(no subject)
Title: As Wisdom Grows (1/3)
Characters/Pairing: Kurt/Mike, Mr. and Mrs. Chang, Burt Hummel, Glee club, Mr. Schue, Miss Pilsbury
Rating: R for swearing and sexual references. To, you know, rape.
Word Count: 7,184 for this part
Summary: Mike gets raped. Kurt just tries to help him through it.
Warnings: There are references, not too dark or graphic but there all the same, to rape and Mike is a little broken in this story.
Notes: For the Mike/Kurt Summer Love Fic Fest, prompt 51. I was drawn to the prompt because of the challenge and pure heartbreak of it. Also, I have grown attached to this verse because of the very slow pacing I had to approach it with -- everyone in it grew on me. A preemptive sorry for any delay between the next two parts.
--
Mike bangs on Matt’s door before he even thinks that one through. Is so glad it’s Matt that answers and not Mr. or Mrs. Rutherford, because wouldn’t that be a bitch to explain?
“Dude,” Matt groans, eyes mostly still closed, “What time is it and why are you here?”
Mike tries for a smile, even though it’s dark and Matt isn’t looking and Mike is in such a mood to not smile, is hurting in so many ways and maybe limping, maybe was crying ten minutes ago. He just smiles dimly and whispers, “It’s around three in the morning but if my mom calls tell her I was here since, like, twelve. I don’t know, just. Yeah, can I come in?”
His voice sounds a little weird, even to him, and apparently also to Matt because he stops rubbing at his eyes long enough to try and peer closely at him. “Dude, are you okay?”
The truth would be no, but Mike has already decided that that’s a truth he will not share with anyone, ever. So, “Yeah, fine,” he lies, clearing his throat to hide the cracking of his voice, “I’ll take a shower and crash on the couch, I know where the towels and blankets are.”
Matt’s frowning, looking hard for clues of what’s going on, but Mike pushes past him and heads for the linen closet, legs only a little shaky. “Alright, man.” Matt says after him, knows the rules of best friendship where Matt doesn’t pry right away if Mike’s really not offering, and Mike lifts a hand to acknowledge his kindness.
-
He gets to school a little later than usual because he leaves Matt’s house at about five, after getting no sleep, and goes and sits in a park. Because, okay, he thinks he has the right to act a little psychotic for a second before he takes a breath and pretends it all away.
The air is cool and all the dedicated runners are out and Mike is sitting in the clothes he wore yesterday on a hard wooden bench, carefully and deliberately placing layers of denial, one right after the other, over this little hard and burning core of pain inside him. Just that and staring at the ground. This is stupid, he realizes, just really stupid, he needs to go home and change clothes. He should have stayed at Matt’s until Mrs. Rutherford physically saw him so his staying over isn’t just a folded blanket at the foot of the couch, a dirty and still slightly damp towel in the hamper, (flecks of drying blood swirling down the shower drain,) and a figment of Matt’s late night imagination. He needs to get it together and do the homework for pre-calc before third block, needs to call his mom, get up off this bench and go home to take another shower.
Mike closes his eyes against the tightening in his chest, the want to crawl in his bed and cry with his head under the pillow creeping into his chest like ivy over a retaining wall, the shortness of breath and the clinking sound of ice against glass muffled but there in his ear (stupidest mistake of his life - !). He gasps and hunches over and wills the blurriness in his vision from tears away. He’ll go home in a second, Mike promises himself, when he isn’t suddenly hypersensitive to the throbbing of his body and the memory of the stupidest decisions he’s ever made to date.
-
So yeah, Mike sits in a park and then goes home at nearly eight thirty to shower and change clothes, doesn’t see his parents - they leave for work before he goes to school, of course he doesn’t see them - and so gets to school really late.
“Mike,” Matt confronts him during lunch, “My mom texted me and said your mom called her asking if she’d seen you and she said no and you’re mom freaked out, apparently.”
“Oh. Um.” Mike is biting into a sandwich at that moment and he realizes that his mom hasn’t seen him in what’s going on about twenty four hours. “Yeah.”
Matt is dubious of that response, as he very well should be since it doesn’t answer anything, but he lets it slide all the same and changes the subject. “Okay, so want to let me know why you were at my house early this morning?”
Mike takes another bite of his sandwich, this time it’s strategic, and mutters out, “Dance audition, remember?” Which is only a lie by omission.
