Hoppípolla (But You Are Standing)
Title: Hoppípolla (But You Are Standing)
Rating: PG
Characters: Blaine/Kurt
Words: ~3,500
Spoilers: No spoilers.
Summary: The most important thing about New Directions is its heart. Kurt worries that it could change; Blaine won't let it. (A conversation at dawn, in the summer, a while before Kurt leaves for New York.)
Author's Note: I missed you, fandom. ♥ The title is from Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós. If this story could have a soundtrack, it would be that song on repeat. (Note: Edited very slightly after posting; nothing too major, but changed a basic idea of the story that I didn't notice was incongruous until after it was up.)
The best part of summer, for Blaine, is being awake at four-thirty in the morning, lying on top of the blankets, with the book he’s just finished still balanced on his stomach, the ending still lingering in his head. He does this a lot. He loves the forbidden feeling of being up so late-early, when the air buffers gently in through his window, cool and smelling like grass and dew. He likes the way that everything feels light and free, because he doesn’t have anywhere pressing to be tomorrow, and he can easily sleep until noon if he wants to, even though he knows he won’t. And when he wakes up, he can just start another book. And he can read it until four-thirty in the morning. Again.
His bedroom door creaks a little, and his bed dips as Brontë, his mother’s cat, gracefully leaps up and walks along the narrow strip of mattress between Blaine and the edge, before stepping up onto Blaine’s chest and settling there on top of the book, staring at Blaine with two big, vaguely interested eyes. Blaine smiles and runs his fingers through the fur on Brontë’s back. (Blaine didn’t understood why his mother named the cat Brontë when he was six and she brought him home, but now he thinks he does. Brontë kind of reminds Blaine of Wuthering Heights. He doesn’t know why. He thinks it’s the way that Brontë always seems almost aggressively dissatisfied and intensely bored with everything.)
Brontë’s fur shines black and brown and a little gray with age in the dark yellow light from Blaine’s bedside lamp. He rubs between the cat’s ears. “You miss mom?” he asks softly. Brontë doesn’t deign to answer, but bumps Blaine’s fingers with his head. “Yeah,” Blaine murmurs, with a small smile. “Me, too.”
Blaine’s phone buzzes on his bedside table, and he blinks over at it, surprised. Brontë seems surprised, too. His ears flick when Blaine reaches out to snap it open and brings it close to his eyes to read.
From: Kurt
Improbably awake. I know that you’re probably still
reading, but I wanted to tell you that I love you,
and I’ll see you later. Can’t wait.
Blaine smiles. He texts Kurt back one-handed, his other hand curled into Brontë’s fur.
From: Blaine
Finished half an hour ago. Still letting it
settle. Love you, too. Can’t wait, either.
Going to bed?
It’s a while before the next text comes. Blaine spends it slowly petting Brontë, looking up at the ceiling, breathing in the air from outside. When it does come, his phone buzzes weirdly against his sternum, and he picks it back up.
From: Kurt
How long would it take you to get here?
Blaine frowns at the screen.
From: Blaine
If I don’t take any time to make myself look
presentable, maybe twenty minutes?
From: Kurt
Good.
Drive to my house, park outside, and text
me for further instructions.
Blaine grins, lowers his phone, and looks down at Brontë. “Sorry, buddy,” he whispers. “Looks like I have other plans.”
They’ve never done this kind of thing before, and that makes it feel even better, to be walking out in the almost-cool dark, with the streetlamps all pale white light and stretching out along the sidewalk. Kurt texted him simple directions, and Blaine keeps them open in his hand as he goes, feeling the little coil of excitement tightening in his stomach as he gets closer to wherever Kurt is. The houses he passes slowly by are unfamiliar and dark and silent, and Blaine feels the way he always feels when he goes out in the early hours of the morning: like he’s the last person on Earth. Him and Kurt, maybe, just the two of them and no one else -- but in a good, contented kind of way. It’s so peaceful, with no one else in the world awake.
Blaine glances one last time at the directions and takes a final turn down another street. The horizon is getting a little lighter, just smudges of pale blue and gray, and the streetlamps flare like diamonds against it. Blaine can see further along the sidewalk, where the houses give up and a green field rolls out to a big, squat brick building that is obviously a school, even from this distance. He slips his phone back into his pocket, listening to the little echoes of his steps off of the houses lining either side of the road.
