wrap it much faster than the last update. :S Happy Friday the 13th, everyone! Here's my contribution to the spookiness. :P
1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11 // 12
13
The rain was still pounding outside when Rachel walked out to Puck’s back yard in her knee length black dress and pink umbrella from the funeral. His mom let her in and pointed her outside, the exact opposite of where she wanted to go. It would be nice to be indoors and warm, but she went anyway. She had lost Puck somewhere after the burial, and he hadn’t shown at the wake.
She trudged through the moist grass, the rain soaking her feet in her thin flats. Puck was standing under a tarp near the trees at the edge of the property line. A ghostly leech sucked the spirit out of her and sent her pulse racing as she spotted him lift an axe and slam it down across a chunk of wood resting on a short stump. It split and the wood shot off in opposite sides. Rachel stepped under the big tarp and tentatively lowered her umbrella.
“Noah, what are you doing?” Her voice almost got lost in the storm.
“I lost my girlfriend.” Puck stabbed another chunk of wood on the stump in front of him. “Lost my baby mama.” The axe rose high and a forceful swing sliced the block in half.
Rachel flinched. “N-Noah.” She shook herself and fixed him with her bossiest tone. “Stop that this instant. Kurt says that you’re next. You really shouldn’t be-”
“So what if I am?!” Puck bellowed, having no trouble being heard over the cacophonous thunder, sounding closer with every boom. “Everyone’s dropping like flies, and I’ve always been a joiner.” The axe plowed downward in a wide arc with a heavy thud.
“Noah, don’t be an idiot. Come inside, and we’ll call Rabbi Chaim.” Rachel implored.
“This isn’t going to be fixed with prayer, Berry. Lauren and Quinn are gone, and combining our Jew power isn’t going to change that. So why don’t you march your little ass back home before my Death shit drags you down with me.” He walked over to the pile of wood behind him and hauled a stack back over to the stump. “It already skipped you or whatever, right? Go write a Grammy winner or go flash Ben Israel. Live a little. If Death wants me it can come and get me. I’d like to see the fucking punk try!”
“Noah!” Rachel exclaimed. “Death isn’t something you can punch in the face and ‘out-man’! Stop. You know, if Lauren were here-”
“Don’t.” He stopped on his way to pick the axe back up to point at her warningly.
She snapped her mouth shut, lips in a tight line for a couple of seconds before hurriedly getting out what she wanted to say anyway.
“All I’m saying is she was a tough girl who knew how to keep you in line, and you need someone to keep you in check because you are eternally making horrible life choices. I may not be your girlfriend or the mother of your estranged baby, but I am your friend. I value our time together even if the primary foundation of our friendship is based on our shared religious affiliations. You tolerate me very well, and I understand and appreciate your value underneath the many layers of crass misogyny. You’re my friend, perhaps the best one I’ve ever had. And I believe Kurt, so even though I may not rank all that high to you, I hope you’ll take your significance to me into consideration while you debate whether or not to get yourself killed. I know you’re in pain, Noah.” Her voice slowed and softened. “It will get better. Please give yourself the time you need to see that.”
“Listen to her, man.”
Rachel turned to see Finn had walked up behind her. He lowered his umbrella when he reached the tarp, changed out of his suit into a pair of jeans and a hoodie. He looked pained but forced a thin smile as he looked over at Puck.
“An axe, dude?” Finn chided. “I love you, man, but that’s pretty dumb. And…that’s coming from me.”
Puck took a couple of steps back, a wispy broken exhale almost lifting his lips. “Both of you suck.” He jutted his chin out with a glare, and Rachel raised hers haughtily. He pulled his hand away from the handle of the axe and hunched in a lazy way as he looked over at them. “I don’t know how to do this. This has been the shittiest few weeks of my life, and that’s saying something because my life is crap.”
Rachel watched and held back tears as Finn walked over and engulfed Puck in a hug. It looked like Puck was trying to pull away, but the urge quickly left him and his arms went around Finn tightly. Rachel shifted for a few moments wanting to make it a group hug but figuring that was pushing it.
Puck pulled back and frowned at Finn, shoving his shoulder away. “All right. Let’s go inside. If I start grabbing your ass I’ll know you gave me the gay.”
Finn chuckled, and Rachel shook her head. Boys.