Matt doesn’t appear to be completely buying that either but Mike can’t say more, he’s moved on already, locked that night up deep inside him and it’ll stay there until it’s dusty and forgotten.
-
His mom freaking out? Yeah, Mike realizes he should have taken that more seriously when she comes storming into glee rehearsal with a cop, screaming her head off about an Amber Alert.
“Mom, I had an audition.” Mike says meekly as she throws her arms in the air at the sight of him and begins a rant about how he wasn’t home and Mrs. Rutherford hadn’t seen him.
“What kind of audition goes on until such ungodly hours that you can’t call or come home? You had me worried!” Her tone is accusatory, which she has every right to be, but it has Mike’s stomach going in freefall and then his mouth goes dry. Which is weird, all he has to say is he had an interview, they liked him that much, but in the end it didn’t go well and he just crashed at Matt’s. That’s so spot on that it’s not even a little bit of a lie, just shameful truths that are making Mike’s heart beat a tattoo against his ribcage.
“I.” He gasps out. Where is his breath, come on, breathe nice and loud for me -
Mike jerks back, from that memory and from his mom trying to wrap her arms around him, tears in her eyes. She chalks it up to teenage male pride, thinks he doesn’t want to be hugged by his mom in front of all his friends when really he just doesn’t want to be touched at all by anyone. “You had me worried,” she repeats mournfully, anger sitting barely detectable but there in the background of her voice, “Where were you?”
“If it means anything,” Matt interrupts quietly and Mike realizes that the whole club is gaping at the two of them and the cop standing patiently off to the side, “He really did come to my place - woke me up and everything with the doorbell, but it was late and my mom didn’t see him.”
“So it wasn’t - wasn’t some glee thing - ?”
Mike jumps at the almost accusation and heads her off that direction. If glee gets in trouble for this, he will never forgive himself. “No no, Mom, it was me, promise. Just me, all my own fault. Sorry.”
She squints at him, suspicious, but he’s never given her reason to doubt him before, and he probably seems no worse for the wear in the end - despite how untrue that may actually be, but Mike’s fine with pretending. With the situation sufficiently diffused, Mike’s mom starts calming down and apologizing to Mr. Schue and the cop tips his hat and mutters if they ever need him in a real emergency then they have the number.
His mom finally leaves, warning him to come home right after rehearsal and baseball practice from now on or else, and then Mike is left with the club full out staring him down.
“You didn’t go home?” Both Matt and Mr. Schue ask in demanding voices and Mike tries not to visibly shrink into himself.
“Uh yeah, like I said, I crashed at Matt’s for a little bit - ”
“Which so beautifully explains why he’s confused as well,” Kurt, of all people, chimes in with a snippy tone - it is, apparently, Mike thinks, his only way to deal with people, “Yeah, Mike, right.”
Mike tries not to stumble over his words because this is actually the really easy part to tell. “I left early and he didn’t know where I went after that, I’m not lying - ”
“Wait wait wait, you had a dance audition? And you didn’t tell us? What for?” Rachel Berry’s single minded focus of course makes an appearance today, as it does every afternoon, but maybe Mike can work that to his advantage.
He keeps his voice steady as Finn tries to shush her and Mercedes mumbles something about learning the appropriate time and place for saying really stupid things, “Um just for a movie dance extra, but I thought it’d be cool. I don’t think.” His voice shuts off for a second there and even Puck, whose attention had be lost about forty seconds into this discussion, looks up briefly at the abruptness of it. I don’t think it went like it should have, he almost says, but the wording’s too weird to not draw attention. Stop thinking about it, he tells himself, stop it, just move on.
“It went late,” he chooses instead, “And I don’t think I got the part.”
Mr. Schue, so averse to acknowledging failure and its effects on the human psyche, claps his hands together and tells them to get back to rehearsing. The rest of rehearsal goes on without a hitch - well, other than a moment where Mike stops in the middle of a dance and nearly just, like, cries for no reason.
Just stops and can’t breathe, can’t remember the next dance step and might cry in the middle of the choir room. Kurt rebounds off Mike mid twirl and glares after he pitches forward into Quinn in the middle of her mini solo. The performance stutters on after the hiccup, mainly because Mr. Schue does some quick thinking and signals for both Brad to keep playing accompaniment and Mike to come sit the song out. Mr. Schue has him sit the next two songs out and Mike thinks it’s overkill because he’s only flubbed up a dance step, no reason to think he’s catatonic and will trip over his feet in every number.
