Fic: Sweet Child O' Mine (7/10ish)
Media: Fic
Title: Sweet Child O’ Mine (7/10ish)
Author/Artist: likethdirection
Friendship/Pairings: Kurt+Puck, canon pairings as of 2x22
Spoilers: To be safe, we’ll say everything through Season 2?
Rating: PG-13+
Summary: Puck comes to Kurt for help, and Kurt figures it can’t hurt to do a friend a favor. Unfortunately, everything is more complicated when there’s a baby involved.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6a | 6b
A/N Regarding Season 3: So, as predicted, a certain Season 3 storyline has decided to get ALL up in my plotline's business. I write fanfic to bring into existence the things I want to see in the plotline, so RIB, power to ya, I guess. (Though...Quinn. Um.) However, I plan to keep to my storyline, and this fic will remain a what-if story that completely disregards all events of Season 3 thus far.
So if you're looking for pink hair, purple pianos, or McKinley!Blaine, I suggest just watching the show, because they won't be found here. :)
~*~
Kurt woke up to Puck kicking at his foot again, and the moment he opened his eyes, he swore--a big rarity for him--and buried his face back into his pillow. Unfortunately, the rest of his body seemed to notice that he was awake and chose then to tell him exactly what it thought about copious amounts of alcohol. “Oh my God.”
“Okay, sweet. Just making sure you weren’t dead.”
“Am. Close. Dying.” That had somehow made sense in his head. Then again, his head was not feeling terribly useful or un-cracked-in-half just now, so it wasn’t all that surprising.
"Damn. Okay. Scale of one to fuck-you. How hung over are you?"
Kurt moaned miserably into the pillow.
"Figured. Sit up, dude."
He shook his head by centimeters, clutching the pillow tighter. "If I move, I'll vomit and die," he croaked without lifting his face from it. "All your fault."
"Yep." Puck's hands were worming their way under Kurt's arms, and then he was being bodily lifted into a sitting position while he let out a loud whine of protest. Once his back was against the futon, he pulled his knees to his chest and rested the pillow on them, never taking it off his eyes. His head was pounding so hard that he was thought he might actually cry a little, and he groaned when he realized his stomach was churning in time with the throbbing. And he really had to pee. And half of his face hurt, like someone had slapped him really hard.
Oh, wait.
"I hate everything," he moaned.
"You and me both. Come on, I got a hangover-cure. I figured it out freshman year when I was mixing up gross stuff to see if it’d blow up." Puck was tugging at the pillow. Kurt held fast, because no. "Seriously. Let go."
"No."
"It's either drop it now or I'm blasting the shower on cold and throwing you in. Your call."
Kurt just groaned again and held on tight.
"Fair warning," Puck said, and Kurt gasped when he was hoisted straight up in the air, dropping the pillow to scrabble at Puck's shoulders for balance. A flash of daylight shot straight through his eyes and into his brain, and he let out a pitiful yelp, holding tight around Puck's neck and burying his face in his shoulderblade as he was piggybacked out the door.
It took him a second to notice that they were definitely moving toward the bathroom. "Oh, God--are you kidding me right now? Puck, don't," he pleaded, a little pathetically.
"Told you. Fair warning."
"I don’t have the, that, that thing anymore!" Kurt argued into Puck’s shirt because that made perfect sense, kicking weakly and smacking at his back. "I dropped it when you mauled and kidnapped me. Noah!" He lifted his head just a little, only cracking his eyes open enough to gasp and catch the bathroom doorframe before he could be carried through. "Noah Puckerman, put me down right now or I will start humping your ass."
Puck stopped dead. "Dude! Gay!"
"Kurt Hummel. Nice to meet you. Step away from the shower."
Puck seemed to consider calling his bluff for a moment, and Kurt summoned what little smartass-energy he had left and tilted his hips back. "Fair warning."
He was dropped so fast that he noticed his butt hurting before noticing he hadn't landed on his feet. And wow, he really had to pee now. He glared up at Puck, then braced himself on the doorway to slowly, slowly pull himself up, his voice straining as he said, "Thank you. Thank you for that."
Puck still looked decidedly uncomfortable (and not a little hung over himself), and Kurt would have rolled his eyes if it wouldn't have made his head explode. "I promise I'm not going to hump you. I do have standards. And feel slightly like I was hit in the head with a train."
The quip seemed to help Puck shake it off, and he crossed his arms in a challenge. "I call bullshit. Everyone wants a piece of the Puckmeister."
"You keep telling yourself that, Noah."
"You totally want to hit this."
"Not particularly."
"Dude, you're so lying."
"Can we get back to the subject of why you just almost signed your own death warrant by getting my clothes wet?" Kurt asked, his voice still crackly, stretching his thumb and forefinger across his eyes and trying not to dance in place to distract from his rather insistent bladder. "Or at least let me in there by myself to let nature take its course?"
Puck snorted and stepped out of the doorway. "Knew you were lying."
Kurt flipped him the finger and shut the door in his face.
-
Both surprisingly and not surprisingly, Puck turned out to be very, very good in a hangover crisis. He kept Kurt’s glass filled with water and threw things at him whenever he stopped drinking it, and let him borrow a McKinley XXL T-shirt and sweatpants when thirty-plus hours in his skinny jeans began to take their toll, and offered him his homemade anti-hangover concoction (and knelt next to him and rubbed his back and muttered helpful encouragements like “Let it out, kid,” when he threw it up in the toilet five minutes later).
In the meantime, they sat on Puck’s bed and watched bad reality TV on very low volume for a while, switching off with Puck’s laptop to check all their usual sites. (Kurt was very, very tempted to glance at Puck’s browser history when he wasn’t looking, but then thought for a moment about what he might actually find there and decided against it for the sake of his innocence.) He ended up avoiding Facebook after looking for a minute and seeing the flood of status updates from that morning and the previous night:
Rachel Barbra Berry
She was never mine to lose; Why regret what cannot be? These are words she’ll never say, Not to me...
Quinn Fabray
My Facebook is going to disappear for a while. I’m tired of other people prying into parts of my life that are none of their business.
Brittany S. Pierce
i think my frends need to talk to lord tubbington he can help them work out there issues. exept puck, because hes to mean to my other frends
Santana Fucking Lopez
Puck Zilla and Kurt Elizabeth Hummel are doin the nasty. 69 all nite long. Tell your friends!
Artie ‘Prof X’ Abrams
Bitches be goin mad craycray up in here...
Mike Chang
Can’t we all just get along? :(
Mercedes Jones
Hot Damn Mess. Approach with caution if you talk to me, cause imma cut somebody.
Finn Hudson
from now on no one talk to me unless ur not gonna lie to me.
That one had been particularly painful.
After Kurt had called to check in with his dad, explaining in vague terms just how he was the one hanging out at Puckerman’s while Finn was the one sitting on his phone with Rachel all day, it had hit him that for all the drama that had surrounded that stupid, life-ruining article, he and Puck had skipped a fairly crucial detail.
He turned to Puck. "Did you ever actually read Jacob’s article?"
"Nah," Puck said, his voice still rough with his hangover. He'd stretched out on the mattress in yesterday’s wrinkled jeans and white undershirt an hour ago, and now watched the TV screen with muted interest as the Top Model contestants had their swimsuit photo-shoot. "Didn't even see the headline. Kinda got distracted by life sucking."
