Fic: Glee: Reaching (Kurt/Blaine, PG)
Endless, endless thanks to stoney321 for talking to me, holding my hand, and keeping me on track.
Title: "Reaching" [on the AO3]
Author: flaming muse
Fandom: Glee
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG
Word count: 4000
Summary: It used to be easy for Blaine. Now nothing is easy.
Spoilers: set within 4x04 (“The Break Up”), 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!
“Isn’t it a beautiful night?” Rachel asks, her arm hooked through Finn’s as they walk down the city sidewalk on their way to Callbacks. She takes a deep breath and beams at the street around them. “It’s just perfect.” She squeezes in closer to Finn and says, “Especially with you here.”
Blaine watches Finn smile down at her, and his steps slow without thought. It’s something he and Kurt have done on double dates with them before, walked nearby but far enough apart each couple has space to talk freely, but it isn’t Finn and Rachel that Blaine is trying to avoid. It’s the sense of impending doom lurking ahead of him, just at the edge of his sight.
But he can’t avoid it, no matter how slowly he walks, because it’s not a mugger in an alley or a bus going the wrong way down a one-way street. It’s him. He’s the doom, and he’s realizing it’s only a matter of time now before he can’t keep it inside anymore.
“That’s the coffee shop I was telling you about,” Kurt says from beside him, nodding to a store window as they pass. It looks sophisticated, all blond wood and chrome, customers sitting at the tables with laptops and headphones or chatting with friends, just like a coffee shop in New York should look. “The one with the weird taste in music and the barista who likes to speak in rhymes? Their so-called pain au chocolat is a travesty of epic proportions, but they do grind the best French roast I’ve found.”
“That sounds great,” Blaine says. He looks away from the window to find Kurt watching him, his step swaying in that unconsciously flirty way he has when he’s happy, and despite the cloud on his heart Blaine can’t help but smile to see it. He’s here in New York with Kurt, walking down the street. They’re together, and Kurt’s so full of light about it. About him. It’s wonderful. It’s like Blaine can breathe for the first time in weeks.
“I usually make a quick breakfast at home in the mornings, but we can come down here if you’d rather.”
“I like your cooking,” Blaine reminds him. He loves watching Kurt’s hands moving so skillfully in the kitchen, he loves working side-by-side and helping Kurt chop or stir, and he loves tasting the love in every bite of Kurt’s food when it’s made for him. “Besides, I heard what you said about their pain au chocolat.”
Kurt’s shoulders swing a little, another happy sign. “I see you are determined to pass the Kurt Hummel Official New York quiz at the end of your trip.”
Blaine’s smile goes stiff and fake at the word ‘end’, but he keeps it in place. “I’m going to try.” It’s a promise.
“Oh, you know you succeed at anything you put your mind to, Mr. Senior Class President,” Kurt says with an airy confidence in him. “I’m not worried.”
“Good.” Blaine’s steps slow some more, and Kurt falls easily into the new rhythm beside him. Ahead Rachel and Finn look like any other happy couple on the street, attractive, in love, and Blaine wishes it were just as easy for him to feel so good.
That’s not right, he realizes, because he does feel good. He feels amazing. The second he got his arms around Kurt he felt incredible, like all of the gaping holes in his heart were filled, and every kiss, every touch, every little glance Kurt is giving him only makes him feel better.
He’d thought, somehow, that Kurt would be different in New York, but he isn’t. Blaine had imagined in the dark hours of his days in Ohio that Kurt would be more distant, more sophisticated, more grown up, more independent, more disinterested. None of that’s true. He’s exactly the same. He has the same handsome face, the same sparkle in his eyes, the same giddy smile, the same little ways he shows his love, like fixing Blaine’s collar or pointing out unsavory things to avoid on the sidewalk.
He’s just the same. He’s everything Blaine wants, everything Blaine has been so desperately missing, and he’s not holding back at all. From that very first moment at the door, he’s been looking at Blaine the way he’s always looked at Blaine: with his heart in his eyes, with joy, with love.
God, it’s just what Blaine wants, and it’s so good he feels like he could cry with relief and misery.
“ - will have to go shopping for Finn for a new wardrobe as soon as possible,” Kurt is saying as they stroll along. “I mean, he wasn’t even fashionable in Lima, and here...” He shakes his head and smiles approvingly over at Blaine, his hands clasped in front of him. “Of course, you are always impeccably dressed.”
“Thank you,” Blaine says. “And you look fantastic, but that’s no surprise.”
Kurt’s smile grows even wider. “Thank you. Although if I’d known you were coming, I would have put on something even nicer. Maybe tomorrow,” he says with a flirty dip of his head.
“You know I like everything you wear.” God, Blaine’s missed just getting to see his outfits everyday, that physical manifestation of his personality, not to mention how gorgeous he looks in them. Blaine can’t stop looking at him, drinking in the very sight of him, so close in a way he used to take for granted. He doesn’t anymore.
