Fic: I Know Not Everybody Has Got A Body Like You (1/2)
Title: I Know Not Everybody Has Got A Body Like You
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine, Mike/Tina, Santana/Brittany, Finn/Rachel, Artie/Misogyny, Sam/Really Wanting To Get Back Together With Mercedes, Mercedes/Pretending To Want Shane More Than Sam, Lauren/Chocolate/Being A Boss
Spoilers (if any): Up to Season 3, Episode 9, just to be safe.
Warnings (if any): Some foul language, discussion of relatively attractiveness, in-universe sex riots, loving homages to Pedo!Will, spoiler: mention of Will Schuester reproducing
Word Count: 6480
Summary: In which guilt leads to suspicion, suspicion leads to discovery, and discovery leads to the Dark Side: half-naked revenge.
Author’s Note (if any): This is based on this prompt from the kurt_blaine prompt meme and is unbeta’d to the max because I have a pathological fear of seeking out new people. The visuals overpowered me and I couldn’t resist the need to churn something out. I hope the OP likes it. Title from George Michael’s Faith.
“I mean, it makes me really unhappy, but that’s the way it is.”
That was the moment Kurt walked in on: Blaine’s frowning face and Lady Macbeth-esque wringing hands, surrounded by rolling eyes (Santana) and ambivalent shrugs.
He couldn’t help but ask. “What makes you unhappy?”
Blaine’s spine went ramrod straight and his head turned at break-neck speeds to where Kurt was standing. His expression shifted to one Kurt could all too easily decipher: guilt. Why was Blaine feeling guilty?
“Oh, um…” He laughed nervously. “Well, everyone was… teasing me about when we were going to get married and I just took it too seriously and felt so frustrated that our families wouldn’t be able to see us get married in the state we were born in.” Blaine nodded to himself, just in case it wasn’t obvious enough to Kurt that he was lying. “It’s just unfair.”
“Yes...” Kurt nodded back, deciding to wait on calling his boyfriend out for lying to his face. “But it won’t always be like that. We won’t let it be.” He put on a smile. He could lie too. “Besides, who wants to get married in Ohio? There’s a whole world out there!” He forced a joyous laugh.
Blaine smiled back, his face still tinged with some kind of remorse. “You’re right. I mean, who could imagine Kurt Hummel, performer-fashionisto to the stars, getting married here?” As Kurt took the seat to Blaine’s left, his boyfriend grabbed one of his hands and wrapped it in his own.
Mr. Schue burst in before the couple could continue their conversion, proclaiming, “All right, guys: this week, we’re going to focus on an artist from my days in glee club whom I feel doesn’t get nearly enough credit.”
Thirteen of the glee clubbers, Sugar and Rory being too new to be forewarned and Blaine having heard all the horror stories from Kurt, tried not to moan. Hadn’t they done enough Journey?
Then Mr. Schue turned to the board and wrote that artist’s name. Kurt would be lying if he said he’d literally never expected Mr. Schue to write those two words on the blackboard, but that didn’t mean they weren’t in the top ten most unlikely.
GEORGE MICHAEL.
“What can we learn from George Michael?”
Santana snarked rhetorically, “Don’t troll a bathroom for your next trick? You’ll only make it in music if you white-wash your name?”
“There’s life after being in a boy band?” Sam asked, clearly thinking of his humiliating time as front man of The Justin Bieber Experience.
“Yes, Sam!” Mr. Schue smiled. “Well, sort of. George Michael experienced a lot of hardship, both for leaving Wham and from the record company. But, from that hardship, he found greatness. Using the work of George Michael, I want you guys to find a song based around some hardship you’ve faced and overcome.”
Brittany whispered a bit too loudly, “How is this different from every other assignment we’ve done?”
Apparently unstoppable in his determination, Mr. Schue declared, “Well, Brittany, I’ll show you. This song is about a hardship I’ve faced recently, something I was afraid of, but couldn’t be happier about now. From the top!”
The band started playing. Next to Kurt, Blaine’s brow furrowed in near recognition. “No, it couldn’t be…”
“That’s all I wanted, something special, something sacred in your eyes…”
“Oh, God, it is.”