"Mm."
"You gonna?"
Kurt nodded, tentatively clicking through. "Might as well. Wish us luck." Puck snorted, and if he was being honest with himself, Kurt‘s hopes weren’t much higher.
He opened the article, and began to read.
And then stopped.
And then read some more.
His heart began to throb in his ears. Oh, no.
Suddenly the mattress was shifting, and Puck was sitting up. "Shit, dude."
"What?"
"How do you go that white that fast without passing out?" He tugged his laptop more onto Kurt's right leg, leaning in to read over his shoulder. "Lemme see."
Kurt stayed silent, lowering his eyes from the screen. He should move. Get it over with before Puck recoiled from him, or kicked him out. Getting some distance on his own, at least, would hurt less.
But Puck went still, and Kurt was frozen. "I'm sorry," Kurt said in almost a whisper, still looking down. "I swear, I didn't know he was going to write it like that." Puck didn't say anything, and Kurt started pulling into himself, creating some space between them. "I...I'll talk to Jacob, I'll figure something out. I'm really sorry--"
"Dude."
Kurt snapped his mouth shut, tense as a bowstring and waiting for the fallout. He'd lost all of his friends but one, and now that one was going to run as far away as he could. He was going to start his senior year the exact same way he’d started his freshman year: alone, reviled, and invisible.
What he wasn’t expecting Puck to say was, "Calm the fuck down."
It surprised him into glancing back, and he faltered when he found that Puck hadn't pulled away. He frowned back at Kurt without moving an inch. "Seriously. Cut it out." Puck's arm shot around his waist to yank him back onto the mattress from where he'd started to edge away.
Kurt hit the mattress with a grunt, blinking as Puck's arm pulled back. "Did you…read any of it?"
"The part where he basically says we're fucking? Yeah."
It took a second for Kurt to close his mouth. "…Oh."
"You honestly think I give a crap what it says?" Puck scrolled down, lingered a moment on a photo of himself holding Beth and looking down into the pond. "You think any one of us dudes hasn't been called gay since joining glee club? Big fucking deal."
He scrolled down some more, and Kurt winced when they came on another photo, this one of when he was trying to wrestle Puck away from his hair. They were both laughing at the same time, weirdly enough, and Kurt had a hold of both of Puck's wrists, and taken out of context, it did sort of look…crap.
Kurt slumped forward, holding his hand across his eyes again because this was making his head throb. “Oh my God.”
“I said cut it out. Who cares? You ever seen the guys’ locker room after we score a win? It’s like WWE meets softcore gay porno. This isn’t shit.”
Kurt dared to peek out from behind his hand, looking warily at Puck with one eye. “Why are you having such a good attitude about this?”
Puck just shrugged, and Kurt sighed, dropping his hand and picking up where he left off. Puck kept control of the article, scrolling down slowly enough to let them both read.
Apparently, they were lovers. Apparently, they had been moonlighting since long before June. Adoption was only the latest stage of their ‘relationship‘; it was grown from freshman-year ’dumpster-dating,’ and from stolen moments in the visiting room of the Lima Juvenile Detention Center, and from a week locked in a Port-A-Potty after failing to avenge a lost love (for some reason, Puck choked on his water at that part and coughed until Kurt gave him a couple of concerned pats on the back).
Apparently, after returning from ‘Hogwarts School of Gaycraft and Gayetry, ‘ Kurt had decided that one man was hardly enough to sate his bottomless gay desire for man-flesh.
Apparently, hooking up with ‘the rosy-cheeked manchild’ (Kurt couldn’t quite decide whether he wanted to punch the laptop screen or throw up again; in a staggering show of restraint, he managed to do neither) was the only way for Puck to feel like a man again after his testicles had taken up residence next to Lauren Zizes’ wrestling trophy.
It had two hundred forty-eight pageviews.
This time, self-restraint didn’t cut it.
-
“Shit, Hummel, you trying to break a record or what?” Puck asked, squatting next to Kurt and giving him a couple of pats on the back as he coughed once more, then reached to flush the contents of his stomach down the toilet a second time, pale and panting.
Two hundred forty-eight. Over half the student body.
“Dude, you’re not gonna faint or anything, are you? ‘Cause no way am I doing CPR after that kind of barfage.”
It would take one comment. One word. And if it were any other guy in the world, it wouldn’t matter, but it was Kurt, so it would. And then Puck would have to save himself, and Kurt would be on his own, because the rest of his friends were gone.
“No,” he heard himself murmur in response.
Mercedes hated him. Finn hated him. Rachel, and Quinn, and Santana. He’d hurt them all.
Blaine still hadn’t called him back; he had probably seen the article already, and would never call again.
Kurt had talked to Shelby Corcoran, and five minutes later, she’d decided to take Puck’s little girl away. Puck was going to be attacked by everyone for this stupid, stupid article, and he wasn’t going to have Beth, and he wasn’t going to want Kurt anywhere close, and he’d have no friends, and without anyone there for him he’d sink and sink and then do something stupid and go to jail and it would be all Kurt’s fault and--
“Shit, okay. You’re freaking out. I’ve got this.” Puck’s hands were gripping his shoulders, coaxing him off his knees until he was sitting on the bathroom floor, his back against the tub. Kurt immediately hugged his knees to his chest, his head drooping forward until his bangs brushed them.
He wasn’t doing a single good thing for a single person in his life.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into his knees.
“Seriously, knock it off with the groveling. It’s weird.” Puck settled his back against the tub next to him, crossing his arms. “What’s your problem?”
And that wasn’t a question he could answer completely, not right now. Too softly, he just said, “I’m sorry it’s me.”
Puck didn’t answer, or ask what he meant, and Kurt didn’t look up again. He hated when he started feeling ugly like this, especially in front of other people. Only Finn, Blaine, and his dad had ever seen it before now, and they were close. They knew what he needed them to be: an arm around his shoulders, or a kiss to his knuckles, or a hug, or--
A hand clapped down on his shoulder, then gave it a firm squeeze, then was gone as soon as it had come. Quietly, just like last night, Puck said, “I told you. We’re cool.”
And he sat with him as the seconds ticked into minutes, saying nothing more until Kurt’s mind had calmed enough for him to lift his head again, face the world again. Kurt took a long, slow breath, then finally sat back, digging his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. Sometimes I just need a moment.”
“I feel ya.” Puck studied him a second, then seemed satisfied and hefted himself to his feet. “You gonna puke again if you stand up?”
“I’ll actually be impressed if I do. I don’t think there’s anything left in there,” Kurt murmured, gingerly rubbing his stomach before holding onto the side of the tub and pushing himself up. He only swayed for a second before his legs remembered how to stand up, and he let out his breath, making a face when his stomach informed him that it was now both empty and unhappy.
“I think we’ve got some ginger ale or something in the fridge,” Puck said. “Guess if we don’t, there’s still some beer left. That’s bubbly.”
Kurt stared at him, and his expression must have been exceptional, because Puck snorted a laugh, seeming to surprise himself with it. Kurt rolled his eyes and gave him a halfhearted shove out the door. “Ginger ale or nothing, thank you. If you’ll excuse me, I have a second date with your Listerine.”
“Kinky.”
“Ew.”