Kurt is in the little playground sprawled out beside the school. He’s sitting on top of the bright blue jungle gym, balanced on a bar, looking up at the paling sky, and Blaine is arrested into stopping just inside the gate. The smell of woodchips and grass is heavy in the air, nostalgic, and that feeling collides sort of incongruously with the swoop in Blaine’s stomach at the sight of Kurt with his back straight and his legs bare and pale from the knees down, hooked through a lower bar. (Blaine has seen Kurt’s legs before - Blaine would be hard pressed to find a part of Kurt he hasn’t seen, at this point - but he can’t remember ever seeing Kurt in honest-to-god shorts.) He has to watch, for just a second, unnoticed.
He’s been taking a lot of snapshots, lately, in his mind, or at least trying to. For later, when Kurt is in New York. There are things he knows he’ll want to remember, and this is one of those things. Five in the morning on an already-beautiful day, with Kurt high-up and graceful and looking thoughtfully at the sky. He files it away with the hundreds of other things he needs to hold onto for as long as he can.
When he lets the gate swing closed behind him, it ting’s brightly into the silence, and Kurt looks down at him, surprised. Blaine watches the brilliant smile that moves slowly over his face, and feels himself mirroring it. He walks over, angling around the spring-horses, until he’s standing right below Kurt, and he reaches out to curl his hands around Kurt’s bare calves.
“Hi,” he says quietly. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Kurt stares down at him, biting his lip against what Blaine is sure would be a laugh, and reaches out to touch Blaine’s hair. “You’re wearing glasses,” he says, wonderingly. “And no gel.”
“Only for you,” Blaine says. “Seriously.” He gently squeezes Kurt’s calves. “You’re wearing shorts.”
“I take it you approve?”
“You should wear shorts every day.”
“I’ll take it into consideration.” Kurt’s eyes are bright, still at the edge of laughing, and he dips his fingers back through Blaine’s hair. Blaine sighs and sways forward to lean against Kurt’s legs with his eyes closed. Kurt smells the way he does just after he steps out of the shower - clean and pink and not really covered up by anything yet, just the lingering trace of flowers and the natural smell of him. He presses his nose against Kurt’s skin, finally earning a real laugh. “Get up here,” Kurt says through it, tugging at his arm.
Blaine climbs up the jungle gym. It’s strange how familiar it is, despite that fact that he hasn’t set foot in a playground since elementary school. His feet know where to go, even though it’s all a lot less effort than he remembers; everything is smaller now. He settles on the top bar next to Kurt, letting their legs and shoulders touch. They both look out, up at the sky, where it meets the treeline in the distance, still getting brighter, everything painted in the shallow dawn gray that comes before the sun.
The comfortable quiet nestles in between them.
Blaine has never seen Kurt outside at this time of day, in this light. He watches out of the corner of his eye, the way the shadows fall on Kurt’s face, highlighting his cheekbones, his lips, his jaw. Kurt’s expression is almost wistful, very far away. His fingers drum against the metal bar, with hollow little ringing sounds.
Quietly, like he might break something if he speaks any louder, Blaine asks, “So, why were you awake so late?”
Kurt is silent for a long time. Blaine waits him out, looking back at the street, letting himself get lost in the way the streetlamps look as the light starts to get stronger; they get paler and paler in the contrast, ghostly little orbs dotting the way back.
When Kurt finally speaks, instead of answering, he asks, “Do you remember when I explained the whole history of New Directions to you?”
Blaine smiles. Yes, he does. It took almost an entire day, last summer, with the two of them spread out on Kurt’s bedroom floor, lying head to head with Kurt’s laptop between them, playing a long, long playlist. Blaine had listened, lying on his stomach, while Kurt took him through a musical retrospective, from Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat to Somewhere Over The Rainbow to Empire State of Mind to Light Up The World. Kurt patiently explained everything, pausing the music where he had to, switching from disparaging to delighted depending on the story. He was quiet during I Want To Hold Your Hand, and Blaine reached out for him then, and didn’t let go until As If We Never Said Goodbye, through all of the secondhand accounts of what happened during Kurt’s time at Dalton.
It was valuable, Blaine knew, to know everything, if (when) he started at McKinley. But honestly he just liked listening to Kurt talk about something he loved that much.