Everyone with knowledge of the works of George Michael started recoiling in horror at Mr. Schuester’s performance of a song that was almost definitely about Lolita levels of obsessions and creepy. Everyone else hit that point when the glee instructor sang, “I will be your father figure, put your tiny hand in mine, I will be your preacher, teacher, anything you have in mind…”
Kurt tried to contemplate what Blaine had been talking about that could possibly have made him look so guilty the second he had walked into the choir room, because, frankly, thinking intensely about exactly what colors a dead body would turn from decaying in the desert was probably less harmful to his mental health than letting himself register Mr. Schue’s quote-unquote ‘performance’. He thought back to the first time he’d had the pleasure of meeting Sebastian and how very alike his expressions then and now were.
Could Blaine have been saying something about him? Something about him that… made him unhappy? The hand that wasn’t wrapped around Blaine’s flew to his cheeks. Oh, God, had Blaine realized what an awful case of gay face he had, whatever the hell that was??
He could feel his breath speeding up, like he was on the verge of hyperventilating. Please, no, he’d lost so much this year, not Blaine, please, not Blaine…
Apparently, Blaine could feel his breath speeding up too because he leaned in and whispered in his ear, “Hey, it’s okay, he’s hit the outro, we’re nearly safe.”
Kurt smiled tightly back, murmuring, “I know. Just… trying to make it through. Thinking of England and everything.” He forced a laugh out. Blaine didn’t look entirely convinced, but squeezed his hand and looked back to the horror show that was Mr. Schuester singing Father Figure.
“I’ll be your daddy!”
Santana said in slight horror under her breath, “That would be so wanky if it didn’t make me want to barf.”
“I will be the one who loves you… ‘til the end of… time.”
No one wanted to be the one to clap first, as if waiting long enough without acknowledging what they had just seen would make it vanish from their memories.
Well, no one except Sugar.
“Wow, Mr. Schue, you totally fooled me into thinking you had talent!” Sugar smiled widely and gave the confused teacher two thumbs up. “Yay!”
The sad part was she probably wasn’t being sarcastic.
Not one to be deterred, Mr. Schuester turned to the other gleeks. “So, what did everyone else think?”
Everyone looked at their neighbours, hoping someone else would sacrifice him-or-herself for the good of the group. In a fit of desperation, Kurt glanced at his bare wrist and gasped histrionically, “Oh my goodness, is that the time? Finn, Blaine, Rachel, we’re going to be late for Friday Night Dinner at my house!”
Finn brightened for a moment, only for his mood to slump when he didn’t catch on, “Oh, dude, but it’s…”
“Yes!” Rachel proclaimed dramatically, cutting Finn off. “You’re absolutely right, Finn; it is of the utmost importance that we not miss dinner! It’s tradition!”
“Tradition is one of the arch-stones of our society.” Blaine added, shrugging with feigned sheepishness at the now more confused glee instructor as he stood with Kurt and inched towards the door.
The other glee students started jumping on the bandwagon presented by Kurt, the highlights of which included Artie claiming he had to get home for his traditional family watching of the new episode of Sherlock (“there’s a dominatrix up in, g!”) and Brittany saying it was tradition in her house to take Daddy’s sleepy pills when they wanted to cry and forget things that made them feel dirty. After a second of looking at her with horrified bug eyes, Rory realized he really did want to leave that badly and corroborated her story.
Futilely, Mr. Schuester called out after his retreating students, “Don’t forget to pick a George Michael song to perform this week!” Huh. He’d thought the kids would be happier for him.
***
Kurt ended up not only not calling Blaine out, but taking the ostrich approach of trying to forget about it, to just wrap himself in the security of knowing that Blaine loved him even in spite of any flaws he might or might not possess. Nobody was perfect, after all. Lord knew Blaine had had his share of screw-ups before their relationship had even existed, but love was not finding someone perfect, it was seeing perfection in an imperfect person. It wasn’t as though Blaine was any less affectionate; if anything, he seemed just the slightest bit more romantic in recent times.
So, of course, the hateful and self-destructive parts of Kurt’s mind starting whispering the words, ‘Someone has a guilty conscience.’