But rehearsal ends with him in a chair next to Mr. Schue, who fixes him with a look that means stay, we need to have an awkward conversation after everyone’s left. Not that everyone doesn’t notice because, really, how can they not? Tina even shoots him a look of concern as she wheels Artie out, so he shrugs to keep her from lagging behind, mouths I’m fine at her and she’s finally gone, though with reluctance.
“Mike,” Mr. Schue says pleasantly enough, “Is something wrong? Is this about the audition? Because I’m sure you did your best and that’s all you can do, if you don’t get the part - ”
Mike can’t handle a freaking pep talk about the audition, because even if he did get the part, even if the audition had, after all that, been legit, Mike wouldn’t take it. No way in hell, so he can’t sit here and pretend to be upset over not getting the part, not without threatening to spill every last bit of resolve he’s gathered up inside himself.
“I did go home,” he finally mumbles, just to shut Mr. Schue up, “Just, I left Matt’s early ‘cause I couldn’t sleep and wandered around the park before going home. They had gone to work, I just missed my mom, is all. She just didn’t see me come in.”
Mr. Schue blinks at Mike and Mike averts his gaze and starts his shrinking act again. It’s a little involuntary right now but he’ll reassert being bold, reassert his manliness, tomorrow if he has to, if it doesn’t stop on its own. “I rode on a bus.” He elaborates, “The audition was out of town. Time kind of sped by, you know?” He’s offering anything to get Mr. Schue to stop staring at him like that.
“Are your parents not supportive of your extracurricular activities? Your - you know - the nonathletic ones?”
Oh geez, yeah that would be where Mr. Schue goes with the conversation. “No no, they’re fine with glee and dancing, I. I have to go home Mr. Schue.” He sounds like he’s begging by this point, but it’s all he wants to do, go home and sleep. Take a shower and sleep and not talk to his parents about his night, which is exactly what they’re going to want to talk about.
Mr. Schue frowns but he lets Mike go with a simple, “Let us know about the audition results when you find out.”
-
Mike manages to fly under the radar, not hard since he’s both used to it and able to hide behind some of the bigger and louder personalities of his friends. It’s pathetically easy really, by not talking too much and plastering a smile on his face, to keep avoiding too probing questions and any suspicions that he’s not entirely in his right mind for another couple of days. He gets by a whole entire school week safely and soundly and no one any wiser to his stupidity, his incident, his audition gone wrong. His parents buy the bus story and the mindless impulsive teenager act, Matt backs off because normally this sort of lying to your parents about where you disappear to at night thing isn’t really that big of a deal, and Mr. Schue relents and relays to the rest of the club when Mike lies and says he got an email with the callback list and he’s not on it.
Mike is learning how to keep his lies straight and easy to remember, learning how to integrate it into his truths and every day life, is taking four and five and six and seven showers a day because he can’t help it, sometimes the number just climbs and climbs and it’s either that or he can’t always remember where he puts obvious things like his house keys or shoes because his brain’s out doing flashbacks. He also figures out how to breathe when he feels like the world is closing in on him because, he reminds himself, he’s just being a little melodramatic (everything is fine, he whispers to himself in chemistry, breath short and insufficient as tests are handed out down the rows, everything is fine and nothing happened, and the girl sitting next to him eyes him strangely, nervously, so he smiles what he hopes to be winningly at her to pretend he is normal).
He’s a little bit of a mess, feels himself sliding too far to the left and then to right, but, only, in his head. If that makes sense.
It doesn’t but that’s really what Mike feels like, unsteady and slipping as he searches for balance on a cracking ice bed. Trying to hold it together, pull it together, stop waking up in the middle of the night with sweat down his back and voices lingering in his mind - both from nightmares he can’t remember, but doesn’t need to, not to know what they’re about.
And then Mike flinches away from Finn’s friendly one armed manhug after the first successful rendition of this one particularly hard harmony they’ve been working at all afternoon and he ruins it, the illusion of him being mostly okay. Finn’s face goes from confused to downfallen in one second flat, and it takes Mike two more to realize that the rumors about him being gay have been particularly vicious lately and maybe Mike’s acting like he believes them. But that’s not it, Mike wants to say, that’s not it at all, just don’t touch me.
But he doesn’t clarify, just offers another weak smile to add to the endless number of them he’s been handing out lately. Finn offers one back before putting some distance between them with hands held up, palms forward, in a typical gesture of I mean no harm. Mike should really apologize and explain, instead of visibly relaxing - only because Finn is out of his personal space and Mike hasn’t realized his defensive, whole body tenseness until now, now that he’s relaxing out of it.
