Let the Rain Sing You a Lullaby (Glee, Kurt/Quinn, Part 8)
Let the Rain Sing You a Lullaby
by aishuu
Fandom: Glee
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Kurt/Quinn
Wordcount: 2,200 (this section)
Warnings: Topics covered include teen pregnancy, sexuality/gender identity, abortion, discussion of the rape... nothing graphic, though.
Spoilers: Starts right after the Pilot, but this is a divergent story that takes some parallel lines before going completely away from the series canon. Still, anything through "Journey" is fair game.
Notes: The fic is going to start diverging noticeable from the canon timeline and backstory. While I'll try to incorporate some details from Season 2, I'm not promising anything. Though I will say the characters' twitter feeds are pure gold for details.
Summary: How the series might have gone if Kurt was Quinn's baby daddy. Some romances don't fit into any box.
She still feels weird that night when she slides into bed beside Kurt. He's already asleep - the price for being a morning person - so there's no kind of awkward exchange as she settles herself in. Despite her fatigue, her mind is too busy to shut down immediately.
She has options. Quinn thinks about the trust fund Kurt told her about yesterday. She knows that in conservative Ohio, she can make a good case for keeping the baby and allowing Kurt the occasional visit in return for regular checks.
But she's been glad for his presence. She doesn't want to think about how alone she will be if she turns on him. For her entire life, Quinn has been surrounded by people who support her. While she claims to be a highly independent person, she's really not.
There's also the option of having the baby and giving it to Kurt. Kurt has Burt, and she's seen enough of their dynamic to know that Burt will be able to handle it, and Kurt will benefit from his loving father's care. But Mrs. Schue's offer yesterday had triggered some nascent maternal instinct. Quinn isn't sure, but she's starting to think she wants to raise the child as her own. It's only a shade of the fierceness Kurt has been displaying, but it's there.
The third option is to raise the child with Kurt. She has almost three more years of high school to go before graduating, and she might have to live with the Hummels until then. She's not going to drop out, so why not take advantage of their kindness and have the best of both worlds? She can have her baby and decide if she likes being a mother. If she doesn't, she can always walk away later. There's no need to rush, right?
Quinn smiles as she decides that's what she's going to do. She'll think about getting married to Kurt later, but right now, she knows she's going to keep both him and her child for a while.
She vaguely remembers Kurt climbing out of bed early in the morning, but she manages to roll over and falls back asleep until it's after eight. He's not in the room, and she feels weird by herself.
The whole weekend is like that. Quinn finishes her homework that morning, knowing that a week ago, she would have been at a full day cheerleading practice. Kurt is in and out of his house, doing chores and working on his laptop. She doesn't ask what he's doing, and he doesn't tell her.
She does feel a bit hurt when he enters that afternoon carrying bags from Rays. She'd thought he was going to take her grocery shopping with him. Maybe he'd forgotten. She decides not to make an issue of it, since grocery shopping was such a routine thing and there will be other chances to go. She'll remind him at some point.
By six that evening, she's bored out of her skull. Television is boring, and she's already poked around on the internet. Quinn isn't used to having nothing to do, and she hates it.
Kurt walks into the room dressed in that blue Marc Jacobs jacket he's so fond of. "I've got to go meet Mercedes," he tells her. "I should be back around midnight."
Quinn feels her mouth drop a little bit as Kurt whisks away in a hurry. She doesn't have a chance to think before she hears the outside door shut.
She would have liked to have gone with him. Mercedes has been kind to her the last couple of days, and it would be nice to see her. But she knows Mercedes is Kurt's BFF, not hers. She isn't going to sit around and sulk and pout just because he's spending time with his friends. He's not her real boyfriend, and she knows he's not cheating on her, so she's not going to let herself care.
Maybe there's a good Lifetime original movie on.
She's sulking when Burt Hummel finally arrives home. The man works a six day week, Kurt told her yesterday, so he's not around a lot.
Quinn is slumped on his recliner when he walks in, a half-full bowl of popcorn (drenched in real butter, ohhhh yes) in her lap. Lifetime has failed her, but she's discovered Kurt's Buffy DVDs, and is halfway through season one. She can really relate to Buffy, because Buffy is blonde and kickass, but stuck in a situation which just plain sucks.