“I know.” Kurt bumps his arm against Blaine’s, just a little bolder than he might have been in Lima, and it sends sparks up to Blaine’s shoulder. “Because you have excellent taste.”
Kurt seems so happy. As they walk and watch Rachel chatter at Finn, Blaine knows he should be happy, too. He is happy, actually, because he has everything right there next to him. He has Kurt, he has his attention, he has his excitement, and he has his running commentary about the street around them that makes Blaine laugh despite his distraction.
The problem is that he also knows he messed up. He was with someone else. Now that he’s here with Kurt, his heart being filled by the second, he wonders why he even wanted to be, except that he does know because he can’t have this, he can’t have Kurt, not next to him, not in his arms, not across a table, not in his bed, not every day, and he needs him.
Blaine really, really needs him, and Kurt is here and not in Lima with him.
He knows it’s the right place for Kurt, he knows he supported him going, but he just can’t -
“Blaine,” Kurt says, catching him by the arm. “It’s this way.”
Blaine looks up to see that he’s turned to the left at the end of the block for some reason when his friends are all going straight, and he shakes himself out of it. “Sorry. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
Kurt watches him with a little concern but lets go of his arm. “Just stay close to me.”
Blaine nods and wishes it were that simple. He wishes he could just stay close to Kurt.
It used to be so simple. It used to be easy to know where he stood. It used to be easy to know who he was. Back at Dalton, he used to know what to say and do, and he used to be someone people liked and respected. He used to be a leader, a role model. He might have been faking it sometimes, but he was doing it. He liked being that Blaine.
Even Kurt used to want his advice, need his help, and look up to him, but now Kurt is so far ahead of him. He doesn’t need any of that. He doesn’t need Blaine like that anymore. He can do it all in this big city with his new career and new mentors. He doesn’t need Blaine.
But he came into Blaine’s world and shook it all up, opened up Blaine’s heart to having more, and now Blaine needs him. Blaine needs him so much, and Kurt’s here instead, with his eyes fixed on the stars. Blaine might feel like the sun is shining out of him when Kurt’s touching him, but most of the time he’s still just a lost boy in Ohio. Alone.
“We should definitely go there tomorrow. I’d love a new picture of us on my phone,” Kurt says as he points out a little park he’d sent Blaine a picture of the week before, and the honest joy in his voice is one of the loveliest sounds in the world.
Blaine wishes he could keep it there. He wishes he deserved it. He wishes his heart didn’t hurt and his stomach weren’t churning like he might throw up on the sidewalk.
“Me, too,” he says.
He wishes he could go back a few days. He wishes he could stay here for good.
In Lima it’s so much harder. He is so much harder. There’s so much more pressure, and there’s no place he can just be himself, just be loved for who he is, not the way he is in Kurt’s arms.
He always feels the best when he and Kurt are alone, touching, loving, skin on skin and body on body, because that is when there are no barriers, no artifice, no walls or facades. They are just them, together, and he can feel in those moments how much Kurt loves every bit of him.
He’d known being with Eli wasn’t going to help him get that connection. He knew it the minute he’d stood face to face with him, he’d known it again the minute their lips had touched and Blaine’s body had sparked but not his heart, because Eli wasn’t Kurt, and he’d never be Kurt, and nothing and no one would be Kurt but Kurt, but Kurt is gone, slipping away through his grasp like a shadow, not just physically distant but not even always at the end of the phone when Blaine reaches out for him.
Blaine wanted someone to want him, to reach back. Or he thought he did, that’s why he went, but in the end it hadn’t helped at all.
It hadn’t helped. Eli hadn’t accepted him or cared about him; he’d just hooked up with him. Once they were done, once Blaine was back in his head instead of following the demands of his body, it had only made him feel more alone that it wasn’t Kurt beside him, that it wasn’t Kurt, who would have leaned over for a kiss and imperiously demanded a warm washcloth before he pulled Blaine tight against his chest and stroked his hair and skin with the most loving touch Blaine could ever imagine.
But Eli isn’t Kurt. He couldn’t give Blaine any of that.
He doesn’t even remember exactly what drove him there now, only that he didn’t want to be unhappy anymore, that he needed something and he thought that was it. It wasn’t. It wasn’t the right thing at all. It wasn’t Kurt’s mouth and hands and body he missed; it was Kurt.
And the second he saw Kurt’s eyes light up when he opened the door and saw Blaine’s face, he’d felt the weight deep in his heart of how wrong he’d been to look for anything else. Nothing in the world can take the place of that look. No one else is going to look at him like that. That is what he needs.
He should have just given in and come here sooner.
“Stay close; this intersection is insane,” Kurt interrupts his story to say, watching the rushing traffic and catching Blaine by the elbow as the four of them rush across the busy street. “One difference between New York and Ohio is that pedestrians in crosswalks seem to encourage cars to speed up here, not slow down.”