“Okay, because that wasn’t weird. What’s up with you two?” Mercedes pointedly says, hands on her hips as she stares directly at them from across the piano and if Mike was any meaner he’d probably tell her to mind her own business. He isn’t, though, so doesn’t. And anyway, when he looks up, he finds out that the others are giving them varying looks of interest - on a kind of hilarious note Kurt is donning the exact same pose as Mercedes, probably is drawing the exact same assumptions that she and Finn have - and so he shrugs meaninglessly and looks back down to avoid confrontation.
Maybe Mike can pretend that away, it’s not too noticeable and there’re a lot of assumptions he can deny later, if they are ever vocalized. But Santana scoffs because she knows him better than that. The fact that she doesn’t emasculate him onto a silver platter proves that she’s holding back because she knows something’s wrong. She only spares him when she knows he can’t take it, like the time his grandmother died in the seventh grade, the time he and Matt denounced their friendship because of your mom jokes during freshman year, and right now.
And Brittany, cute and lovable and unable to read atmosphere with the same brilliant tenacity Brittany, decides aloud, “Mike is so sad today, and lately? His smile’s been fake.” She then further decides that the only way to fix this is to throw herself on him and hug it out. Because she’s Brittany and she likes touching, and because he’s Mike and he’s nice and they’ve been friends since forever. And everyone knows that, everyone know this should be a heartfelt if not somewhat private moment.
So it’s really too bad, Mike thinks, after he flings Brittany away by the bone of her wrists with wide eyes while suddenly drenched in cold sweat, when his brain stops slamming into the front of his skull with rushed nonsense thoughts and sheer massive freaking-the-fuck-out emotions, that he starts crying. Like, silently, and only the scrunching up of his face and shine of abrupt tears prove it, but everyone is looking straight at him, so they can tell, they know. And it’s really stupid and too public and Mike is gasping for breaths and murmuring, “Shit shit shit,” like a mantra because it’s all he’s thinking clearly and linear enough to say.
No one is entirely sure what to do and Mike doesn’t blame them because he doesn’t know what to do either, this certainly isn’t normal. But he’s paralyzed, with unwanted touch and lack of control over the situation spiraling completely out of his hands, crying quietly into the sleeve of his jacket, thinking determinedly that, no no, he is actually okay or at least is going to be. Even though he is sliding to pieces right now, it’s okay. He’ll make it there, back to normalcy.
Matt takes a leap of faith, soft and unsure. “Mike?” He steps towards his friend, hand reaching.
Mike realizes with a start that he will snap every last one of Matt’s fingers off before he’ll let his best friend touch him. And that thought makes him look at Brittany, pouting and ankles crossed as she sits where she’s fallen on the floor and watches him dejectedly. Santana is softly petting her bruising knee and she’s watching him too, but her eyes are daggers.
Mike takes a step back, a deep breath in, shakes his head wordlessly at Matt and avoids everyone’s gaze. Avoids Mr. Schue’s hand as well as he goes for his backpack and then leaves.
-
Mr. Schue, unsurprisingly, understandably, calls his parents, but Mike doesn’t know what he tells them about the freak out. All he knows is that his parents keep peering worriedly into his room as he hides under the covers.
He’s getting angrier and angrier at himself because he feels disconnect between every single thing in his body: his emotions, his actions, his thoughts. Nothing’s in his control and he’s sliding clink clink clink like ice in a glass of Coke, sliding off one another until they hit the solid of their container.
Mike can’t live like this, he understands that he won’t survive the wear and tear on his body if he keeps breaking down like this, so gets out his laptop and types ‘dealing with rape’ very slowly into Google. But then he can’t bring himself to press ‘search’, so he closes his computer and lets it fall onto the floor. Instead of facing that head on, he gets out of bed to take a shower, to try and sit at the table for what could maybe be a nice and silent dinner afterwards.
Mike finds his dad standing in the hall right outside his bedroom, thinking so hard at the floorboards that Mike’s sudden appearance visibly startles him.
“Is there something you want to talk about?” His dad tries lamely and Mike could hit him, the question is so stupid.
“No,” Mike is a teenager, since when has he ever genuinely wanted to talk to his parents about things of even less grave importance? “But I do want to go take a shower before dinner, so.” He trails off, waits for his dad to drop the subject and dismiss him. Dad doesn’t, though. He stares, looking for what Mike’s hiding, and Mike fidgets under the scrutiny, uncomfortable.
