Something To Sleep To [9/?]
Title: Something To Sleep To
Chapter: 9/?
Author: wishof_wings
Betas: Becky & Therese
Rating: R
Pairing: Klaine
Word Count: 2300
Summary: What started as a volunteer gig at Lima Memorial is slowly turning into a fairy tale for Kurt Hummel. Except Kurt is pretty doubtful that a kiss is going to wake his Prince Charming from his coma.
Spoilers: None
Warnings: AU, homophobia related violence
Author's Notes: Nothing really to say this time around except enjoy. <3 That and man am I an italics addict.
Go back to the beginning.
The next day, things are different.
Kurt isn’t sure if it’s the consistent thrum of Blaine Blaine Blaine in the back of his mind or the fact that he ate lasagna the night before and a bagel that morning. Either way, what had been dragging and heavy the day before is suddenly flitting past him like light.
It takes a lot of willpower not to skip Cheerios that afternoon. But his energy has turned into restlessness and if there’s any way to combat that, it’s by practicing Coach Sylvester’s rigorous routines. Kurt’s even sure, when he steps into the auditorium that afternoon, that he’s already going to do much better than the day before. He practically bounces over to Mercedes, who looks up from where she’s seated on the stage to look at him.
“Someone’s feeling better.” Kurt stops, smiling down at her before slipping seamlessly into his stretches.
“What are you talking about?” He reigns himself in a little bit, even though he can still feel the energy vibrating right beneath his skin.
“You’ve been a zombie all week is what I’m talking about.” Mercedes has completely stopped her half-hearted stretching attempts, and Kurt briefly registers how tired she looks.
“I… Guess Coach Sylvester’s criticism yesterday just whipped me into shape,” he says simply with a casual shrug. Mercedes doesn’t look very convinced, and Kurt isn’t insanely surprised; it was a pretty weak argument. “And I’m… Volunteering today, and I always enjoy that.”
The fact that he’d kept everything concerning Blaine practically a secret from Mercedes rears in the back of his mind, but he pushes it away. Kurt loves Mercedes; she’s his best friend, of course he does. There’s just something about Blaine that makes it so hard for Kurt to talk about.
“You’re still volunteering?”
The shock evident in Mercedes’ voice causes Kurt to pause and look at her again.
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?” There’s more bite to his question than he’d intended.
“I just, I don’t know. I thought with Cheerios you didn’t really need it anymore.”
Cheerios doesn’t have Blaine, Mercedes.
“The more things I can put on my eventual college applications, the better. Besides, I enjoy it.” He stresses, going back to his stretching. His positive, anxious, thrumming energy is quickly becoming aggravated.
“Are you still seeing that boy?”
The way she says it causes Kurt to still again, this time looking at her with a combination of disbelief and coldness.
“His name is Blaine.”
Mercedes reaches out as if to take his hand, like she wants him to sit and talk with her, but he draws it away sharply.
“Kurt.” There’s an edge of worry to her voice now. “You’ve been acting… Different, since you started this whole volunteer thing. Especially lately. And you know I think it’s good for you, but I just-It’s weird. It’s like spending your afternoons with a dead person.”
“Blaine is not dead.” His voice is low and cutting, and Mercedes is staring at him now, her mouth beginning to form around words. “Blaine is-” the only person I can talk to anymore. Blaine is the only person who doesn’t make me feel so alone. “You know what? No. I don’t have to justify this to you.”
So he walks away, setting himself up for practice away from Mercedes and her “concern.”
Kurt leaves the locker room after a brief rinse in the shower, the fastest change in history (he’s sure that if it had been timed, he would get some sort of recognition for it), and what would later be deemed as hardly passable styling of his hair. It’s half about getting to the hospital as quickly as he can-the longer practice times had slipped his mind, but the end of visiting hours certainly hadn’t and he really should have skipped practice-but it’s also about dodging Mercedes and her lingering questions. She’d watched him all through practice, looking for openings to talk to him and failing to find any.
