Fic: Sing Your Melody, I'll Sing Along
Title: Sing Your Melody, I’ll Sing Along
Fandom: Glee
Characters (Pairings): Kurt, Puck, Blaine, Finn, Mercedes; (Kurt/Puck, Kurt/Blaine)
Genre: Romance, Angst
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Infidelity, sexual references
Spoilers: 3x01, and it’s AU from there
Word Count: 3,203
Series: The Chain (Interlude)
Summary: ‘There’s a lot of things Kurt can’t handle these days, and this is just one of them.’
Disclaimer: I don’t own Glee, or the song ‘Falling Slowly.’ The lyrics mentioned in the text aren’t mine.
Author’s Note: This is an interlude of sorts to The Chain series, in which we hear from Kurt’s POV. He thinks to a different tune, so the title (and the lyrics within the text) are from the song ‘Falling Slowly’ by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. This covers the same time-frame as the first three parts of the series; I would definitely read those first.
-------------------------------------------
The thing about it all is that Kurt’s aware that everything is his own fault.
Summer was easy. Summer was when he started this whole… thing with Puck, when he didn’t feel nearly as guilty as he should have, and then the first day of school came and everything snapped back like a rubber band carving gouges into his skin.
The way he can’t quite talk to Finn like he used to, the extra tension in the choir room from day one of their senior year, the hint of desperation in Blaine’s eyes when he says he’s changing schools, it’s all Kurt. And even as he knows it and feels vaguely sick because of it, he doesn’t do anything to fix it.
The most he does is press himself closer to Puck the next time they’re together, because when there’s no room in between their bodies then there’s no room for the thoughts that circle around and whisper ‘your fault your fault’ until his head is spinning from the weight.
-
Everything is messy now, with Puck and Blaine at the same school and Kurt trying to figure out where the hell he is between them, and nothing about their situation really changes but it feels less stable all the same. And Puck keeps making it worse by touching him or asking him dumb questions like “Why are you with him?” that Kurt isn’t sure he has answers to. He considers it, lying in bed with Puck and tracing patterns and song lyrics into the skin of his shoulder (gently, not rubber-band-snap but feather-light, because he doesn’t want to leave an imprint).
He thinks that Blaine and being with Blaine are two different things, and he’s always gotten along better with one than with the other. He thinks that there are some people in this world who are sturdier than others, and those are the kind you’re meant to stand by. He thinks that Puck looks at him like he’s something beautiful, but only when it’s so dark he can barely see it.
He thinks that he’s been here too long, so he stops in the middle of writing - ‘games that never amount to more than they’re meant will play themselves out’ - on Puck’s arm and gets up to gather his clothes together, wondering whether Puck can feel what Kurt is telling his skin.
(Probably not, because if he could, then this might have been over weeks ago.)
-
The other thing about it all is that, when he told Blaine he loved him, Kurt meant it.
-
Jenny Walsh shouldn’t make Kurt jealous. She shouldn’t, because Kurt isn’t with Puck, except for a few hours every week, and Kurt understands that he has no right to feel possessive when he has even less claim to Puck than all the various girls Puck is sleeping with.
It’s not so much the idea of them having sex as it is Puck’s arm around her shoulders (like Kurt’s arm is around Blaine’s shoulders when they walk through the halls on their more confident days, when they feel like they don’t need to be as careful) that has Kurt yelling, yelling in the middle of a rehearsal and this is so not the time but there’s something dark and sticky in his gut and he has to get it out.
An hour later isn’t the time either, but Puck’s just whipped around and “-ran right into his arms and out of our school like a fucking coward; why couldn’t you have-” and Kurt can’t, Kurt really just can’t. Because Puck should know better than to throw that back in his face and because Kurt still doesn’t feel safe in the locker room.
“You’ve never fought for anything in your life,” he tells Puck, three minutes of harsh words and past-that-should-stay-there later (and talking about Kurt’s time in the closet is so hypocritical that Kurt could have laughed at it, but didn’t). “You didn’t say a word when Quinn decided you weren’t as poster-boy as Sam or when Lauren walked away…” He doesn’t add himself to the list, because he has no place there. “Or when Quinn signed Beth away to-”
Puck’s gone. And maybe he should be.
