Standing in the Light (1/5)
Title: Standing in the Light
Author: glitterandpaws
Artist: lalala-broadway
Word Count: ~31,700
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Kurt/Blaine, Sugar, Sebastian
Warnings: Mentions of homophobia and bullying
Summary: Each person has their soulmate's name written on the back of their neck, visible only to their destined partner. Blaine moves to New York for his first year at Tisch, full of hope and small-town ideals. He stumbles on Sugar Motta's coffee house, where he meets Kurt. Kurt is Blaine's Pandora's Box, opinionated and a little jaded. But is Kurt the one he's looking for?
~Written for the Blaine Big Bang~
Art Masterpost
Author's Note: It feels bizarre to be finally letting people see this - I had the idea so long ago. Feels good, though. Huge thanks goes to my artist, lalala-broadway, for drawing me some wonderful art! And thank you to electrictoes for beta-ing this from the start, back when there were more SOME STUFFs than finished scenes. You've been awesome. Hugs and love to you both! Hope you guys enjoy this one.
~o~o~o~
It began in the mid-70s, or thereabouts. The date isn’t exact, but it can’t be. It took a few years until the world started to notice anything. Their name on the back of their best friend’s neck had children running to their parents. A quick glance under a girl’s hair, fingertips across the back of a son’s neck, and it was dismissed as child’s play, harmless and sweet. The world only sat up straighter when numbers grew.
It took until the start of the 90s to be sure. It was an epidemic, not a smattering of rumours, and it was generally accepted as fact long before governments released statements and started making pamphlets. My father kept all of them, right from the start. They’re his own version of vintage, one of the few frivolities he lets himself have. I was allowed to read them all when I was old enough and I submerged myself in them for days, a hemisphere of bright colours and slogans on glossy paper laid out around me on my bedroom floor. I wanted to know everything there was to know. Somewhere out there, my soul mate was living, my name etched across the back of their neck, and when we met, I was going to be the most prepared soul mate there ever was.
I found it easy to be a romantic, growing up on a diet of soul mate TV in a traditional Midwestern town. For all their rigidness, my parents had found each other and believed their match destined. It took me until I reached middle school to realise there were the cynics; people who scoffed at the notion of some higher force dictating who was right for us and branding us before we could meet. This wave of opposition to all the ideals I had built up staggered me and I had more than a few moments of doubt. I wondered whether there was any point to it all. Why should I go searching for someone when I didn’t know anything about them? Then I took out the pamphlets I’d always kept in a box on my desk. Looking over them reminded me of all the reasons I was an optimist, a hopeful.
I settled into my own skin at the start of high school. I lived in Ohio, so most people put away their disdainful teenage ideas about predestination and reverted to contentment with the idea that they would one day find the person meant for them. There were still the few who kept it up, but they were the same ones who smoked under the bleachers and ripped all of their clothes. Freshman year was also the time I told the world that the person holding my name was going to be a guy.
I have a scar on my left side, right under my ribs, that proves how well that was taken.
Ohio has always been a place of sureties to me. That world works like clockwork, everyone going through their own little segment of life the way they should. Even the rebels are predictable. And just like I was sure of everything in Ohio, I was sure that I wanted to get out. I wanted to act, to make art and give it to the world; I wanted to find love. I couldn’t do any of those things in my little Midwestern town. I fought with my parents in that way we fought about everything from my sexuality to my choice of friends: passively. There were never arguments, simply remarks and words left unsaid. We had so many silent dinners that I lost count. I didn’t crack, though, and when my acceptance letters came from schools in New York they gave in.
My parents drove me to Columbus airport, my whole life packed up in the trunk. They spent the drive discussing mundane things I barely heard as I stared out the window. This was the last I would see of Ohio for a long time, and I couldn’t say I was sad to be leaving.
They hugged me goodbye at the boarding gate. My father clung to me for a surprisingly long time - I’d been expecting the perfunctory pat on the back, but he pulled me to his chest and told me to take care of myself. My mother’s tears were anticipated, but no less emotive for it. I found myself blinking back tears of my own as she pulled me into a tight embrace, whispering frantic advice and farewells into my ear. They called my flight again, one last time, and I pulled back. I gave them a final wave over my shoulder and from then on it was a rush; from the plane roaring off the runway to the bump as we landed.
