Fic: Glee: Parts of Speech (Kurt/Blaine, PG)
I didn't think I was going to write a fic about this episode, because I think it said things well enough, and I didn't have a gap I needed to fill that I didn't think would be addressed in the next episode based on the promo (remember, I'm unspoiled!). But then Blaine showed up and told me I needed to write something anyway. So I did.
Title: "Parts of Speech" [on the AO3]
Author: flaming muse
Fandom: Glee
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG
Word count: 2000
Summary: For Blaine, love is a verb.
Spoilers: through 4x03 (“Makeover”), no spoilers beyond
Disclaimers: The characters belong to various corporate Powers That Be. I make absolutely no profit from playing with them.
Distribution: Please ask.
Feedback is lovely!
After the party, after he’s celebrated with his friends and has shaken hands with his new constituents, Blaine heads home alone. The house is dark, since his parents haven’t waited up for him, and he lets himself in through the front door with a sigh. The welcome, or lack thereof, doesn’t help his mood at all.
He might have won the election, and he might have come to a good understanding with Sam that could lead to a kind of friendship he hasn’t really had since the Warblers, but he still wants to share the joy of victory with someone who loves him. And he can’t.
He knows he should just shower and go to bed so that he can get up and face another day in the morning, but there’s this restless energy thrumming in him making his muscles tense and his fingers clench too tightly around the knob of his bedroom door as he opens it.
Kurt still hasn’t called.
A part of him worries, because Kurt’s in New York, and anything could have happened, but mostly he just feels ignored. It probably isn’t fair. He knows Kurt has work, even if it’s getting really late, but sometimes Rachel tackles him the minute he walks in the door. Blaine knows how she is. He knows that no matter how hard Kurt tries, it can be impossible to get away.
Still. He kind of thinks a handful of missed calls and unanswered texts deserves some sort of effort, especially on a day where Kurt knows there was news about the election.
Blaine looks at his closed laptop on his bed, the bed he hasn’t spent nearly enough time in with Kurt, and can’t think of putting on his cold pajamas and sliding under the cold covers, alone with his cold thoughts, alone in the bed, just alone. No, he can’t.
Instead he pulls open his dresser drawer and grabs his workout clothes. He doesn’t even bother to hang up his blazer when he pulls it off; it’s a spiteful affront to Kurt’s sensibilities that doesn’t even make sense, because Kurt won’t know about it and Blaine will be the one who has to take it to the dry cleaner to get them to press out the wrinkles, but it’s the best he can do.
The heavy punching bag hanging in his basement is lit by one bare bulb that he flicks on as he walks into the room, and it’s a spot of light in the darkness, an isolation that he can embrace. It’s supposed to be just him and the bag here, his soundtrack the heartbeat of his punches and the hum of the furnace, and if he throws his phone on the weight bench just in case, he knows in a few minutes he won’t be thinking about anything but the breath in his lungs and the impact of his gloved fist against a surface that doesn’t yield, that doesn’t give, that doesn’t break, that can take everything he can throw at it.
He inhales through his nose as he wraps up his hands and fits them into his gloves. He tries to find that focused, dark place inside of him; it’s hard to reach on his happiest days, when he’s filled with joy and music and Kurt, but on days like today, when he feels like he’s living his life all alone with no outcome good enough to fill the void, it’s easy to sink into the chill in his own chest and press out everything but the bag in that spotlight in front of him.
He doesn’t like that he’s so hurt. He doesn’t like that he’s so angry. He stretches his arms and shoulders as he warms up and wishes he could get rid of the well of frustration and rejection inside of him as easily as the stiffness in his muscles.
If he’s fair, he knows he should have thought of this future when he transferred. He knew Kurt was a year ahead of him. He knew Kurt would graduate and leave. He knew he’d be left behind, and he’s not exactly in the worst situation in the world: a show choir national champion, the male lead soloist of the glee club as tries to reach first place for the second year in a row, and now senior class president and a member of a bunch of different clubs. He has friends. He has respect. He has honors, victories, and memories that he wouldn’t have gotten at Dalton.