Blaine nods, and Kurt glances at him, catching the smile and returning it, a little smaller. He lets out a breath. After a moment, he says, “I feel like we’re giving you guys something that’s alive.” He meets Blaine’s eyes. “Do you know what I mean? Like, the glee club is a baby that we’re passing over to you to take care of now.”
Blaine grins at the image: Kurt, Rachel, Finn and the rest of the graduated seniors offering up a shrieking infant to him and Tina and Artie and Sugar and everyone else. “I understand,” he says. “The club sort of is your baby, in the figurative sense.” He pauses, considering. “That’s sort of how we characterize history, isn’t it? This living thing that we keep shaping as it’s passed down.”
Kurt’s mouth twitches. “Something like that.” He looks away, over the field, back to the trees blocking the horizon, then sighs, shoulders slumping. “I don’t want to leave it. I don’t want it to change.”
Blaine nudges Kurt’s shoulder lightly with his own. “Don’t you trust us with it?” he asks. “I promise we won’t accidentally kill it or let it grow up to be a cowboy or anything.”
Kurt laughs. “Okay, the baby metaphor is getting creepy.” He tilts back a little, craning his neck to look up, and shrugs. “I’ve been there for most of the time that the glee club’s been around. Through all of the crazy. And it’s disappointing, that suddenly I don’t get to be part of it anymore. I feel like it should come with me, or something.”
“Well, some of it is,” Blaine says. “Rachel and Finn are going to New York with you. Mike’s going to Julliard.”
“It isn’t the same,” Kurt sighs.
Blaine nods. “I don’t know,” he murmurs thoughtfully. He pauses. “I guess I don’t understand, really. When I left the Warblers, it didn’t feel like that. It just felt like I was leaving, not abandoning something. They’ve been singing for a hundred years, they’ll keep doing it when I’m gone.”
Kurt’s mouth twitches. “Not that they didn’t sort of implode when you left.” He lets go of the bar and twines his hands in his lap, looking down at them. “It isn’t just singing, Blaine,” he murmurs. “The club saved my life. It gave me a voice, and other people who understood it, most of the time.” He glances at Blaine, then back down again. “I need it to keep being that, for other people. Not just a place to sing. It needs to be--”
“A safe place,” Blaine finishes softly. He's thought about this before. “It needs to be somewhere people can go when they can’t go anywhere else.”
Kurt nods. His hands twine together, then apart, then together again.
New Directions, Blaine has realized slowly during his time there, is that place. He may not have felt it as strongly as everyone else at first, but when he lets himself stand back, and look hard at the things that have happened over the last two years, and the things that Kurt filled him in on that day in his room - it’s obvious. Kurt was a closeted, quiet, fierce, smart gay kid trapped in a small town. Rachel was ostracized and lonely and destined for something bigger. Tina faked a stutter so she wouldn’t have to interact with other people. Finn was caught in the endless loop of being forced to do things he didn’t believe in to keep himself from being rejected. Every one of the initial members of New Directions had something they needed to get away from, and they needed people who accepted that about them.
And it’s sort of magical, really, when Blaine thinks about it. Because it didn’t have to end well at all. There was every chance that it could have been a disaster. But it wasn’t. They worked. And then more people with the same needs came in, and they were accepted, molded right into the way the group worked, and even if it was sort of incestuous and volatile most of the time, everyone got what they needed out of it.
Glee club, with those people, became the safest place to just exist in the lives of basically every member. Because they stood up for their own, and they rallied for crises, and they listened when they needed to. And they were friends. And they loved each other.
And that’s what Kurt is saying.
“I just don’t want it to change,” Kurt repeats quietly. “I don’t want it to become about something else.”
Blaine shakes his head. He reaches out and takes Kurt’s hand, startling him into looking up. “No,” he says, meeting Kurt’s eyes. “It won’t become about something else. I promise.”
Kurt tries to smile at him. “I appreciate the thought, Blaine, but you don’t really know that yet.”
Blaine actually laughs. “You don’t think you guys passed that torch to us, along with everything else?” He shifts closer, making Kurt really look at him. “Believe me, Kurt. New Directions isn’t ever going to be just about doing well at competitions and bringing home trophies. Those are fun, but - I don’t think that we’d last a semester like that. I don’t think we’d manage to gather a group to perform at all. It’s about pulling together people who need something from each other, right? It’s about heart.”