New York seemed even bigger now that I was there alone. JFK was sweltering in the vestiges of summer and I felt my shirt sticking uncomfortably to my skin under my Dalton hoodie. I almost wished I’d chosen something lighter for the trip, but the comfort of curling up in my memories as I flew towards my new life outweighed the discomfort of the heat. I kept it on as I waited for my bag by the carousel and as I dragged it through the airport, reasoning that it wouldn’t be long before I was in my dorm room, where I had been promised air conditioning.
I flagged a taxi outside the airport, unable to face the maze of the subway with a suitcase (or at all - I had given myself two weeks to learn how not to end up downtown when I was aiming up). I stared out the window, silently blessing the weak, clunking air con in the cab. I expected to see my new city looming up before me soon enough, but I had forgotten that this was New York. Minutes dragged by with the car crawling through traffic until I was slumped back in my seat, too lethargic even to take off my hoodie and give myself some relief from the heat.
When the city finally came into view, I gave a tiny cheer inside, tilting my head to the window and gazing upwards. Even the times I had visited it before, it had never seemed this tall, this immense. Maybe it was because it was now mine to play in, mine to explore; I felt like I would never discover everything there was to know. I felt too small to even make a footprint on the surface.
We drew up outside the residence halls, I paid the driver, watched my suitcase be dumped on the street in front of me, and was left standing on the precipice of my new life, on what felt like a very ordinary sidewalk. It wasn’t ordinary; it was New York, it was far from ordinary. It was a thousand miles from Ohio, big and blaring and free, but it had shrunk to those paving stones. The city didn’t have the gloss of dreams any more: it was right in front of me, raw and real and breathing, and I couldn’t go to sleep dreaming of it; it was reality now.
I took up the handle of my suitcase and pulled it into the lobby, slightly unstable on my feet. I leaned heavily on my bag as I greeted the girl behind the reception desk.
“Blaine Anderson?”
She looked down at her list, scanning her pencil along the names until she found mine and ticked me off. “You’re in 306,” she said, reaching behind her for a key. “Your roommate’s already signed in, so you’ll meet him when you get up there.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking the key with a smile. It dropped from my face as soon as I turned from her, tugging my bag over to the elevator - thank god for small mercies; stairs would have been impossible. I had hoped for just a few minutes alone, time to strip off a layer, splash some water on my face, try to make myself smell less like an airplane bathroom. As it was, I would have to give the best impression of myself I could when my clothes were sticking to me and my hair probably made me look like a madman.
I unlocked the door to my room, pushing it open and finding a family on the other side. I paused in the doorway as they all turned to me. My roommate and his parents were all crowded on his side of the room, unpacking his belongings.
“Hi,” I said, stepping into the room, suitcase at my heels. I twisted awkwardly to close the door, then turned back to face them, giving them the best smile I could manage. “I’m Blaine Anderson.”
“Nice to meet you, Blaine,” said my roommate’s father, reaching out to shake my hand. “I’m Danny Carvello, this is my wife Janie. Oh, and my son,” he said, clapping the boy in question on the shoulder. “Tommy.”
Tommy, shoved forwards by his father’s heavy pat, held his hand out to me. “Nice to meet you,” he said, smiling. I took it with a nod.
Tommy looked nothing short of normal. He had intrusive parents who didn’t want to let their baby boy fly the nest just yet; a mother who insisted on kissing his cheek just one more time before she left; a father who initiated a manly handshake only to grab him into a hug. They were the picture of a family, and Tommy was just as normal as a student at Tisch could be. Or at least, that was what I hoped. I’d heard about roommates from hell - had in fact spent far too long on one of those sites, freaking myself out so much that I was tempted to pack for an exorcism. I seemed to have escaped that fate for now, unless Tommy turned into a demon overnight.
“You from around here?”
I looked up from my bag, putting one more shirt in the drawer. “No, Ohio. You?”
“Upstate. Syracuse?” I nodded, the name sounding familiar. “It’s not far, but my mom’s still… well, you saw.”
I laughed, nodding and returning to my unpacking.
“So, Ohio.”
“Ohio,” I sang, drawing a huff of laughter out of him. “Why did I ever leave Ohio? Plenty of reasons, actually,” I continued, slipping back into speech.
“Am I allowed to ask?”
“Well.” I stood up, a pile of jeans in my arms, and carried them to the drawer. “Firstly, Tisch, hello. Secondly, I can’t do what I want to do in Ohio. And thirdly, I can’t stay in a place where people are prejudiced against me. It’s not… You think it’s okay, for the most part, but I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
“Why were people prejudiced against you?”