That self-satisfied smirk eased back onto Puck’s face, and he disappeared from the doorway, thumping down the stairs. Kurt studied himself in the mirror a moment--hollow-eyed and unkempt and really, what a mess--before opening it to take the mouthwash. First, he would get the vomit-taste out of his mouth. Then he would worry about everything else.
“One thing at a time,” he murmured to his reflection.
One thing at a time.
-
By the time Kurt pulled in to his own driveway, more or less pulled together in his own clothes and still shaking his head over the fact that he’d just had an hour-long debate with Puckerman about whether it should or should not have been Renee stomping it out against Jaslene in the final runway show, the air was cooling and the shadows were stretched long across the ground. He turned off the engine and stared at his front door. Checked himself in the mirror. Fiddled with the strap on his messenger bag.
Another moment, and he let out his breath and muttered to himself, “For goodness’ sake.”
He would be fine, he determined as he headed toward the front door.
He hadn’t heard a word from Finn or from Blaine, and his dad was probably waiting to demand an explanation for the change in last night’s plans, and he did look a whole lot like he was doing the walk of shame right now as he grimaced against the sunlight and crossed the yard in yesterday’s clothes, but he would be fine.
He reached the front door, and stood there, rehearsing what he was going to say to his dad and Finn and Carole one more time in his head.
Just fine. Totally fine. Fine, fine, fine.
Just as he lifted his key toward the lock, though, the door swung open, nearly making him jump out of his skin and sending his lines flying out of his head.
Finn stared down at him, the way one might stare at somebody through a ten-foot-thick stone wall.
Kurt gaped stupidly for a second, grasping for any last wisps of whatever he’d told himself he would say, and only belatedly noticed the phone against Finn’s ear.
Finn looked him up and down, then looked away. “Yeah. He just got here.” Rachel’s tinny voice chattered through the phone, loud enough to be heard but not understood. “Yeah. I’m not gonna.” A bit more chattering. “’Kay. Be there in a minute.”
He hung up, and Kurt seized his opportunity before it could vanish. “Finn--”
Finn turned his head completely away and called over his shoulder, “Kurt’s got a hangover!”
Kurt’s jaw dropped.
Finn turned back around and walked right by, bumping firmly and deliberately into Kurt’s shoulder as he passed, not sparing him another glance.
-
For all the thought he’d put into what he’d been sure were airtight, perfectly plausible explanations, Kurt ultimately found himself wondering why he’d bothered. He could barely lie to his dad about the time of day. As it was, his dad took one look at him, hardly thirty seconds after he’d gotten in the house, and that was all it took.
When asked if Finn’s accusation was true, he didn’t even bother with a denial.
Instead, he focused on the fact that they never left the safety of the house, that there had been absolutely no driving, and that the worst thing they did was play video games, badly, and jump around the room to nostalgic pop music. That he was aware that drinking was a poor choice, and that if his stomach had anything to say about it, he had certainly learned his lesson. That he truly was sorry for breaking their trust.
His dad’s frown eased a little bit with Kurt’s honesty, but deepened again when Kurt refused to answer any questions about Puck’s role in it all. And on that, Kurt didn’t budge.
Sighing, his dad rubbed a hand over his face while Carole eyed them from the kitchen sink. “I’ve gotta tell you, Kurt, you’re not doing yourself any favors by being stubborn here.” Kurt shrugged, his eyes down. “I’m glad you were safe, and that you didn’t try to drive back here while you still had that garbage in your system. But I know you know better than this. You’re smarter than this. You knowingly broke my rules, you broke the law, and for that, I’m really disappointed in you.”
Kurt cringed, because ever since last fall, those words always made him think of Mr. Schuester standing grimly in the doorway of his French class.
His dad must have noticed, because he sighed. “I’m just glad you’re all right. I believe you know you were wrong. But that doesn’t get you off the hook, kid.” Kurt glanced up, wondering if he just made his eyes a little bigger, if his dad would soften up without realizing he was--
“Not gonna work. Put those away.” Damn it. “You’re grounded. No phone, no computer, no leaving this house without clearing it with me first.”
Kurt’s head shot up, his stomach dropping. “Dad, no.”
“You can have it all back the first day of school. Until then--”
“Dad, no,” Kurt said again, swallowing his panic. “Everything else is fine, but I need my phone.”
“Think you can last half a week, kid.”
“No, you don’t understand. Blaine--”
“Has got his own life, just like you do. You’ll be fine.”
“Dad --”
“Kurt. I’m not asking here.”
“He could break up with me,” Kurt blurted, his stomach starting to roil again. “There was a misunderstanding, and I called him to explain but I missed him, and he hasn’t called back, and if he does and I don’t answer for four days, he’s going to think--”
“Kurt.” His dad looked at him, all humor gone from his face, and held out his hand. Kurt’s mouth closed. “Phone.”
This could not be happening.
Silently, Kurt pulled his phone out of his bag, glanced at it one more time on the vain hope that there would be a missed call--nothing--and straightened again, feeling wounded and utterly betrayed.
He was going to lose Blaine.
He blinked back the tears and carefully shut down the emotions in his face, then turned around and pressed the phone into his father’s hand with perhaps a little more force than necessary, his voice coming out flat and cold. “May I be excused?”
“I’ll be coming up for the computer cord.”
“No need.” His dad made a face like he was getting a headache, and Kurt spun on his heel and tramped up the stairs, yanked the power cord out of the wall and out of his computer, chucked it down to the bottom step, and slammed the door.
-
He wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed when someone stopped outside his room and knocked. Of course, busy as he’d been working himself into a ball of nerves and nausea and woe, he hadn’t noticed much of anything.
Undoubtedly it was his dad, who hated fighting with him just as much as Kurt did, wanting to talk it out. Kurt was not in the mood to talk it out.
He was just opening his mouth to call, ‘Can’t talk, life ruined,’ when a voice that was definitely not his dad’s said, “Kurt, are you awake?”
Not his dad. Carole. Innocent bystander.
Kurt forced himself to take a calming breath and replied, “Yes. It’s open.”
Once she’d shut the door behind her, Carole came in and sat next to him on his bed. “How are you doing in here?”
Kurt picked an imaginary piece of lint off his pajama pants, which he’d changed into immediately after he was done blasting ‘Rose’s Turn’ on repeat through his speakers while having a minor nervous breakdown. (His dad had said phone, computer, and friends, not that he had many of those left. He hadn’t said anything about music. So there.) “Oh, you know.”
She patted his knee and gave it a squeeze. “Would this help at all?”
Kurt glumly lifted his eyes, then blinked them wide when he saw that she was holding his phone. He stared at it, then at her.
“I’m not getting in a discipline-war with your dad,” she assured him, smiling as she held it out to him. “You’re stuck there. But you got a call a few minutes ago, and--”
“What?!” Kurt snatched the phone from her hand, his breath sucking in when he looked at it.
1 Missed Call: Blaine
Oh God. Oh God, oh God.
“Here are the terms,” Carole said, gently placing her hand over the screen to get his attention back on her. “He left you a voicemail. You can listen to that, and then you can make one call--no longer than five minutes, just to explain what’s going on--or one text. Then we’ve got the phone until school starts. Does that sound fair?”
