Tore The Pages All Away
Title: Tore The Pages All Away
Rating: G.
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine, Blaine/OC.
Spoilers (if any): If Blaine being a junior is still considered a spoiler!
Warnings: Character death, angst. So. Much. Angst.
Word Count: 3,000+
Summary: Blaine Anderson spent his entire life waiting for the other shoe to drop. He just never imagined it would fall like this.
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A/N: Hey there! I present to you an incredibly angsty one-shot I wrote last night! It's un-betaed so all mistakes are my own. There's not a lot of dialogue, but that's sort of on purpose so I hope you don't mind! It's angsty. Very angsty. So be warned. The title comes from the song Who You'd Be Today by Kenny Chesney. There is one line in here that I took directly from the most recent episode of Private Practice because it was part of what inspired this. So yes, I hope you enjoy!
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Blaine Anderson spent his entire life waiting for the other shoe to drop.
When he first kissed Kurt, he spent over a year waiting for him to realize that he wasn’t good enough. That there were boys much more attractive and so much more worthy of his attentions than he was. But he never did. He never left Blaine. Not even after a year of being in New York, with probably hundreds of boys that were attracted to him. And that? That is what gets Blaine through his senior year at McKinley.
When they move into their first apartment, next door to the attractive and damn near irresistible Oliver Isaac (seriously who names their child Oliver?), Blaine waits for Kurt to tell him that he’s discovered how much better life would be Oliver Stupid Isaac. But he doesn’t. In fact, they barely talk about their next door neighbor and Blaine realizes that he’s insecurities are nearly laughable because Kurt has never had eyes for anybody but him.
When they get married, Blaine is only vaguely threatened by their very gay wedding planner and that’s something he prides himself on. He wondered, for a moment, whether Kurt would decide to run off with a man who shared more of his common interests. The idea is quickly tossed out of brain when Kurt fires the wedding planner, stating that “Nobody else has any idea how to do this right but me and I refuse to have anything less than a perfect wedding.”
He thinks it might fall when they decide it’s time to have kids. They’re 27 and 26 respectively and they’re absolutely, positively ready for it. Well Kurt is, but Blaine? Blaine’s scared shitless. What if he’s not a good dad? What if he isn’t ready to be a parent? What if he becomes his father? Kurt holds him while he cries more times than he can count during the year and a half it takes them to get approved for adoption.
And this is where the shoe slowly starts to unlace and just slip the tiniest bit.
Both Blaine and Kurt thought that the hard part was over. They were approved now, so the next step was to find a baby. Or a mother. Whichever came first. They aren’t in a position to be picky. They both want an infant. A small child, to hold, and to raise right from the beginning. So their agent, Ally, looks at prospective mothers mostly.
They cycle through so many women before they find her. And it’s not their fault. It’s not. The women that have interviewed them have either been slightly closed minded or had an ideal picturesque couple in mind and Blaine and Kurt just didn’t fit the mold.
Her name is Danielle. She’s sixteen years old and pregnant with a baby she doesn’t want. She’s not in an ideal position for a baby and Kurt and Blaine love her in the second they meet her. She, oddly enough, looks something like Kurt and that’s what causes Blaine’s heart to leap into his throat with hope.
She introduces herself with her head hanging low, her other hand on a small bulge in her stomach. Kurt and Blaine introduce themselves and the conversation flows so easily after that that Blaine and Kurt decide that now, it might be okay to hope.
They get the call a week and a half later. Danielle picked them. She wants them to keep her baby. To become its family. Ally called right before breakfast but Kurt and Blaine don’t even make it to the table that morning. They just hold each other, tears streaming from both of their eyes, whispering “I love you’s” into each other’s ears.
Danielle wants to know them. She’s already read their file but she really, really wants to know them. They have her over for dinner one night, a month after they received the call from Ally. It’s awkward and it’s slightly stilted but they get along. It doesn’t leave Blaine nervous that she’s going change her mind and that’s the most important part.
When she invites them to her 20 week sonogram, neither of them hesitates to say yes. It’s the appointment. They’re meant to find the gender today and it’s absolutely nerve-wracking. It’s the last minute though, when Blaine backs out. He says he doesn’t want to know. He wants it to be a surprise and Kurt respects that. So Kurt leaves the room too, when the nurse tells Danielle the gender.