“Because I’m gay.” I straightened up, finally letting myself pull my sweater off and feeling the immediate relief of cool air. I dumped it on the bed and turned back to Tommy. “It’s not a problem, is it?”
He looked up from his own suitcase. “We go to theatre school. What do you think?”
I grinned. “And this is why I moved to New York.”
**
For the next week I walked into so many rooms full of people, and didn’t recognise any of them. I hadn’t been thrown into a new group like this since Dalton, and then I’d had the Dalton kindness wrapped around me like a freshly-dried blanket. Tisch was harder, over-bright personalities and catty remarks and every man for himself. I made friends, I wasn’t lonely, but it took me longer than I’d hoped it would.
September was all grey and wet sidewalks and dark stage lights, cold from disuse. I drank a thousand bad cups of coffee and had a wild moment of attempting to smoke, and I ate more ramen than I knew the world could hold. Tommy tried to get us into a club and we were turned away with a laugh. College wasn’t what I’d imagined, but it was somehow what I’d expected.
The rain was slapping on the sidewalk and burrowing into the fabric of my jacket as I walked down a street I didn’t know. I’d got on the wrong metro line, but managed to get vaguely close to my dorm (I hoped). But in the rain, all of New York seemed to blend into one, tall mass. I wrapped my arms tight around my torso, ducked my head, and tried to keep as close to the buildings as possible. When a particularly large gust hit me, making my eyes water, I looked up to see where I was and smiled, relieved at the sight of a coffeehouse. The name Sugar’s was displayed above the door in bright pink letters.
I pushed open the door and stepped into the warm, muggy heat of the coffeehouse. There was only one other patron, curled up in a corner seat. A girl stood behind the counter, counting coins and humming along to the song playing through the speakers. I stepped up to her, brushing my wet hair off my forehead and sniffing slightly. She looked up and laughed.
“What happened, you get washed down a plughole?”
I smiled, shaking my head, spraying water droplets on the counter as I did. She tutted, grabbing a cloth and wiping the wood dry again. She set the cloth aside, leaned on her elbows and looked me up and down. “You’re new.”
I pulled at my wet jacket. The rain was seeping into my skin. “Yeah. It looked lovely in here, so I thought I’d, um, drop in.”
“You mean it looked dry. And I meant to the city.”
“Oh. Right, yes. I am.”
“Searching?”
I smiled. “Making myself available while following my dreams.”
She rolled her eyes, but there was a hint of a smile on her lips. “What’ll it be?”
“Medium drip?”
“Should have guessed.” She straightened up, turning away to work the coffee machine. Her hair was tied in a side ponytail, swept over one shoulder to bare the back of her neck. I gasped, gripping the edge of the counter. There were black letters there, written across her skin, plain as daylight.
She looked back over her shoulder, smirking. “Look a little closer.”
I tried to work my throat, but my heart was pounding. I squinted, trying to see what she meant. I looked at the letters. Sugar.
“What…?”
She span back to me, holding out her hand. “Sugar Motta, owner and manager of Sugar’s Coffee. It’s a tattoo.”
I took her hand in a daze, my heart still feeling like it was going to beat out of my chest. “Blaine Anderson. Why would you do that?”
“So I can see faces like the one you’re making every day,” she said with a laugh. She turned back to the coffee machine, speaking as she worked. “It’s awesome having your own name written on you, don’t you think? I’m my own woman. I’m my own soul mate.”
I watched her tap coffee grounds into a waste disposal. “I can see why you like it. But… what about when the real thing comes along? Won’t it cover it?”
“It’s in the wrong place,” she explained, placing a cup on the counter in front of me. I took it blindly, still trying to process. “I asked.”
I sipped my coffee, not quite noticing how it was slightly too hot. “I can’t believe I fell for it.”
“Am I not good enough to be the love of your life?”
“No,” I said with a laugh. “You’re a girl. Kind of an issue.”
She laughed, grabbing a biscotto and putting it on a plate, sliding it towards me. “For that, free food. Not every day you get to turn a gay guy.” I took the plate with a smile and a murmur of thanks. “Come on.” She came around the counter, ushering me towards a table. “Everyone’s sheltering, so unless I get any more soaked strays my business is done for a bit.” She pushed me into a seat, looked down at me where I was still dripping water, then scurried back behind the counter. She returned with two towels, which she handed to me before settling into the chair opposite me. I thanked her again, rubbing at my hair with one of the towels. I was going to get rain hair - that crazy, fluffy, Hugh-Grant-gone-wrong look that I’d learned not to show to anyone. There was nothing I could do about it, though, so I set about drying myself off.