Kurt very nearly pounced on her in a hug, and she laughed and hugged back. “Thank you,” he said breathlessly, nearly vibrating with anticipation. “Yes. Yes, that is fair. Oh my God, Carole.” He pulled back. “My dad was actually okay with this?”
She took her hand off the screen. “It took some convincing. But we both know you’re a good kid. You wouldn’t have gotten so upset if you didn’t have a reason.”
A reason. Right. There was a reason that this was as terrifying as it was wonderful.
“Thank you,” he said again, then lifted up his phone. Blaine’s name stared back at him. Taking another deep breath, Kurt opened his voicemail and pressed the phone to his ear.
“Hey.” Kurt closed his eyes, missing his voice. “I got your message. I’ve gotten a lot of messages from a lot of people over the last twenty-four hours, actually.” He didn’t sound angry. But he did sound tired, flat, a little subdued, and that made Kurt’s insides tighten up just the same. Blaine sighed in his ear. “Look, Kurt, we obviously have some things to talk about, and I’m not going to talk about them with your voicemail. I just got back to Ohio, it was kind of emotional with everyone leaving Six Flags, and it was a long trip, I still have to get prepped for school next week…honestly, I can’t deal with one more thing right this second, so I think it might be best if we wait on talking about this until we can do it in person. Until then…maybe we should just leave it. Focus on getting our own things figured out. For now.” He paused, and in the brief quiet Kurt was pretty sure he could hear his own heart cracking. “I…I’ll call you.”
The message ended with a click.
Numbly, Kurt lowered his phone.
“Is everything okay?” Carole asked, and Kurt had no idea what to say.
It wasn’t a break-up message. It wasn’t. Blaine would be clear about it if it was a break-up message. However, it sounded frighteningly like an ‘I’m-going-to-break-up-with you-but-I’m-too-nice-to-do-it-over-your-voicemail’ message. Or an ‘I’m-heartbroken-and-too-tired-to-fully-express-it-to-you’ message. Or an ‘I-hate-you-now-but-am-my-polite-Blaine-self-and-so-will-just-imply-it-by-not-saying-I-miss-you-or-I-love-you-because-I-don’t’ message.
Or all three.
“Kurt?”
He’d gotten ‘a lot of messages from a lot of people.’ Who would have called him? Who was angry enough to do that? Who would he believe?
And ‘just leave it?’ What on earth did that mean?
The cruel, ugly side of his mind silently offered, It means he doesn’t want to deal with you anymore.
It had been building up and building up from the moment Finn had looked at that article in Rachel’s basement, growing as his friends turned on him, as Puck whispered heartbreak over his child, as that article wrapped him in a too-familiar lie, as Blaine’s silence stretched longer, as his father looked at him with that disappointment and didn’t understand.
The moment Carole placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, Kurt brought a hand to his mouth and sobbed.
Her arms were around him immediately, her voice murmuring soft words, and he allowed himself a moment to press his face into her shoulder and cry. Ten seconds passed. Then he quickly, forcibly pulled himself together, sniffing hard.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling away and wiping hastily at his cheeks. “Sorry. I’m overreacting. I’m aware of it.” He sniffed again. “It’s…it’s just today.”
“It’s okay,” Carole assured him, still holding onto his arms and stroking one of them with her thumb. “Sweetheart, you never have to apologize for hurting. Even if it’s over something small.” She caught his eye. “Okay?”
Kurt nodded, taking a deep breath. He looked back at his phone, picked it up again, and flicked his eyes back up to Carole. “I’m just going to…”
She nodded, and he opened up a new text. It would not be to Blaine, he couldn’t even do anything with that right now, and once he’d decided that, he found there really wasn’t much of a decision process required. He put in the recipient, then quickly typed the message in.
>>You: Finn sold me out for drinking. Grounded from phone & comp, house arrest until school, so no updates. Blaine called. I think he’s going to break up with me.
He stared at the text for too long, his thumb hovering over the Send button, before shaking his head a little and deleting the last sentence. He replaced it with Inconclusive, and his chest slowly unclenched. He sent the text.
The reply was almost immediate.
>>Puck: wtf, dick move! sux dude. dont puke up a kidny or anythn, srsly take a nap or sumthn. ill hit u up l8r.
The corner of Kurt’s mouth twitched up. He read the text one more time, took a breath, and handed his phone back to Carole.
“What can I do, sweetie?” she asked gently, smoothing back his hair and absently touching his forehead, like she was checking for a fever. And he didn’t allow himself to think for too long about how someone else used to do the same thing whenever he was sick or sad, but with cooler hands and a clear voice, singing ‘My Favorite Things’ for ages, sometimes making up her own verses, until he smiled or slept. He didn’t let himself, because if one more thing threatened to knock him off balance today, he had a feeling he would crack. Again. For the third time.
So instead of thinking about it, he leaned into her when her hand smoothed across his back, and he shook his head. “Just don’t bring anything up with my dad,” he murmured. “I need to figure this out.”
“Okay,” she said. “I trust you. But whatever is going on, remember that you don’t have to do it all on your own. Your dad and I are always here for you. Nothing is too big or too small. Okay?”
Kurt nodded, closing his eyes and not thinking about how long he’d gone without the simple comfort of being held by someone soft and sweet-smelling and who loved him.
In a whisper, he said, “I’m sorry I can’t call you ‘Mom.’”
“What?”
“It’s not that I don’t…that…it, it’s not a reflection on you. At all.” And he was sure there was some graceful way to say it, but his tongue was so far beyond grace by now that it wasn’t worth it. He lowered his eyes. “I just can’t.”
“Oh, sweetie.” She hugged him close to her side. “Is this because of Finn starting to say ‘Dad?’”
“No. Yes. Not…” He let out his breath, annoyed with himself. “I don’t know.”
“Kurt, I don’t want you to feel any pressure to say, or do, or be anything that you’re the least bit uncomfortable with. Your dad has told me so much about how close you were to your mom, and she can’t be replaced by anyone. Not for anything in the world.” Kurt nodded, but kept his eyes down, and she gave him a squeeze. “What’s this really about, Kurt?”
Kurt took a slow breath, then shook his head. “I just…this summer, I’ve been thinking about families a lot. For a few reasons. And I just don’t want you to doubt that that’s what you are. To me.” He swallowed hard. “I need you to know that you and…and Finn, are both really important to me.”
And that was true, so true that it hurt, and he did not think about last night, about Finn’s fading smile.
There was a teary smile in Carole’s voice when she said, “Well, you’re really important to us, too.”
They sat there a while longer before Kurt finally pulled away, attempting a smile. “Will you tell Dad I won’t be down for dinner? I think I’m going to turn in early.”
“Sure, sweetheart. But I’ll be watching to make sure you get something in your stomach tomorrow.”
Kurt nodded, and Carole fondly cupped his cheek. “Sweet dreams.”
“Thanks.”
Once the door had shut, Kurt slumped down on his bed, staring at nothing. There were too many things happening in his head at once. Too many misunderstandings to juggle, too many uncertainties, too many broken hearts. He had to fix this, and he had no idea where to start.
His mind was still spinning as his eyelids drooped, his body giving up on him at last. He would figure this out. He would fix it. He had to.
His eyes slid shut, and he slept for a very long time.
~*~
A/N: Once again, a huge thanks to theslashbunny for her patience, insight, and expertise at getting around LJ's occasional shenanigans.