-
Kurt goes home after that, only it’s Blaine’s home instead of his own and it’s really Blaine’s room, and his parents are gone. And Kurt feels this something creeping up on him that usually has him running to Puck, but that’s just not an option right now, so instead it leads to Blaine and Kurt naked on the bed and needing a condom for the first time ever, and Kurt pretending he doesn’t know anything about this.
It doesn’t fix anything, and the next time he’s at Puck’s house, Kurt can’t bring himself to lie.
-
Finn yells at him, and for the first minute or so, all Kurt can think is, “Oh God, how did he figure it out?” because that’s probably the way Blaine will figure it out too and Kurt thought he had his bases covered pretty well but… Oh. Puck told him. Kurt can decide how to feel about that later, but at least he knows Puck won’t be doing the same thing for Blaine.
“You can’t say anything about this,” Kurt reminds Finn. “You can’t lecture me, not when you did the same damn thing.”
“Not for months.” There’s a moment where Kurt would do almost anything to stop Finn from looking at him like that. “Not… You can’t do stuff like this; you can’t lead people on when-”
“I am not ‘leading people on,’” Kurt says, not even yelling but just low and hard and dangerous. “I am with Blaine, I just… I…” He stops, because ‘I just need a break,’ doesn’t sound like something a good person would ever say.
-
“Can I stay?”
Kurt asks it quietly, because if it’s loud then it will mean something and it’ll hurt if Puck says no, but he says yes, and Kurt curls deeper into Puck’s chest and closes his eyes because…
He’s not sure why. Maybe because Finn actually managed to make him feel guilty the other day (even though he’s wrong; it’s not just Puck who needs Kurt to stop, but Blaine, too, so it’s both of them, and maybe Kurt even needs it a little himself, but he doesn’t think about any of that), or maybe because he knows that as soon as he stands up, the world will be hard again.
It’s like a chemical reaction, or it would be if Kurt were good at chemistry. His skin plus Puck’s skin equals silence, and he doesn’t have voices shouting at him that something needs to change. He likes it better when it’s quiet.
-
Finn keeps glaring at them, at Kurt and Puck and occasionally at Blaine, like he’s actually annoyed that Blaine hasn’t noticed Kurt cheating on him (which he hasn’t, but he does know something is wrong, and Kurt hates himself for that). Finn keeps glaring until he yells at Rachel over absolutely nothing, and yeah, Rachel can be annoying, but so can anyone and this is just one more thing that can be traced right back to Kurt.
‘Your fault.’
-
He does enjoy, for a change, feeling wanted.
-
There’s something weird about the way the ceiling looks when he’s in bed with Puck. It’s a very appealing ceiling, even though the back of his brain tells him it’s actually a boring color and it has chips in the paint at the edges.
Something grinds deep in his chest, scratching against his ribs when Puck sighs and turns over just a little but doesn’t let go.
-
Actually, Kurt thinks that the only reason Blaine notices anything is because of the good parts, the parts where Kurt clings a little bit closer after every evening he spends with Puck. Blaine gives him a funny look sometimes when Kurt grabs his hand while they’re walking between classes, and it gets funnier the more he does it.
Blaine knows why they don’t do it very often, knows about the jocks at this school and how bad it used to be, even if it’s better now that Kurt is a senior and has a lot of strong, straight friends who glower at anyone who aims a slushie at him, so he knows how weird it is when Kurt initiates obvious contact in hallways where anyone at all can see.
-
Puck worries about someone figuring it out, and Kurt reflects briefly that if that happened, Puck would be out, but puts that thought aside because it would be bad for both of them, if for different reasons.
It’s easier to believe that Puck doesn’t care about him when they’re arguing, so even though they’re pressed together, skin to skin, Kurt can’t relax completely while Puck’s telling him things he doesn’t want to hear about Jacob’s article. Kurt just… doesn’t see the point in worrying about it, honestly.