“Did something happen?” His dad tries again and Mike shakes his head immediately.
“No, Dad, look. Stop worrying, I just have a lot going on.”
“Your teacher said you were crying Mike. I don’t…you haven’t cried since elementary school.” His dad looks so lost, as his eyes search in Mike’s over the rims of his glasses. He’s looking for an explanation that makes sense but isn’t scary, something to explain this away without changing their lives. Mike is sorry to disappoint, can’t explain it then, if those are the requirements. Wouldn’t. Won’t ever, the end. So his dad finishes calmly, quietly, with, “High school boys don’t just cry, Mike.”
This is true. This is very very true, Mike acknowledges that truth by biting on his bottom lip and nodding. “I know. I. It was a one time thing, don’t worry.”
-
Unsurprisingly still, Miss Pillsbury calls him into her office for a talk the next day.
“I heard, Michael, that you are…having some issues with something?”
Mike shrugs and keeps staring at his hands. “I’m dealing with it.”
Miss Pillsbury, Mike thinks, is not always an entirely effective guidance counselor. She stutters around for a bit, “Oh, um, well - well, sometimes talking about these things help with the coping process. And I am under an oath of silence, and even if your problems aren’t, um, entirely within legal procedures we can work something out…”
She patiently slides some pamphlets across her desk and is waiting for a reaction when it hits Mike that she thinks he’s on drugs. A brief glance at the pamphlets proves as much, with titles like ‘Stealing Out Of The Medicine Cabinet CAN Kill You!’ and ‘Weed: Sure It Makes Good Brownies But It Still Is Bad!’ staring back up at him. Oh god.
“My problems,” he clarifies slowly, “Aren’t drugs. I’m not on drugs or steroids or anything.”
She just stares back, waiting. Mike feels weird, with her watching him squirm. “I just,” he finds himself saying, “I just. What can I do, you know?”
She smiles a little, urging him to continue, and he starts looking everywhere else but at her, thinks furiously about if he should do this. She’s under an oath, she won’t tell anyone. Not even his parents, right?
“I, what can you tell me, then? About…about.” Mike doesn’t know why saying it out loud is so hard, why taking that final step would be too much. Would it be over faster, would he be over it faster if he could say the words to someone? Maybe bury it in someone else.
Mike’s heart is in a lump in his throat. He runs a hand through his hair and shifts and exhales shakily. “Never mind. Never mind Miss P, I don’t - ”
The sound of her sliding her drug pamphlets back to her side of the desk makes him look up and the expression on her face is patience mixed with resignation. “If you ever need to talk, Michael, I’ll be here.”
Mike nods like he’s supposed to and leaves her office without a word.
-
Someone taps him on the shoulder expectantly while he’s sitting on the locker room bench, leaning over and lacing up his sneakers, hair still damp. It makes him shiver involuntarily, but he swallows it and looks up anyway. That someone turns out to be Rachel and she is backed by Kurt and every glee girl except for Brittany and Santana - Mike can guess that Santana’s still mad and Brittany might be too, come to think of it.
He raises an eyebrow because he knows this isn’t good, the girls (and Kurt) have this fondness for interventions and makeovers and fixing broken things and if they’re here then they see Mike as in need of one of the three.
All Mike manages out is, “Um.” Before Rachel beams scarily at him and plunges headfirst into her probably planned speech. “Mike, you have been incredibly downtrodden lately and we, as your fellow club members and more importantly as your friends, feel it our duty to get to the bottom of it.”
He attempts to avoid the imminent horrible and drama-wrought conversation that’s heading straight at him. “You girls do realize you’re in the boys locker, right?” There’s an awkward beat and Mike tilts his head in Kurt’s direction, “Er, sorry Kurt. You’re fine.” Kurt lets his accidental comment slide right off of him like water, not even fazed, just looks determined and strong.
Tina crosses her arms with a hint of attitude - Mike sometimes forgets that she can hold her own if she feels the need - and immediately gets what he’s trying to do. “Don’t change the subject. Mike, you’re really bummed out and freaked out about something. We’re here for you.”
Mike’s eyes drift their way back to the floor, not sure how to take or handle this, before Mercedes pats him briefly on the back. Mike flinches so hard at the contact that he tastes copper and panic and bile in the back of his throat and almost vomits, almost misses her question (but doesn’t miss the look the others share uneasily with each other). “Is anyone, you know, messing with you?”