Title: Sweet Child O’ Mine (7/10ish)
Author/Artist: likethdirection
Friendship/Pairings: Kurt+Puck, canon pairings as of 2x22
Spoilers: To be safe, we’ll say everything through Season 2?
Rating: PG-13+
Summary: Puck comes to Kurt for help, and Kurt figures it can’t hurt to do a friend a favor. Unfortunately, everything is more complicated when there’s a baby involved.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6a | 6b
A/N Regarding Season 3: So, as predicted, a certain Season 3 storyline has decided to get ALL up in my plotline's business. I write fanfic to bring into existence the things I want to see in the plotline, so RIB, power to ya, I guess. (Though...Quinn. Um.) However, I plan to keep to my storyline, and this fic will remain a what-if story that completely disregards all events of Season 3 thus far.
So if you're looking for pink hair, purple pianos, or McKinley!Blaine, I suggest just watching the show, because they won't be found here. :)
~*~
Kurt woke up to Puck kicking at his foot again, and the moment he opened his eyes, he swore--a big rarity for him--and buried his face back into his pillow. Unfortunately, the rest of his body seemed to notice that he was awake and chose then to tell him exactly what it thought about copious amounts of alcohol. “Oh my God.”
“Okay, sweet. Just making sure you weren’t dead.”
“Am. Close. Dying.” That had somehow made sense in his head. Then again, his head was not feeling terribly useful or un-cracked-in-half just now, so it wasn’t all that surprising.
"Damn. Okay. Scale of one to fuck-you. How hung over are you?"
Kurt moaned miserably into the pillow.
"Figured. Sit up, dude."
He shook his head by centimeters, clutching the pillow tighter. "If I move, I'll vomit and die," he croaked without lifting his face from it. "All your fault."
"Yep." Puck's hands were worming their way under Kurt's arms, and then he was being bodily lifted into a sitting position while he let out a loud whine of protest. Once his back was against the futon, he pulled his knees to his chest and rested the pillow on them, never taking it off his eyes. His head was pounding so hard that he was thought he might actually cry a little, and he groaned when he realized his stomach was churning in time with the throbbing. And he really had to pee. And half of his face hurt, like someone had slapped him really hard.
Oh, wait.
"I hate everything," he moaned.
"You and me both. Come on, I got a hangover-cure. I figured it out freshman year when I was mixing up gross stuff to see if it’d blow up." Puck was tugging at the pillow. Kurt held fast, because no. "Seriously. Let go."
"No."
"It's either drop it now or I'm blasting the shower on cold and throwing you in. Your call."
Kurt just groaned again and held on tight.
"Fair warning," Puck said, and Kurt gasped when he was hoisted straight up in the air, dropping the pillow to scrabble at Puck's shoulders for balance. A flash of daylight shot straight through his eyes and into his brain, and he let out a pitiful yelp, holding tight around Puck's neck and burying his face in his shoulderblade as he was piggybacked out the door.
It took him a second to notice that they were definitely moving toward the bathroom. "Oh, God--are you kidding me right now? Puck, don't," he pleaded, a little pathetically.
"Told you. Fair warning."
"I don’t have the, that, that thing anymore!" Kurt argued into Puck’s shirt because that made perfect sense, kicking weakly and smacking at his back. "I dropped it when you mauled and kidnapped me. Noah!" He lifted his head just a little, only cracking his eyes open enough to gasp and catch the bathroom doorframe before he could be carried through. "Noah Puckerman, put me down right now or I will start humping your ass."
Puck stopped dead. "Dude! Gay!"
"Kurt Hummel. Nice to meet you. Step away from the shower."
Puck seemed to consider calling his bluff for a moment, and Kurt summoned what little smartass-energy he had left and tilted his hips back. "Fair warning."
He was dropped so fast that he noticed his butt hurting before noticing he hadn't landed on his feet. And wow, he really had to pee now. He glared up at Puck, then braced himself on the doorway to slowly, slowly pull himself up, his voice straining as he said, "Thank you. Thank you for that."
Puck still looked decidedly uncomfortable (and not a little hung over himself), and Kurt would have rolled his eyes if it wouldn't have made his head explode. "I promise I'm not going to hump you. I do have standards. And feel slightly like I was hit in the head with a train."
The quip seemed to help Puck shake it off, and he crossed his arms in a challenge. "I call bullshit. Everyone wants a piece of the Puckmeister."
"You keep telling yourself that, Noah."
"You totally want to hit this."
"Not particularly."
"Dude, you're so lying."
"Can we get back to the subject of why you just almost signed your own death warrant by getting my clothes wet?" Kurt asked, his voice still crackly, stretching his thumb and forefinger across his eyes and trying not to dance in place to distract from his rather insistent bladder. "Or at least let me in there by myself to let nature take its course?"
Puck snorted and stepped out of the doorway. "Knew you were lying."
Kurt flipped him the finger and shut the door in his face.
-
Both surprisingly and not surprisingly, Puck turned out to be very, very good in a hangover crisis. He kept Kurt’s glass filled with water and threw things at him whenever he stopped drinking it, and let him borrow a McKinley XXL T-shirt and sweatpants when thirty-plus hours in his skinny jeans began to take their toll, and offered him his homemade anti-hangover concoction (and knelt next to him and rubbed his back and muttered helpful encouragements like “Let it out, kid,” when he threw it up in the toilet five minutes later).
In the meantime, they sat on Puck’s bed and watched bad reality TV on very low volume for a while, switching off with Puck’s laptop to check all their usual sites. (Kurt was very, very tempted to glance at Puck’s browser history when he wasn’t looking, but then thought for a moment about what he might actually find there and decided against it for the sake of his innocence.) He ended up avoiding Facebook after looking for a minute and seeing the flood of status updates from that morning and the previous night:
Rachel Barbra Berry
She was never mine to lose; Why regret what cannot be? These are words she’ll never say, Not to me...
Quinn Fabray
My Facebook is going to disappear for a while. I’m tired of other people prying into parts of my life that are none of their business.
Brittany S. Pierce
i think my frends need to talk to lord tubbington he can help them work out there issues. exept puck, because hes to mean to my other frends
Santana Fucking Lopez
Puck Zilla and Kurt Elizabeth Hummel are doin the nasty. 69 all nite long. Tell your friends!
Artie ‘Prof X’ Abrams
Bitches be goin mad craycray up in here...
Mike Chang
Can’t we all just get along? :(
Mercedes Jones
Hot Damn Mess. Approach with caution if you talk to me, cause imma cut somebody.
Finn Hudson
from now on no one talk to me unless ur not gonna lie to me.
That one had been particularly painful.
After Kurt had called to check in with his dad, explaining in vague terms just how he was the one hanging out at Puckerman’s while Finn was the one sitting on his phone with Rachel all day, it had hit him that for all the drama that had surrounded that stupid, life-ruining article, he and Puck had skipped a fairly crucial detail.
He turned to Puck. "Did you ever actually read Jacob’s article?"
"Nah," Puck said, his voice still rough with his hangover. He'd stretched out on the mattress in yesterday’s wrinkled jeans and white undershirt an hour ago, and now watched the TV screen with muted interest as the Top Model contestants had their swimsuit photo-shoot. "Didn't even see the headline. Kinda got distracted by life sucking."