Kurt’s staring at him, eyebrows raised, mouth open. Then he smiles, slowly, his whole face softening. He lets out a breath. “Being a part of something special,” he murmurs, “makes you special.”
Blaine grins. “I like that.”
Kurt sighs. “It’s not mine.” He squeezes Blaine’s hand, shaking his head. “I don’t know when you became the spokesperson for the importance of glee, but I like it.”
“That’s my new job. Glee recruiter.” He bumps Kurt’s shoulder again, then ducks his head a little to be able to see his face. “You know I’m telling you the truth, right?” he asks, gently. “I know how important this is. And if I don’t, you know that Tina does. She would never let the glee club turn into a musical war machine like Vocal Adrenaline.”
“Or a charming relic for old people like the Warblers,” Kurt murmurs lightly.
Blaine smirks. “Shut up.”
“Fine,” Kurt laughs. “Fine. I know. You guys understand. You and Tina and Artie do, anyway.” He grins. “You’ll give New Directions heart.”
“And we’ll pass it on, when we leave,” Blaine says. “We’ll make sure the new kids understand what it means to be part of this. If it’s anything like it has been the last few years, they’re just going to know, anyway. It’s probably just going to happen.”
“But you’re going to help it happen,” Kurt says, eyeing him. “Right?”
“When we need to.”
Kurt nods, then. His shoulders relax, a little, bowing more easily to let him lean back into Blaine. He lets out a breath he seems to have been holding for a long time.
“Is this why you were up so late?” Blaine asks. “Worrying about this?”
“I was packing, mostly. But worrying, too, I guess.”
Blaine sighs, and refolds their hands so that their fingers interlace. One month until Kurt goes away to New York with Rachel and Finn. They’re going to be fine. Blaine knows that. Being a little more alone for a little while won’t destroy him. But he really is going to need glee, probably more than he thinks even now. He’s going to like having a room full of people who understand.
“You and Rachel are going to have to sing your feelings at each other for a while when you get to NYADA,” Blaine murmurs, and he feels Kurt laugh silently next to him.
“Believe me,” Kurt says, “we’re planning on it.”
On the horizon, over the dark line of trees, the sun is starting to creep into view. It throws light against the wide expanse of grass in brilliant green patches, making the dew shine, and the school windows gleam with the reflection of bright orange and yellow. The dawn gray is faded and mixed with pink and blue, and it’s beautiful, to watch the sunrise from the top bar of a jungle gym with the boy he’s in love with. Blaine smiles and closes his eyes to feel the sun on his face.
Kurt tucks his head into the curve of Blaine’s shoulder and sighs. “I used to come here a lot at this time of day. I liked to stay up long enough to watch the sun come up.”
“It’s my favorite,” Blaine murmurs, letting his head fall against Kurt’s.
Kurt snorts. “Well, I can’t tell you’re tired or anything.”
“Shut up,” Blaine says. “We’re having a moment.”
Kurt is quiet. They have a moment. And it’s wonderful.
When they decide that the sun has come up enough to call it risen, Kurt unhooks his legs from the lower bar and lets himself drop down to the ground in a little spray of wood chips. He offers his hand back up to Blaine, and Blaine smiles as he takes it, letting Kurt tug him down, and then letting Kurt use the fact that he’s off-balance to pull Blaine into a kiss. Blaine hums into it, and Kurt tucks his arms around Blaine’s waist.
“How much trouble do you think I’ll get into if my dad finds us sleeping in my bed later?” he asks quietly.
Blaine presses another kiss into his neck. “I think it’ll be worth it,” he says. “And I think you’ve already made up your mind anyway.”
“True.” Kurt curls their hands together again, pecking one last kiss against Blaine’s lips. “Both true.” He turns and leads Blaine back around the creaking spring-horses, the metal beaded and pooled with dew, to the gate, which he opens for both of them, back onto the grass, toward the sidewalk, toward home.
Blaine watches their hands suspended between them in the early-morning light and feels bouyant, and exhausted, and happy. This is one of those moments, those snapshot moments that he wants to hold onto. That he’ll share, maybe, somehow, with the group that’s waiting for him in the future, in the choir room. Because they’ll understand, even if he has to show them.