“With that gay accusation bit, we mean,” Kurt follows up, certainty in his voice. “Your reaction to Finn’s charitable camaraderie kind of gave it away.”
“Ah,” Mike takes this excuse and runs with it, “Yeah. But, um, it’s cool. I don’t - ”
“We’re not accusing you of being homophobic,” Quinn tells him with a little smile, “We know it’s just hard to handle.”
“Especially with how Lima treats homosexuals.” Rachel chimes in. “So I propose - ”
“We all propose, remember - ” Mercedes cuts in.
“Geez Rachel, why is it always about you - ” Kurt cuts in on Mercedes cutting in.
“Guys,” Tina wails, “This is about us being there for Mike, not your diva battles - ”
Mike watches the developing fight helplessly, looks to Quinn for some direction and she shrugs. “If anyone messes with you,” her tiny and clever smile is so free of pity that Mike takes to it, latches on to her words and really listens, “Then punch them. That’s what Puck does for Finn lately and, while a little counterproductive about stemming the gay rumors, it shuts people up.”
He laughs, like he’s supposed to, and it’s not just manufactured but a little bit real because Quinn isn’t sympathizing with what she doesn’t know. She’s just giving and he’s just taking and enjoying and the other five grin back at him. He hasn’t been laughing and smiling like he normally does and it’s so noticeable that this display of happiness gets them excited.
Mike makes them empty promises in response to their relentlessness, of talking about his problems and going to them for help and standing up for himself, until they leave, appeased.
Except for Kurt. Mike finishes tying up the other shoe and puts his cleats in his locker and doesn’t realize Kurt’s let himself back in until he clears his throat expectantly. As Mike closes his locker and turns around, he’s not surprised that Kurt has one hip jutted out and his arms crossed.
“I hope you don’t actually think I bought your fake out.” He is unmoving, ready to launch a thousand ships to get what he wants, “I don’t think any of the girls did either, really, but they are willing to settle with what you, in all your stubbornness, are offering. I, however, am not.”
Mike sighs. He’s tired and he really needs to get home, really wants to go home, and his dreading talking to Kurt if the boy is determined to rise to the challenge and painfully extract honesty out of Mike. “What do you want Kurt?”
“The truth.” It’s a simple, obvious demand, no less than what Mike is expecting and yet not so simply filled.
“Kurt,” the weary quality to Mike’s voice is probably not going to get him anywhere, but he’ll try because it’s all he has, “It’s not that important.”
Kurt huffs and sits down next to Mike on the bench. “Right. You cried in the middle of glee. And as I highly doubt that it was Brittany who made you cry, she’s a clueless sweetheart who wanted a hug, clearly there’s something you’re keeping to yourself.”
Mike looks at the far wall and is uncomfortable with how close Kurt is, with both his words and his body. He’s sitting practically right next to Mike. How is Mike to think straight like this?
“It’s that audition, isn’t it?” Kurt is spot on, but then again, that’s the really obvious part of it.
“I hope you don’t think it’s over not getting the part, I’m not a girl or anything.” Is all Mike can muster, because Mike would die if anyone thought that. That’s just humiliating.
Kurt lets out a bark of sharp laughter. “Oh no, I don’t think it’s that. But…” His face becomes contemplative and he too is staring blankly at the wall so Mike can’t predict where this is going. “But then I don’t know what to make of it. What’s going on Mike?”
Well Mike really doesn’t want to have a heart to heart in the guys’ locker room. “Kurt, this is the locker room, it's really public domain - ”
“And you’re the last guy on the baseball team left hanging around. You took really long in the showers.”
The beads of water collecting on Mike’s forehead from his wet bangs and the reasons of why (clink clink clink) floating around in the space between his ears remind him as much. Mike feels boneless now, slouches in on himself, and he hides his face in his hands. “What do you want from me?”
There is now urgency in Kurt’s words, “Mike - what - what happened? You aren’t yourself. I just want to help.” He’s starting to understand enough of the situation to not touch Mike. He hears Kurt shift towards him and then abruptly away on the bench in a valiant effort to figure out how to comfort him. It’s all of Mike’s fears but it’s also a relief, that someone’s getting it without him having to say a thing. Be strong, he reminds himself, be strong and don’t cry.
The last thing Kurt quietly says is, “Mike.” Before he falls silent and waits for Mike to get there in his own time.