“I’m glad you haven’t been hit,” Blaine says as he eyes a car coming way too quickly toward them.
Kurt grins at him and tugs him a little more quickly out of its path to the safety of the sidewalk. “All of that dancing we did in glee has given me excellent reflexes. I just twirl out of the way.”
Blaine can almost picture it, Kurt nonchalantly performing a perfect spin in the middle of a busy street as a cab whizzes past. He smiles back and has to swallow down the lump in his throat.
Here he is, getting everything he wants, and he’s done something to hurt his best friend, the love of his life. It’s the last thing he wants to do, but he already has, that’s the problem. He isn’t sure how he can fix it, but he can’t look into Kurt’s gorgeous eyes and not hear the echoing footsteps of his actions following them.
Why didn’t he come here first?
It’s so unfair that he has finally gotten used to feeling wanted after so much of his life when he didn’t - when he was forced to stand in Cooper’s shadow, when he was bullied and battered for being gay, when he joined New Directions and was rejected time and again - and with Kurt gone and busy he doesn’t have that anymore. What Kurt gives him on their Skype dates and texts isn’t enough to take more than the edge off of his pain. He’s desperate for that connection. He aches for someone to turn toward him instead of away, someone to want to be with him instead of leaving his school or his state, someone to reach out instead of hanging up the phone.
If only Kurt hadn’t gone, Blaine thinks with an ache in his chest, because Blaine had been okay with him there, and now he isn’t. Now he isn’t at all. He’s spinning out of control and can’t stop it. Now he isn’t even okay with him, because he’s going to have to do something to explain the unexplainable, why he did something that meant nothing because the person who means everything is too far away.
He’s not sure he can explain it at all. Now that he’s next to Kurt, none of it makes sense. The only thing he knows is that the thought of being without him hurts. Kurt’s the only thing that fills the holes in his life. School can’t, glee club can’t, clubs can’t. Just Kurt, and Kurt can’t, either, not anymore, not when he’s here and Blaine’s alone at home with his thoughts and his desperate heart.
He was so stupid to have hooked up with Eli, not just because it was wrong but because it wasn’t enough. Eli was never going to look at him the way Kurt looks at him. Blaine has done something awful to the best and most important person in his life, and it’s all for something that wasn’t enough.
He can’t think about it that way. He can barely think about it all. He doesn’t want to, because he has Kurt now, they’re together again, and that’s all that matters. He has to focus on what matters.
“You’re going to love this place,” Kurt tells him as Rachel leans up on her toes ahead of them to murmur something in Finn’s ear. Well, his shoulder, given the height difference, but closer to his ear than she usually is. “Everyone’s voices are amazing. You’re going to fit right in.”
“I don’t know about that,” Blaine says, though it’s not the quality of his voice that sets him apart from everyone here. It’s what’s inside. It’s what’s following him.
“You’ll see,” Kurt says, smiling over at him like Blaine can make the sun rise and set. “Trust me.”
“I do,” Blaine promises. He does. It’s himself he doesn’t trust anymore.
Kurt rubs his hand on Blaine’s shoulder in a fleeting touch as they turn another corner, and Blaine’s whole body prickles with the heart-freeing joy of it of the gesture. “I know.”
It’s so much easier to breathe here, Blaine thinks, or it would be if he didn’t have this secret trying to claw its way out.
It’s so much easier to be Blaine-Kurt’s-boyfriend than Blaine Anderson on his own again. It’s so much easier to be with him.
Blaine has let Kurt go every time he wanted to leave to reach for his dreams, because Kurt is amazing and deserves his support, because love isn’t supposed to trap you but make you better, but he realizes maybe he should have held on a little tighter for himself, because this time he couldn’t follow. He should have thought about that.
A voice in him whispers that he could never have held Kurt back, even though it’s killing him that he’s gone. Even though Blaine may have killed them. He could never have done that to Kurt.
He should have thought about what he was doing to himself, though, because Kurt wasn’t.
Eli isn’t the answer. Eli doesn’t matter at all. But even if Blaine hadn’t done what he did with him, he’d still be slowly crumbling without Kurt, drying up and dying without his attention and love, and he doesn’t know what else to do. Kurt’s been slipping out of his fingers since he left Dalton, he’s been this flitting ball of light getting brighter and bigger with each month, with each step towards his dreams, with each step away from Blaine. And Blaine loves that about him, loves everything that Kurt is, but if Kurt’s always facing away from him heading for something else, it’s hard to be happy that Kurt’s still reaching behind him to hold his hand.
Because Blaine needs more than that.
Blaine needs this. Blaine needs to be with him, doing things, having time, soaking up all of the little ways Kurt loves him, because Blaine needs his love.
