Something To Sleep To [16/?]
Title: Something To Sleep To
Chapter: 16/?
Author: wishof_wings
Betas: Becky, Izzy, & Em
Rating: R
Pairing: Klaine
Word Count: 2200
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: I seem to make up for big gaps between updates by giving you multiple ones in a short period of time. That's probably not the best idea, but... I'm a glutton for punishment, it seems. I did post a bonus to chapter 15, so if you missed it, just click the convenient back arrow at the bottom of the chapter. Also! I didn't mean for my AO3 note to be confusing. I have no intention to stop updating STST on livejournal. (: Enjoy!
Go back to the beginning.
“I think it’s the most activity that’s been in Blaine’s room, ever. I’m sure that if we hadn’t had Carole on our side, we would have gotten kicked out.”
Kurt places a slice of turkey on his dad’s plate as he talks, shifting easily to the mashed potatoes afterwards.
“It’s so strange, because you don’t really think of people laughing in a coma patient’s room, but Cooper-”
“Which one’s Cooper again?”
Kurt settles into his chair and meets Burt’s confused look.
“That’s Blaine’s older brother. Anyways, Cooper seemed intent on keeping the atmosphere up. I think that was good for Grace-Mrs. Anderson,” Kurt clarifies, when he sees his dad open his mouth to ask a question. “It’s obvious this is all still very hard for her, but I think Cooper being there helped.”
“I see...”
“I think Carole helped, too. She’s really a fantastic nurse, you know? She really seemed to put Grace at ease during the whole thing, and of course she supervised while I cut Blaine’s hair.”
“You did what now?”
“Cut Blaine’s hair. Ugh, you should have seen him, dad. He looked like a chia pet. Grace was actually very flattering in her compliments about it, but Cooper seemed to keep teasing Blaine despite the fact that he’s in a coma-”
“Kurt.”
Kurt pauses, mouth still open mid-sentence, but when he sees the look on Burt’s face, he promptly shuts it.
“That’s... Great. I’m so glad you’re spending time with Carole, getting to know her better. It makes me happy that you like her so much.” Kurt beams at his father. “But, you... You’ve been spending a lot of time at the hospital. Have you been hanging out with your real friends at all?”
The smile falls from Kurt’s face.
“Blaine is a real friend,” he says quietly.
“Kurt, you know that’s not what I meant-”
“There aren’t a lot of ways to take that, dad.”
“Buddy, no, hey, look at me.”
Kurt hadn’t even realized he’d been averting his eyes, so he glances up from the table to look at his dad.
“I meant, when was the last time you hung out with Mercedes? Or Tina? I haven’t seen them these last couple of weeks.”
“I see them at school.”
“So you just have no social life outside of school anymore?”
Kurt grips his fork tightly.
“I do-”
“Hanging out at a hospital isn’t a social life, Kurt.”
Kurt jerks back as if he’s been slapped, and he stares at his plate with wide eyes.
“Look, I’m just worried about you. You seem happier, I’ll give you that, but it’s not normal-”
“Well, news flash, dad! I’m not normal.” Kurt’s plate clatters against the table as he stands up. “I’ve never been normal, and I’m sorry-”
“Kurt-”
“I’ll just go not be normal somewhere else.”
“Kurt, you hardly touched your dinner.”
“I lost my appetite.”
His eyes sting as he heads for the basement, slamming the door behind him. Hopefully that will be enough to convince his dad to leave him alone; Kurt doesn’t have the luxury of a lock on his bedroom door.
As he lags through his skin routine, he feels himself calm down, but the idea of talking to his dad still isn’t appealing. It’s early, but he shuts off his light and climbs into bed anyway, resolutely staring at the ceiling and wishing he could sleep.
He’s almost there when he hears the door crack open and his dad’s heavy footsteps down the stairs.
“Kurt? You asleep?”
He isn’t, but he keeps quiet. Kurt hears his dad settle on one of the stairs, but doesn’t chance looking at him.