Being part of something special, he thinks, and smiles, makes you special.
Rating: PG
Characters: Blaine/Kurt
Words: ~3,500
Spoilers: No spoilers.
Summary: The most important thing about New Directions is its heart. Kurt worries that it could change; Blaine won't let it. (A conversation at dawn, in the summer, a while before Kurt leaves for New York.)
Author's Note: I missed you, fandom. ♥ The title is from Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós. If this story could have a soundtrack, it would be that song on repeat. (Note: Edited very slightly after posting; nothing too major, but changed a basic idea of the story that I didn't notice was incongruous until after it was up.)
The best part of summer, for Blaine, is being awake at four-thirty in the morning, lying on top of the blankets, with the book he’s just finished still balanced on his stomach, the ending still lingering in his head. He does this a lot. He loves the forbidden feeling of being up so late-early, when the air buffers gently in through his window, cool and smelling like grass and dew. He likes the way that everything feels light and free, because he doesn’t have anywhere pressing to be tomorrow, and he can easily sleep until noon if he wants to, even though he knows he won’t. And when he wakes up, he can just start another book. And he can read it until four-thirty in the morning. Again.
His bedroom door creaks a little, and his bed dips as Brontë, his mother’s cat, gracefully leaps up and walks along the narrow strip of mattress between Blaine and the edge, before stepping up onto Blaine’s chest and settling there on top of the book, staring at Blaine with two big, vaguely interested eyes. Blaine smiles and runs his fingers through the fur on Brontë’s back. (Blaine didn’t understood why his mother named the cat Brontë when he was six and she brought him home, but now he thinks he does. Brontë kind of reminds Blaine of Wuthering Heights. He doesn’t know why. He thinks it’s the way that Brontë always seems almost aggressively dissatisfied and intensely bored with everything.)
Brontë’s fur shines black and brown and a little gray with age in the dark yellow light from Blaine’s bedside lamp. He rubs between the cat’s ears. “You miss mom?” he asks softly. Brontë doesn’t deign to answer, but bumps Blaine’s fingers with his head. “Yeah,” Blaine murmurs, with a small smile. “Me, too.”
Blaine’s phone buzzes on his bedside table, and he blinks over at it, surprised. Brontë seems surprised, too. His ears flick when Blaine reaches out to snap it open and brings it close to his eyes to read.
From: Kurt
Improbably awake. I know that you’re probably still
reading, but I wanted to tell you that I love you,
and I’ll see you later. Can’t wait.
Blaine smiles. He texts Kurt back one-handed, his other hand curled into Brontë’s fur.
From: Blaine
Finished half an hour ago. Still letting it
settle. Love you, too. Can’t wait, either.
Going to bed?
It’s a while before the next text comes. Blaine spends it slowly petting Brontë, looking up at the ceiling, breathing in the air from outside. When it does come, his phone buzzes weirdly against his sternum, and he picks it back up.
From: Kurt
How long would it take you to get here?
Blaine frowns at the screen.
From: Blaine
If I don’t take any time to make myself look
presentable, maybe twenty minutes?
From: Kurt
Good.
Drive to my house, park outside, and text
me for further instructions.
Blaine grins, lowers his phone, and looks down at Brontë. “Sorry, buddy,” he whispers. “Looks like I have other plans.”
They’ve never done this kind of thing before, and that makes it feel even better, to be walking out in the almost-cool dark, with the streetlamps all pale white light and stretching out along the sidewalk. Kurt texted him simple directions, and Blaine keeps them open in his hand as he goes, feeling the little coil of excitement tightening in his stomach as he gets closer to wherever Kurt is. The houses he passes slowly by are unfamiliar and dark and silent, and Blaine feels the way he always feels when he goes out in the early hours of the morning: like he’s the last person on Earth. Him and Kurt, maybe, just the two of them and no one else -- but in a good, contented kind of way. It’s so peaceful, with no one else in the world awake.
Blaine glances one last time at the directions and takes a final turn down another street. The horizon is getting a little lighter, just smudges of pale blue and gray, and the streetlamps flare like diamonds against it. Blaine can see further along the sidewalk, where the houses give up and a green field rolls out to a big, squat brick building that is obviously a school, even from this distance. He slips his phone back into his pocket, listening to the little echoes of his steps off of the houses lining either side of the road.