“Tell me about these dreams you’re following.”
I looked out from under the towel, still rubbing at my hair. “I just started at Tisch.” Sugar made an oohing sound, clasping her hands and resting her elbows on the table, making a show of listening very keenly. I laughed at her, rolling my eyes.
“Are you loving it? Is it everything you ever thought it would be and more?”
“Better. Crazy, but I love it.”
“When you’re rich and famous, you’re going to tell them I’m the one that got you there, right? Without me, you would have died out in that storm, from pneumonia or a lightning strike or a rabid stray cat or something.”
“Of course, Sugar.”
She clapped her hands, giggling. “Okay.” She stood up, patting me on the head as she went back behind the counter again. “What’ll we have?” She picked up a stack of CDs, fanning them out in her hands and raising her eyebrows at me.
“Branching out from generic coffee shop music?”
“There’s no one here. Well, except that guy,” she pointed to the corner, “but he’s always here, so he’s like furniture.” I pressed my lips together, trying not to laugh out loud. “I want a dance party.”
“You’re insane.”
“I think you mean fun.” She picked a CD and ducked down behind the counter. I assumed she was putting it in the player (and spinning the volume dial all the way up) because a few moments later a loud, sugar pop dance beat blasted out of the speakers. She didn’t bother to walk around the counter again, instead hopping straight over it and running over to me, grabbing my hands and pulling me to my feet. I laughed at her, but she was already dancing around me. After a few seconds, I joined her. She let out a squeal, jumping at me and pulling me to dance with her.
We danced until the rain stopped. At some point, the other patron left, but we didn’t notice, too busy showing off our most ridiculous moves. When the clouds began to clear, Sugar flopped back onto the floor, panting. I didn’t bother to hesitate before dropping down beside her.
“I hope you mop this.”
“Excuse me, Blaine Anderson, I am a respectable business woman,” she said with a slap to my stomach. I just laughed, closing my eyes and breathing deeply through my nose. The air smelt like rain and coffee and sweetener.
“You’ll tell them I taught you how to dance, too.”
“Oh, yes. I think this,” I made a ridiculous wiggling movement, mimicking Sugar’s earlier dancing, “will be the new thing. All the cool kids will do it.”
“You’re cute, Blaine. It’s sad you’re gay.”
“If I ever feel the calling of the straight,” I said, rolling my head on my arm to look at her, “I’ll know where to go.”
“Oh, you won’t. You’re at theatre school.” She made jazz hands at the words. “You’ll get gayer by the second.”
“I resent that stereotype.”
“You won’t resent it when it’s getting you laid,” she sang, hauling herself to her feet. I followed suit as she primped her hair in the mirrored surface of the coffee machine.
“I’m not really that kind of guy.”
She patted my chest, heading back around the counter. “I forgot you were a romantic. On the search for your One True Love.”
“Is there anything wrong with that?” I asked, propping my elbows on the counter.
“Nothing at all. It’s just a big city, that’s all. You shouldn’t expect it to just fall into your lap.”
I looked down at the countertop, stroking my fingertip through a few stray sugar granules. I was hopeful, I knew that, but I liked to think I wasn’t stupid. I believed in fate, and in things happening if they were meant to happen. I didn’t want to go searching for something so much that it drove me crazy, but I didn’t want to lie back and expect things, either.
Sugar was still talking, but I only tuned into the tail end of it. “… and I know you want to wait for your one special guy, but if one of those theatre boys puts his moves on you, I’m just saying I think you should go for it.” She plopped a pink ice drink with whipped cream onto the counter in front of me.
“Is that for me?”
“I’m thinking of calling it Pride Parade.”
I sucked on the straw. The drink was just as sweet as it looked and I was sickened to find I enjoyed it. “It’s disgusting. I mean, it’s delicious. But it’s disgusting.”
“Just like me,” she said, tapping me on the forehead. “But I have more emphasis on just the delicious. Were you listening to me?”
“About the theatre boys?” She nodded. “I get where you’re coming from, but I really want to wait.”
“But how long are you going to sit around waiting to be someone’s virgin bride?” Sugar said, sipping on her own Pride Parade. “Twenty-one? Fine, that’s salvageable. But what about twenty-five? Or thirty-four? God, Blaine, what if you’re a forty-year-old virgin?”
“You watch too many movies.”
“And too much reality tv, but that’s not the point.” She pointed her straw at me. “Look, I’ll let you have a year, maybe two. But then, you are getting your fine ass laid.”