If he’s fair, he knows he had a fantastic year last year with his boyfriend, and he wouldn’t trade that for anything.
Blaine gets into position in front of the bag, settling his weight onto the balls of his feet.
He doesn’t want to be fair.
He just doesn’t want to have to be fair when he’s hurt, when he’s in his dark basement in Ohio alone when his boyfriend who supposedly loves him isn’t even answering his calls and when he does he has such a fabulous life in New York that he can’t always listen to the stupid mundane details of Blaine’s life, the life he’s stuck in because he transferred for Kurt but Kurt isn’t there.
The bag swings and twists with Blaine’s punches, and his shoulders and back are already starting to ache from the way the impact shudders up his arm. He just hits harder.
He has a lot at McKinley, maybe more than he would have had at Dalton, but if he’d stayed at Dalton he wouldn’t have had to figure out who he was without Kurt, because he’d been at Dalton without Kurt. He knew who he was and what his place was there. At McKinley, he’s always been Kurt’s-boyfriend-Blaine, he’s always been Blaine-who-attends-Kurt’s-school, and without Kurt as his focus he feels lost. It’s not Kurt’s school now. He’s not Kurt’s boyfriend in those halls, not the same way he was. And it feels empty. He can fill up his time there, but like lettuce fills up his stomach he can’t live on it.
Except apparently he needs to. He needs to find a way to, because he can’t live because of Kurt anymore. Because Kurt’s off living without him.
Blaine’s breath escapes him in a sob, and he tells himself it’s sweat he wipes out of his eyes with the back of his glove.
He just wants to be first in his boyfriend’s life, that’s all. He doesn’t think it’s too much to ask.
He knows Kurt has a job, he knows Kurt’s trying to find his way in a new city and a new life, and Blaine had done his best to prepare himself for Kurt going away and doing just that. The reality of it is a lot harder than he’d expected, though, because even when he has Kurt on the phone or Skype he doesn’t always have his attention, not the soft-eyed gentle focus Blaine craves, because like a magpie Kurt is drawn to the shiny things in his life, and Blaine’s life is anything but shiny compared to working at vogue.com and having big city adventures with Rachel.
Blaine can’t blame Kurt for being more interested in his own life - hell, Blaine is more interested in Kurt’s life than his own - but Blaine cares about Kurt’s life in part because Kurt’s the one living it. He feels like Kurt ought to feel the same way about him.
And maybe he does, Blaine doesn’t know. He pounds the bag and feels sick to his stomach to doubt Kurt at all, because he knows Kurt loves him. He does.
The problem is that for Blaine love is a verb. It’s active. He does things. He serenades, he reaches out to touch, he pulls in for a kiss, he dances at prom, he sits and listens and supports through rehearsals and conversations. He does things.
For Kurt, love is a state of being. He is in love. It’s who he is. It’s everything in him; it shines out of him. It’s a constant. It’s not a question. He just loves Blaine. When Kurt’s talking to him or shopping for new clothes alone or pressing him into the bed or walking down the street in another state, no matter what he’s doing he loves Blaine.
Which is fine if they’re in the same place and Blaine can see it. It’s enough. Sometimes Blaine might like Kurt to make bigger moves, reach out more, but he knows Kurt. He can see the love in his eyes. He can feel it when Kurt melts in his arms, when Kurt kisses him back, when Kurt sits without too much complaining through a movie only Blaine wants to see. He can see how Kurt cares about him, cares for him, takes care of him when Kurt is right there.
But Blaine can’t see him anymore, he can’t see the love just in him, and he needs the actions instead. He hates that he’s needy, but he really, really does need it. He doesn’t know how to feel any other way but abandoned when Kurt doesn’t show him that he loves him. Because what does it matter if Kurt loves him if Blaine can’t feel it?
So he hits and hits the bag until his arms are sore, his chest is heaving, and his eyes are stinging, and if he doesn’t feel all that much better he does feel tired, and maybe he can take a hot shower and crawl into bed now and find the sleep he is starting to crave.
