fic: i dreamt the world stopped turning (1/?)
Title: I Dreamt The World Stopped Turning (1/?)
Rating: R to be safe, probably closer to PG-13.
Warnings: Underage alcohol use/abuse, a tiny bit of language.
Wordcount: 1500
Spoilers: Season 4 spoilers/speculation.
Summary: Being apart is harder than expected, and finding each other again is even harder.
A/N: Title comes from Must I Paint You A Picture - Billy Bragg. Also posted at my tumblr.
The first thing Kurt notices as he’s pulled begrudgingly into wakefulness is that Blaine isn’t there. It’s been the first thing he’s noticed ever since he first woke up next to Blaine, with tangled feet and warm chests pressed together and careful, chaste kisses, too aware of morning breath for anything more. Waking up alone hasn’t seemed right since then, and Kurt cherishes the mornings when he’s not alone.
And then he remembers.
Past tense. He cherished the mornings when he wasn’t alone. The memory of the previous evening hits Kurt like a train and he buries his face into his pillow as tears prickle behind his eyes. He has to suck gulps of air through the pillow and swallow so hard it hurts his throat to stop himself from crying again. He can’t. His sinuses ache from it and the tip of his nose is raw and stinging from being rubbed at repeatedly with tissues, sleeves, and at one point, a towel.
Kurt wasn’t sure what a break up was going to feel like. He’d never considered it. Blaine was it, as far as he was concerned. They were going to get married the year after Blaine graduated from college, a small but spectacular ceremony in Central Park, with just families and close friends there to witness. Finn was going to be Kurt’s best man, Cooper Blaine’s, and even though a bachelor party arranged bythose minds would have been painful at best, it would have been worth it. They were going to wear complementing suits, not identical but almost - Kurt has a sketchpad halfway full of designs. There would’ve been a reception at a fancy hotel, the Ritz or the Plaza, and all of their friends, old and new, would’ve been there. The Warblers of 2010 would have reformed to perform a set of sappy love songs, before being joined by the New Directions of 2009 to 2012 to sing for the happy couple’s first dance. Cooper and Finn would have attempted speeches, both trying to out-funny each other. Burt would’ve cried and they would’ve grown old together. together.
Not anymore.
Kurt shifts in the bed, trying to find a comfortable position, but moving his face away from the suffocating pillow results in a stabbing pain shooting through his head. He panics, his mind racing through aneurysms and strokes and brain tumors, but then he pukes a little in his mouth and it tastes like vodka. His first hangover on the morning of his first break up is a combination so hateful that Kurt considers jumping out of his twentieth floor window into moving traffic for a less agonizing, more immediate death. But that would require the ability to stand, and Kurt’s legs don’t seem to be complying with his will.
Over the summer, all of the New Directions had put fifty dollars into a kitty for Puck and Santana to acquire enough booze to last the vacation. Eight hundred dollars had bought them far more cheap alcohol than the group could possibly consume even if they had parties twice a week (they were usually scheduled for Friday or Saturday nights, to accommodate those with summer jobs), and so the remainder was split up at the end of summer. Kurt had drunk, but he’d never got past a happy buzz and had delighted in being cheerfully loud and deliberately extra high-pitched in the mornings while everyone around him was suffering. Kurt had stashed the two bottles of cheap vodka and six-pack of beer he had been allotted into the middle of one of his cases, not really intending to drink it but not wanting to leave it at home for his parents to find either. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Everything was hurting, his heart was hurting, and the bottle was just there.
He can’t remember how much he drunk, but it was definitely a lot. He had never had vodka neat; he always mixed it with Coke or lemonade (and once, coffee, but that was quickly discovered to be the worst idea ever.) The first few mouthfuls had tasted like paint stripper, and the rest had tasted like nothing at all, as he became numb and progressively more wasted.
Eventually, Kurt manages to crawl out of bed. The room spins as he stands up and he’s struck by a wave of nausea, resulting in some extremely undignified projectile vomit aimed in the general direction of the small wastebasket by his bed. Most of it misses, but Kurt doesn’t care. He’ll clean it up when he feels more human, and puking has certainly helped the process begin. His stomach feels a little less like it’s performing a contortionist act as he stumbles out of the bedroom and begins rummaging around in boxes and drawers to find the painkillers he knows he has somewhere in his tiny apartment.
Tiny is a spectacular understatement - he can almost touch both sides of the living room-cum-kitchenette if he stretches, and the bathroom is down the hall and shared with the seven other equally shoddy apartments on his floor. He hasn’t braved it yet, electing to use the bathroom in the coffee shop downstairs and to take showers at the pool two blocks over. Blaine hadn’t even seen it. Kurt’s glad of that, he thinks. The only thing worse than Blaine breaking up with him would have been Blaine staying with him out of pity. And besides, Kurt has been convinced by his dad to look for a better apartment, with the promise that he won’t have to worry about paying rent until he’s earning a reasonable living wage. It was too big an offer to accept at first, but four nights in the most hellish apartment on earth quickly changed Kurt’s mind. He’ll look for somewhere better. Somewhere with his own bathroom and a real kitchen and a bigger bed. Not that he has anyone to share it with any more. He keeps forgetting, a combination of alcohol and denial, and every time he remembers it’s like another icicle stabbed into his heart, making his blood run cold and a shudder run up his spine as he tries to comprehend his newly shattered life.
He curses aloud as he trips over the vodka bottle - half-empty, and shit, it’s a wonder he’s still alive - before he finally locates the bottle of Tylenol and grasps it tightly as he collapses into the single, ratty armchair. The rattle of the tablets as he shakes them out of the plastic tub makes Kurt wince in pain and he swallows two straight down his dry throat. The water in the apartment runs a faint brown color, the only thing Kurt has to drink them down with is vodka, and he has regained enough cognizance to realize that that’s a terrible idea.
He tosses the bottle aside, not caring where it lands. He screws his eyes shut tight and inhales sharply as the sound of the plastic clunking against the wall, rebounding and rattling as it rolls away screams through his ears like a gunshot. He draws his knees up to his chest, hugging them tightly and resting his head against his kneecaps as he wills the medication to work faster. When he can move without heaving, he’ll get coffee. He wants to go downstairs and buy some, but that would mean walking down a lot of stairs. More than that, it would involve changing out of the same red pants and black shirt he slept in, now crinkled, smelling of cheap booze, and spattered with his own puke. He’ll probably make it himself, crappy instant coffee he has stashed in his one cupboard for emergencies. The water stops being brown if it’s allowed to flow for a long time, and the weird taste is almost gone once it’s boiled. It may taste like microwaved dog crap, but the caffeine should clear his head a bit. Then, he’ll clean up the mess in his room, try to get the stains out as much as possible and open the window wide because city smog and the stench from the hot dog vendor, violently strong even from so many storeys below, is mildly preferable to stale vomit. Then he’ll call Rachel, or maybe text her, because she did just break up with Finn and she might need a friend as much as he does right now. But for now, the painkillers are finally kicking in and Kurt’s exhausted, so he tucks himself around his long legs as best he can between the hard arms of the chair and closes his eyes, hoping beyond hope that he’ll wake up and this whole sorry mess will be one long bad dream.