"Mm."
"You gonna?"
Kurt nodded, tentatively clicking through. "Might as well. Wish us luck." Puck snorted, and if he was being honest with himself, Kurt‘s hopes weren’t much higher.
He opened the article, and began to read.
And then stopped.
And then read some more.
His heart began to throb in his ears. Oh, no.
Suddenly the mattress was shifting, and Puck was sitting up. "Shit, dude."
"What?"
"How do you go that white that fast without passing out?" He tugged his laptop more onto Kurt's right leg, leaning in to read over his shoulder. "Lemme see."
Kurt stayed silent, lowering his eyes from the screen. He should move. Get it over with before Puck recoiled from him, or kicked him out. Getting some distance on his own, at least, would hurt less.
But Puck went still, and Kurt was frozen. "I'm sorry," Kurt said in almost a whisper, still looking down. "I swear, I didn't know he was going to write it like that." Puck didn't say anything, and Kurt started pulling into himself, creating some space between them. "I...I'll talk to Jacob, I'll figure something out. I'm really sorry--"
"Dude."
Kurt snapped his mouth shut, tense as a bowstring and waiting for the fallout. He'd lost all of his friends but one, and now that one was going to run as far away as he could. He was going to start his senior year the exact same way he’d started his freshman year: alone, reviled, and invisible.
What he wasn’t expecting Puck to say was, "Calm the fuck down."
It surprised him into glancing back, and he faltered when he found that Puck hadn't pulled away. He frowned back at Kurt without moving an inch. "Seriously. Cut it out." Puck's arm shot around his waist to yank him back onto the mattress from where he'd started to edge away.
Kurt hit the mattress with a grunt, blinking as Puck's arm pulled back. "Did you…read any of it?"
"The part where he basically says we're fucking? Yeah."
It took a second for Kurt to close his mouth. "…Oh."
"You honestly think I give a crap what it says?" Puck scrolled down, lingered a moment on a photo of himself holding Beth and looking down into the pond. "You think any one of us dudes hasn't been called gay since joining glee club? Big fucking deal."
He scrolled down some more, and Kurt winced when they came on another photo, this one of when he was trying to wrestle Puck away from his hair. They were both laughing at the same time, weirdly enough, and Kurt had a hold of both of Puck's wrists, and taken out of context, it did sort of look…crap.
Kurt slumped forward, holding his hand across his eyes again because this was making his head throb. “Oh my God.”
“I said cut it out. Who cares? You ever seen the guys’ locker room after we score a win? It’s like WWE meets softcore gay porno. This isn’t shit.”
Kurt dared to peek out from behind his hand, looking warily at Puck with one eye. “Why are you having such a good attitude about this?”
Puck just shrugged, and Kurt sighed, dropping his hand and picking up where he left off. Puck kept control of the article, scrolling down slowly enough to let them both read.
Apparently, they were lovers. Apparently, they had been moonlighting since long before June. Adoption was only the latest stage of their ‘relationship‘; it was grown from freshman-year ’dumpster-dating,’ and from stolen moments in the visiting room of the Lima Juvenile Detention Center, and from a week locked in a Port-A-Potty after failing to avenge a lost love (for some reason, Puck choked on his water at that part and coughed until Kurt gave him a couple of concerned pats on the back).
Apparently, after returning from ‘Hogwarts School of Gaycraft and Gayetry, ‘ Kurt had decided that one man was hardly enough to sate his bottomless gay desire for man-flesh.
Apparently, hooking up with ‘the rosy-cheeked manchild’ (Kurt couldn’t quite decide whether he wanted to punch the laptop screen or throw up again; in a staggering show of restraint, he managed to do neither) was the only way for Puck to feel like a man again after his testicles had taken up residence next to Lauren Zizes’ wrestling trophy.
It had two hundred forty-eight pageviews.
This time, self-restraint didn’t cut it.
-
“Shit, Hummel, you trying to break a record or what?” Puck asked, squatting next to Kurt and giving him a couple of pats on the back as he coughed once more, then reached to flush the contents of his stomach down the toilet a second time, pale and panting.
Two hundred forty-eight. Over half the student body.
“Dude, you’re not gonna faint or anything, are you? ‘Cause no way am I doing CPR after that kind of barfage.”
It would take one comment. One word. And if it were any other guy in the world, it wouldn’t matter, but it was Kurt, so it would. And then Puck would have to save himself, and Kurt would be on his own, because the rest of his friends were gone.
“No,” he heard himself murmur in response.
Mercedes hated him. Finn hated him. Rachel, and Quinn, and Santana. He’d hurt them all.
Blaine still hadn’t called him back; he had probably seen the article already, and would never call again.
Kurt had talked to Shelby Corcoran, and five minutes later, she’d decided to take Puck’s little girl away. Puck was going to be attacked by everyone for this stupid, stupid article, and he wasn’t going to have Beth, and he wasn’t going to want Kurt anywhere close, and he’d have no friends, and without anyone there for him he’d sink and sink and then do something stupid and go to jail and it would be all Kurt’s fault and--
“Shit, okay. You’re freaking out. I’ve got this.” Puck’s hands were gripping his shoulders, coaxing him off his knees until he was sitting on the bathroom floor, his back against the tub. Kurt immediately hugged his knees to his chest, his head drooping forward until his bangs brushed them.
He wasn’t doing a single good thing for a single person in his life.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into his knees.
“Seriously, knock it off with the groveling. It’s weird.” Puck settled his back against the tub next to him, crossing his arms. “What’s your problem?”
And that wasn’t a question he could answer completely, not right now. Too softly, he just said, “I’m sorry it’s me.”
Puck didn’t answer, or ask what he meant, and Kurt didn’t look up again. He hated when he started feeling ugly like this, especially in front of other people. Only Finn, Blaine, and his dad had ever seen it before now, and they were close. They knew what he needed them to be: an arm around his shoulders, or a kiss to his knuckles, or a hug, or--
A hand clapped down on his shoulder, then gave it a firm squeeze, then was gone as soon as it had come. Quietly, just like last night, Puck said, “I told you. We’re cool.”
And he sat with him as the seconds ticked into minutes, saying nothing more until Kurt’s mind had calmed enough for him to lift his head again, face the world again. Kurt took a long, slow breath, then finally sat back, digging his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. Sometimes I just need a moment.”
“I feel ya.” Puck studied him a second, then seemed satisfied and hefted himself to his feet. “You gonna puke again if you stand up?”
“I’ll actually be impressed if I do. I don’t think there’s anything left in there,” Kurt murmured, gingerly rubbing his stomach before holding onto the side of the tub and pushing himself up. He only swayed for a second before his legs remembered how to stand up, and he let out his breath, making a face when his stomach informed him that it was now both empty and unhappy.
“I think we’ve got some ginger ale or something in the fridge,” Puck said. “Guess if we don’t, there’s still some beer left. That’s bubbly.”
Kurt stared at him, and his expression must have been exceptional, because Puck snorted a laugh, seeming to surprise himself with it. Kurt rolled his eyes and gave him a halfhearted shove out the door. “Ginger ale or nothing, thank you. If you’ll excuse me, I have a second date with your Listerine.”
“Kinky.”
“Ew.”