Kurt is in the little playground sprawled out beside the school. He’s sitting on top of the bright blue jungle gym, balanced on a bar, looking up at the paling sky, and Blaine is arrested into stopping just inside the gate. The smell of woodchips and grass is heavy in the air, nostalgic, and that feeling collides sort of incongruously with the swoop in Blaine’s stomach at the sight of Kurt with his back straight and his legs bare and pale from the knees down, hooked through a lower bar. (Blaine has seen Kurt’s legs before - Blaine would be hard pressed to find a part of Kurt he hasn’t seen, at this point - but he can’t remember ever seeing Kurt in honest-to-god shorts.) He has to watch, for just a second, unnoticed.
He’s been taking a lot of snapshots, lately, in his mind, or at least trying to. For later, when Kurt is in New York. There are things he knows he’ll want to remember, and this is one of those things. Five in the morning on an already-beautiful day, with Kurt high-up and graceful and looking thoughtfully at the sky. He files it away with the hundreds of other things he needs to hold onto for as long as he can.
When he lets the gate swing closed behind him, it ting’s brightly into the silence, and Kurt looks down at him, surprised. Blaine watches the brilliant smile that moves slowly over his face, and feels himself mirroring it. He walks over, angling around the spring-horses, until he’s standing right below Kurt, and he reaches out to curl his hands around Kurt’s bare calves.
“Hi,” he says quietly. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Kurt stares down at him, biting his lip against what Blaine is sure would be a laugh, and reaches out to touch Blaine’s hair. “You’re wearing glasses,” he says, wonderingly. “And no gel.”
“Only for you,” Blaine says. “Seriously.” He gently squeezes Kurt’s calves. “You’re wearing shorts.”
“I take it you approve?”
“You should wear shorts every day.”
“I’ll take it into consideration.” Kurt’s eyes are bright, still at the edge of laughing, and he dips his fingers back through Blaine’s hair. Blaine sighs and sways forward to lean against Kurt’s legs with his eyes closed. Kurt smells the way he does just after he steps out of the shower - clean and pink and not really covered up by anything yet, just the lingering trace of flowers and the natural smell of him. He presses his nose against Kurt’s skin, finally earning a real laugh. “Get up here,” Kurt says through it, tugging at his arm.
Blaine climbs up the jungle gym. It’s strange how familiar it is, despite that fact that he hasn’t set foot in a playground since elementary school. His feet know where to go, even though it’s all a lot less effort than he remembers; everything is smaller now. He settles on the top bar next to Kurt, letting their legs and shoulders touch. They both look out, up at the sky, where it meets the treeline in the distance, still getting brighter, everything painted in the shallow dawn gray that comes before the sun.
The comfortable quiet nestles in between them.
Blaine has never seen Kurt outside at this time of day, in this light. He watches out of the corner of his eye, the way the shadows fall on Kurt’s face, highlighting his cheekbones, his lips, his jaw. Kurt’s expression is almost wistful, very far away. His fingers drum against the metal bar, with hollow little ringing sounds.
Quietly, like he might break something if he speaks any louder, Blaine asks, “So, why were you awake so late?”
Kurt is silent for a long time. Blaine waits him out, looking back at the street, letting himself get lost in the way the streetlamps look as the light starts to get stronger; they get paler and paler in the contrast, ghostly little orbs dotting the way back.
When Kurt finally speaks, instead of answering, he asks, “Do you remember when I explained the whole history of New Directions to you?”
Blaine smiles. Yes, he does. It took almost an entire day, last summer, with the two of them spread out on Kurt’s bedroom floor, lying head to head with Kurt’s laptop between them, playing a long, long playlist. Blaine had listened, lying on his stomach, while Kurt took him through a musical retrospective, from Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat to Somewhere Over The Rainbow to Empire State of Mind to Light Up The World. Kurt patiently explained everything, pausing the music where he had to, switching from disparaging to delighted depending on the story. He was quiet during I Want To Hold Your Hand, and Blaine reached out for him then, and didn’t let go until As If We Never Said Goodbye, through all of the secondhand accounts of what happened during Kurt’s time at Dalton.
It was valuable, Blaine knew, to know everything, if (when) he started at McKinley. But honestly he just liked listening to Kurt talk about something he loved that much.