It’s enough when they’re together. He knows that now. It’s still enough when he can walk down the street and hear the lilt in Kurt’s voice as he laments the jacket that got away in a recent sample sale. It’s enough when he can see the delight in Kurt’s smile when Blaine catches a waving banner billowing out from a store awning and holds it aside so that Kurt can glide by without being hit by the fabric.
This is enough. This is everything. This is who they are supposed to be, the two of them together and in love, and Blaine wishes he could just sit back and soak Kurt in and love him right back.
But instead he has to find some way of fixing what happened, some way to show Kurt and himself that it wasn’t important because Blaine loves him, and he did it not because he wanted Eli but because he wanted Kurt.
His stomach twists again. He’s risked everything he has because he misses Kurt so much he can’t see or hear or breathe. He knows it will hurt Kurt, which is the last thing he ever wants to do, but he hurts, too, so much.
Blaine has never known what he's doing, and Kurt knows that. Kurt knows him better than anyone, and as much as he loves that Kurt places so much faith in him Kurt also should have known Blaine would make a mess of things alone.
Doesn’t he care about that? Doesn’t he care about what him being so far away does to Blaine? To them?
“I still can’t believe both you and Finn are here,” Kurt says with a wondering laugh after he a little pause when he finishes up a story about his day at work that he dubbed ‘The Case of the Missing Coffee Machine’. “It’s like we always dreamed about, and you’re really here.” His smile is so, so wide, and there’s a bounce in his step that makes Blaine’s heart flip.
Blaine wants to reach out and kiss him and never stop. Blaine wants to pull him into his arms and start crying. He wants to look ahead at their night and know it will be a special date together before they get to fall into Kurt’s bed and each other’s bodies and kiss and touch and love until the sun comes up and they still can’t stop. That’s what this reunion is supposed to be. That’s what he wants tonight to be even now, because he wants Kurt to take his body back and reclaim it as his own. He wants Kurt to erase the memory of anyone else touching him, because he doesn’t want that. He wants this. He wants Kurt.
But he’s the doom hanging over them. He’s his own Sword of Damocles above his head, ready to strike.
“I’m happy I can be,” Blaine tells him, the words catching in his throat, because he can’t quite escape the horrible idea that no matter how big Kurt’s heart is and how generously he’s given it to Blaine he can take it right back again. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” Kurt says, and Blaine’s heart cracks at the sweetness in his voice.
He needed to see Kurt so badly today, not just because he missed him but even more to prove to himself that what they have between them is real at all, that he hadn’t dreamed it up. He needed to see Kurt and know. And he hadn’t dreamed it. Kurt has welcomed him from the second he saw him. Kurt has shone with love and joy every moment. Kurt is exactly the same person he has always been, not distant, not drawing away, not falling out of love. Kurt is there.
Kurt is the most important thing in Blaine’s life. And Blaine might have completely and utterly ruined it.
It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t make sense why. He did it, because Kurt left him alone, and Blaine doesn’t have anything that matters without him. Kurt broke open his shell and showed him everything he could have, and then he left and took it all away.
And Blaine doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to do any of this at all.
Maybe Kurt has the answers. Kurt always has the answers. Maybe that’s why Blaine was driven to come.
Blaine wishes he could take Kurt by the hand and lead him home, lead him to bed and make love and love and more love until the shape of Kurt’s mouth is left in a dozen places on his skin, until the taste of Kurt’s body is all that fills Blaine’s throat, until Kurt’s weak and helpless and clinging to him the way Blaine always feels every minute of the day about him. He wants to make love until Kurt can tell that everything Blaine has done is because he wants him, until somehow Kurt can hear him and understand him and accept him the way he always, always has done, well beyond the way Blaine can do any of that for himself.
But instead Blaine is walking down the street beside Kurt in this amazing city, in turns giddy and in despair, because he doesn’t know how the night is going to go, but he knows that he needs it to be okay, and nothing is okay without Kurt.
If this is the one time Kurt sees into him and can’t accept him, he doesn’t know what he will do at all. Because if Kurt can’t love him, what does he have?
Kurt tucks his hand into Blaine’s elbow and announces, “We’re here! Are you ready for this?”
Blaine can feel in the possessive grip of his fingers, see in the joy-filled tilt of his smile that Kurt does love him. And he loves Kurt with all of his heart, too. He wants to be everything for him. He needs to keep that light in Kurt’s eyes when he looks at him.
He has to show him. He has to make it right. He has to find a way.
Blaine barely notices the door Kurt steers him through. He pastes a smile on his face and lies, “Absolutely.”
~end~
For the record, Blaine is an unreliable narrator, and he and I have some serious disagreements about his view of the world. But this fic isn’t about me; it’s about him.
No bashing of any characters, please. My heart is bruised and bloodied this week, but I still love them both beyond words.
I’m unspoiled for future episodes of Glee. Please be kind and keep it that way!