The two phrases played in his mind, their messages mixing and alternating like the world’s worst mash-up. He needed closure; he was only human. Maybe it wasn’t the most secure course of action, but could knowing what it was Blaine found so awful about him really be any worse than the agony not knowing had proved?
Well, yes, actually, eavesdropping on the West Side Story directors had made him feel a thousand times worse than the self-derived worry their ‘we’ll be in touch’ approach had inspired in him. Still… he needed this.
In any case, his own insecurity had broken him not two days after Mr. Schue had announced George Michael week: he’d made up his mind during Sam singing Amazing right at Mercedes. So that was how Kurt had arrived at this point: standing in front of the meeting place of the A/V Club with a box of Godivas, primed to make a deal with a Greco-Roman wrestling champion of a devil.
Exhaling to steel himself, Kurt reached for the doorknob and opened Pandora’s Box…
And found Tina and Brittany, of all people.
The more Asian of the duo waved. “Hey, Kurt!”
“Tina. Nice to see you’re feeling better. Hi, Brittany. Not that it’s not a pleasure, but why are you in the A/V room?”
Brittany stated what, from her tone, was obvious, “Because I needed to cool down.”
Kurt glanced at Tina, who shrugged and showed off her still-gloved hands. Only Brittany could find January in Ohio warm. He wondered if that was something Sue taught the Cheerios that needed skirts or something they evolved for by necessity.
“Sweetie, that’s AC.”
Brittany seemed disheartened by this revelation. “Letters that rhyme aren’t the same? But that made learning so much faster…”
“I need to talk to Lauren. I, um…” Tina looked at her shoes (which were quite charming-looking, actually) and powered on, “I heard Rachel say she’d set up cameras in the choir room and I need to know what Mike did wrong.”
“Why do you think he did something wrong? Did he buy you something weirdly nice out of the blue, is he being extra complimentary…?”
“He’s suggesting American restaurants for our dates.”
Kurt’s eyebrows shot up. That was serious.
“It just so happens that I need to see Lauren too and for similar reasons. If you want, we can pool our resources and satisfy our trust issues as a team.” Kurt said, holding up his box of gourmet chocolates and eying Tina’s bag of Reese’s with revulsion.
Tina seemed gob-smacked. “Wait, really? Blaine did something wrong? You guys seem so perfect. You’re, like, our favorite dolphins. Right, Brittany?”
“No, Tina,” Brittany said slowly, like she was explaining something obvious to a child, “dolphins are gay sharks. Kurt’s a unicorn. And Blaine Warbler is a pretty birdie.”
“… Right.”
“And they’ll have little pegasus babies some day and the world will be a better place.”
“What the Hell? Why are you losers breathing my air? I already told Puck coming back to glee club was a never deal. ”
Ah, Lauren had arrived. Wonderful. Unfortunately, now Kurt actually had to interact with her and, well, he’d made slight amends with Karofsky (David, rather), but that didn’t mean his natural reaction to people twice as muscular as him wasn’t still to snark until they cried before they made him cry.
Maybe if he just stood there and stared at her blankly, Tina would do the talking for him. He could dream, couldn’t he?
“Hi, Lauren.” Brittany eventually ended up saying. “Everybody brought you chocolate. Is it your birthday?”
The Puck-proclaimed-badass pursed her lips, eying the box and bag with sharpness hawks would envy. If Kurt didn’t know better, he’d think she’d shown just a second of what had looked like disappointment that they weren’t here to woo her back to glee club. “Business. That I can do. Step into my office.” She took five steps to the left and sat at a free desk, pulling out her laptop. As offices went, hers wasn’t exactly Steve Carell calibre. “So, how can I make your tiny brains go boom today?”
Tina seemed to have forgotten the self-confidence she’d gained from two years in glee club, so Kurt took the metaphorical bullet. “We were hoping for the video from the choir room cameras Rachel doesn’t know are still there.”
She didn’t even blink. “How far back? That’s a big bag and a fancy box, but going back more than three months takes a long time and I’ll need a lot more than that to be satisfied.”
Tina and Kurt glanced at each other. “I just need a day. When did Mike’s weirdness start?”