Blaine nods, and Kurt glances at him, catching the smile and returning it, a little smaller. He lets out a breath. After a moment, he says, “I feel like we’re giving you guys something that’s alive.” He meets Blaine’s eyes. “Do you know what I mean? Like, the glee club is a baby that we’re passing over to you to take care of now.”
Blaine grins at the image: Kurt, Rachel, Finn and the rest of the graduated seniors offering up a shrieking infant to him and Tina and Artie and Sugar and everyone else. “I understand,” he says. “The club sort of is your baby, in the figurative sense.” He pauses, considering. “That’s sort of how we characterize history, isn’t it? This living thing that we keep shaping as it’s passed down.”
Kurt’s mouth twitches. “Something like that.” He looks away, over the field, back to the trees blocking the horizon, then sighs, shoulders slumping. “I don’t want to leave it. I don’t want it to change.”
Blaine nudges Kurt’s shoulder lightly with his own. “Don’t you trust us with it?” he asks. “I promise we won’t accidentally kill it or let it grow up to be a cowboy or anything.”
Kurt laughs. “Okay, the baby metaphor is getting creepy.” He tilts back a little, craning his neck to look up, and shrugs. “I’ve been there for most of the time that the glee club’s been around. Through all of the crazy. And it’s disappointing, that suddenly I don’t get to be part of it anymore. I feel like it should come with me, or something.”
“Well, some of it is,” Blaine says. “Rachel and Finn are going to New York with you. Mike’s going to Julliard.”
“It isn’t the same,” Kurt sighs.
Blaine nods. “I don’t know,” he murmurs thoughtfully. He pauses. “I guess I don’t understand, really. When I left the Warblers, it didn’t feel like that. It just felt like I was leaving, not abandoning something. They’ve been singing for a hundred years, they’ll keep doing it when I’m gone.”
Kurt’s mouth twitches. “Not that they didn’t sort of implode when you left.” He lets go of the bar and twines his hands in his lap, looking down at them. “It isn’t just singing, Blaine,” he murmurs. “The club saved my life. It gave me a voice, and other people who understood it, most of the time.” He glances at Blaine, then back down again. “I need it to keep being that, for other people. Not just a place to sing. It needs to be--”
“A safe place,” Blaine finishes softly. He's thought about this before. “It needs to be somewhere people can go when they can’t go anywhere else.”
Kurt nods. His hands twine together, then apart, then together again.
New Directions, Blaine has realized slowly during his time there, is that place. He may not have felt it as strongly as everyone else at first, but when he lets himself stand back, and look hard at the things that have happened over the last two years, and the things that Kurt filled him in on that day in his room - it’s obvious. Kurt was a closeted, quiet, fierce, smart gay kid trapped in a small town. Rachel was ostracized and lonely and destined for something bigger. Tina faked a stutter so she wouldn’t have to interact with other people. Finn was caught in the endless loop of being forced to do things he didn’t believe in to keep himself from being rejected. Every one of the initial members of New Directions had something they needed to get away from, and they needed people who accepted that about them.
And it’s sort of magical, really, when Blaine thinks about it. Because it didn’t have to end well at all. There was every chance that it could have been a disaster. But it wasn’t. They worked. And then more people with the same needs came in, and they were accepted, molded right into the way the group worked, and even if it was sort of incestuous and volatile most of the time, everyone got what they needed out of it.
Glee club, with those people, became the safest place to just exist in the lives of basically every member. Because they stood up for their own, and they rallied for crises, and they listened when they needed to. And they were friends. And they loved each other.
And that’s what Kurt is saying.
“I just don’t want it to change,” Kurt repeats quietly. “I don’t want it to become about something else.”
Blaine shakes his head. He reaches out and takes Kurt’s hand, startling him into looking up. “No,” he says, meeting Kurt’s eyes. “It won’t become about something else. I promise.”
Kurt tries to smile at him. “I appreciate the thought, Blaine, but you don’t really know that yet.”
Blaine actually laughs. “You don’t think you guys passed that torch to us, along with everything else?” He shifts closer, making Kurt really look at him. “Believe me, Kurt. New Directions isn’t ever going to be just about doing well at competitions and bringing home trophies. Those are fun, but - I don’t think that we’d last a semester like that. I don’t think we’d manage to gather a group to perform at all. It’s about pulling together people who need something from each other, right? It’s about heart.”