And with that I'm going to go do something joy-filled, because being in Blaine's headspace has made me want to cry for days. <3 I'm fine; I just am glad I can do other things. :)
Title: "Reaching" [on the AO3]
Author: flaming muse
Fandom: Glee
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG
Word count: 4000
Summary: It used to be easy for Blaine. Now nothing is easy.
Spoilers: set within 4x04 (“The Break Up”), 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!
“Isn’t it a beautiful night?” Rachel asks, her arm hooked through Finn’s as they walk down the city sidewalk on their way to Callbacks. She takes a deep breath and beams at the street around them. “It’s just perfect.” She squeezes in closer to Finn and says, “Especially with you here.”
Blaine watches Finn smile down at her, and his steps slow without thought. It’s something he and Kurt have done on double dates with them before, walked nearby but far enough apart each couple has space to talk freely, but it isn’t Finn and Rachel that Blaine is trying to avoid. It’s the sense of impending doom lurking ahead of him, just at the edge of his sight.
But he can’t avoid it, no matter how slowly he walks, because it’s not a mugger in an alley or a bus going the wrong way down a one-way street. It’s him. He’s the doom, and he’s realizing it’s only a matter of time now before he can’t keep it inside anymore.
“That’s the coffee shop I was telling you about,” Kurt says from beside him, nodding to a store window as they pass. It looks sophisticated, all blond wood and chrome, customers sitting at the tables with laptops and headphones or chatting with friends, just like a coffee shop in New York should look. “The one with the weird taste in music and the barista who likes to speak in rhymes? Their so-called pain au chocolat is a travesty of epic proportions, but they do grind the best French roast I’ve found.”
“That sounds great,” Blaine says. He looks away from the window to find Kurt watching him, his step swaying in that unconsciously flirty way he has when he’s happy, and despite the cloud on his heart Blaine can’t help but smile to see it. He’s here in New York with Kurt, walking down the street. They’re together, and Kurt’s so full of light about it. About him. It’s wonderful. It’s like Blaine can breathe for the first time in weeks.
“I usually make a quick breakfast at home in the mornings, but we can come down here if you’d rather.”
“I like your cooking,” Blaine reminds him. He loves watching Kurt’s hands moving so skillfully in the kitchen, he loves working side-by-side and helping Kurt chop or stir, and he loves tasting the love in every bite of Kurt’s food when it’s made for him. “Besides, I heard what you said about their pain au chocolat.”
Kurt’s shoulders swing a little, another happy sign. “I see you are determined to pass the Kurt Hummel Official New York quiz at the end of your trip.”
Blaine’s smile goes stiff and fake at the word ‘end’, but he keeps it in place. “I’m going to try.” It’s a promise.
“Oh, you know you succeed at anything you put your mind to, Mr. Senior Class President,” Kurt says with an airy confidence in him. “I’m not worried.”
“Good.” Blaine’s steps slow some more, and Kurt falls easily into the new rhythm beside him. Ahead Rachel and Finn look like any other happy couple on the street, attractive, in love, and Blaine wishes it were just as easy for him to feel so good.
That’s not right, he realizes, because he does feel good. He feels amazing. The second he got his arms around Kurt he felt incredible, like all of the gaping holes in his heart were filled, and every kiss, every touch, every little glance Kurt is giving him only makes him feel better.
He’d thought, somehow, that Kurt would be different in New York, but he isn’t. Blaine had imagined in the dark hours of his days in Ohio that Kurt would be more distant, more sophisticated, more grown up, more independent, more disinterested. None of that’s true. He’s exactly the same. He has the same handsome face, the same sparkle in his eyes, the same giddy smile, the same little ways he shows his love, like fixing Blaine’s collar or pointing out unsavory things to avoid on the sidewalk.
He’s just the same. He’s everything Blaine wants, everything Blaine has been so desperately missing, and he’s not holding back at all. From that very first moment at the door, he’s been looking at Blaine the way he’s always looked at Blaine: with his heart in his eyes, with joy, with love.
God, it’s just what Blaine wants, and it’s so good he feels like he could cry with relief and misery.
“ - will have to go shopping for Finn for a new wardrobe as soon as possible,” Kurt is saying as they stroll along. “I mean, he wasn’t even fashionable in Lima, and here...” He shakes his head and smiles approvingly over at Blaine, his hands clasped in front of him. “Of course, you are always impeccably dressed.”
“Thank you,” Blaine says. “And you look fantastic, but that’s no surprise.”
Kurt’s smile grows even wider. “Thank you. Although if I’d known you were coming, I would have put on something even nicer. Maybe tomorrow,” he says with a flirty dip of his head.
“You know I like everything you wear.” God, Blaine’s missed just getting to see his outfits everyday, that physical manifestation of his personality, not to mention how gorgeous he looks in them. Blaine can’t stop looking at him, drinking in the very sight of him, so close in a way he used to take for granted. He doesn’t anymore.