It’s after that appointment that things really start to sink in for them. They’re going to be Dads. They’re going to have a little baby to spoil and teach and raise. They paint the nursery together. It’s a neutral yellow color. When they finish, Kurt wraps his arms around Blaine’s paint covered shoulders and whispers, “No matter what this baby is, it’s going to love this nursery.” Blaine tries to keep his tears from spilling but he can’t help it. He wipes his eyes on the sleeve of Kurt’s shirt and receives a verbal scolding that has him laughing and flicking yellow paint at his husband. They fall asleep in the nursery that night.
Danielle’s pregnancy flies by.
She’s in her 8th month before they know it and god damn it, they’re not ready yet. Their friends threw them a spectacular baby shower that gave them nearly everything they needed that they didn’t already have and that was great. But they couldn’t give them the emotional readiness that they both needed. Burt thinks that they’re both over-stressing. There’s nothing to worry about, they’ll be fine, they’ll be great, etc etc. But it’s so hard. So hard to believe. The baby wasn’t even born yet and they were already stressing. Blaine could hardly even imagine post-birth Kurt. He’s not sure if he’ll be more stressed or less stressed. But Blaine can’t wait to find out.
Kurt’s working the night Blaine gets the call. Danielle’s went into labor and “God damn it, you need to get here now!” So he does. He rushes. He calls Kurt and he rushes. Kurt is frazzled but excited. He says that he’s rushing out of work and he’ll be there as fast as he can.
Danielle’s labor takes eight and a half hours.
Kurt never showed up. First Blaine was angry and now he was just plain worried. Where could his husband be? He’s thinking about it as he’s holding Danielle’s hand as she breathes through contractions. He’s worried sick and about a half minute away from calling the police when they tell him that this baby is ready to be born. So he stays and holds her hand while she pushes. He listens to her scream. And when he hears that baby scream? It’s practically music to his ears. Then he hears it. The flat line. The tell tale sign that something was wrong. He’s rushed out of the room and the baby is cleaned off and rushed into the nursery.
They lose her at 3:30 a.m. She had unknown complications due to pregnancy. She was gone. She gave Blaine and Kurt a chance to be parents and died in the process. She was only 17, a child herself. She was someone’s baby and now she was gone. Blaine held his head in waiting room and cried and wondered, not for the first time, where his husband was.
The baby’s a girl. Blaine’s elated. He can only see her through the nursery window right now but it’s enough. He’s standing right in front of the window when his phone goes off. He doesn’t recognize the number but answers anyways.
The shoe falls at 8 in the morning on April 18th. Blaine Anderson-Hummel received the call that his husband had been fatally wounded in a car accident last night and “they did everything they could but they couldn’t save him.” It was a drunk driver that hit his car. He’s gone. Kurt’s gone. Suddenly the ring on his finger feels heavy and his stomach is contracting. It can’t be true. Kurt wouldn’t leave him like this. Not on this night. Not on the most important night of their lives. They had to have to wrong man. Because it wasn’t Kurt. It couldn’t be.
It is. The hospital calls him to identify his body and Blaine can’t even look past his hair before he’s diving toward the nearest trash can. His husband is lying on a slab. It’s him. It sinks in that Blaine will never hear Kurt’s voice again. He’ll never kiss his temple and stroke his arm when they watched T.V. He’ll never feel Kurt’s hands on him again. He’ll never hear him singing from the kitchen while he’s making dinner. He won’t feel Kurt’s arms wrapped around his torso before they fall asleep. It feels like everything Blaine’s ever known has been pulled out from under him and Blaine realizes that this is when his shoe falls and god, his wishes it would have fallen earlier.
He holds his daughter, legally, for the first time 10 days after she’s born. The paperwork had been delayed because of Danielle’s death. It’s finally pushed through and Blaine holds her like she’s the most fragile thing he’s ever seen, and she is. She’s so small and breakable and he barely knows what to do. He wishes Kurt were there. He pretends that he can feel Kurt’s arms wrapped around them. Blaine does all he can to keep from sobbing while the lawyers are still in the room but the moment they exit, Blaine hugs his daughter to his chest and allows tears to slip.