It’s on his way to the hospital that the nerves come back, the anxious-excited ones that have been driving him all day.
He hardly remembers signing himself in at the nurses station, and the three times he’s scolded for practically running down the halls slips quickly to the back of his mind.
The door is closed when he gets there and, for the first time all day, Kurt truly stops.
A closed door isn’t a locked door.
Still, he stands there, looking at the door, just breathing as he slowly calms down. He feels silly, suddenly, over the fact that he’s spent almost twenty-four hours being so excited or something so little. It’s not like his being there is going to change anything, not for Blaine. But I want to be here.
He touches the door knob and turns it slowly, on the off chance he’s barging in on the middle of something-oh god what if they’re bathing him-but the room is empty, save for Blaine. Kurt closes the door behind himself quietly, walking very slowly towards Blaine’s bedside with deep, purposeful breaths.
The air feels heavy in the room in a way it hasn’t before. There’s a stillness to the room that should be expected, but isn’t, and a quiet that seems wrong. For a brief moment, Kurt can’t even here the blip of Blaine’s heart but it’s there, in the background, a sound he has learned to push away rather than focus on. But even that reassurance doesn’t erase the strange unease he’s feeling. Kurt doesn’t know why it’s there; it’s not like Mrs. Anderson is going to pop out of a closet and yell at him for being there or anything, although he glances at the only other door in the room-the bathroom-and then promptly shakes his head. That’s ridiculous.
It looks different. The room is the same, but it’s more… Lived in. There are books piled next to his vase of flowers, a plush looking blanket over the chair he usually sits in that is also now occupied by a stuffed bear. The bag he’d seen Blaine’s mother with the last time he’d been there is sitting on another table, empty, but that’s the extent of the changes. They’re all so generic that Kurt isn’t sure he could gleam anything about Blaine from them.
And that’s when his attention goes back to Blaine. Blaine, who, rather than a mass of bandages, has a head full of dark, messy curls. Kurt smiles, unable to help himself, and finishes the last few steps to Blaine’s bedside.
He finds himself at a loss for words, standing there and fiddling anxiously with his fingers. He turns instead to move the bear from his seat, which he then pulls back to its usual spot. Kurt pauses for just a moment before tugging the chair a few inches closer to Blaine’s bedside and then folding himself into it.
“I hadn’t imagined you with curly hair.”
Kurt nearly slaps a hand over his mouth. Great, that’s a great first thing to say. He wonders if Blaine would smile or laugh or just roll his eyes, the way a lot of people tend to do.
“I mean. Hi. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?” His arms are close enough to the bedside that he can fold them loosely over the bars that keep Blaine from… Rolling to his death? Kurt can only assume that’s what they’re for. “I… Well, it’s not important why I wasn’t here. But I’m back now.” He rests his chin in his arms, watching the subtle movements of Blaine’s breathing.
“I like it, though. Your hair, I mean.” Kurt bites his lip, wondering when he got so ineloquent. “It’s a little long, I think. Nothing a haircut won’t fix.” Kurt wonders if that’s something they do at the hospital. “Haircut and a shave, and then you’ll look all polished up.”
He resists the urge to reach out and twirl one of Blaine’s curls around his fingers. They looked like they’d be good for that.
Kurt is staring again, he knows he is. His fingers drum against the bed bar with the inkling to reach out and touch, but he keeps it in and doesn’t let himself. There is something about Blaine that just feels different. It’s almost as if the bandages had kept parts of Blaine locked away somehow.
Blaine feels more alive than he did before. His tumbling hair makes him look younger, so much younger, and… More like a person. All those times before, Blaine had basically been a stranger, but now it’s like he isn’t. It’s like Kurt is sitting at the bedside of a friend he’s always had and only just realized is there.