As he’s already proved, Blaine notices more when Kurt behaves actively weird. Therefore, it is a bad idea to react to the article, even if Puck doesn’t understand that, even if the words rumbling through Puck’s chest make it harder to ignore those voices that keep telling Kurt he needs to change something about this.
“You have to pick something. We can’t just do this forever.”
It takes Kurt a minute to realize that one was real.
It wasn’t just guilty voices in his head, it was Puck, real Puck, telling him something wasn’t right about this. Like he actually cared. Like maybe he was more invested in this than he should be and Kurt wasn’t just a pathway to easy sex. Or maybe just like he was tired of Kurt as a pathway to easy sex, and this was his way of saying they should be done.
“No,” Kurt says, even though he isn’t totally sure what he’s saying no to. He is very certain that ‘no’ is the correct answer, all the same. ‘No’ is the answer to a lot of questions, really.
-
The next day is Saturday, and Kurt goes out with Blaine (which is probably overcompensating but he really doesn’t care), and since it’s last-minute they don’t really go anyplace in particular, just hang around the mall. Kurt doesn’t spend a dime and Blaine gives him another of those odd looks, and Kurt kisses him in the middle of the food court to get him to stop.
Unfortunately, this is exactly where Mercedes finds them, storming over from where she’s been shopping with her mother and demanding to know why this meant Kurt was ‘busy’ today, because they could’ve just as easily gone to the mall as a threesome and Kurt has been ducking her all month.
Which, you know, he has. But he can’t admit that.
The nice people from the Taco Bell station ask them to please leave their customers in peace.
-
Kurt decides that talking is overrated the next time he finds his way over to Puck’s house, because really, anything he needs to say can be said perfectly well with hands and lips and pressure. And it’s not like he has that much to say anyway.
Mostly it’s just… need. It’s the need for harder, harder, “Harder,” and pushing against and inside until his body molds into something new, something that hurts people less and hurts himself more.
He feels a little bit better about it afterward, because he’s been feeling the marks on his skin for a long time, but now he can see them. It makes him steady for the first time in a long time, that little bit of consistency. Puck’s looking at him like he’s more than a little messed up, though, and that breaks the calm.
-
Puck is actually very, very good at breaking the calm.
Kurt didn’t know anything was different, but one day he’s trying not to shiver at Puck’s gaze on the back of his neck and the next…
“I don’t think- I mean, since… Maybe we shouldn’t, anymore…”
And all Kurt can do is leave. He nods, he stands up, he gathers his clothes together, and he walks out before Puck can finish his sentence, before Puck can say he doesn’t want Kurt. Because Kurt doesn’t want to hear that. He really doesn’t want to hear that.
-
Everything that was so very messed up before? Now it’s not just messed up, it’s fucked up, and Kurt has lost all ability to deal with it. On the other hand, Puck seems to be dealing with it quite well, because Kurt sees him making out with at least four different girls in the first week alone.
-
“Are you okay?”
Kurt isn’t expecting the question, so he has to blink once or twice before answering, and even when he does, all that comes out is, “What?”
“I said: Are you okay?” Blaine repeats, raising an eyebrow (on Puck, Kurt thinks, that eyebrow would be far more likely to be a question rather than a concern, but that’s hardly important right now). “You just seem so out of it.”
Kurt smiles, and it’s easy, because he’s had an automatic reaction to that question in place since he was eleven and his dad started asking about school again: “I’m fine.” Then he keeps smiling, because he loves Blaine and Blaine loves him and…
There should be more reasons than that.
He kisses Blaine instead of trying to think up more.
-
He holds Blaine’s hand now more than ever, and Blaine lets him, even though it gets them some dangerous looks from the hockey players or the basketball team, depending on the day.
Nothing happens, though, even when it feels like it should.
-
He sits in the back of the Glee room again. There’s no reason not to.
-
“It’s just… Are you sure you’re okay?”
It was sweet the first time, but now he can’t deal with it anymore, because he’s stopped being sure it’s just Blaine being attentive and started wondering whether Blaine is waiting for a specific answer (and wondering whether that answer is: ‘I cheated on you’). “Blaine, I’m fine, I swear. Why do you always ask me that?”