He’s sitting with her that same night. She’s fast asleep and Blaine realizes that she still doesn’t have a name. They never talked about it. Boy’s names came up, because for some reason Blaine had really thought it was going to be a boy. But they never talked about girls names. Blaine’s bottom lip quivers and whispers to the ceiling, “We never talked about girls names.” A few tears slip down his cheek. “We should have talked about girls names.” It’s the last thing he says before he puts her down in her nursery bassinette and curls into himself, sobbing.
He names her Danielle Elizabeth Anderson-Hummel. It takes him a few days to come to peace with his decision but he knows it’s the right one. Her biological mother’s name and Kurt’s mothers name. Burt had just arrived from Ohio, Blaine having called him the moment he heard about Kurt. He lets Burt plan the funeral because he can’t do it. He can’t look at a headstone or a coffin and know that it’s for Kurt. For his husband.
He takes Danielle home and the first time he steps into the nursery he feels like the wind has been knocked out of him. He’s struck with a flood of memories. The time they spent painting. Picking out the crib. Picking out the wall decals. Picking out the mobile. It was everything they did together. They were supposed to raise her together and looking at this room hurt. Looking at anything in the house hurt. Blaine clutched his infant daughter to his chest and whispered, “Your other Daddy loved you so much Dani. You see that stuffed animal over there? He went into Build-A-Bear and made that for you.” It hurt him to talk about Kurt in the past tense.
The funeral is small and Blaine can’t bring himself to take Danielle with him. Blaine cries into his mother’s shoulder when they lower the casket into the ground. His mother keeps a firm grip on his hands and he’s grateful because he knows that if she hadn’t there’s a good chance Blaine would have ran and grabbed the casket and begged them not to put his husband in the ground. He doesn’t run. He holds his mothers hand as he places a bouquet on his fresh grave. He looks up into the sky and says, “I know you didn’t believe in heaven, but I know you made it up there. I love you.” And he walks away.
The first year is the hardest. Raising a newborn on top of losing his husband practically drives Blaine crazy. He wants to pull his hair out and drink himself into oblivion 5 out of 7 days of the week. He misses Kurt more and more every single day. He misses him the most whenever Danielle hits milestones. When she learns to crawl, Blaine is desperate to call for his husband. When she smiles at him for the first time, Blaine has to resist the urge to yell “Kurt!” When she takes her first steps, Blaine wants nothing more than for Kurt to see it. When she says her first word, “Dada”, he only wants to celebrate with Kurt. Instead he gets Rachel and he appreciates her, he does, but she’s not Kurt. She can’t fill the space in his heart and he’s not sure anybody will ever be able to.
He moves out of their house when Danielle turns four. There’re too many memories and he needs a new start. The city, he thinks, holds too many memories. So he packs up and moves to Boston. It was an irrational decision but he can’t bring himself to regret it. Over the past four years, he’s slowly gotten rid of so many pictures. He never knew just how many pictures he and Kurt took with each other. He has a box left. He labels it Kurt and keeps it in his closet. He knows that one day, Dani will ask about the man in the pictures with Daddy but until that day he won’t mention him.
Danielle reminds him more and more of Kurt every single day. He knows that it’s impossible but there’s just…something. She’s got an attitude that would rival his and her fashion sense? Something she doesn’t get from Blaine. She’s only 7 when she starts asking questions. Who’s that man Daddy? Was he my other Daddy? Did you love him? Did you sing to him like you sing to me? He has answers, of course he does, but he never imagined how much it would hurt. Answering questions about your dead husband to the daughter you were supposed to raise together was practically a knife to the chest. She wants to know all about him. What he was like. If he loved her Daddy. So he pulls out the box. There are pictures and videos and he shows them to her. They don’t make it halfway through the first video before Blaine starts crying. Danielle scoots closer to her Daddy and rests her head against his chest and whispers, “I love you, Daddy.” He holds her tight and they watch a few videos before both of them are passed out together on the couch.
Blaine never believed much in the supernatural. Ghosts weren’t his thing. But he knows he feels Kurt. He feels him at Danielle’s first dance recital. He feels him at her first piano recital. He feels him at her 8th grade graduation. Sometimes his presence is so strong it feels like he’s being suffocated. It used to hurt him, those moments when he could feel him. It would ache. But now it’s easier. He can smile again.