“Sugar-”
“Okay, okay, you can have two years. Look, Blaine, I don’t know you that well, but I have a feeling I’m going to get to know you a lot better. I already care about you far too much. You are not going to mope around in my coffeehouse ten years from now, stinking it up with your loneliness, when you could be out having a good time. You are not sitting around for that guy.”
“What if I want to sit around?”
She sighed. “You are way too romantic. I hope my guy is at least half as well versed in matters of the heart.”
I blushed, drinking more pink slush to hide it. Maybe I could pass it off as a reflection of the colour.
“I’m gonna close up,” she said, straightening up and dumping her empty cup in the trash. “It’s early, but this isn’t exactly prime soul mate hour and there’s no one here, so.”
“Do people find each other in here?”
“Once or twice. After that, they’re regulars. They get attached. Drive me nuts.” She flipped the sign on the door to Closed and set about cleaning the coffee machine. I wanted to offer my help, but I had a feeling I would cause more damage than good.
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re so happy. I’m sure it’s nice for them, but they make me forget that I’m my own woman sometimes. You see it so much that you want it.”
“I feel that way all the time.”
“That,” she said, gesturing with a cloth, “is because you’re young and crazy in love with the idea of being in love.”
“How old are you, then, if you’re so wise?”
“I thought gentlemen never asked a woman’s age.” I rolled my eyes behind her back, but she seemed to sense it because she laughed. “Nineteen. Opened this up back in July, after I graduated.”
“How did you afford a place like this?”
“My daddy owns half of America. He buys me things.”
I choked on a mouthful of pink. “So he just bought you a coffeehouse?”
“I asked very nicely.”
I shook my head at her. Sugar was too much. She wasn’t like some of the students at Tisch, too much in that intense, throwing their talent at you way. Or like the guy who lived down the hall from me who made his love for the proper works of Shakespeare very clear, at all times of day and night, and who I’d seen bedecked in a ruff the other day. They were characters, they were fun; they were what I’d expected a little of. Sugar was something else.
**
I fumbled with my wallet, barely grasping it between two of my fingers as I tried not to spill my coffee. The bags of books in my other hand swung as I finally managed to transfer my wallet and tuck it back into my pocket. I shook my hair out of my eyes and finally looked back up at where I was walking: straight into a horde of people as was always the case in this city. I slipped back into that blind awareness I’d picked up in my two months in the city, seeing people without noticing them. It’s that jaded city-boy habit that I blame for making me not notice at first.
When I saw him, everything paused, the world shrinking down to a buzzing in my ears and my own name printed across someone else’s skin.
New York exploded back around me, brash and loud and dizzyingly alive. I couldn’t think about it, could only focus on the man ahead of me. He was too far for me to see anything more than my name, my name, my name on his skin, and I started shoving against the crowd. I dropped my bags, coffee cup hitting the pavement, spilling and splashing at the legs of the multitude. He reached a crossing and I broke into a run, only to come head to head with a huge tourist group, chattering loudly and pausing to take photos of the very tops of the buildings. I tried to skirt around them, but there were too many, so I gave up and pushed through, bashing into people as I went. I came to halting stop at the edge of the pavement, cars trundling past and blocking my path. I had missed the light and was stuck right on the edge, craning my neck to the see the other side.
He was gone.
The light changed back and I ran, shoulder-checking people without realising. There was a break in the crowd and I took it at a sprint. I ran and pushed and twisted and squeezed, barely aware of the circus of people around me, only one of them on my mind.
I ran for six blocks before I realised I wouldn’t find him.
**
“What’s he look like?”
I rolled my head on the table, looking up at her. “Brunette, I think. Maybe blonde. Tallish. I never got close enough to see him properly.”
“A tallish brunette-maybe-blonde. I’ll put a sign up in the window. There aren’t many of those in this city.”
Blaine gave her the laugh she wanted. “I can’t talk about this any more.”
Sugar pushed his coffee in front of his nose and turned away, ponytail swinging. “Nor can I, I have coffee to make.” She smiled brightly at the new customer who was gaping at her, trying to get another glance at her neck. I lifted my head off the wood and picked up my cup. The bell above the door jingled a few times, people moving in and out, and I watched them with slightly glazed eyes.
“Nice tattoo,” said a clear voice at the counter. I looked over, seeing Sugar’s eyes widen and a smile spread across her face.
“Thank you. And you get the prize for being the first, so whatever you want is on the house.”