“Because you never seem fine,” Blaine shoots back. Kurt thinks he shouldn’t be angry, because it’s Kurt’s business if he’s not okay, isn’t it (even if that’s not really how a relationship works)? “You always say you are, but you’re not. You’re distracted and you’re acting weird, and I just want to help.” He ends on a softer note, eyes wide and worried, and Kurt just…
“Blaine, please. Please, can we just… not, right now?” He really can’t, right now.
They’re sorry, they say. They love each other.
Blaine will ask him the same questions tomorrow.
-
Kurt notices Puck reading a book on college applications and realizes that, God, he hasn’t even thought about his own in a week.
-
Sometimes, it’s perfect.
They’re in the car, singing and being all kinds of cliche, and people are giving them weird looks from the sidewalk, and it’s perfect.
They’re at the end of some upbeat Katy Perry tune that he can’t remember the name of, but knows all the lyrics to because Blaine plays it all the time, and you’d never know they were singers from the awful, awful way they’re trying and failing to harmonize, but that’s kind of the point.
The next song on the radio is slow and soft and entirely different, and Kurt knows it, even if he can’t think from where. “I don’t know you,” he sings softly, and Blaine glances over briefly from the wheel, eyes twinkling because they both know the words, “but I want you all the more for that.”
It’s the kind of song that works just right for two voices, because there’s a male and a female part, one for each of them, even if the lyrics are a little sad. And Kurt loves, just loves that Blaine doesn’t question for a moment when Kurt takes the male part from the first line; Blaine just comes in when the woman does, sweet lines about love and wanting someone you don’t (can’t?) have.
Blaine turns to him again when they’re at a red light, sings “Take this singing boat and point it home” staring right into Kurt’s eyes, and for a while…
For a while, this is all Kurt needs.
-
He wakes up in the middle of the night when he remembers the last time he heard those lyrics was in his head as he wrote them on Puck’s skin, only to have them fade out a moment after because he wasn’t using any ink.
-
Sometimes it’s not perfect (and isn’t that just how a relationship goes?)
Sometimes all he wants to do is take a break from thinking and that’s the day Blaine wants to do “whatever you want to do, Kurt;” sometimes he wants to go see a particular movie and that is when Blaine insists on taking him out to dinner. Just little things that don’t quite match up.
Sometimes it takes him a day or two to apologize, and he spends that day or two thinking dangerous thoughts.
-
Puck calls him. Puck calls him drunk, and oh God, is this really Kurt’s life?
Kurt tells himself he doesn’t care what happens to Puck tonight. He tells Puck to have someone watch him sleep. He tells no one a lot of other things that either shouldn’t or don’t deserve to be said.
-
‘Physics’ is not a very good last word. ‘Physics’ is actually a terrible last word, but it was the only thing he could think of when Puck pulled him into an empty classroom in the middle of the school day and Kurt actually wasn’t sure for a minute what the hell was going to happen (and he was even less sure of what he wanted to happen).
There’s a lot of things Kurt can’t handle these days, and this is just one of them.
-
The topic of today’s English discussion is something along the lines of ‘50 Ways Hamlet Changed My Sexual Background,’ as performed rather disturbingly by Kurt’s over-excited English teacher, who probably doesn’t realize how many times she’s used the word ‘phallic’ during the class period.
Kurt turns around when he hears a soft thud behind him to find Puck with his head on the desk, hand gripping tight into his short hair.
(Kurt used to do that, too.)
The teacher doesn’t stop, so Kurt turns back to the front to take notes. He wonders just what (who) Puck is doing at night to make him so tired, and something tugs at his chest, but he swallows it back down.
-
He’s fine until he isn’t, until something breaks inside his chest and he folds over where he sits, hands over his eyes like he could actually hide the tears if he tried hard enough. And Blaine is so, so confused, but he puts an arm around Kurt and lets him cry into his shirt (which is a whole new level of wrong, that Blaine is comforting Kurt about this) until Kurt just… can’t, anymore.