***
Kurt checked his phone for the tenth time since Finn left. Nothing. Not that he was expecting anything. He was just afraid while he was busy not getting any supernatural warnings that the phone would ring with bad news about Puck. With any luck, Finn would convince Puck to come spend the night at their house to keep a closer eye on him. It hadn’t helped with Quinn, but it had to be better than just hoping he would get a message in time if Kurt got something in the middle of the night.
Or maybe he could go spend the night over there. He really didn’t like the idea of Finn on the road with Puck in this weather. Too much bad could come from that. He woke his phone up to send Finn a quick text just to check in, but the abused battery blinked at him in a thin red line. Sighing, he walked it over to his dresser and paused as his eyes caught on the framed photo sitting in the corner. Finn had tacky rainbow beaded necklaces on with one arm slung around Puck’s shoulders and the other around Kurt at the pride parade they road tripped to last semester. Puck’s t-shirt said ‘Team Gay’ on the front (and unseen in the picture, ‘No Homo’ on the back, “to keep them at bay,” he had said). Kurt sighed and bent down to the outlet beside the dresser. He grabbed the blow dryer by the cord to make room for the charger, but as the metal prongs pulled free, a static crackle burned the outlet and a sharp painful jolt snaked through the cord and shocked Kurt with a jarring shot of electricity.
He stumbled sideways, bumping the bookshelf and knocking a hardback off the top. He tripped backward over it and went down against the wall, banging into the potted bonsai tree and knocking it over on the floor. The hair on his arms was up, and he gasped for air in short, light pants. Across the room, a dark shadow glided over the window and the lightning storm outside.
***
Rachel’s phone sang ‘Defying Gravity’ and she fished it out of her purse while she watched the boys stack the unchopped wood and cover it up with another tarp. Puck’s mom swung the back door open and yelled at her son to get in out of the storm.
“Yeah, I’m coming, Mom!” He hollered back.
“Hello?” Rachel answered the phone, holding both hands over it at one ear to protect it from the spray of rain being blown sideways by the wind.
“Rachel, it’s Puck!” Kurt screamed in her ear. “He and Finn aren’t answering their phones! Do you know where Puck is?!”
Oh no. “I’m with him.” Rachel held her arm up and waved the phone, calling to him over the rain. “Noah!” The boys turned. “It’s Kurt!”
Finn squinted uneasily.
Lightning flashed like a sudden burst of sunlight, illuminating the back yard in a bright ray of momentary clarity. Behind the thick sheets of pouring rain, a bolt gutted through a nearby tree, shattering the bark with a deafening roar. Rachel felt it through the trembling ground, screaming and flinching backward out of the cover of the overhead tarp. Rain beat down on her in a rapid splatter as the struck tree tipped and tore through the tarp on its way down.
Puck slipped over the slick grass directly into the falling tree’s path, but Finn shoved him hard out of the way, slipping forward himself. Puck fell back on the ground with a harmless thump while the huge old tree barreled down on Finn at an angle. The unmistakable sound of snapping bones cut over the storm, and Finn bellowed in pain. The torn tarp sloped, draped over him, and blocked out the damage.
“Finn!” Rachel rushed forward, hunching and slapping the tarp off of her head as she got closer, finally dropping to her knees and crawling over to him under it.
She barely reached him when Puck grabbed her by the waist and moved her aside, scrambling on his knees beside Finn. He punched at the tarp to see, and Rachel flashed her phone over there for light with shaking hands. She was distantly aware of a small voice coming from the speaker. Finn’s forearm was trapped under the tree trunk, and he was gritting his teeth. Puck seized him, anchored his foot against the tree and yanked Finn as hard as he could. His arm released with a loud half-groan, half-scream from Finn, in tact but clearly broken.
Rachel cried as she and Puck hefted and assisted Finn out from under the fallen tarp and across the back yard to the house, but the storm raged around them and flushed her tears with rain. Her phone lay fallen and forgotten in the mud behind them.
***
If there were nurses or metal medical shelves in Kurt’s way, they were left behind him as rubble as he cannonballed through the hallways. He was so over the hospital. Over rushing there for Finn. Over his heart rate jumping so high he felt horribly lightheaded and dizzy like the time Finn convinced him Project Runway was canceled by getting Artie to help him Photoshop a press release with the AfterElton header on top to spook him on April Fool’s Day. He was that kind of shaky, only times a million.