Maybe he can get some sleep and push back the worst of his feelings for a while longer.
And then his phone rings.
He stops the bag from swinging with one hand and glances over. He knows it’s Kurt before he even sees the name on the screen or registers the ringtone over the blood thundering in his ears. It can only be Kurt.
For a moment he considers not answering the phone. He knows it’s petty, but it’s late, and he could have gone to bed. He doesn’t have to pick up. He could let Kurt wait for once. He could let Kurt wonder. He could let Kurt miss him.
Part of him really wants to.
But he doesn’t. He can’t. It’s Kurt.
Blaine sits heavily on the bench and picks up, stripping off his gloves as soon as he has the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder. “Hello?”
He hears the increasingly familiar sound of the city street behind Kurt’s breathless, beloved voice; Kurt must be walking somewhere. “Blaine! Oh my god, Blaine, you won’t believe what happened today!”
Blaine wants to snap back What about my day? He’d be within his rights as a boyfriend, he knows. He had a big day, too. Kurt should care about that. Kurt should be asking about that.
But Blaine’s love is a verb. He does things. He might also have excitement to share, but one of them has to talk first. Blaine can step back from what he needs and let Kurt start. He can give Kurt that. Kurt’s the one on his own in New York. He’s the one having the bigger adventures. He’s the one who doesn’t have as many people around him to talk to, even if the only one Blaine cares about talking to right now is Kurt.
It might make his heart hurt to hold back, it might make him wish Kurt showed his love in a different way sometimes, but Blaine can do it, because he loves Kurt so very much. And he knows Kurt loves him, too, which means they’ll get to Blaine’s day once Kurt has gotten out the waterfall of words he’s barely keeping inside, and then they’ll talk about Blaine’s triumph.
It’s not that Kurt doesn’t care about him, because of course he does; he’s just... Kurt.
And Blaine loves him.
So he drops his gloves to the bench, flexes his aching fingers, feels his heart thump in his chest with how much he wishes they were in the same place, and says with a tired smile, “Tell me.”
~end~
I AM UNSPOILED FOR NEXT WEEK. DO NOT TELL ME ANYTHING, PLEASE. OMG, PLEASE, DO NOT TELL ME ANYTHING.
Title: "Parts of Speech" [on the AO3]
Author: flaming muse
Fandom: Glee
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG
Word count: 2000
Summary: For Blaine, love is a verb.
Spoilers: through 4x03 (“Makeover”), no spoilers beyond
Disclaimers: The characters belong to various corporate Powers That Be. I make absolutely no profit from playing with them.
Distribution: Please ask.
Feedback is lovely!
After the party, after he’s celebrated with his friends and has shaken hands with his new constituents, Blaine heads home alone. The house is dark, since his parents haven’t waited up for him, and he lets himself in through the front door with a sigh. The welcome, or lack thereof, doesn’t help his mood at all.
He might have won the election, and he might have come to a good understanding with Sam that could lead to a kind of friendship he hasn’t really had since the Warblers, but he still wants to share the joy of victory with someone who loves him. And he can’t.
He knows he should just shower and go to bed so that he can get up and face another day in the morning, but there’s this restless energy thrumming in him making his muscles tense and his fingers clench too tightly around the knob of his bedroom door as he opens it.
Kurt still hasn’t called.
A part of him worries, because Kurt’s in New York, and anything could have happened, but mostly he just feels ignored. It probably isn’t fair. He knows Kurt has work, even if it’s getting really late, but sometimes Rachel tackles him the minute he walks in the door. Blaine knows how she is. He knows that no matter how hard Kurt tries, it can be impossible to get away.
Still. He kind of thinks a handful of missed calls and unanswered texts deserves some sort of effort, especially on a day where Kurt knows there was news about the election.
Blaine looks at his closed laptop on his bed, the bed he hasn’t spent nearly enough time in with Kurt, and can’t think of putting on his cold pajamas and sliding under the cold covers, alone with his cold thoughts, alone in the bed, just alone. No, he can’t.