“Look, you’re my son and you know I love you. And yeah, we don’t see everything eye to eye, but I don’t think any parent is supposed to get their kid like that. I think that’s one of the challenges of parenthood.” Burt pauses, and Kurt can imagine him taking off his hat and wringing it in his hands.
“I didn’t mean to upset you, but it’s my job as your dad to look out for you. I’m sure this Blaine is a good kid, but the thing is that he’s a stranger no matter how well you think you know him.” A sigh. “All I’m saying is that you’ve never even spoken to this guy. Heck, he probably doesn’t even know you exist.”
Kurt feels like he stops breathing.
Burt falls quiet again and Kurt can hear the stairs creak as he stands and heads back up.
“Love you, buddy.”
The door closes, and Kurt turns on his side, blinking back tears.
Kurt always knew it was a possibility. There is nothing that says for sure that coma patients are aware of what’s going on around them while they’re under. But that hasn’t stopped Kurt from wanting Blaine to hear him, wanting Blaine to know everything that Kurt has told him over the last four weeks. If Blaine wakes up and he-
No. No. Blaine has to know Kurt.
He has to.
It doesn’t even occur to Kurt that he’s skipped Cheerios practice until he’s pulling into the hospital parking garage. In fact, chances are he wouldn’t have even known if he hadn’t seen the text from Mercedes (a WHERE ARE YOU?!?!?!?!). He looks at it for a few moments before shutting his phone off without a second thought.
After his rather eventful weekend at the hospital, Kurt feels a strange giddiness walking towards Blaine’s room. Saturday night, it had been a good, excited energy. But now, after what his dad had said the night before, it feels almost nervous. It’s almost as if Kurt expects to walk in and see Blaine with his eyes open, looking at Kurt as if he’s never seen him before in his life.
Kurt swallows.
But Blaine is as he has been, albeit with a much tamer head of curls. Kurt can tell that someone else has been there; Cooper, most likely, given the fact that Winnie-the-Pooh has been left open and there are three empty coffee cups stacked within each other.
Rolling his eyes, Kurt cleans up first, but he has a hard time finding the energy to be annoyed. After all, it’s signs that someone else has been to see Blaine, and that fact alone makes Kurt want to smile.
With that settled, he pulls out the two flowers he managed to make the day before.
“Today I present you with a glorious white magnolia and a rainbow of poppies.” Really, it’s beginning to look quite impressive in that tiny, plastic vase. It’s a complete mess, given all the different kind of flowers, but it’s a beautiful sort of chaos. “Well, by rainbow I mean the first three colors, but I’m sure you’re not picky.” He arranges them until he’s satisfied before he settles into the familiar feeling of his chair.
And then he draws a blank.
He’s looking at Blaine and it’s like right after The Dream, except there’s really no reason for Kurt to feel so self conscious this time.
Is there?
“Ugh, this is ridiculous,” he groans, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes. Everything would be fine if Kurt hadn’t gotten into that stupid argument with his dad the night before. Then Kurt could just talk about everything, like he usually does, and feel excited about ridding Blaine of his mountain-man appearance.
He takes a few breaths and then looks back at Blaine.
“This isn’t normal, is it?” Kurt asks quietly, tilting his head to the side. It’s not as if Blaine will answer him, and while Kurt had accepted that some time ago, a part of him is still hoping Blaine will. His hand finds Blaine’s automatically, finding comfort in its warmth and solidity.
Kurt knows Blaine, more so now than even a few days ago. He knows that Blaine has an adorable obsession with Winnie the Pooh, even at the age of fifteen (and fifteen year old boys should not be able to grow that much facial hair, it’s not fair). He knows that Blaine loves to laugh and to sing. He knows that Blaine fell off his bike when he was seven and has a scar on the back of his knee because of it.