Mike regulates his breathing through his fingers, keeps hearing clinking and his own ragged breaths over and over in his head, like a broken record and other clichéd metaphors. He’s just one big soap opera special smashed together, after all. “Yeah,” he whispers finally, “Yeah it was the audition. Something…happened.”
“Yeah?” It’s not Kurt asking for anything, just him encouraging, supporting Mike because he needs the help.
And suddenly this is embarrassing and unbearable. Mike shoots up off the bench, unable to face it, Kurt - of all people, Kurt - feeling sorry for him. “Never mind,” he mumbles, grabbing his bag, “Just forget it.”
He whirls around to run out and Kurt jumps up as well. “Wait! I just…let me ask a question?”
He pauses for an answer and he is genuinely asking Mike to ask his question. His sincerity strikes a chord and Mike hopes he won’t regret this decision. “What?”
“Was it…was what happened something - ah - overtly sexual?”
There are seven seconds, he counts them as they stretch out, that fall between that question and when Mike wheezes out an almost silent, “Yeah,” and flees.
-
He goes to Matt’s house because he’s tired of his parents tiptoeing around him.
“I think I might be clinically insane,” are Mike’s first words when he enters Matt’s bedroom, “So I’m sorry if I do anything else terribly psychotic and Puck-worthy.”
Matt looks up from the book he’s reading from where he’s sitting at his desk. “Uh, okay, did you burn something down, is it that kind of Puck-worthy?”
Mike sinks into Matt’s bed and wishes for it to swallow him up. “No,” he says thoughtfully, “Maybe I should. Something big to get it over with. So I can stop acting so insane in all these little ways.”
“Dude, what’s your issue?” Matt dog ears the page he’s on and closes it, turning in his chair to look at his friend. “You look like you bolted here after practice.” The words might seem callous, but the manner in which they are said is not. Matt is worried.
Mike locks eyes with him for a moment, which is a moment too long because Matt can see everything on his face, and then stares up at the ceiling. “I did bolt. I also had a moment with Kurt Hummel. I also am trying to decide why I am so crazy lately.”
“I’m wondering why too.” Matt’s not joking, he’s serious, but then again so is Mike, so they’re even. “I’m not stupid, Mike. I know you’re acting way way off, but I can’t make you tell me why. I’m not good with words, just like you, so…” He trails off into a shrug. “It’d be a bad combination. You know I don’t judge, though. Whatever’s up - and you’re probably sick of hearing this, but - you know I’m here for you.”
And Mike knows. It just doesn’t seem to make this any easier.
-
Kurt asks Mike to meet him in the choir room during lunch and Mike has nothing else to do, is not about to blow off the guy he’s admitted the most of anything to. So he brings his brown bag to the room with no expectations.
Kurt is sitting on the piano bench, tinkering around, so Mike takes a seat in one of the chairs and immediately starts rifling through his lunch to avoid looking at Kurt.
Kurt, on the other hand, is never one to waste time. “Mike, you and I both know what this is about. And I - I’ve been thinking. If it’s sexual…” His sure tone falters, because even he doesn’t know how to process that correctly and, god, he doesn’t even know to what extent. “I think you need to tell someone about it. Talk to someone.”
Mike keeps his head ducked, even after he finds his sandwich. So Kurt presses on. “It doesn’t have to be me. I just think, with a time sensitive issue like this, you should do it soon, be it Miss Pillsbury or Mr. Schue or you parents or Matt. Or me, but I’m not saying it has to be me.”
Mike licks his dry lips and wishes for the conversation to be over. “I’m fine Kurt.”
There is a clang of dissonant notes as Kurt bangs his hand on the piano as he stands. “How many times,” his voice is shaking with anger, “Do you have to be reminded of your own mental breakdown last rehearsal before you realize that excuse doesn’t fly? I can’t - now that I know why, I’m not going to stand by and just watch.”
Mike’s fingers curl into the saran wrapped bread and wonders why not? Kurt takes a deep breath and continues more calmly, “You’re clearly not dealing well with whatever happened. You need to talk it out with someone before you internalize it completely wrong and go crazy from it.”
And he might have a point there, Mike admits, because sometimes he’s okay but then sometimes he feels like he’s going to explode from all the pressure and pain building up inside and he doesn’t know what to do with himself when it gets like that. So he takes a shower, hyperventilates, goes to sleep, something, anything to avoid what’s reverberating on the insides of his skull and ribcage.