Burt pauses in the doorway, shifting on his feet for a second. "Kurt around?"
"He's out with Mercedes," she says, grabbing another handful of popcorn.
"I see." The man looked at the screen. "This is the one about the redhead having the computer in love with her, right?"
She blinks, broadsided by his knowledge. "You're a fan?"
"Kurt went through a Buffy phase about five years back. I think I've seen all of these at least twice," he says. Instead of pointing out that she's in his usual chair, he sits down on the couch and studies the screen. "I think it was one of his better phases."
"Oh?" Quinn's not all that interested since she's pissed off at Kurt, but she is really tired of watching TV. She'll take any conversation she can get.
"When he was a kid, he loved the Barney, which I guess is normal enough, but the stupid song would get stuck in my head."
"My parents wouldn't let me watch Barney. They thought...." She cuts off, deciding that explaining why her parents had put the purple dinosaur on the ban list might not be a good idea.
"He was gay? I heard that one, too," Burt says. "Just like the Teletubbbies, which he never really picked up on, thank goodness since the dinosaur was more than enough to annoy the heck out of me. But no one's gonna convince me that letting Kurt watch Barney is why he is the way he is."
Quinn takes a sip of her soda (diet, since the real stuff tastes funny to her) as an excuse to think over what the right reply is. "You don't think he can be... cured?" she asks cautiously.
Burt's fingers tense against the armrest for a second. "Kurt told me you were religious."
"I am."
"My wife was religious, too. She used to pray for Kurt to be healed, since we knew he was gonna be gay. You can just tell with some kids, and Kurt..." He pauses, shaking his head. "Katie figured out eventually that there's nothing wrong with Kurt. Kurt is himself, and I can't believe a loving God would want to change him for anything."
She squirms a bit in her chair. She's never quite been able to figure out why God lets bad things happen, but knows there has to be a reason. Her father had always been very vocal in his loathing of homosexuality, declaring it a mortal sin. Quinn hadn't really thought about it, just accepted that he'd been right and that people like Kurt were deviants who needed to find the right way or else they'd go straight to hell.
There had been a lot she hadn't thought about, but now she wonders if her father is wrong about that, too. Kurt may be gay enough to be his own pride parade, but he's a good person. And he's smart, too smart to choose to be gay if he had any other choice.
Burt sighs, pulling his hat off his head and putting it on his knee. "I know you were raised differently, but I believe God wants Kurt to be the way he is. It's the only thing that makes sense to me."
"I wasn't taught to believe that," she says quietly. She knows Burt is fiercely defensive of Kurt, and doesn't know if this conversation should be taking place. Keeping her mouth shut might be wiser.
"Doesn't mean you were taught right," he said, holding up a hand. "I'm not knocking your beliefs, but there's religion and then there's faith. They're two completely different things."
In the past, she would have jumped down anyone's throat for saying that. There was One True Way, and everyone else was wrong. But now she knows her church might not be right, since her father has cast her out. She wants desperately to reconcile her beliefs with what has happened to her, because she doesn't want to go to hell.
"What do you mean?"
"Religion is the way man tries to understand God - it's the rules that a church tells you to follow. But faith is something more," Burt tells her. "I don't pretend to be a smart man, but it seems pretty clear to me that you can't put God into a box. God is much more than any human can understand. It seems ridiculous that one religion can be right, and everyone else is just plain wrong."
She stares at him for a long moment, unable to believe that Burt is telling her this. He's not a sophisticated man, not like Quinn's father, but he's thoughtful and surprisingly deep. Looking at him, she realizes how much she'd assumed about him based upon appearances.
And if the last weeks have taught her anything, it's that assumptions suck. Kurt has surprised her at every turn, so she shouldn't expect less from his father.
"I like the idea of having answers," she says.
"Most people do. The world's too complicated for things to be simple." He turns to squint at the television, which is just getting into the climatic fight scene. "But I think part of living is trying to come to our own answers. Religion can provide guidance, but we need to find our own truth."
"Maybe." And then because she feels awkward and uncomfortable, she asks, "Do you want to watch something else?"
"This is fine," he says, "though I wouldn't say no if you wanted to share some popcorn."
Quinn hands over the bowl with a shaky smile and turns her head back to the screen, trying to get lost in the show.
She wakes up around four in the morning, needing to use the bathroom.