Instead he pulls open his dresser drawer and grabs his workout clothes. He doesn’t even bother to hang up his blazer when he pulls it off; it’s a spiteful affront to Kurt’s sensibilities that doesn’t even make sense, because Kurt won’t know about it and Blaine will be the one who has to take it to the dry cleaner to get them to press out the wrinkles, but it’s the best he can do.
The heavy punching bag hanging in his basement is lit by one bare bulb that he flicks on as he walks into the room, and it’s a spot of light in the darkness, an isolation that he can embrace. It’s supposed to be just him and the bag here, his soundtrack the heartbeat of his punches and the hum of the furnace, and if he throws his phone on the weight bench just in case, he knows in a few minutes he won’t be thinking about anything but the breath in his lungs and the impact of his gloved fist against a surface that doesn’t yield, that doesn’t give, that doesn’t break, that can take everything he can throw at it.
He inhales through his nose as he wraps up his hands and fits them into his gloves. He tries to find that focused, dark place inside of him; it’s hard to reach on his happiest days, when he’s filled with joy and music and Kurt, but on days like today, when he feels like he’s living his life all alone with no outcome good enough to fill the void, it’s easy to sink into the chill in his own chest and press out everything but the bag in that spotlight in front of him.
He doesn’t like that he’s so hurt. He doesn’t like that he’s so angry. He stretches his arms and shoulders as he warms up and wishes he could get rid of the well of frustration and rejection inside of him as easily as the stiffness in his muscles.
If he’s fair, he knows he should have thought of this future when he transferred. He knew Kurt was a year ahead of him. He knew Kurt would graduate and leave. He knew he’d be left behind, and he’s not exactly in the worst situation in the world: a show choir national champion, the male lead soloist of the glee club as tries to reach first place for the second year in a row, and now senior class president and a member of a bunch of different clubs. He has friends. He has respect. He has honors, victories, and memories that he wouldn’t have gotten at Dalton.
If he’s fair, he knows he had a fantastic year last year with his boyfriend, and he wouldn’t trade that for anything.
Blaine gets into position in front of the bag, settling his weight onto the balls of his feet.
He doesn’t want to be fair.
He just doesn’t want to have to be fair when he’s hurt, when he’s in his dark basement in Ohio alone when his boyfriend who supposedly loves him isn’t even answering his calls and when he does he has such a fabulous life in New York that he can’t always listen to the stupid mundane details of Blaine’s life, the life he’s stuck in because he transferred for Kurt but Kurt isn’t there.
The bag swings and twists with Blaine’s punches, and his shoulders and back are already starting to ache from the way the impact shudders up his arm. He just hits harder.
He has a lot at McKinley, maybe more than he would have had at Dalton, but if he’d stayed at Dalton he wouldn’t have had to figure out who he was without Kurt, because he’d been at Dalton without Kurt. He knew who he was and what his place was there. At McKinley, he’s always been Kurt’s-boyfriend-Blaine, he’s always been Blaine-who-attends-Kurt’s-school, and without Kurt as his focus he feels lost. It’s not Kurt’s school now. He’s not Kurt’s boyfriend in those halls, not the same way he was. And it feels empty. He can fill up his time there, but like lettuce fills up his stomach he can’t live on it.
Except apparently he needs to. He needs to find a way to, because he can’t live because of Kurt anymore. Because Kurt’s off living without him.
Blaine’s breath escapes him in a sob, and he tells himself it’s sweat he wipes out of his eyes with the back of his glove.
He just wants to be first in his boyfriend’s life, that’s all. He doesn’t think it’s too much to ask.
He knows Kurt has a job, he knows Kurt’s trying to find his way in a new city and a new life, and Blaine had done his best to prepare himself for Kurt going away and doing just that. The reality of it is a lot harder than he’d expected, though, because even when he has Kurt on the phone or Skype he doesn’t always have his attention, not the soft-eyed gentle focus Blaine craves, because like a magpie Kurt is drawn to the shiny things in his life, and Blaine’s life is anything but shiny compared to working at vogue.com and having big city adventures with Rachel.