Can’t.
Fandom: Glee
Characters (Pairings): Kurt, Puck, Blaine, Finn, Mercedes; (Kurt/Puck, Kurt/Blaine)
Genre: Romance, Angst
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Infidelity, sexual references
Spoilers: 3x01, and it’s AU from there
Word Count: 3,203
Series: The Chain (Interlude)
Summary: ‘There’s a lot of things Kurt can’t handle these days, and this is just one of them.’
Disclaimer: I don’t own Glee, or the song ‘Falling Slowly.’ The lyrics mentioned in the text aren’t mine.
Author’s Note: This is an interlude of sorts to The Chain series, in which we hear from Kurt’s POV. He thinks to a different tune, so the title (and the lyrics within the text) are from the song ‘Falling Slowly’ by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. This covers the same time-frame as the first three parts of the series; I would definitely read those first.
-------------------------------------------
The thing about it all is that Kurt’s aware that everything is his own fault.
Summer was easy. Summer was when he started this whole… thing with Puck, when he didn’t feel nearly as guilty as he should have, and then the first day of school came and everything snapped back like a rubber band carving gouges into his skin.
The way he can’t quite talk to Finn like he used to, the extra tension in the choir room from day one of their senior year, the hint of desperation in Blaine’s eyes when he says he’s changing schools, it’s all Kurt. And even as he knows it and feels vaguely sick because of it, he doesn’t do anything to fix it.
The most he does is press himself closer to Puck the next time they’re together, because when there’s no room in between their bodies then there’s no room for the thoughts that circle around and whisper ‘your fault your fault’ until his head is spinning from the weight.
-
Everything is messy now, with Puck and Blaine at the same school and Kurt trying to figure out where the hell he is between them, and nothing about their situation really changes but it feels less stable all the same. And Puck keeps making it worse by touching him or asking him dumb questions like “Why are you with him?” that Kurt isn’t sure he has answers to. He considers it, lying in bed with Puck and tracing patterns and song lyrics into the skin of his shoulder (gently, not rubber-band-snap but feather-light, because he doesn’t want to leave an imprint).
He thinks that Blaine and being with Blaine are two different things, and he’s always gotten along better with one than with the other. He thinks that there are some people in this world who are sturdier than others, and those are the kind you’re meant to stand by. He thinks that Puck looks at him like he’s something beautiful, but only when it’s so dark he can barely see it.
He thinks that he’s been here too long, so he stops in the middle of writing - ‘games that never amount to more than they’re meant will play themselves out’ - on Puck’s arm and gets up to gather his clothes together, wondering whether Puck can feel what Kurt is telling his skin.
(Probably not, because if he could, then this might have been over weeks ago.)
-
The other thing about it all is that, when he told Blaine he loved him, Kurt meant it.
-
Jenny Walsh shouldn’t make Kurt jealous. She shouldn’t, because Kurt isn’t with Puck, except for a few hours every week, and Kurt understands that he has no right to feel possessive when he has even less claim to Puck than all the various girls Puck is sleeping with.
It’s not so much the idea of them having sex as it is Puck’s arm around her shoulders (like Kurt’s arm is around Blaine’s shoulders when they walk through the halls on their more confident days, when they feel like they don’t need to be as careful) that has Kurt yelling, yelling in the middle of a rehearsal and this is so not the time but there’s something dark and sticky in his gut and he has to get it out.
An hour later isn’t the time either, but Puck’s just whipped around and “-ran right into his arms and out of our school like a fucking coward; why couldn’t you have-” and Kurt can’t, Kurt really just can’t. Because Puck should know better than to throw that back in his face and because Kurt still doesn’t feel safe in the locker room.
“You’ve never fought for anything in your life,” he tells Puck, three minutes of harsh words and past-that-should-stay-there later (and talking about Kurt’s time in the closet is so hypocritical that Kurt could have laughed at it, but didn’t). “You didn’t say a word when Quinn decided you weren’t as poster-boy as Sam or when Lauren walked away…” He doesn’t add himself to the list, because he has no place there. “Or when Quinn signed Beth away to-”
Puck’s gone. And maybe he should be.
