All You Need Is Love (3/9)
Parts: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Ben said. He was sitting next to Harry on the bench, picking distractedly at his sandwich.
“Talk quieter,” Harry hissed. He tried to peek out from around the corner of the booth, only for his sunglasses and oversized hat to get in the way. He grappled with them for a second, finally managing to pull the glasses down enough to allow him to see the Kapoor siblings. Pratik had barely sat down before his sister started talking at him. Harry frowned.
“I feel like we’re living out every bad teenage romantic comedy in the history of cinema,” Ben said. “This is mad.”
“What does that make us?” Wes asked from across the table, behind David, who was sitting in his lap.
“Sparta,” David suggested.
“Comic relief,” Blaine told him.
“What does that make you?” David asked.
“The only sane men,” Kurt said. He and Blaine were sitting next to Wes and David, not quite in each other’s laps but close enough that it probably didn’t matter. The back booth in Sal’s Deli wasn’t really made for six people, especially with four of them crammed into one side.
“Why are you all even here?” Ben wondered aloud.
“We’re just looking out for our boys,” Wes said primly. He let David feed him a curly fry from their shared plate.
“Plus, we were kind of bored,” David said with a shrug. “Our girls won’t be here for another couple of hours. So why not?”
“We were lonely,” Wes agreed sadly, hitting David in the arm until he stopped trying to force-feed him fries. “Our day was filled with ennui and despair.”
“We just wanted to make sure Pratik was okay,” Blaine corrected. “He seemed kind of off, yesterday.”
“We wanted to see if Pratik was okay and our day was filled with ennui and despair,” Wes corrected back. “We are complicated people. We have many reasons for our actions.”
“You are crazy people,” Kurt said. He hadn’t gotten anything to eat, since he and Blaine were just going to get dinner at Parries’ during the show later, but he managed a very stern glare over the rim of his glass of water. “And the only reasons for your actions are crazy reasons.”
“Double Oh Grumpy, you wound us,” Wes said. “Right in our crazy hearts.”
“Hey, these are really good fries,” David said, having given up on feeding Wes and resorted to feeding himself instead.
Gerald returned to their table. “I don’t know, man, it doesn’t seem that bad,” he said. “She seems kind of overbearing, but-”
“Keep listening!” Harry said. “Don’t talk to us, go listen to them!”
Gerald rolled his eyes. “Lee owes me,” was all he said before wandering unsubtly back towards the Kapoors' table. Pratik didn’t seem to notice, his face set as he looked at his sister. Then he went paler than Harry had ever seen him, his mouth almost dropping open.
Harry realized that he was gripping his cup so tightly that it was creaking and he set it down carefully.
Gerald was making a beeline back to the booth. “Lee is going to kill everyone,” was the first thing he said when he reached them, wincing.
“What did she say?” Harry asked.
“She says his parents want to straighten him up,” Gerald said, the worlds tripping over each other on their way out. “They want to send him to a doctor. But she talked them out of it, and now they want to send him back to India instead.”
Time stopped. Harry tried to breathe. For almost a full minute, he thought he had forgotten how. “But Pratik hates going back to India,” he said. His voice was thick and slow, and he wondered when the air had turned solid. “They… they can’t…”
But he knew they could. Harry thought of coming back to the room after a day of classes and not having Pratik there, with his guitar and his slow smile and his quiet laugh, and his heart went ragged.
“Shit,” Ben said, expressively.
“There has to be a way we can fight this,” Blaine said, the same gleam of fanatical light appearing in his eyes as whenever there was a story in the news about gay marriage. Harry would have rolled his eyes at him but he seemed to have forgotten how to make his muscles work. “This can’t be legal.”
“Of course it’s legal,” Kurt said. “They’re his parents, it’s not like it’s kidnapping.”
“Damn, my manager’s glaring at me,” Gerald said. “Back to work. I’m real sorry, man. I’ll tell you if I hear anything else.”
Blaine was still looking at Kurt in surprise as Gerald left. Kurt shrugged, frowning. “Let’s think about this rationally,” he said. “I know it’s perfectly okay to be gay at Dalton, but it’s not like that everywhere else.”
“But it should be,” Blaine said.
“Yes.” Kurt nodded. “But it’s not.”
Blaine frowned. “And you’re saying that’s okay?”
Kurt frowned right back at him. “Of course not. But I’m saying that’s what it is.”
“Wes,” David whined, burying his head into Wes’ shoulder. “I hate it when mom and dad fight, make it stop.”
Wes patted his head, looking a bit distracted. “So what are you going to do?” he asked Harry.
Harry stared at him. Thinking hurt. “Do?” he asked.
India was really, really far away. Sure, they’d have the internet, but the internet was nothing compared to actually having Pratik there, walking next to him, shoulders bumping and hand warm in his own. The internet was nothing compared to smiling across the stage at him as they played music together, the sound of the guitar melding with the sound of Harry’s voice until they became one in the music.
The internet was less than nothing compared to Pratik’s body alive underneath him, Pratik’s hands low on his back, Pratik’s skin warm under his mouth, Pratik’s voice breathy and keening in his ear.
“Are you going to let them ship your boyfriend back to India?” Wes asked, patient.
“What’s he supposed to do about it?” Kurt said. “It’s Pratik’s fight, anyway.”
“There has to be something he can do,” Blaine said.
They were all looking at him.
“I… I don’t know,” Harry said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” His hands were shaking.
Ben took a hold of his wrist, gently. “Take deep breaths,” he advised. “Talk to Pratik. Hear it from him, first. Yeah, okay?”
“He’s my Rose,” Harry realized at once.
“What?” Blaine asked.
“He’s the Rose to my Doctor,” Harry said. It felt like fear had cut a hole in his chest and left nothing behind. “And I can’t make him sacrifice everything for me, I can’t. I have to let him go.”
“He is not your Rose,” Ben said, rolling his eyes. “That’s ridiculous. Calm down.”
“He is,” Harry insisted.
“Okay, I lost this conversation somewhere,” Kurt said, frowning. “Who’s a flower and why?”
“It’s a Doctor Who thing,” Wes explained in a stage whisper. “I think.”
“Harry is being fake British again,” David said when Kurt continued to look confused. “And Ben is being real British, because he’s very nice and doesn’t like to draw attention to the fake Britishness of others, especially when they’re possibly distraught.”
“No, that I understood,” Kurt said. “I was just trying to figure out what it had to do with Pratik.”
“Nothing,” Ben said. “Harry’s being ridiculous.”
“Everything,” Harry said. He still felt hollow. “But whatever. I’ll talk to him.”
“Tell us how it goes,” Blaine said. “Tell him we’ve got his back.”
“Tell him we’re willing to kidnap him,” David said. “We’ll even bring our duck.”
“You probably shouldn’t actually tell him that part,” Blaine said.
“When are you going to talk to him?” Ben asked. His face was blank, neither disapproving nor encouraging. Harry knew he had understood, even if the rest didn’t. He didn’t necessarily agree, but he understood. Harry felt a little less alone. “The show’s in less than two hours.”
“After,” Harry said. He wanted… well, he wanted a lot of things, but most of all he wanted to pretend that the last half hour had never happened, if only for a little longer. “It can wait until after. The show must go on, right?”
Yeah. Right.