“I know.” Kurt bumps his arm against Blaine’s, just a little bolder than he might have been in Lima, and it sends sparks up to Blaine’s shoulder. “Because you have excellent taste.”
Kurt seems so happy. As they walk and watch Rachel chatter at Finn, Blaine knows he should be happy, too. He is happy, actually, because he has everything right there next to him. He has Kurt, he has his attention, he has his excitement, and he has his running commentary about the street around them that makes Blaine laugh despite his distraction.
The problem is that he also knows he messed up. He was with someone else. Now that he’s here with Kurt, his heart being filled by the second, he wonders why he even wanted to be, except that he does know because he can’t have this, he can’t have Kurt, not next to him, not in his arms, not across a table, not in his bed, not every day, and he needs him.
Blaine really, really needs him, and Kurt is here and not in Lima with him.
He knows it’s the right place for Kurt, he knows he supported him going, but he just can’t -
“Blaine,” Kurt says, catching him by the arm. “It’s this way.”
Blaine looks up to see that he’s turned to the left at the end of the block for some reason when his friends are all going straight, and he shakes himself out of it. “Sorry. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
Kurt watches him with a little concern but lets go of his arm. “Just stay close to me.”
Blaine nods and wishes it were that simple. He wishes he could just stay close to Kurt.
It used to be so simple. It used to be easy to know where he stood. It used to be easy to know who he was. Back at Dalton, he used to know what to say and do, and he used to be someone people liked and respected. He used to be a leader, a role model. He might have been faking it sometimes, but he was doing it. He liked being that Blaine.
Even Kurt used to want his advice, need his help, and look up to him, but now Kurt is so far ahead of him. He doesn’t need any of that. He doesn’t need Blaine like that anymore. He can do it all in this big city with his new career and new mentors. He doesn’t need Blaine.
But he came into Blaine’s world and shook it all up, opened up Blaine’s heart to having more, and now Blaine needs him. Blaine needs him so much, and Kurt’s here instead, with his eyes fixed on the stars. Blaine might feel like the sun is shining out of him when Kurt’s touching him, but most of the time he’s still just a lost boy in Ohio. Alone.
“We should definitely go there tomorrow. I’d love a new picture of us on my phone,” Kurt says as he points out a little park he’d sent Blaine a picture of the week before, and the honest joy in his voice is one of the loveliest sounds in the world.
Blaine wishes he could keep it there. He wishes he deserved it. He wishes his heart didn’t hurt and his stomach weren’t churning like he might throw up on the sidewalk.
“Me, too,” he says.
He wishes he could go back a few days. He wishes he could stay here for good.
In Lima it’s so much harder. He is so much harder. There’s so much more pressure, and there’s no place he can just be himself, just be loved for who he is, not the way he is in Kurt’s arms.
He always feels the best when he and Kurt are alone, touching, loving, skin on skin and body on body, because that is when there are no barriers, no artifice, no walls or facades. They are just them, together, and he can feel in those moments how much Kurt loves every bit of him.
He’d known being with Eli wasn’t going to help him get that connection. He knew it the minute he’d stood face to face with him, he’d known it again the minute their lips had touched and Blaine’s body had sparked but not his heart, because Eli wasn’t Kurt, and he’d never be Kurt, and nothing and no one would be Kurt but Kurt, but Kurt is gone, slipping away through his grasp like a shadow, not just physically distant but not even always at the end of the phone when Blaine reaches out for him.
Blaine wanted someone to want him, to reach back. Or he thought he did, that’s why he went, but in the end it hadn’t helped at all.
It hadn’t helped. Eli hadn’t accepted him or cared about him; he’d just hooked up with him. Once they were done, once Blaine was back in his head instead of following the demands of his body, it had only made him feel more alone that it wasn’t Kurt beside him, that it wasn’t Kurt, who would have leaned over for a kiss and imperiously demanded a warm washcloth before he pulled Blaine tight against his chest and stroked his hair and skin with the most loving touch Blaine could ever imagine.
But Eli isn’t Kurt. He couldn’t give Blaine any of that.
He doesn’t even remember exactly what drove him there now, only that he didn’t want to be unhappy anymore, that he needed something and he thought that was it. It wasn’t. It wasn’t the right thing at all. It wasn’t Kurt’s mouth and hands and body he missed; it was Kurt.
And the second he saw Kurt’s eyes light up when he opened the door and saw Blaine’s face, he’d felt the weight deep in his heart of how wrong he’d been to look for anything else. Nothing in the world can take the place of that look. No one else is going to look at him like that. That is what he needs.
He should have just given in and come here sooner.
“Stay close; this intersection is insane,” Kurt interrupts his story to say, watching the rushing traffic and catching Blaine by the elbow as the four of them rush across the busy street. “One difference between New York and Ohio is that pedestrians in crosswalks seem to encourage cars to speed up here, not slow down.”