-
Kurt goes home after that, only it’s Blaine’s home instead of his own and it’s really Blaine’s room, and his parents are gone. And Kurt feels this something creeping up on him that usually has him running to Puck, but that’s just not an option right now, so instead it leads to Blaine and Kurt naked on the bed and needing a condom for the first time ever, and Kurt pretending he doesn’t know anything about this.
It doesn’t fix anything, and the next time he’s at Puck’s house, Kurt can’t bring himself to lie.
-
Finn yells at him, and for the first minute or so, all Kurt can think is, “Oh God, how did he figure it out?” because that’s probably the way Blaine will figure it out too and Kurt thought he had his bases covered pretty well but… Oh. Puck told him. Kurt can decide how to feel about that later, but at least he knows Puck won’t be doing the same thing for Blaine.
“You can’t say anything about this,” Kurt reminds Finn. “You can’t lecture me, not when you did the same damn thing.”
“Not for months.” There’s a moment where Kurt would do almost anything to stop Finn from looking at him like that. “Not… You can’t do stuff like this; you can’t lead people on when-”
“I am not ‘leading people on,’” Kurt says, not even yelling but just low and hard and dangerous. “I am with Blaine, I just… I…” He stops, because ‘I just need a break,’ doesn’t sound like something a good person would ever say.
-
“Can I stay?”
Kurt asks it quietly, because if it’s loud then it will mean something and it’ll hurt if Puck says no, but he says yes, and Kurt curls deeper into Puck’s chest and closes his eyes because…
He’s not sure why. Maybe because Finn actually managed to make him feel guilty the other day (even though he’s wrong; it’s not just Puck who needs Kurt to stop, but Blaine, too, so it’s both of them, and maybe Kurt even needs it a little himself, but he doesn’t think about any of that), or maybe because he knows that as soon as he stands up, the world will be hard again.
It’s like a chemical reaction, or it would be if Kurt were good at chemistry. His skin plus Puck’s skin equals silence, and he doesn’t have voices shouting at him that something needs to change. He likes it better when it’s quiet.
-
Finn keeps glaring at them, at Kurt and Puck and occasionally at Blaine, like he’s actually annoyed that Blaine hasn’t noticed Kurt cheating on him (which he hasn’t, but he does know something is wrong, and Kurt hates himself for that). Finn keeps glaring until he yells at Rachel over absolutely nothing, and yeah, Rachel can be annoying, but so can anyone and this is just one more thing that can be traced right back to Kurt.
‘Your fault.’
-
He does enjoy, for a change, feeling wanted.
-
There’s something weird about the way the ceiling looks when he’s in bed with Puck. It’s a very appealing ceiling, even though the back of his brain tells him it’s actually a boring color and it has chips in the paint at the edges.
Something grinds deep in his chest, scratching against his ribs when Puck sighs and turns over just a little but doesn’t let go.
-
Actually, Kurt thinks that the only reason Blaine notices anything is because of the good parts, the parts where Kurt clings a little bit closer after every evening he spends with Puck. Blaine gives him a funny look sometimes when Kurt grabs his hand while they’re walking between classes, and it gets funnier the more he does it.
Blaine knows why they don’t do it very often, knows about the jocks at this school and how bad it used to be, even if it’s better now that Kurt is a senior and has a lot of strong, straight friends who glower at anyone who aims a slushie at him, so he knows how weird it is when Kurt initiates obvious contact in hallways where anyone at all can see.
-
Puck worries about someone figuring it out, and Kurt reflects briefly that if that happened, Puck would be out, but puts that thought aside because it would be bad for both of them, if for different reasons.
It’s easier to believe that Puck doesn’t care about him when they’re arguing, so even though they’re pressed together, skin to skin, Kurt can’t relax completely while Puck’s telling him things he doesn’t want to hear about Jacob’s article. Kurt just… doesn’t see the point in worrying about it, honestly.