“First what?” the man replied. He tilted his head, angling his face towards me, and my stomach did some sort of backflip. He was pale and ethereal, his voice high, but not piercingly so. From what I could see of him, he was beautiful, dressed in well-fitted and skilfully cut clothes, a bright scarf wound around his neck. I missed the rest of his and Sugar’s conversation, watching him take his coffee in a daze. When he turned, Sugar caught my eye over his shoulder and raised her eyebrows, tilting her head at him. I glanced away from her to find him watching me, a small smile on his lips. He walked over to my table and I started blushing before he even reached me.
“Hi,” he said, holding out his free hand, “I’m Kurt.”
“Hi,” I breathed, smiling up at him and shaking his outstretched hand, congratulating myself on so far seeming normal.
“May I sit here?”
“Go ahead.” I pushed my bag off the table and gestured towards the free chair. “It’s all yours.”
He smiled at me again, eyes sparkling. He sat down and took a sip of his coffee. “So, what’s your name?”
“Oh! Oh, sorry, I’m Blaine.” I held out my hand again and Kurt shook with a crook of one eyebrow. I let go of his hand quickly, feeling foolish. “So,um, I’ve never seen you in here before,” I said, looking down at my cup and then back up at him, into his bright blue eyes. “On a search? ”
“For what?” he asked with a tilt of his head.
“For your soulmate. I’ve heard of people like that before, trying every coffee shop in New York and hoping that in just one of them they’ll find true love.”
“Is that something you do?”
I laughed. “No, god no.”
“So you don’t believe in it?” He leaned forwards over the table, eyebrows raised slightly.
“Of course I do. It’s…” I gripped my cup. “It’s all I think about sometimes. I’m just of the belief that whoever you’re meant to be with will come to you. If fate says it should happen, it will happen.”
He sat back in his seat and I had the slight feeling that he was disappointed.
“Do you believe in it, Kurt?”
He ran his finger along the handle of his coffee cup, staring into it. “I don’t believe it’s not real. I just don’t agree with falling love with someone just because you should. I’d want to know the person rather than just throw myself into it.”
“So if you met them right now, what would you do?”
“I don’t know.” Kurt smiled, shaking his head. “I’d kind of like it to be spur of the moment. I want to give things a chance to work out naturally.”
“It’s natural to be with the person you’re destined for.”
“Now it is. How do you think people decided before?”
I went silent at that. I knew exactly how it used to work, testing and hoping until you found the right person, The One. Everything was easier now. The laziness of the human condition seemed to have truly manifested itself. I understood that things used to be different, and I could see Kurt’s point of view. I just couldn’t imagine not spending as long as I could being the partner to the one person made to complete me.
I suppose we were both silly romantics, in our own way.
There was always a part of me alert to new people I met, wondering whether they were it. As I watched Kurt sip his coffee, wide blue eyes staring back over the rim of the cup, I felt something I hadn’t in a long time: I wanted it to be him. I avoided that hope as much as I could; seeing what I was wishing for taken away with just a glance of skin was an ache I had never learned to deal with. It shouldn’t be so keen a pain when I had only met any of the guys for five minutes at the most, but in those moments there was something tangible about what we may have together. The backwaters of my mind, the little undercurrents, were all working to weave together a future with kisses and dances and growing old as the stars side by side. I didn’t notice them at work until those snatches of future were taken away with one blank neck; then they rose up, lashing and biting, and it always hurt more than it should.
I tried to avoid doing that to myself, but Kurt was igniting a far more noticeable want somewhere deep in my chest. I had felt compelled to speak to him, for no reason I could find; I had simply known that I didn’t want to let him go with nothing more than a shared glance. Then he had sat opposite me and I was helpless from then on.
We had slotted into sync with just one conversation. Kurt felt effortless - the way he spoke, the easy smile that quirked his lips from time to time, the grace of his long fingers wrapped around his cup, the soft, almost indolent blink of his eyelashes; how he spoke to me, viewing the world just differently enough to keep me on my toes, but not forcing an argument when there was no need for one. As we talked - sliding into lighter topics; easier, we’ve-only-just-met topics - he revealed a quick humour, sharp and delicious. He had me biting my lip to hold in laughter too loud for a coffee shop.
There was something twisting proleptic in my stomach, that Kurt would be my undoing. I could see him taking me apart with one smile; one grip of fingertips against the inside of my wrist, where the blood beat quickly under my skin. He was the shining, final evil from a foolish girl’s box of tricks: he was hope.
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