Kurt’s staring at him, eyebrows raised, mouth open. Then he smiles, slowly, his whole face softening. He lets out a breath. “Being a part of something special,” he murmurs, “makes you special.”
Blaine grins. “I like that.”
Kurt sighs. “It’s not mine.” He squeezes Blaine’s hand, shaking his head. “I don’t know when you became the spokesperson for the importance of glee, but I like it.”
“That’s my new job. Glee recruiter.” He bumps Kurt’s shoulder again, then ducks his head a little to be able to see his face. “You know I’m telling you the truth, right?” he asks, gently. “I know how important this is. And if I don’t, you know that Tina does. She would never let the glee club turn into a musical war machine like Vocal Adrenaline.”
“Or a charming relic for old people like the Warblers,” Kurt murmurs lightly.
Blaine smirks. “Shut up.”
“Fine,” Kurt laughs. “Fine. I know. You guys understand. You and Tina and Artie do, anyway.” He grins. “You’ll give New Directions heart.”
“And we’ll pass it on, when we leave,” Blaine says. “We’ll make sure the new kids understand what it means to be part of this. If it’s anything like it has been the last few years, they’re just going to know, anyway. It’s probably just going to happen.”
“But you’re going to help it happen,” Kurt says, eyeing him. “Right?”
“When we need to.”
Kurt nods, then. His shoulders relax, a little, bowing more easily to let him lean back into Blaine. He lets out a breath he seems to have been holding for a long time.
“Is this why you were up so late?” Blaine asks. “Worrying about this?”
“I was packing, mostly. But worrying, too, I guess.”
Blaine sighs, and refolds their hands so that their fingers interlace. One month until Kurt goes away to New York with Rachel and Finn. They’re going to be fine. Blaine knows that. Being a little more alone for a little while won’t destroy him. But he really is going to need glee, probably more than he thinks even now. He’s going to like having a room full of people who understand.
“You and Rachel are going to have to sing your feelings at each other for a while when you get to NYADA,” Blaine murmurs, and he feels Kurt laugh silently next to him.
“Believe me,” Kurt says, “we’re planning on it.”
On the horizon, over the dark line of trees, the sun is starting to creep into view. It throws light against the wide expanse of grass in brilliant green patches, making the dew shine, and the school windows gleam with the reflection of bright orange and yellow. The dawn gray is faded and mixed with pink and blue, and it’s beautiful, to watch the sunrise from the top bar of a jungle gym with the boy he’s in love with. Blaine smiles and closes his eyes to feel the sun on his face.
Kurt tucks his head into the curve of Blaine’s shoulder and sighs. “I used to come here a lot at this time of day. I liked to stay up long enough to watch the sun come up.”
“It’s my favorite,” Blaine murmurs, letting his head fall against Kurt’s.
Kurt snorts. “Well, I can’t tell you’re tired or anything.”
“Shut up,” Blaine says. “We’re having a moment.”
Kurt is quiet. They have a moment. And it’s wonderful.
When they decide that the sun has come up enough to call it risen, Kurt unhooks his legs from the lower bar and lets himself drop down to the ground in a little spray of wood chips. He offers his hand back up to Blaine, and Blaine smiles as he takes it, letting Kurt tug him down, and then letting Kurt use the fact that he’s off-balance to pull Blaine into a kiss. Blaine hums into it, and Kurt tucks his arms around Blaine’s waist.
“How much trouble do you think I’ll get into if my dad finds us sleeping in my bed later?” he asks quietly.
Blaine presses another kiss into his neck. “I think it’ll be worth it,” he says. “And I think you’ve already made up your mind anyway.”
“True.” Kurt curls their hands together again, pecking one last kiss against Blaine’s lips. “Both true.” He turns and leads Blaine back around the creaking spring-horses, the metal beaded and pooled with dew, to the gate, which he opens for both of them, back onto the grass, toward the sidewalk, toward home.
Blaine watches their hands suspended between them in the early-morning light and feels bouyant, and exhausted, and happy. This is one of those moments, those snapshot moments that he wants to hold onto. That he’ll share, maybe, somehow, with the group that’s waiting for him in the future, in the choir room. Because they’ll understand, even if he has to show them.
Being part of something special, he thinks, and smiles, makes you special.