As he’s already proved, Blaine notices more when Kurt behaves actively weird. Therefore, it is a bad idea to react to the article, even if Puck doesn’t understand that, even if the words rumbling through Puck’s chest make it harder to ignore those voices that keep telling Kurt he needs to change something about this.
“You have to pick something. We can’t just do this forever.”
It takes Kurt a minute to realize that one was real.
It wasn’t just guilty voices in his head, it was Puck, real Puck, telling him something wasn’t right about this. Like he actually cared. Like maybe he was more invested in this than he should be and Kurt wasn’t just a pathway to easy sex. Or maybe just like he was tired of Kurt as a pathway to easy sex, and this was his way of saying they should be done.
“No,” Kurt says, even though he isn’t totally sure what he’s saying no to. He is very certain that ‘no’ is the correct answer, all the same. ‘No’ is the answer to a lot of questions, really.
-
The next day is Saturday, and Kurt goes out with Blaine (which is probably overcompensating but he really doesn’t care), and since it’s last-minute they don’t really go anyplace in particular, just hang around the mall. Kurt doesn’t spend a dime and Blaine gives him another of those odd looks, and Kurt kisses him in the middle of the food court to get him to stop.
Unfortunately, this is exactly where Mercedes finds them, storming over from where she’s been shopping with her mother and demanding to know why this meant Kurt was ‘busy’ today, because they could’ve just as easily gone to the mall as a threesome and Kurt has been ducking her all month.
Which, you know, he has. But he can’t admit that.
The nice people from the Taco Bell station ask them to please leave their customers in peace.
-
Kurt decides that talking is overrated the next time he finds his way over to Puck’s house, because really, anything he needs to say can be said perfectly well with hands and lips and pressure. And it’s not like he has that much to say anyway.
Mostly it’s just… need. It’s the need for harder, harder, “Harder,” and pushing against and inside until his body molds into something new, something that hurts people less and hurts himself more.
He feels a little bit better about it afterward, because he’s been feeling the marks on his skin for a long time, but now he can see them. It makes him steady for the first time in a long time, that little bit of consistency. Puck’s looking at him like he’s more than a little messed up, though, and that breaks the calm.
-
Puck is actually very, very good at breaking the calm.
Kurt didn’t know anything was different, but one day he’s trying not to shiver at Puck’s gaze on the back of his neck and the next…
“I don’t think- I mean, since… Maybe we shouldn’t, anymore…”
And all Kurt can do is leave. He nods, he stands up, he gathers his clothes together, and he walks out before Puck can finish his sentence, before Puck can say he doesn’t want Kurt. Because Kurt doesn’t want to hear that. He really doesn’t want to hear that.
-
Everything that was so very messed up before? Now it’s not just messed up, it’s fucked up, and Kurt has lost all ability to deal with it. On the other hand, Puck seems to be dealing with it quite well, because Kurt sees him making out with at least four different girls in the first week alone.
-
“Are you okay?”
Kurt isn’t expecting the question, so he has to blink once or twice before answering, and even when he does, all that comes out is, “What?”
“I said: Are you okay?” Blaine repeats, raising an eyebrow (on Puck, Kurt thinks, that eyebrow would be far more likely to be a question rather than a concern, but that’s hardly important right now). “You just seem so out of it.”
Kurt smiles, and it’s easy, because he’s had an automatic reaction to that question in place since he was eleven and his dad started asking about school again: “I’m fine.” Then he keeps smiling, because he loves Blaine and Blaine loves him and…
There should be more reasons than that.
He kisses Blaine instead of trying to think up more.
-
He holds Blaine’s hand now more than ever, and Blaine lets him, even though it gets them some dangerous looks from the hockey players or the basketball team, depending on the day.
Nothing happens, though, even when it feels like it should.
-
He sits in the back of the Glee room again. There’s no reason not to.
-
“It’s just… Are you sure you’re okay?”
It was sweet the first time, but now he can’t deal with it anymore, because he’s stopped being sure it’s just Blaine being attentive and started wondering whether Blaine is waiting for a specific answer (and wondering whether that answer is: ‘I cheated on you’). “Blaine, I’m fine, I swear. Why do you always ask me that?”