Quinn had fallen asleep on the sofa, and she awakes to the feeling of a blanket on top of her. She wonders if it was Burt or Kurt who put it there. She pushes it off and stumbles to the bathroom to do her business. The clock reads 4:05 in neon green numerals when she finishes, and she knows she wants to go back to sleep. The question is where.
She can go down to Kurt's room and crawl into bed with him, but she's still feeling alienated. She can go back onto the sofa, but that's not going to be as comfortable. Her neck already has a bit of a crick in it.
She weighs her choices carefully before opening the door to the basement. She and Kurt are going to be stuck together for a while, and she's not going to let his moodiness scare her off.
She feels her way down the stairs, using the railing to guide her. The light from the basement window is scant, but it's enough for her to find her way. Kurt is sleeping in the center of the bed, and she squints as she realizes he's not wearing a shirt. For a second, she considers turning around, but then she sets her chin and decides she's not going to back down. She's tired and cranky, and even if Kurt is stark naked, she's getting into that bed.
She lifts up the blanket, and thankfully catches the sight of dark sweatpants he's wearing. She wasn't looking, she thinks, wondering if she's blushing.
The mattress shifts under her weight as she sits on the edge. Kurt is right in the middle, and although he is on his side with his hands drawn tight to his chest, the only way she's going to fit in bed is to either plaster herself against him, or to somehow move him more to the other side. She decides on the latter, since she would feel very weird cuddling with him.
Quinn touches his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his soft skin under her fingers. She pushes him slightly, hoping he will roll over and fix her problem.
She's not expecting him to sit upright, groggily pushing her hand away forcefully. "Dun touch me," he slurs, still not entirely awake.
"Sorry," she replies, thinking it would have been better to have kept to the sofa. "I just wanted you to move over."
She can't make out much of his expression in the room's darkness, but she can see the way his shoulders start to relax. "Isn't a good idea to wake me up," he says, sliding over even as he complains.
Quinn swings her feet up onto the bed, settling herself in for the rest of the night. She hears him lay back down, and shuts her eyes. The bed shifts a couple times as he tries to get comfortable, but she takes comfort in the residual warmth of the sheets and is soon asleep.
Part 8
by aishuu
Fandom: Glee
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Kurt/Quinn
Wordcount: 2,200 (this section)
Warnings: Topics covered include teen pregnancy, sexuality/gender identity, abortion, discussion of the rape... nothing graphic, though.
Spoilers: Starts right after the Pilot, but this is a divergent story that takes some parallel lines before going completely away from the series canon. Still, anything through "Journey" is fair game.
Notes: The fic is going to start diverging noticeable from the canon timeline and backstory. While I'll try to incorporate some details from Season 2, I'm not promising anything. Though I will say the characters' twitter feeds are pure gold for details.
Summary: How the series might have gone if Kurt was Quinn's baby daddy. Some romances don't fit into any box.
She still feels weird that night when she slides into bed beside Kurt. He's already asleep - the price for being a morning person - so there's no kind of awkward exchange as she settles herself in. Despite her fatigue, her mind is too busy to shut down immediately.
She has options. Quinn thinks about the trust fund Kurt told her about yesterday. She knows that in conservative Ohio, she can make a good case for keeping the baby and allowing Kurt the occasional visit in return for regular checks.
But she's been glad for his presence. She doesn't want to think about how alone she will be if she turns on him. For her entire life, Quinn has been surrounded by people who support her. While she claims to be a highly independent person, she's really not.
There's also the option of having the baby and giving it to Kurt. Kurt has Burt, and she's seen enough of their dynamic to know that Burt will be able to handle it, and Kurt will benefit from his loving father's care. But Mrs. Schue's offer yesterday had triggered some nascent maternal instinct. Quinn isn't sure, but she's starting to think she wants to raise the child as her own. It's only a shade of the fierceness Kurt has been displaying, but it's there.
The third option is to raise the child with Kurt. She has almost three more years of high school to go before graduating, and she might have to live with the Hummels until then. She's not going to drop out, so why not take advantage of their kindness and have the best of both worlds? She can have her baby and decide if she likes being a mother. If she doesn't, she can always walk away later. There's no need to rush, right?