Blaine can’t blame Kurt for being more interested in his own life - hell, Blaine is more interested in Kurt’s life than his own - but Blaine cares about Kurt’s life in part because Kurt’s the one living it. He feels like Kurt ought to feel the same way about him.
And maybe he does, Blaine doesn’t know. He pounds the bag and feels sick to his stomach to doubt Kurt at all, because he knows Kurt loves him. He does.
The problem is that for Blaine love is a verb. It’s active. He does things. He serenades, he reaches out to touch, he pulls in for a kiss, he dances at prom, he sits and listens and supports through rehearsals and conversations. He does things.
For Kurt, love is a state of being. He is in love. It’s who he is. It’s everything in him; it shines out of him. It’s a constant. It’s not a question. He just loves Blaine. When Kurt’s talking to him or shopping for new clothes alone or pressing him into the bed or walking down the street in another state, no matter what he’s doing he loves Blaine.
Which is fine if they’re in the same place and Blaine can see it. It’s enough. Sometimes Blaine might like Kurt to make bigger moves, reach out more, but he knows Kurt. He can see the love in his eyes. He can feel it when Kurt melts in his arms, when Kurt kisses him back, when Kurt sits without too much complaining through a movie only Blaine wants to see. He can see how Kurt cares about him, cares for him, takes care of him when Kurt is right there.
But Blaine can’t see him anymore, he can’t see the love just in him, and he needs the actions instead. He hates that he’s needy, but he really, really does need it. He doesn’t know how to feel any other way but abandoned when Kurt doesn’t show him that he loves him. Because what does it matter if Kurt loves him if Blaine can’t feel it?
So he hits and hits the bag until his arms are sore, his chest is heaving, and his eyes are stinging, and if he doesn’t feel all that much better he does feel tired, and maybe he can take a hot shower and crawl into bed now and find the sleep he is starting to crave.
Maybe he can get some sleep and push back the worst of his feelings for a while longer.
And then his phone rings.
He stops the bag from swinging with one hand and glances over. He knows it’s Kurt before he even sees the name on the screen or registers the ringtone over the blood thundering in his ears. It can only be Kurt.
For a moment he considers not answering the phone. He knows it’s petty, but it’s late, and he could have gone to bed. He doesn’t have to pick up. He could let Kurt wait for once. He could let Kurt wonder. He could let Kurt miss him.
Part of him really wants to.
But he doesn’t. He can’t. It’s Kurt.
Blaine sits heavily on the bench and picks up, stripping off his gloves as soon as he has the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder. “Hello?”
He hears the increasingly familiar sound of the city street behind Kurt’s breathless, beloved voice; Kurt must be walking somewhere. “Blaine! Oh my god, Blaine, you won’t believe what happened today!”
Blaine wants to snap back What about my day? He’d be within his rights as a boyfriend, he knows. He had a big day, too. Kurt should care about that. Kurt should be asking about that.
But Blaine’s love is a verb. He does things. He might also have excitement to share, but one of them has to talk first. Blaine can step back from what he needs and let Kurt start. He can give Kurt that. Kurt’s the one on his own in New York. He’s the one having the bigger adventures. He’s the one who doesn’t have as many people around him to talk to, even if the only one Blaine cares about talking to right now is Kurt.
It might make his heart hurt to hold back, it might make him wish Kurt showed his love in a different way sometimes, but Blaine can do it, because he loves Kurt so very much. And he knows Kurt loves him, too, which means they’ll get to Blaine’s day once Kurt has gotten out the waterfall of words he’s barely keeping inside, and then they’ll talk about Blaine’s triumph.
It’s not that Kurt doesn’t care about him, because of course he does; he’s just... Kurt.
And Blaine loves him.
So he drops his gloves to the bench, flexes his aching fingers, feels his heart thump in his chest with how much he wishes they were in the same place, and says with a tired smile, “Tell me.”
~end~
I AM UNSPOILED FOR NEXT WEEK. DO NOT TELL ME ANYTHING, PLEASE. OMG, PLEASE, DO NOT TELL ME ANYTHING.