“Because you never seem fine,” Blaine shoots back. Kurt thinks he shouldn’t be angry, because it’s Kurt’s business if he’s not okay, isn’t it (even if that’s not really how a relationship works)? “You always say you are, but you’re not. You’re distracted and you’re acting weird, and I just want to help.” He ends on a softer note, eyes wide and worried, and Kurt just…
“Blaine, please. Please, can we just… not, right now?” He really can’t, right now.
They’re sorry, they say. They love each other.
Blaine will ask him the same questions tomorrow.
-
Kurt notices Puck reading a book on college applications and realizes that, God, he hasn’t even thought about his own in a week.
-
Sometimes, it’s perfect.
They’re in the car, singing and being all kinds of cliche, and people are giving them weird looks from the sidewalk, and it’s perfect.
They’re at the end of some upbeat Katy Perry tune that he can’t remember the name of, but knows all the lyrics to because Blaine plays it all the time, and you’d never know they were singers from the awful, awful way they’re trying and failing to harmonize, but that’s kind of the point.
The next song on the radio is slow and soft and entirely different, and Kurt knows it, even if he can’t think from where. “I don’t know you,” he sings softly, and Blaine glances over briefly from the wheel, eyes twinkling because they both know the words, “but I want you all the more for that.”
It’s the kind of song that works just right for two voices, because there’s a male and a female part, one for each of them, even if the lyrics are a little sad. And Kurt loves, just loves that Blaine doesn’t question for a moment when Kurt takes the male part from the first line; Blaine just comes in when the woman does, sweet lines about love and wanting someone you don’t (can’t?) have.
Blaine turns to him again when they’re at a red light, sings “Take this singing boat and point it home” staring right into Kurt’s eyes, and for a while…
For a while, this is all Kurt needs.
-
He wakes up in the middle of the night when he remembers the last time he heard those lyrics was in his head as he wrote them on Puck’s skin, only to have them fade out a moment after because he wasn’t using any ink.
-
Sometimes it’s not perfect (and isn’t that just how a relationship goes?)
Sometimes all he wants to do is take a break from thinking and that’s the day Blaine wants to do “whatever you want to do, Kurt;” sometimes he wants to go see a particular movie and that is when Blaine insists on taking him out to dinner. Just little things that don’t quite match up.
Sometimes it takes him a day or two to apologize, and he spends that day or two thinking dangerous thoughts.
-
Puck calls him. Puck calls him drunk, and oh God, is this really Kurt’s life?
Kurt tells himself he doesn’t care what happens to Puck tonight. He tells Puck to have someone watch him sleep. He tells no one a lot of other things that either shouldn’t or don’t deserve to be said.
-
‘Physics’ is not a very good last word. ‘Physics’ is actually a terrible last word, but it was the only thing he could think of when Puck pulled him into an empty classroom in the middle of the school day and Kurt actually wasn’t sure for a minute what the hell was going to happen (and he was even less sure of what he wanted to happen).
There’s a lot of things Kurt can’t handle these days, and this is just one of them.
-
The topic of today’s English discussion is something along the lines of ‘50 Ways Hamlet Changed My Sexual Background,’ as performed rather disturbingly by Kurt’s over-excited English teacher, who probably doesn’t realize how many times she’s used the word ‘phallic’ during the class period.
Kurt turns around when he hears a soft thud behind him to find Puck with his head on the desk, hand gripping tight into his short hair.
(Kurt used to do that, too.)
The teacher doesn’t stop, so Kurt turns back to the front to take notes. He wonders just what (who) Puck is doing at night to make him so tired, and something tugs at his chest, but he swallows it back down.
-
He’s fine until he isn’t, until something breaks inside his chest and he folds over where he sits, hands over his eyes like he could actually hide the tears if he tried hard enough. And Blaine is so, so confused, but he puts an arm around Kurt and lets him cry into his shirt (which is a whole new level of wrong, that Blaine is comforting Kurt about this) until Kurt just… can’t, anymore.
Can’t.