That self-satisfied smirk eased back onto Puck’s face, and he disappeared from the doorway, thumping down the stairs. Kurt studied himself in the mirror a moment--hollow-eyed and unkempt and really, what a mess--before opening it to take the mouthwash. First, he would get the vomit-taste out of his mouth. Then he would worry about everything else.
“One thing at a time,” he murmured to his reflection.
One thing at a time.
-
By the time Kurt pulled in to his own driveway, more or less pulled together in his own clothes and still shaking his head over the fact that he’d just had an hour-long debate with Puckerman about whether it should or should not have been Renee stomping it out against Jaslene in the final runway show, the air was cooling and the shadows were stretched long across the ground. He turned off the engine and stared at his front door. Checked himself in the mirror. Fiddled with the strap on his messenger bag.
Another moment, and he let out his breath and muttered to himself, “For goodness’ sake.”
He would be fine, he determined as he headed toward the front door.
He hadn’t heard a word from Finn or from Blaine, and his dad was probably waiting to demand an explanation for the change in last night’s plans, and he did look a whole lot like he was doing the walk of shame right now as he grimaced against the sunlight and crossed the yard in yesterday’s clothes, but he would be fine.
He reached the front door, and stood there, rehearsing what he was going to say to his dad and Finn and Carole one more time in his head.
Just fine. Totally fine. Fine, fine, fine.
Just as he lifted his key toward the lock, though, the door swung open, nearly making him jump out of his skin and sending his lines flying out of his head.
Finn stared down at him, the way one might stare at somebody through a ten-foot-thick stone wall.
Kurt gaped stupidly for a second, grasping for any last wisps of whatever he’d told himself he would say, and only belatedly noticed the phone against Finn’s ear.
Finn looked him up and down, then looked away. “Yeah. He just got here.” Rachel’s tinny voice chattered through the phone, loud enough to be heard but not understood. “Yeah. I’m not gonna.” A bit more chattering. “’Kay. Be there in a minute.”
He hung up, and Kurt seized his opportunity before it could vanish. “Finn--”
Finn turned his head completely away and called over his shoulder, “Kurt’s got a hangover!”
Kurt’s jaw dropped.
Finn turned back around and walked right by, bumping firmly and deliberately into Kurt’s shoulder as he passed, not sparing him another glance.
-
For all the thought he’d put into what he’d been sure were airtight, perfectly plausible explanations, Kurt ultimately found himself wondering why he’d bothered. He could barely lie to his dad about the time of day. As it was, his dad took one look at him, hardly thirty seconds after he’d gotten in the house, and that was all it took.
When asked if Finn’s accusation was true, he didn’t even bother with a denial.
Instead, he focused on the fact that they never left the safety of the house, that there had been absolutely no driving, and that the worst thing they did was play video games, badly, and jump around the room to nostalgic pop music. That he was aware that drinking was a poor choice, and that if his stomach had anything to say about it, he had certainly learned his lesson. That he truly was sorry for breaking their trust.
His dad’s frown eased a little bit with Kurt’s honesty, but deepened again when Kurt refused to answer any questions about Puck’s role in it all. And on that, Kurt didn’t budge.
Sighing, his dad rubbed a hand over his face while Carole eyed them from the kitchen sink. “I’ve gotta tell you, Kurt, you’re not doing yourself any favors by being stubborn here.” Kurt shrugged, his eyes down. “I’m glad you were safe, and that you didn’t try to drive back here while you still had that garbage in your system. But I know you know better than this. You’re smarter than this. You knowingly broke my rules, you broke the law, and for that, I’m really disappointed in you.”
Kurt cringed, because ever since last fall, those words always made him think of Mr. Schuester standing grimly in the doorway of his French class.
His dad must have noticed, because he sighed. “I’m just glad you’re all right. I believe you know you were wrong. But that doesn’t get you off the hook, kid.” Kurt glanced up, wondering if he just made his eyes a little bigger, if his dad would soften up without realizing he was--
“Not gonna work. Put those away.” Damn it. “You’re grounded. No phone, no computer, no leaving this house without clearing it with me first.”
Kurt’s head shot up, his stomach dropping. “Dad, no.”
“You can have it all back the first day of school. Until then--”
“Dad, no,” Kurt said again, swallowing his panic. “Everything else is fine, but I need my phone.”
“Think you can last half a week, kid.”
“No, you don’t understand. Blaine--”
“Has got his own life, just like you do. You’ll be fine.”
“Dad --”
“Kurt. I’m not asking here.”
“He could break up with me,” Kurt blurted, his stomach starting to roil again. “There was a misunderstanding, and I called him to explain but I missed him, and he hasn’t called back, and if he does and I don’t answer for four days, he’s going to think--”
“Kurt.” His dad looked at him, all humor gone from his face, and held out his hand. Kurt’s mouth closed. “Phone.”
This could not be happening.
Silently, Kurt pulled his phone out of his bag, glanced at it one more time on the vain hope that there would be a missed call--nothing--and straightened again, feeling wounded and utterly betrayed.
He was going to lose Blaine.
He blinked back the tears and carefully shut down the emotions in his face, then turned around and pressed the phone into his father’s hand with perhaps a little more force than necessary, his voice coming out flat and cold. “May I be excused?”
“I’ll be coming up for the computer cord.”
“No need.” His dad made a face like he was getting a headache, and Kurt spun on his heel and tramped up the stairs, yanked the power cord out of the wall and out of his computer, chucked it down to the bottom step, and slammed the door.
-
He wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed when someone stopped outside his room and knocked. Of course, busy as he’d been working himself into a ball of nerves and nausea and woe, he hadn’t noticed much of anything.
Undoubtedly it was his dad, who hated fighting with him just as much as Kurt did, wanting to talk it out. Kurt was not in the mood to talk it out.
He was just opening his mouth to call, ‘Can’t talk, life ruined,’ when a voice that was definitely not his dad’s said, “Kurt, are you awake?”
Not his dad. Carole. Innocent bystander.
Kurt forced himself to take a calming breath and replied, “Yes. It’s open.”
Once she’d shut the door behind her, Carole came in and sat next to him on his bed. “How are you doing in here?”
Kurt picked an imaginary piece of lint off his pajama pants, which he’d changed into immediately after he was done blasting ‘Rose’s Turn’ on repeat through his speakers while having a minor nervous breakdown. (His dad had said phone, computer, and friends, not that he had many of those left. He hadn’t said anything about music. So there.) “Oh, you know.”
She patted his knee and gave it a squeeze. “Would this help at all?”
Kurt glumly lifted his eyes, then blinked them wide when he saw that she was holding his phone. He stared at it, then at her.
“I’m not getting in a discipline-war with your dad,” she assured him, smiling as she held it out to him. “You’re stuck there. But you got a call a few minutes ago, and--”
“What?!” Kurt snatched the phone from her hand, his breath sucking in when he looked at it.
1 Missed Call: Blaine
Oh God. Oh God, oh God.
“Here are the terms,” Carole said, gently placing her hand over the screen to get his attention back on her. “He left you a voicemail. You can listen to that, and then you can make one call--no longer than five minutes, just to explain what’s going on--or one text. Then we’ve got the phone until school starts. Does that sound fair?”