Quinn smiles as she decides that's what she's going to do. She'll think about getting married to Kurt later, but right now, she knows she's going to keep both him and her child for a while.
She vaguely remembers Kurt climbing out of bed early in the morning, but she manages to roll over and falls back asleep until it's after eight. He's not in the room, and she feels weird by herself.
The whole weekend is like that. Quinn finishes her homework that morning, knowing that a week ago, she would have been at a full day cheerleading practice. Kurt is in and out of his house, doing chores and working on his laptop. She doesn't ask what he's doing, and he doesn't tell her.
She does feel a bit hurt when he enters that afternoon carrying bags from Rays. She'd thought he was going to take her grocery shopping with him. Maybe he'd forgotten. She decides not to make an issue of it, since grocery shopping was such a routine thing and there will be other chances to go. She'll remind him at some point.
By six that evening, she's bored out of her skull. Television is boring, and she's already poked around on the internet. Quinn isn't used to having nothing to do, and she hates it.
Kurt walks into the room dressed in that blue Marc Jacobs jacket he's so fond of. "I've got to go meet Mercedes," he tells her. "I should be back around midnight."
Quinn feels her mouth drop a little bit as Kurt whisks away in a hurry. She doesn't have a chance to think before she hears the outside door shut.
She would have liked to have gone with him. Mercedes has been kind to her the last couple of days, and it would be nice to see her. But she knows Mercedes is Kurt's BFF, not hers. She isn't going to sit around and sulk and pout just because he's spending time with his friends. He's not her real boyfriend, and she knows he's not cheating on her, so she's not going to let herself care.
Maybe there's a good Lifetime original movie on.
She's sulking when Burt Hummel finally arrives home. The man works a six day week, Kurt told her yesterday, so he's not around a lot.
Quinn is slumped on his recliner when he walks in, a half-full bowl of popcorn (drenched in real butter, ohhhh yes) in her lap. Lifetime has failed her, but she's discovered Kurt's Buffy DVDs, and is halfway through season one. She can really relate to Buffy, because Buffy is blonde and kickass, but stuck in a situation which just plain sucks.
Burt pauses in the doorway, shifting on his feet for a second. "Kurt around?"
"He's out with Mercedes," she says, grabbing another handful of popcorn.
"I see." The man looked at the screen. "This is the one about the redhead having the computer in love with her, right?"
She blinks, broadsided by his knowledge. "You're a fan?"
"Kurt went through a Buffy phase about five years back. I think I've seen all of these at least twice," he says. Instead of pointing out that she's in his usual chair, he sits down on the couch and studies the screen. "I think it was one of his better phases."
"Oh?" Quinn's not all that interested since she's pissed off at Kurt, but she is really tired of watching TV. She'll take any conversation she can get.
"When he was a kid, he loved the Barney, which I guess is normal enough, but the stupid song would get stuck in my head."
"My parents wouldn't let me watch Barney. They thought...." She cuts off, deciding that explaining why her parents had put the purple dinosaur on the ban list might not be a good idea.
"He was gay? I heard that one, too," Burt says. "Just like the Teletubbbies, which he never really picked up on, thank goodness since the dinosaur was more than enough to annoy the heck out of me. But no one's gonna convince me that letting Kurt watch Barney is why he is the way he is."
Quinn takes a sip of her soda (diet, since the real stuff tastes funny to her) as an excuse to think over what the right reply is. "You don't think he can be... cured?" she asks cautiously.
Burt's fingers tense against the armrest for a second. "Kurt told me you were religious."
"I am."
"My wife was religious, too. She used to pray for Kurt to be healed, since we knew he was gonna be gay. You can just tell with some kids, and Kurt..." He pauses, shaking his head. "Katie figured out eventually that there's nothing wrong with Kurt. Kurt is himself, and I can't believe a loving God would want to change him for anything."
She squirms a bit in her chair. She's never quite been able to figure out why God lets bad things happen, but knows there has to be a reason. Her father had always been very vocal in his loathing of homosexuality, declaring it a mortal sin. Quinn hadn't really thought about it, just accepted that he'd been right and that people like Kurt were deviants who needed to find the right way or else they'd go straight to hell.
There had been a lot she hadn't thought about, but now she wonders if her father is wrong about that, too. Kurt may be gay enough to be his own pride parade, but he's a good person. And he's smart, too smart to choose to be gay if he had any other choice.