He meets James Gilmore when Danielle’s 10. It’s an accident but he leaves Blaine smiling bigger than he’s smiled in years. When James asks him on a date, he accepts, but not without feeling the squeeze on his heart.
The date is miserable. Blaine barely speaks and James carries most of the conversation. Blaine can’t help but feel guilty. Even after 10 years, he can’t help but feel like he’s cheating on Kurt. So he leaves early, claiming family emergency. He leaves Danielle with Rachel for a few days and takes a trip up to New York. He visits the cemetery where Kurt’s buried. He sits in front of his grave and traces the engraved words. “I’m sorry I haven’t come to visit in a long time. I’ve been busy.” He has to gulp, to keep the knot in his throat, “I still miss you. Every day. It’s so hard. Raising her without you. I see more and more of you in her every single day and I don’t know whether it’s me holding onto you or her actual personality.” He laughs. “I met someone. His name is James. He makes me laugh, like you used to. I couldn’t finish our date though. Because he wasn’t you. No one will ever be you.” He chokes out, tears starting to fall down his face. “It felt like cheating. I don’t think I’ll ever find someone that I can love again. You were it for me, Kurt.” He runs a hand through is hair. “God it’s been 10 years and I still don’t know how to live without you. I don’t even live in the same house anymore and sometimes I wake up and expect to see you with a cup of coffee and the morning paper. And when I get downstairs and don’t see you, it hurts all over again.” He swallows thickly. “Danielle’s growing up so beautifully and I hate that you don’t get to see it. She asks about you, asks me to tell her stories. She loves you almost as much as I do.” He smiles. “I really love you Kurt. Forever and always.” He presses his fingers against his lips and places them against the cold stone. He stands up, brushes off his knees and walks away.
It takes him a few weeks, but he calls James. Talking to Kurt helped. He thinks he might be ready. They go on another date and it goes much better than the first. James tells Blaine all about his daughter, Amy, and they exchange stories. Blaine feels Kurt with him the whole time but it’s not overwhelming and it’s not negative. Blaine leaves the date feeling good.
James proposes to Blaine four years after they meet. Blaine can’t accept and it takes James a long time to understand why. Marriage is something that was….special. A once in a lifetime moment he only wanted with Kurt. It hurts James and for awhile, their relationship is in jeopardy. They rescue it though and James understands they can only spend the rest of their lives as “Partners” and not “Husbands”.
Life is easier with James. He can hold his hand and cuddle and he has somebody that makes him feel safe again. He never stops missing Kurt, though. Never. He visits his grave once a year. Sometimes on their anniversary, sometimes on Kurt’s birthday, but never on the day he died. It’s Danielle’s birthday and he tries to keep that day as positive as possible. There are a few years that he needs to go twice, because it’s hard but most times it’s just once.
He stops feeling Kurt as often. He only feels him on big occasions. He feels him at Danielle’s high school graduation. He feels him when she tells him that she’s going to be a doctor.
He feels him when she gets married. She marries a lovely man named Henry and Blaine adores him. He treats his baby right and that’s all that matters. He visits Kurt’s grave twice that year. It’s hard for him to watch his baby grow up.
Blaine feels him when Danielle brings home his first grandchild. It’s a little boy named Kurt. Blaine can’t help but sob and Danielle hugs her father. Blaine swears up and down he can feel Kurt’s arms around him, the same way he could feel them when he first held Danielle.
Blaine feels Kurt for the last time when he’s on his death bed. He knows that his time is up. He’s lived a long life, while it might not have been full it’s been long. James had died two years previous and Blaine feels guilty that it’s not James that he knows he’ll see on the other side. When his eyes close for the last time, he whispers, “Kurt.”
His eyes open again and he sees him. Just as he looked the day he died. Youthful and gorgeous. Blaine looks down at his own hand and sees the hand of a 28 year old. He bites his lip and runs to him. Kurt wraps him up in his arms and they kiss for the first time in almost 60 years. Blaine can’t stop the tears from falling. “I love you, Kurt.” Kurt smiles.
“I love you too. Never stopped.” Kurt takes his hand and they walk.