Kurt very nearly pounced on her in a hug, and she laughed and hugged back. “Thank you,” he said breathlessly, nearly vibrating with anticipation. “Yes. Yes, that is fair. Oh my God, Carole.” He pulled back. “My dad was actually okay with this?”
She took her hand off the screen. “It took some convincing. But we both know you’re a good kid. You wouldn’t have gotten so upset if you didn’t have a reason.”
A reason. Right. There was a reason that this was as terrifying as it was wonderful.
“Thank you,” he said again, then lifted up his phone. Blaine’s name stared back at him. Taking another deep breath, Kurt opened his voicemail and pressed the phone to his ear.
“Hey.” Kurt closed his eyes, missing his voice. “I got your message. I’ve gotten a lot of messages from a lot of people over the last twenty-four hours, actually.” He didn’t sound angry. But he did sound tired, flat, a little subdued, and that made Kurt’s insides tighten up just the same. Blaine sighed in his ear. “Look, Kurt, we obviously have some things to talk about, and I’m not going to talk about them with your voicemail. I just got back to Ohio, it was kind of emotional with everyone leaving Six Flags, and it was a long trip, I still have to get prepped for school next week…honestly, I can’t deal with one more thing right this second, so I think it might be best if we wait on talking about this until we can do it in person. Until then…maybe we should just leave it. Focus on getting our own things figured out. For now.” He paused, and in the brief quiet Kurt was pretty sure he could hear his own heart cracking. “I…I’ll call you.”
The message ended with a click.
Numbly, Kurt lowered his phone.
“Is everything okay?” Carole asked, and Kurt had no idea what to say.
It wasn’t a break-up message. It wasn’t. Blaine would be clear about it if it was a break-up message. However, it sounded frighteningly like an ‘I’m-going-to-break-up-with you-but-I’m-too-nice-to-do-it-over-your-voicemail’ message. Or an ‘I’m-heartbroken-and-too-tired-to-fully-express-it-to-you’ message. Or an ‘I-hate-you-now-but-am-my-polite-Blaine-self-and-so-will-just-imply-it-by-not-saying-I-miss-you-or-I-love-you-because-I-don’t’ message.
Or all three.
“Kurt?”
He’d gotten ‘a lot of messages from a lot of people.’ Who would have called him? Who was angry enough to do that? Who would he believe?
And ‘just leave it?’ What on earth did that mean?
The cruel, ugly side of his mind silently offered, It means he doesn’t want to deal with you anymore.
It had been building up and building up from the moment Finn had looked at that article in Rachel’s basement, growing as his friends turned on him, as Puck whispered heartbreak over his child, as that article wrapped him in a too-familiar lie, as Blaine’s silence stretched longer, as his father looked at him with that disappointment and didn’t understand.
The moment Carole placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, Kurt brought a hand to his mouth and sobbed.
Her arms were around him immediately, her voice murmuring soft words, and he allowed himself a moment to press his face into her shoulder and cry. Ten seconds passed. Then he quickly, forcibly pulled himself together, sniffing hard.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling away and wiping hastily at his cheeks. “Sorry. I’m overreacting. I’m aware of it.” He sniffed again. “It’s…it’s just today.”
“It’s okay,” Carole assured him, still holding onto his arms and stroking one of them with her thumb. “Sweetheart, you never have to apologize for hurting. Even if it’s over something small.” She caught his eye. “Okay?”
Kurt nodded, taking a deep breath. He looked back at his phone, picked it up again, and flicked his eyes back up to Carole. “I’m just going to…”
She nodded, and he opened up a new text. It would not be to Blaine, he couldn’t even do anything with that right now, and once he’d decided that, he found there really wasn’t much of a decision process required. He put in the recipient, then quickly typed the message in.
>>You: Finn sold me out for drinking. Grounded from phone & comp, house arrest until school, so no updates. Blaine called. I think he’s going to break up with me.
He stared at the text for too long, his thumb hovering over the Send button, before shaking his head a little and deleting the last sentence. He replaced it with Inconclusive, and his chest slowly unclenched. He sent the text.
The reply was almost immediate.
>>Puck: wtf, dick move! sux dude. dont puke up a kidny or anythn, srsly take a nap or sumthn. ill hit u up l8r.
The corner of Kurt’s mouth twitched up. He read the text one more time, took a breath, and handed his phone back to Carole.
“What can I do, sweetie?” she asked gently, smoothing back his hair and absently touching his forehead, like she was checking for a fever. And he didn’t allow himself to think for too long about how someone else used to do the same thing whenever he was sick or sad, but with cooler hands and a clear voice, singing ‘My Favorite Things’ for ages, sometimes making up her own verses, until he smiled or slept. He didn’t let himself, because if one more thing threatened to knock him off balance today, he had a feeling he would crack. Again. For the third time.
So instead of thinking about it, he leaned into her when her hand smoothed across his back, and he shook his head. “Just don’t bring anything up with my dad,” he murmured. “I need to figure this out.”
“Okay,” she said. “I trust you. But whatever is going on, remember that you don’t have to do it all on your own. Your dad and I are always here for you. Nothing is too big or too small. Okay?”
Kurt nodded, closing his eyes and not thinking about how long he’d gone without the simple comfort of being held by someone soft and sweet-smelling and who loved him.
In a whisper, he said, “I’m sorry I can’t call you ‘Mom.’”
“What?”
“It’s not that I don’t…that…it, it’s not a reflection on you. At all.” And he was sure there was some graceful way to say it, but his tongue was so far beyond grace by now that it wasn’t worth it. He lowered his eyes. “I just can’t.”
“Oh, sweetie.” She hugged him close to her side. “Is this because of Finn starting to say ‘Dad?’”
“No. Yes. Not…” He let out his breath, annoyed with himself. “I don’t know.”
“Kurt, I don’t want you to feel any pressure to say, or do, or be anything that you’re the least bit uncomfortable with. Your dad has told me so much about how close you were to your mom, and she can’t be replaced by anyone. Not for anything in the world.” Kurt nodded, but kept his eyes down, and she gave him a squeeze. “What’s this really about, Kurt?”
Kurt took a slow breath, then shook his head. “I just…this summer, I’ve been thinking about families a lot. For a few reasons. And I just don’t want you to doubt that that’s what you are. To me.” He swallowed hard. “I need you to know that you and…and Finn, are both really important to me.”
And that was true, so true that it hurt, and he did not think about last night, about Finn’s fading smile.
There was a teary smile in Carole’s voice when she said, “Well, you’re really important to us, too.”
They sat there a while longer before Kurt finally pulled away, attempting a smile. “Will you tell Dad I won’t be down for dinner? I think I’m going to turn in early.”
“Sure, sweetheart. But I’ll be watching to make sure you get something in your stomach tomorrow.”
Kurt nodded, and Carole fondly cupped his cheek. “Sweet dreams.”
“Thanks.”
Once the door had shut, Kurt slumped down on his bed, staring at nothing. There were too many things happening in his head at once. Too many misunderstandings to juggle, too many uncertainties, too many broken hearts. He had to fix this, and he had no idea where to start.
His mind was still spinning as his eyelids drooped, his body giving up on him at last. He would figure this out. He would fix it. He had to.
His eyes slid shut, and he slept for a very long time.
~*~
A/N: Once again, a huge thanks to theslashbunny for her patience, insight, and expertise at getting around LJ's occasional shenanigans.