“Um… this week? We went to Denny’s after Puck sang I Want Your Sex. DENNY’S.”
Hmm. Could Blaine’s guilt and Mike’s possibly have the same source?
Kurt made up his mind and took the shot in the dark. “Could we start on this Monday? I have a feeling we won’t need much more.”
In an instant, Lauren’s powerful fingers flew on the keyboard, working the keys like a pianist.
“Caramel pecan, stat!”
Kurt blinked a few times before he realized she was speaking to him. He ripped open the Godivas box and checked the card. How in the world had she known? Just to be safe, he took all four caramel pecans out of the box and handed them to the techno savant at work.
Lauren snatched the chocolate square from the table like a kung fu master snatched a pebble from his sensei’s hand in one of those awful B-grade wuxia movies Kurt’s dad liked; only the sudden disappearance and chewing that followed told him that she’d moved at all.
“Done.”
She turned the laptop towards Kurt, Tina, and Brittany (who hadn’t left for reasons Kurt doubted he’d understand and was now waving at the tiny versions of the club in the screen) and jabbed a button. All three gleeks held their breath.
“If you ever hunger, hunger for me…” And then averted their eyes, Tina shrieking, “Oh, God, what is that?!” while Brittany started reciting the ‘stop, don’t touch me there’ song under her breath.
Kurt pleaded, “Can we rewind, please?”
They watched Mr. Schue do his horrendous performance backwards, then leave, then Blaine and Kurt exchanged the words that had started Kurt’s slow breakdown, then Kurt left, and they saw Blaine talking to everyone else.
“A little further…” The last of the group of people Kurt remembered seeing when he’d walked into the choir room arrived. “Now.”
For two recorded minutes, the majority of the glee club sat in silence. Naturally, Santana couldn’t allow that to continue.
“Okay, I’m from Lima Heights Adjacent--”
“We know.”
“--so how the Hell you’re all expecting me to deal with boredom when I was raised to hate it as much as the police and myself is beyond me. I’mma stir this boring ass pot. Let’s go around the room and talk looks. Are you settler or settlee? Who is hogging the hot in your relationships?”
“Me.”
“Sugar, you’re not in a relationship.”
“I’m speaking pre-emptively.”
It was sad that this was how Sugar acted after growing as a person and becoming less self-involved.
“Now… who first? Of course! Peter Potamus. How about you and Rocky J. Squirrel duke it out over who’s less repellent?”
“Oh, um… Well, I’ve only dated two girls, three if I count you and Brittany, but Rachel’s dated me and Puck and Jesse and Blaine and Jacob likes her…”
“Please don’t remind me.”
“… so I guess she’s hotter. Like, if we do the math.”
“Finn, that is such a kind thing to say. Yes, me, definitely me.”
“Shane and I don’t even have to think it through: we just automatically say I’m hotter.”
“That’s because you both have working eyes.”
Awkward silence descended on both sides of the screen, Kurt rolling his eyes. He didn’t want to go there, but seriously: how could a guy who used to strip for a living have so little game?
“I’ve never dated, so I don’t know. In Ireland, you have to pay a girl’s father her weight in gold before you can court her.”
Okay, no way he wasn’t making that up.
“Much like my idol James Cameron before me, I’ve only dated women that matched me in appearance.”
“No way! No offense, but Tina was hotter than you even when she was still all Goth.”
Tina clenched her teeth. “What does he mean, ‘even when’?”
“Ooh, are we admitting defeat in the hotness battle, almighty Situ-Asian?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I mean, I’d never stray, I love Tina, but I’m expecting a lot of girls wanting one-on-one dance lessons in college. I’m a lot to offer and I’m betting there wouldn’t be any ‘Abs, dim sum, yawn, I’m going to play Angry Birds’ from a hypothetical someone else, even if they’ll stay hypothetical.”
“Oh, what a martyr,” Tina snarled, “sacrificing himself by staying with me! Let’s see how many one-on-one dance lessons he can offer when I break his legs!”
“Tina! Calm.” Kurt gestured to the screen, where Santana was talking, then to the room, where Brittany was listening.