Grace and Cooper hadn’t felt strange sitting there and talking about Blaine, telling stories about him and filling Kurt in on things he didn’t know. How Blaine hates wearing his hair curly (Kurt has no idea why) or how he’d seen The Princess and the Frog in theaters four times and spent a solid month singing the songs out loud as often as possible. Some of the stories were for Cooper’s benefit too. Kurt could tell by the way he would suddenly watch his mother attentively. Like how Blaine had made his mother heart shaped pancakes for Valentine’s Day (he’d burnt them, but Grace had still eaten them) and how he’d tried to hide a stray cat in his room that past summer because he’d felt so bad for it.
They were the sorts of stories that had made Kurt curl up in his chair and just listen, eyes straying from Blaine’s family to Blaine himself. Because yes, of course Kurt knows Blaine. There is no way he could ever consider Blaine a stranger now.
But that doesn’t stop the nagging in the back of his mind, the echo of his father’s voice: he probably doesn’t even know you exist.
Kurt sighs, leaning forward until he can run his free hand through Blaine’s curls. Please, he thinks, but he isn’t even sure what he’s asking for.
The sound of the door opening jolts him out of his reverie, and he draws his hands into his lap as quickly as possible.
“Hello, sweetie,” Carole says with a smile as she strides in. She’s carrying an armful of folders, and Kurt can tell by the state of her hair that she’s been there for a few hours already.
“Shaving today, right?” She asks before Kurt can manage a greeting back. He nods and she shifts around the jumble in her arms before setting down an electric razor.
“It’s hospital policy,” Carole says to Kurt’s inquisitive eyebrow raise. “But the good thing is that you don’t need me hovering over you while you use it.” She smiles at him, shifting the stuff around in her arms again. “Just don’t do anything rash, like shave off one of Blaine’s eyebrows.”
Kurt huffs out a laugh, shaking his head.
“Tempting, but I think his mother would kill me.” Besides, Blaine’s eyebrows have grown on him. They’re charming in their own right.
“Did you need anything else, honey?”
Kurt isn’t sure he’ll ever get used to Carole’s affinity for pet names, but at least it’s in a pleasant way.
“No, I brought everything else I’d need. Thank you, Carole.” They share a smile and then she’s gone.
Shaving is something Burt had taught Kurt how to do right at the beginning of puberty, before either of them knew that Kurt’s facial hair-while existent-didn’t require as much maintenance as most teenage boys. But that had been with a regular, run-of-the-mill razor. Using an electric one can’t be that different, right?
After all, the hospital wouldn’t allow electric razors, either, if they thought they were dangerous.
Despite the fact that the whole process involves Kurt bringing blades against another person’s skin, it’s a lot less nerve-wracking than cutting Blaine’s hair had been. It’s slow and methodical, warm water and oil and the steady hum of the razor.
It’s a task that involves Kurt invading Blaine’s personal space, more so than at any other time he’d had the opportunity to touch. His fingers linger longer than they should when they pull the skin of Blaine’s cheek taut, fleeting across the hardness of Blaine’s jaw and past his ear, until Kurt’s hand is curving around the back of Blaine’s neck.
Kurt tilts Blaine’s head back, moving the razor carefully along Blaine’s throat and trying not to think about the feel of the curls looped around his fingers. He’s so close, he swears he can feel the heat radiating off of Blaine’s skin.
When he’s done, he pulls back just far enough to survey his work, grasping Blaine’s chin until his face is angled towards Kurt.
“There.” Kurt smiles, filled with a small sense of accomplishment. It’s not the best shave in the world, but it’s the best he can do given the circumstances. “Don’t you look handsome.” His fingers smooth gently along Blaine’s throat and jaw until Kurt finds himself cupping Blaine’s face in his hands.
He’s never been this close before. So close that he can see the individual eyelashes fanned across Blaine’s cheek and the lightest betrayal of freckles, so few Kurt can count them, that are normally hidden in Blaine’s complexion. Kurt’s too close, and he knows that he is, but he doesn’t pull away. His fingers move, feeling the sharpness of Blaine’s cheekbones and the way his nose slopes.
It isn’t until Kurt’s thumb swipes across Blaine’s lower lip that he jolts back, nearly colliding with his chair.