“I’m glad you haven’t been hit,” Blaine says as he eyes a car coming way too quickly toward them.
Kurt grins at him and tugs him a little more quickly out of its path to the safety of the sidewalk. “All of that dancing we did in glee has given me excellent reflexes. I just twirl out of the way.”
Blaine can almost picture it, Kurt nonchalantly performing a perfect spin in the middle of a busy street as a cab whizzes past. He smiles back and has to swallow down the lump in his throat.
Here he is, getting everything he wants, and he’s done something to hurt his best friend, the love of his life. It’s the last thing he wants to do, but he already has, that’s the problem. He isn’t sure how he can fix it, but he can’t look into Kurt’s gorgeous eyes and not hear the echoing footsteps of his actions following them.
Why didn’t he come here first?
It’s so unfair that he has finally gotten used to feeling wanted after so much of his life when he didn’t - when he was forced to stand in Cooper’s shadow, when he was bullied and battered for being gay, when he joined New Directions and was rejected time and again - and with Kurt gone and busy he doesn’t have that anymore. What Kurt gives him on their Skype dates and texts isn’t enough to take more than the edge off of his pain. He’s desperate for that connection. He aches for someone to turn toward him instead of away, someone to want to be with him instead of leaving his school or his state, someone to reach out instead of hanging up the phone.
If only Kurt hadn’t gone, Blaine thinks with an ache in his chest, because Blaine had been okay with him there, and now he isn’t. Now he isn’t at all. He’s spinning out of control and can’t stop it. Now he isn’t even okay with him, because he’s going to have to do something to explain the unexplainable, why he did something that meant nothing because the person who means everything is too far away.
He’s not sure he can explain it at all. Now that he’s next to Kurt, none of it makes sense. The only thing he knows is that the thought of being without him hurts. Kurt’s the only thing that fills the holes in his life. School can’t, glee club can’t, clubs can’t. Just Kurt, and Kurt can’t, either, not anymore, not when he’s here and Blaine’s alone at home with his thoughts and his desperate heart.
He was so stupid to have hooked up with Eli, not just because it was wrong but because it wasn’t enough. Eli was never going to look at him the way Kurt looks at him. Blaine has done something awful to the best and most important person in his life, and it’s all for something that wasn’t enough.
He can’t think about it that way. He can barely think about it all. He doesn’t want to, because he has Kurt now, they’re together again, and that’s all that matters. He has to focus on what matters.
“You’re going to love this place,” Kurt tells him as Rachel leans up on her toes ahead of them to murmur something in Finn’s ear. Well, his shoulder, given the height difference, but closer to his ear than she usually is. “Everyone’s voices are amazing. You’re going to fit right in.”
“I don’t know about that,” Blaine says, though it’s not the quality of his voice that sets him apart from everyone here. It’s what’s inside. It’s what’s following him.
“You’ll see,” Kurt says, smiling over at him like Blaine can make the sun rise and set. “Trust me.”
“I do,” Blaine promises. He does. It’s himself he doesn’t trust anymore.
Kurt rubs his hand on Blaine’s shoulder in a fleeting touch as they turn another corner, and Blaine’s whole body prickles with the heart-freeing joy of it of the gesture. “I know.”
It’s so much easier to breathe here, Blaine thinks, or it would be if he didn’t have this secret trying to claw its way out.
It’s so much easier to be Blaine-Kurt’s-boyfriend than Blaine Anderson on his own again. It’s so much easier to be with him.
Blaine has let Kurt go every time he wanted to leave to reach for his dreams, because Kurt is amazing and deserves his support, because love isn’t supposed to trap you but make you better, but he realizes maybe he should have held on a little tighter for himself, because this time he couldn’t follow. He should have thought about that.
A voice in him whispers that he could never have held Kurt back, even though it’s killing him that he’s gone. Even though Blaine may have killed them. He could never have done that to Kurt.
He should have thought about what he was doing to himself, though, because Kurt wasn’t.
Eli isn’t the answer. Eli doesn’t matter at all. But even if Blaine hadn’t done what he did with him, he’d still be slowly crumbling without Kurt, drying up and dying without his attention and love, and he doesn’t know what else to do. Kurt’s been slipping out of his fingers since he left Dalton, he’s been this flitting ball of light getting brighter and bigger with each month, with each step towards his dreams, with each step away from Blaine. And Blaine loves that about him, loves everything that Kurt is, but if Kurt’s always facing away from him heading for something else, it’s hard to be happy that Kurt’s still reaching behind him to hold his hand.
Because Blaine needs more than that.
Blaine needs this. Blaine needs to be with him, doing things, having time, soaking up all of the little ways Kurt loves him, because Blaine needs his love.
It’s enough when they’re together. He knows that now. It’s still enough when he can walk down the street and hear the lilt in Kurt’s voice as he laments the jacket that got away in a recent sample sale. It’s enough when he can see the delight in Kurt’s smile when Blaine catches a waving banner billowing out from a store awning and holds it aside so that Kurt can glide by without being hit by the fabric.