Burt sighs, pulling his hat off his head and putting it on his knee. "I know you were raised differently, but I believe God wants Kurt to be the way he is. It's the only thing that makes sense to me."
"I wasn't taught to believe that," she says quietly. She knows Burt is fiercely defensive of Kurt, and doesn't know if this conversation should be taking place. Keeping her mouth shut might be wiser.
"Doesn't mean you were taught right," he said, holding up a hand. "I'm not knocking your beliefs, but there's religion and then there's faith. They're two completely different things."
In the past, she would have jumped down anyone's throat for saying that. There was One True Way, and everyone else was wrong. But now she knows her church might not be right, since her father has cast her out. She wants desperately to reconcile her beliefs with what has happened to her, because she doesn't want to go to hell.
"What do you mean?"
"Religion is the way man tries to understand God - it's the rules that a church tells you to follow. But faith is something more," Burt tells her. "I don't pretend to be a smart man, but it seems pretty clear to me that you can't put God into a box. God is much more than any human can understand. It seems ridiculous that one religion can be right, and everyone else is just plain wrong."
She stares at him for a long moment, unable to believe that Burt is telling her this. He's not a sophisticated man, not like Quinn's father, but he's thoughtful and surprisingly deep. Looking at him, she realizes how much she'd assumed about him based upon appearances.
And if the last weeks have taught her anything, it's that assumptions suck. Kurt has surprised her at every turn, so she shouldn't expect less from his father.
"I like the idea of having answers," she says.
"Most people do. The world's too complicated for things to be simple." He turns to squint at the television, which is just getting into the climatic fight scene. "But I think part of living is trying to come to our own answers. Religion can provide guidance, but we need to find our own truth."
"Maybe." And then because she feels awkward and uncomfortable, she asks, "Do you want to watch something else?"
"This is fine," he says, "though I wouldn't say no if you wanted to share some popcorn."
Quinn hands over the bowl with a shaky smile and turns her head back to the screen, trying to get lost in the show.
She wakes up around four in the morning, needing to use the bathroom.
Quinn had fallen asleep on the sofa, and she awakes to the feeling of a blanket on top of her. She wonders if it was Burt or Kurt who put it there. She pushes it off and stumbles to the bathroom to do her business. The clock reads 4:05 in neon green numerals when she finishes, and she knows she wants to go back to sleep. The question is where.
She can go down to Kurt's room and crawl into bed with him, but she's still feeling alienated. She can go back onto the sofa, but that's not going to be as comfortable. Her neck already has a bit of a crick in it.
She weighs her choices carefully before opening the door to the basement. She and Kurt are going to be stuck together for a while, and she's not going to let his moodiness scare her off.
She feels her way down the stairs, using the railing to guide her. The light from the basement window is scant, but it's enough for her to find her way. Kurt is sleeping in the center of the bed, and she squints as she realizes he's not wearing a shirt. For a second, she considers turning around, but then she sets her chin and decides she's not going to back down. She's tired and cranky, and even if Kurt is stark naked, she's getting into that bed.
She lifts up the blanket, and thankfully catches the sight of dark sweatpants he's wearing. She wasn't looking, she thinks, wondering if she's blushing.
The mattress shifts under her weight as she sits on the edge. Kurt is right in the middle, and although he is on his side with his hands drawn tight to his chest, the only way she's going to fit in bed is to either plaster herself against him, or to somehow move him more to the other side. She decides on the latter, since she would feel very weird cuddling with him.
Quinn touches his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his soft skin under her fingers. She pushes him slightly, hoping he will roll over and fix her problem.
She's not expecting him to sit upright, groggily pushing her hand away forcefully. "Dun touch me," he slurs, still not entirely awake.
"Sorry," she replies, thinking it would have been better to have kept to the sofa. "I just wanted you to move over."
She can't make out much of his expression in the room's darkness, but she can see the way his shoulders start to relax. "Isn't a good idea to wake me up," he says, sliding over even as he complains.
Quinn swings her feet up onto the bed, settling herself in for the rest of the night. She hears him lay back down, and shuts her eyes. The bed shifts a couple times as he tries to get comfortable, but she takes comfort in the residual warmth of the sheets and is soon asleep.
Part 8