“Well, obviously, I’m the hot one in Santittany. Let keep it real here: I’d be keeping the boys at bay with a stick even if I hadn’t skanked around. Without Brit’s rep for putting out, most guys would have just been freaked out by her. Guys are so dumb.”
Then and now, Brittany looked heart-broken.
“Oh. I forgot that happened. Daddy’s sleepy pills work really well.”
Kurt put his hand on her shoulder. “Oh, honey. I think she tried to put a compliment in there? Somewhere?”
“Yeah, sorry it took you so long to realize Santana’s a raging bitch when the rest of us already knew.” Lauren sounded bored. “Is this going to take much longer? I’m pretty sure I’m almost done downloading all the released episodes of Vampire Diaries and I needs my Salvatore Brothers time.”
Tina stopped rubbing Brittany’s back to growl (at Lauren; apparently, anger killed Tina’s self-preservation), “We paid for three months worth of footage and we’ve had ten minutes. Twilight 2: Electric Boogaloo can wait.”
Lauren’s eyes narrowed behind her glasses. “You’re lucky I like Twilight or I’d pull your head out of your ass and shove it up Jacob Ben Israel’s.”
Quinn and Puck had opted out of discussion, Quinn because it was ‘degrading’ and Puck because he had instituted contracts with all his MILFs that he couldn’t mention their age or fading looks as a negative in public ‘after what happened with Mrs. Hooper.’
Kurt whispered to Tina, “Wasn’t Mrs. Hooper our ninth grade Chem teacher, the one who…”
“… Out of nowhere, got a bunch of plastic surgery to try and look like a life-sized Barbie doll? Yeah.”
“And then there was one. All right, Blainers, spill. Who’s hotter, you or Priscilla, Queen of the Desert? I mean, we know, but do you?”
“…”
Kurt said hollowly, “I think I know where this is headed.”
“We can stop it.” Tina looked at Lauren, who was contemplating a Reese’s cup like it held the secret to immortality.
“No.” Kurt exhaled. “I came this far. And you and Brit suffered through it. How can I do less?”
“I… guess I’m the hotter. I think Kurt’s beautiful, but… no one else does. Not even Kurt. We haven’t encountered many other gay guys, but they just look through Kurt to stare at me. Girls never go ‘all the good ones are gay’ at Kurt when they see us together. So I must be the hotter. I mean, it makes me really unhappy, but that’s the way it is.”
“You can stop now.”
Lauren slammed her laptop shut like it was a briefcase and she was a lawyer in a courtroom drama. “Pleasure doing business with you.” Then she left the three gleeks to their wallowing.
Kurt went first. “I’m not sure how to take that.”
Brittany reached out, trying to comfort him like he’d comforted her. “Blaine Warbler was sweet when he hurt you.”
“Yeah, compared to ours, he was practically complimenting you.” Tina pointed out, still a bit bitter, but trying to be empathetic for her friend.
“But… why do other people suddenly matter? Why can’t it just be ‘I think you’re beautiful’ without ‘no one else does’? Am I the only one who means it when we sing Perfect to each other?”
Tina pointed out the obvious. “I blame Santana.”
“I blame all of us.” Brittany frowned. “Blaine Warbler left his cage and we made his feathers all dirty. We made him like us.”
Kurt sighed. Was Brittany right? Had he led to the ruin of Blaine’s sweet nature by wanting him to come to McKinley so badly? Or, worse, had their relationship always been as fickle and shallow as everyone else’s and they just hadn’t wanted to notice?
No. He refused to believe that. “Throwing blame around won’t solve this problem. We need to do something.”
“Like what?” Tina asked despondently. “We aren’t happier for knowing why our boyfriends were acting all guilty and now Brit’s miserable when she didn’t even have anything to be concerned about. Where do we go from here?”
Brittany gave her thoughts, “People not thinking you’re sexy is a hardship. Maybe we could sing about it.”
Kurt almost chuckled. Then he started thinking. “You may be on to something, Brittany.”
“Wait, really?” The cheerleader smiled a little. “People don’t usually say that about my ideas.”
“Girls, gather round. We need to start planning a number that will rock everyone’s worlds.”
And now, the thrilling conclusion...