What am I doing?
<< 16 >>
Chapter: 16/?
Author: wishof_wings
Betas: Becky, Izzy, & Em
Rating: R
Pairing: Klaine
Word Count: 2200
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: I seem to make up for big gaps between updates by giving you multiple ones in a short period of time. That's probably not the best idea, but... I'm a glutton for punishment, it seems. I did post a bonus to chapter 15, so if you missed it, just click the convenient back arrow at the bottom of the chapter. Also! I didn't mean for my AO3 note to be confusing. I have no intention to stop updating STST on livejournal. (: Enjoy!
Go back to the beginning.
“I think it’s the most activity that’s been in Blaine’s room, ever. I’m sure that if we hadn’t had Carole on our side, we would have gotten kicked out.”
Kurt places a slice of turkey on his dad’s plate as he talks, shifting easily to the mashed potatoes afterwards.
“It’s so strange, because you don’t really think of people laughing in a coma patient’s room, but Cooper-”
“Which one’s Cooper again?”
Kurt settles into his chair and meets Burt’s confused look.
“That’s Blaine’s older brother. Anyways, Cooper seemed intent on keeping the atmosphere up. I think that was good for Grace-Mrs. Anderson,” Kurt clarifies, when he sees his dad open his mouth to ask a question. “It’s obvious this is all still very hard for her, but I think Cooper being there helped.”
“I see...”
“I think Carole helped, too. She’s really a fantastic nurse, you know? She really seemed to put Grace at ease during the whole thing, and of course she supervised while I cut Blaine’s hair.”
“You did what now?”
“Cut Blaine’s hair. Ugh, you should have seen him, dad. He looked like a chia pet. Grace was actually very flattering in her compliments about it, but Cooper seemed to keep teasing Blaine despite the fact that he’s in a coma-”
“Kurt.”
Kurt pauses, mouth still open mid-sentence, but when he sees the look on Burt’s face, he promptly shuts it.
“That’s... Great. I’m so glad you’re spending time with Carole, getting to know her better. It makes me happy that you like her so much.” Kurt beams at his father. “But, you... You’ve been spending a lot of time at the hospital. Have you been hanging out with your real friends at all?”
The smile falls from Kurt’s face.
“Blaine is a real friend,” he says quietly.
“Kurt, you know that’s not what I meant-”
“There aren’t a lot of ways to take that, dad.”
“Buddy, no, hey, look at me.”
Kurt hadn’t even realized he’d been averting his eyes, so he glances up from the table to look at his dad.
“I meant, when was the last time you hung out with Mercedes? Or Tina? I haven’t seen them these last couple of weeks.”
“I see them at school.”
“So you just have no social life outside of school anymore?”
Kurt grips his fork tightly.
“I do-”
“Hanging out at a hospital isn’t a social life, Kurt.”
Kurt jerks back as if he’s been slapped, and he stares at his plate with wide eyes.
“Look, I’m just worried about you. You seem happier, I’ll give you that, but it’s not normal-”
“Well, news flash, dad! I’m not normal.” Kurt’s plate clatters against the table as he stands up. “I’ve never been normal, and I’m sorry-”
“Kurt-”
“I’ll just go not be normal somewhere else.”
“Kurt, you hardly touched your dinner.”
“I lost my appetite.”
His eyes sting as he heads for the basement, slamming the door behind him. Hopefully that will be enough to convince his dad to leave him alone; Kurt doesn’t have the luxury of a lock on his bedroom door.
As he lags through his skin routine, he feels himself calm down, but the idea of talking to his dad still isn’t appealing. It’s early, but he shuts off his light and climbs into bed anyway, resolutely staring at the ceiling and wishing he could sleep.
He’s almost there when he hears the door crack open and his dad’s heavy footsteps down the stairs.
“Kurt? You asleep?”
He isn’t, but he keeps quiet. Kurt hears his dad settle on one of the stairs, but doesn’t chance looking at him.