Rachel’s phone went straight to voicemail when he tried calling her back repeatedly and several minutes later he received a text from Puck himself, ‘Finn hospital tree fell’. Leave it to Puck to be as vague as possible and not answer the phone when he tried to call him right back. He had rushed out of the house only stopping for his keys.
His warm change of clothes from earlier were a complete waste since he hadn’t even thought about an umbrella as he rushed from the house to his Escalade and did the same from the parking garage to the hospital. He hadn’t even thought to stop and tell Carole until he was already on the road, and his cell phone’s worn battery gave out after that short exchange.
He rushed past the nurses station in the ER now until he spotted Rachel standing in front of a curtained off area biting her nails and looking like a rat that got caught in a drainage pipe. Puck was sitting on the floor along the wall and got to his feet as he spotted him.
“He’s fine. Broke his arm.” Puck said instantly.
“He what?!” Kurt exclaimed shrilly, the rubber soles of his crutches barely able to keep him from toppling over. Rachel hurried over to them.
“The tree landed on him when he pushed me out of the way.” Puck explained. “I haven’t seen a break that gnarly since Coach Sylvester tried to double the size of her pyramid and Brittany landed on her ankle freshman year. My boy saved my life.”
His boy?! Kurt pushed past him in frustration and ripped back the curtain of the partitioned area. If Finn belonged to anyone it wasn’t the guy smirking about broken bones. Finn was sitting on the edge of a cheap cot, a wheeled tray pushed up to him as a female doctor managed his injured arm. His wince was slightly dimmed as he noticed Kurt with relief and joy and a dawning hesitation as his eyes tracked up and down his frazzled, wet, harried state.
Kurt’s hair was a flat dripping helmet, his long brown sweater sleeves were glued to his thin arms, and his skinny jeans clung to his legs like a layer of black paint. Finn looked like he was contemplating the best way to say, ‘You look like a drowning victim,’ without getting slapped when he broke into another wince as the doctor adjusted him.
“Your arm is broken?” The question passed through numb lips flatly.
Finn grinned at him, actually grinned. “Yeah, I’m fine though.”
“No, you’re not!” The feeling returned to Kurt’s voice with a high screech that would have been embarrassing if his boyfriend wasn’t currently being prepped for a cast. The doctor turned in surprise. “Your arm is broken!”
Finn shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s on my burned hand’s side. It’s my throwaway arm.”
Kurt gaped. Giant blazing white stars spotted his vision. His fists were viselike around the handles of his crutches and his teeth nearly ground into powder. “Appendages are not disposable, Finn!”
“Well, if I hadn’t been there it probably would have smashed Puck and Rachel like grapes, so I’m not complaining.” He countered.
Puck looked at Rachel as he considered the grape analogy. “Puckleberry juice.”
Rachel looked like she swallowed an egg.
“Really, I’m-”
Kurt knocked the words out of Finn, flinging his arms around his neck and carefully avoiding his hurt side, making his crutches tumble noisily to the tiled floor. Finn’s good arm went around him. It was such a Finn thing to do to get skipped by Death and go stand in front of it later to protect a friend. Why couldn’t Kurt love someone with a smaller sense of good will who selfishly thought only of himself and didn’t care about anyone else? Oh yeah. Because then he would love Azimio and would be forced to jump off the nearest cliff.
“You must be Kurt.” The doctor lifted a brow as he pulled back delicately and collected his crutches. “He’s been asking for you nonstop. Thought he might have hurt his head too and gotten stuck on repeat.”
Finn blushed. “I was worried.” He gave Kurt a significant look, and oh yeah…
Now that he saw Finn was hurt but fixable his one track mind began to clear out the fog and make room for the giant flashing billboard in his brain. The one he had ignored as he sped dangerously through a storm to get there. His ‘one step at a time’ philosophy had reached a particularly nasty step.
He was next.
Sinking into the plastic chair next to the cot, he reached for his pounding head and forgot all about the good posture he trained his body to assume at all times to showcase dignity and self-respect. Right then he was just a rain soaked lump sitting at the top of Death’s list. He signaled the doctor.
“Do you think I could get checked out too?” Kurt asked, tired voice heavy with defeat and exhaustion. He slumped low enough in his seat to drop his head back against the chair. “I got somewhat electrocuted earlier.”
A beat of silence passed before his words sunk in and Finn nearly fell off the side of the bed, jerking so hard the tray rattled and the doctor jumped.
“WHAT?!”