Kurt seems to take his silence as him considering the notion, so they both let the lack of words fill the space between them. And Mike is considering it. Thinking, about that talk with Miss Pillsbury and she promised it’d be between just him and her, and maybe an impersonal confession is what he needs. Talk it out once and be done.
But how? How can he say something like that out loud, he can’t even wrap his mind around it completely, can’t convince himself it happened just the same way he can’t convince himself it didn’t. There’s too much and too little evidence to go either way, so Mike’s being tortured by what he wants to think and what he knows happened.
“It was the dance audition. I was really stupid and look where it got me.” He finds himself saying unintentionally, because Kurt listens and doesn’t judge and hasn’t known him since he was six like Matt has, so that’s impersonal too. And yet he’s personal enough to know that Mike can’t stand being touched, to know that Mike is just drowning in himself and doesn’t want to admit it, so he doesn’t have to explain.
Kurt is leaning on the piano when Mike glances sideways at him, looking conflicted and protective. It’s interesting, especially when Kurt murmurs, “Don’t blame yourself.”
There’s tenderness there, so welcoming for Mike to lay himself bare in, but he’s not having this conversation, no way, not happening. And if he ever actually does, it will be one way and one time and then it will be over forever.
He clears his throat and stands, because when he thinks too hard about it, about how it's him and Kurt in a room alone together talking about his emotions, it gets awkward. “I, um. I’ll go see Miss P sometime before the week’s over. Uh, see you.”
Kurt doesn’t try to stop him or correct him or coerce him into letting up details. Mike likes him a little more for that.
-
“Oh,” Miss Pillsbury is so surprised to see him in her office that she folds up the Clorox wipe she is using to scrub at a corner of her desk and throws it away, “Ah, Michael, I’m so glad to see you.”
Michael shrugs as he slumps into the seat in front of her desk and figures he should get this over with. But he’s having issues with his words, so he struggles to unfreeze his throat muscles as he sorts through the words he should use.
“Miss P,” he settles on, “Um.”
“Yes, Mike?”
I went to a dance audition and something really stupid happened and I don’t know how to move on with my life is the only thing coming to mind, so he says exactly that. Exactly.
She frowns. “Well, Mike, show business isn’t exactly easy and being a dancer is even less easy, but you’re young and I have some pamphlets on keeping your self esteem up - ”
She’s taking this the wrong way. Mike starts to panic because she’s going to make him say it or else send him out of her office with pamphlets titled ‘If You Think You Can Then You’re Halfway There!’ and he doesn’t need that. “No not that kind of stupid,” he blurts, “Like. I.” He looses all sense of what he is going to say, all sense of what he’s doing here, of what he’s supposed to get out of this experience. His mouth moves in shapes but no sound comes out and he’s rocking slightly forward.
“Michael?” Miss Pillsbury’s voice is constricted a little with worry as he touches his lips to his hands sitting clasped in his lap, spine curved completely as he breathes and pulls together the courage he needs.
“Do you have any pamphlets on rape?” His voice cracks so horribly but he’s standing strong enough by just saying it.
Her stunned silence tells Mike she doesn’t know how to take that. She further confirms that by asking uncertainly, “For someone else or…for you?”
“Do you have pamphlets on rape?” Mike repeats into his lap, a little louder, just in case.
“Ah, right, sorry, none of my business, so…” He convinces himself to sit up, straight and proud, he’s done enough, as she rifles through her papers.
“Um,” her tone is so apologetic it hurts, “I only have rape awareness for girls, since the budget…” Mike doesn’t have to be told how cheap McKinley High is, he plays baseball as his spring sport and they have to all buy their own cups every year.
She looks at him, sympathy in her eyes. “Um, but I don’t know if this won’t be helpful, in case it’s someone else who, er, was…” Mike stares right at her, challenges her to say it, and she can’t. “Um, right, and here’s one for rape victims' friends and family and how to cope. I hope it’s helpful.”
Mike takes both pamphlets without looking at the covers, suddenly embarrassed, and folds them into little squares that fit into his back pocket. He can’t look at them, he can’t look at Miss Pillsbury anymore either.
“Mike,” she’s just as uncomfortable as he is, except she doesn’t have to live with it on the bad days. “If it was you, you’ll want to do more than just pamphlets…”
“Right, yeah, thanks Miss P. For the packets.” He’s probably flushed and as red as a tomato. He just wants to get this experience behind him.
She lets him go - he practically runs out - without any other attempts to be helpful or get to the bottom of what he’s meant by his visit.