This is enough. This is everything. This is who they are supposed to be, the two of them together and in love, and Blaine wishes he could just sit back and soak Kurt in and love him right back.
But instead he has to find some way of fixing what happened, some way to show Kurt and himself that it wasn’t important because Blaine loves him, and he did it not because he wanted Eli but because he wanted Kurt.
His stomach twists again. He’s risked everything he has because he misses Kurt so much he can’t see or hear or breathe. He knows it will hurt Kurt, which is the last thing he ever wants to do, but he hurts, too, so much.
Blaine has never known what he's doing, and Kurt knows that. Kurt knows him better than anyone, and as much as he loves that Kurt places so much faith in him Kurt also should have known Blaine would make a mess of things alone.
Doesn’t he care about that? Doesn’t he care about what him being so far away does to Blaine? To them?
“I still can’t believe both you and Finn are here,” Kurt says with a wondering laugh after he a little pause when he finishes up a story about his day at work that he dubbed ‘The Case of the Missing Coffee Machine’. “It’s like we always dreamed about, and you’re really here.” His smile is so, so wide, and there’s a bounce in his step that makes Blaine’s heart flip.
Blaine wants to reach out and kiss him and never stop. Blaine wants to pull him into his arms and start crying. He wants to look ahead at their night and know it will be a special date together before they get to fall into Kurt’s bed and each other’s bodies and kiss and touch and love until the sun comes up and they still can’t stop. That’s what this reunion is supposed to be. That’s what he wants tonight to be even now, because he wants Kurt to take his body back and reclaim it as his own. He wants Kurt to erase the memory of anyone else touching him, because he doesn’t want that. He wants this. He wants Kurt.
But he’s the doom hanging over them. He’s his own Sword of Damocles above his head, ready to strike.
“I’m happy I can be,” Blaine tells him, the words catching in his throat, because he can’t quite escape the horrible idea that no matter how big Kurt’s heart is and how generously he’s given it to Blaine he can take it right back again. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” Kurt says, and Blaine’s heart cracks at the sweetness in his voice.
He needed to see Kurt so badly today, not just because he missed him but even more to prove to himself that what they have between them is real at all, that he hadn’t dreamed it up. He needed to see Kurt and know. And he hadn’t dreamed it. Kurt has welcomed him from the second he saw him. Kurt has shone with love and joy every moment. Kurt is exactly the same person he has always been, not distant, not drawing away, not falling out of love. Kurt is there.
Kurt is the most important thing in Blaine’s life. And Blaine might have completely and utterly ruined it.
It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t make sense why. He did it, because Kurt left him alone, and Blaine doesn’t have anything that matters without him. Kurt broke open his shell and showed him everything he could have, and then he left and took it all away.
And Blaine doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to do any of this at all.
Maybe Kurt has the answers. Kurt always has the answers. Maybe that’s why Blaine was driven to come.
Blaine wishes he could take Kurt by the hand and lead him home, lead him to bed and make love and love and more love until the shape of Kurt’s mouth is left in a dozen places on his skin, until the taste of Kurt’s body is all that fills Blaine’s throat, until Kurt’s weak and helpless and clinging to him the way Blaine always feels every minute of the day about him. He wants to make love until Kurt can tell that everything Blaine has done is because he wants him, until somehow Kurt can hear him and understand him and accept him the way he always, always has done, well beyond the way Blaine can do any of that for himself.
But instead Blaine is walking down the street beside Kurt in this amazing city, in turns giddy and in despair, because he doesn’t know how the night is going to go, but he knows that he needs it to be okay, and nothing is okay without Kurt.
If this is the one time Kurt sees into him and can’t accept him, he doesn’t know what he will do at all. Because if Kurt can’t love him, what does he have?
Kurt tucks his hand into Blaine’s elbow and announces, “We’re here! Are you ready for this?”
Blaine can feel in the possessive grip of his fingers, see in the joy-filled tilt of his smile that Kurt does love him. And he loves Kurt with all of his heart, too. He wants to be everything for him. He needs to keep that light in Kurt’s eyes when he looks at him.
He has to show him. He has to make it right. He has to find a way.
Blaine barely notices the door Kurt steers him through. He pastes a smile on his face and lies, “Absolutely.”
~end~
For the record, Blaine is an unreliable narrator, and he and I have some serious disagreements about his view of the world. But this fic isn’t about me; it’s about him.
No bashing of any characters, please. My heart is bruised and bloodied this week, but I still love them both beyond words.
I’m unspoiled for future episodes of Glee. Please be kind and keep it that way!
And with that I'm going to go do something joy-filled, because being in Blaine's headspace has made me want to cry for days. <3 I'm fine; I just am glad I can do other things. :)