“Look, you’re my son and you know I love you. And yeah, we don’t see everything eye to eye, but I don’t think any parent is supposed to get their kid like that. I think that’s one of the challenges of parenthood.” Burt pauses, and Kurt can imagine him taking off his hat and wringing it in his hands.
“I didn’t mean to upset you, but it’s my job as your dad to look out for you. I’m sure this Blaine is a good kid, but the thing is that he’s a stranger no matter how well you think you know him.” A sigh. “All I’m saying is that you’ve never even spoken to this guy. Heck, he probably doesn’t even know you exist.”
Kurt feels like he stops breathing.
Burt falls quiet again and Kurt can hear the stairs creak as he stands and heads back up.
“Love you, buddy.”
The door closes, and Kurt turns on his side, blinking back tears.
Kurt always knew it was a possibility. There is nothing that says for sure that coma patients are aware of what’s going on around them while they’re under. But that hasn’t stopped Kurt from wanting Blaine to hear him, wanting Blaine to know everything that Kurt has told him over the last four weeks. If Blaine wakes up and he-
No. No. Blaine has to know Kurt.
He has to.
It doesn’t even occur to Kurt that he’s skipped Cheerios practice until he’s pulling into the hospital parking garage. In fact, chances are he wouldn’t have even known if he hadn’t seen the text from Mercedes (a WHERE ARE YOU?!?!?!?!). He looks at it for a few moments before shutting his phone off without a second thought.
After his rather eventful weekend at the hospital, Kurt feels a strange giddiness walking towards Blaine’s room. Saturday night, it had been a good, excited energy. But now, after what his dad had said the night before, it feels almost nervous. It’s almost as if Kurt expects to walk in and see Blaine with his eyes open, looking at Kurt as if he’s never seen him before in his life.
Kurt swallows.
But Blaine is as he has been, albeit with a much tamer head of curls. Kurt can tell that someone else has been there; Cooper, most likely, given the fact that Winnie-the-Pooh has been left open and there are three empty coffee cups stacked within each other.
Rolling his eyes, Kurt cleans up first, but he has a hard time finding the energy to be annoyed. After all, it’s signs that someone else has been to see Blaine, and that fact alone makes Kurt want to smile.
With that settled, he pulls out the two flowers he managed to make the day before.
“Today I present you with a glorious white magnolia and a rainbow of poppies.” Really, it’s beginning to look quite impressive in that tiny, plastic vase. It’s a complete mess, given all the different kind of flowers, but it’s a beautiful sort of chaos. “Well, by rainbow I mean the first three colors, but I’m sure you’re not picky.” He arranges them until he’s satisfied before he settles into the familiar feeling of his chair.
And then he draws a blank.
He’s looking at Blaine and it’s like right after The Dream, except there’s really no reason for Kurt to feel so self conscious this time.
Is there?
“Ugh, this is ridiculous,” he groans, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes. Everything would be fine if Kurt hadn’t gotten into that stupid argument with his dad the night before. Then Kurt could just talk about everything, like he usually does, and feel excited about ridding Blaine of his mountain-man appearance.
He takes a few breaths and then looks back at Blaine.
“This isn’t normal, is it?” Kurt asks quietly, tilting his head to the side. It’s not as if Blaine will answer him, and while Kurt had accepted that some time ago, a part of him is still hoping Blaine will. His hand finds Blaine’s automatically, finding comfort in its warmth and solidity.
Kurt knows Blaine, more so now than even a few days ago. He knows that Blaine has an adorable obsession with Winnie the Pooh, even at the age of fifteen (and fifteen year old boys should not be able to grow that much facial hair, it’s not fair). He knows that Blaine loves to laugh and to sing. He knows that Blaine fell off his bike when he was seven and has a scar on the back of his knee because of it.