“I missed you.” His voice comes out thick and his face heats with embarrassment. Not that it matters. Not that Blaine can see. “Is that weird?” Yes. It feels weird.
“I came here on Monday. I didn’t even… I couldn’t come and see you. After everything with your mom, I felt like I shouldn’t be here. Like… Maybe if she didn’t want me here, you didn’t want me here, either.” Kurt’s fingers tighten around the bar and he casts his eyes downwards, inspecting the creases in the hospital sheet where it disappears beneath Blaine’s shoulder.
“I don’t know you Blaine, but. But you don’t really know me, either, do you? Some people think you can hear me, but. I mean, your own mom said me being here was pointless. But it doesn’t feel pointless to me.” He glanced upwards, almost hoping that Blaine’s eyes would open and he would look at Kurt. He wonders what color they would be.
“Carole, she told me that no one comes to visit you. She told me… About your mom, about what she did. How she sat with you and waited, and now she doesn’t anymore.” Kurt thinks of why Mrs. Anderson still comes if her son is practically dead to her, and he can’t help but want there to still be hope for her. You don’t have to give up.
“No one deserves that, I think. Being alone. No one.” He sits up a little taller and without thinking about it, without giving himself a chance to second guess it, Kurt reaches forward and takes one of Blaine’s hands between his own. There. Because Blaine’s hand is warm and solid and a sign that Blaine is as alive as Kurt is.
“Can I tell you something?” Kurt’s voice becomes hushed, his thumb brushing lightly over the back of Blaine’s wrist. “It’s selfish of me, but, if you’re going to know me, maybe you should know that I can be selfish sometimes. As if my so-called master plan isn’t evidence enough of that.”
He focuses on the back and forth motion of his thumb, dragging his fingers back over the ridges of Blaine’s knuckles.
“I’m alone, too. I mean, I have friends, and I have my dad, but. I’m alone.” His breath leaves him slowly, as if he’s just admitted something that had only been a quiet thought late at night. “It’s the same kind of loneliness I imagine you feel, I guess. Maybe it’s selfish of me to make that comparison-after all, it’s not like you can do anything about it. I could easily go out and make myself happy, because happiness is made it doesn’t just… It doesn’t just happen.” He’s squeezing Blaine’s hand, almost able to feel the way the blood beats through his veins.
“Not for me.” Kurt’s own voice is pitiful to his ears and he slowly relaxes his grip.
“I have these friends and family and I can’t even… They don’t know. They can’t even begin to understand what it’s like to be me, to live in this place and be different the way I’m different…” His breath catches and he stops, eyes slamming shut as he forces himself to breathe. He breathes and breathes until the prickling in his eyes stops, and he’s not sure how long it takes him.
“I’m not saying you know. You probably don’t. You probably go on dates on Friday nights, and walk down the halls and dread school because you hate homework rather than hating the people who sneer and mock you and throw you into dumpsters.” Blaine is probably so normal. He’s probably a good student, maybe with a girlfriend, and a table full of friends who he can talk to about football and video games and cars and whatever else generic, mid-western boys are into.
“Even so, those people aren’t here. And that says something, Blaine, even if you don’t know it. Even if no one else knows it, I do.”
Blaine doesn’t have other visitors. Do his hypothetical friends and girlfriend even know he’s in the hospital? Kurt can’t imagine why Blaine would be alone if he wasn’t really alone. If he wasn’t alone in the way that Kurt often felt he was. The type of alone that meant being surrounded by people but never letting them close enough, never letting them look too closely.
If I was the one in a coma, would people come for me?
Yes. He knows right away that his dad wouldn’t leave his bedside no matter what, no matter how much time had passed. And his friends, New Directions, they’d be there. His heart aches suddenly with the reality of how alone Blaine really must be.
“I won’t let you be alone. You’ll never be alone again.”
He lifts Blaine’s hand, pliant between both of Kurt’s palms, and presses his forehead against the jumble. Never again.
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