Grace and Cooper hadn’t felt strange sitting there and talking about Blaine, telling stories about him and filling Kurt in on things he didn’t know. How Blaine hates wearing his hair curly (Kurt has no idea why) or how he’d seen The Princess and the Frog in theaters four times and spent a solid month singing the songs out loud as often as possible. Some of the stories were for Cooper’s benefit too. Kurt could tell by the way he would suddenly watch his mother attentively. Like how Blaine had made his mother heart shaped pancakes for Valentine’s Day (he’d burnt them, but Grace had still eaten them) and how he’d tried to hide a stray cat in his room that past summer because he’d felt so bad for it.
They were the sorts of stories that had made Kurt curl up in his chair and just listen, eyes straying from Blaine’s family to Blaine himself. Because yes, of course Kurt knows Blaine. There is no way he could ever consider Blaine a stranger now.
But that doesn’t stop the nagging in the back of his mind, the echo of his father’s voice: he probably doesn’t even know you exist.
Kurt sighs, leaning forward until he can run his free hand through Blaine’s curls. Please, he thinks, but he isn’t even sure what he’s asking for.
The sound of the door opening jolts him out of his reverie, and he draws his hands into his lap as quickly as possible.
“Hello, sweetie,” Carole says with a smile as she strides in. She’s carrying an armful of folders, and Kurt can tell by the state of her hair that she’s been there for a few hours already.
“Shaving today, right?” She asks before Kurt can manage a greeting back. He nods and she shifts around the jumble in her arms before setting down an electric razor.
“It’s hospital policy,” Carole says to Kurt’s inquisitive eyebrow raise. “But the good thing is that you don’t need me hovering over you while you use it.” She smiles at him, shifting the stuff around in her arms again. “Just don’t do anything rash, like shave off one of Blaine’s eyebrows.”
Kurt huffs out a laugh, shaking his head.
“Tempting, but I think his mother would kill me.” Besides, Blaine’s eyebrows have grown on him. They’re charming in their own right.
“Did you need anything else, honey?”
Kurt isn’t sure he’ll ever get used to Carole’s affinity for pet names, but at least it’s in a pleasant way.
“No, I brought everything else I’d need. Thank you, Carole.” They share a smile and then she’s gone.
Shaving is something Burt had taught Kurt how to do right at the beginning of puberty, before either of them knew that Kurt’s facial hair-while existent-didn’t require as much maintenance as most teenage boys. But that had been with a regular, run-of-the-mill razor. Using an electric one can’t be that different, right?
After all, the hospital wouldn’t allow electric razors, either, if they thought they were dangerous.
Despite the fact that the whole process involves Kurt bringing blades against another person’s skin, it’s a lot less nerve-wracking than cutting Blaine’s hair had been. It’s slow and methodical, warm water and oil and the steady hum of the razor.
It’s a task that involves Kurt invading Blaine’s personal space, more so than at any other time he’d had the opportunity to touch. His fingers linger longer than they should when they pull the skin of Blaine’s cheek taut, fleeting across the hardness of Blaine’s jaw and past his ear, until Kurt’s hand is curving around the back of Blaine’s neck.
Kurt tilts Blaine’s head back, moving the razor carefully along Blaine’s throat and trying not to think about the feel of the curls looped around his fingers. He’s so close, he swears he can feel the heat radiating off of Blaine’s skin.
When he’s done, he pulls back just far enough to survey his work, grasping Blaine’s chin until his face is angled towards Kurt.
“There.” Kurt smiles, filled with a small sense of accomplishment. It’s not the best shave in the world, but it’s the best he can do given the circumstances. “Don’t you look handsome.” His fingers smooth gently along Blaine’s throat and jaw until Kurt finds himself cupping Blaine’s face in his hands.
He’s never been this close before. So close that he can see the individual eyelashes fanned across Blaine’s cheek and the lightest betrayal of freckles, so few Kurt can count them, that are normally hidden in Blaine’s complexion. Kurt’s too close, and he knows that he is, but he doesn’t pull away. His fingers move, feeling the sharpness of Blaine’s cheekbones and the way his nose slopes.
It isn’t until Kurt’s thumb swipes across Blaine’s lower lip that he jolts back, nearly colliding with his chair.
What am I doing?
<< 16 >>