The Embroid'ry of Your Life (Ginormous unfinished fic post!) (Glee, Kurt, PG-13)
The Embroid'ry of Your Life
I'm posting this because I have finally given up all hope of ever finishing it, and because someone over at kurt_blaine has beaten me to sending Kurt to Columbia College Chicago.
I started writing this story at the end of November last year - back when Blaine was OLDER than Kurt and cage!Dalton seemed a totally real possibility, and it has gone through many revisions since, but I have never committed to it enough to actually finish it, and every time I try I keep on getting jossed by new canon. This story is about twenty different things, some of which are described below. One which isn't is that it is not-quite-songfic set to Judy Collins' Albatross, which is where the title comes from. This was the first story I tried to write in this fandom and it shows so fucking much, but whatever, man, see if I care! There is a lot of meta and missing bits associated with this story. Ed notes and commentary are in a rather eye-catching shade of green. Gross spacing indicates lots of missing text. Only pt 1 is complete, and even that is missing one or two sentences. Everything else is in different states of development, most of them embryonic.
1. (If Kurt Hummel were to have a Wikipedia page, lovingly curated by a handful of obsessive fans, under 'influences' it would say Although his love of Wicked dates back to his childhood [27], he first saw it professionally performed in the summer of 2011, at a showing attended with his friend Mercedes Jones [28].)
The plan had been born nearly a year ago, before Kurt met Blaine, and Mercedes met Sam; it was something they had discussed last summer, when the air was hot and sticky and unsettlingly still and they would play at escaping Lima with their minds. When driving to New York seemed outside the reach of feasibility - mostly because neither Kurt not Mercedes thought their parents would let them attempt it - Chicago, only five hours away, presented itself as a cosmopolitan haven; the Windy City ready to blow their ennui away.
Over Christmas they smoothed over the harsh words left over from the autumn and as the winter deepened their friendship recovered. He enlisted Carole's help over spring break, and contained his smile every time she made a comment at the dinner table about how good a driver Kurt was, driving back and forth from Westerville that whole spring with nary a scratch on the car, or whenever she insisted he take her to the grocery store or made offhanded comments about how much more mature than other kids his age he was. She was subtle, and when Burt eventually became suspicious at their unrelenting closeness and complicit smiles and demanded to know what they were scheming he had proudly agreed with her too many times to justify saying no. It is a cloudy April Saturday when his father finally, inevitably, relents, and Kurt calls Mercedes and breathlessly says, "He said yes. We are going to Chicago. I need to get on eBay yesterday," and dissolves into giddy laughter as Mercedes shouts, "I'll be at yours in fifteen minutes!" down the phone.
A return to McKinley, Prom, Nationals and New York all stand between them and their trip, but Kurt can't wait until the summer comes and the two of them are off, together again, and with no one to interrupt them.
-
There are hours of research on the internet after that, haphazardly squeezed around the rest of their lives - where to stay, what to see, where to go, what to do, what to wear - and intense bidding wars on eBay for vintage McQueen trousers and DVF print scarves. The third time he is outbid within a second of a sale closing, Kurt is forced to concede to a glib Mercedes that all his time with Blaine, and his fancy uniformed school have both atrophied his reflexes. When one night Kurt discovers that Wicked is playing in a place called the Cadillac Palace he buys two tickets without consulting Mercedes, because how can he not?
[Wicked was indeed playing at the Cadillac theater... until February 2011. It ran for about five or six years, I think, and anyhow I was like fuck it he's totally going to see Wicked, authorial privilege.]
They set the date for early July, in the middle of their long summer break, and when the morning finally arrives they set off against a perfectly blue sky. Kurt watches in the rearview mirror as his father recedes into the distance, his last words a question on whether he'd checked the air on the spare tire and has brought the GPS charger. Mercedes and him have made separate playlists for the drive and once they're in the car they laugh every time a song they've both chosen comes on, warm because despite the tyranny of distance and the anguish of this year they have managed to remain Kurt and Mercedes, BFF.
Kurt is a good driver, self assured and confident and prudent in his big black car, and the drive is a smooth experience, soundtracked not only by their music but also by their incessant chatter. Soon after they cross into Indiana the conversation turns to their next - their last - school year, and then to the future that lies beyond.
"Do you ever regret coming back?" she asks him, concern creeping into her tone. "I know we didn't really talk about it, but prom--"
"Prom is over," he says, and his fingers don't grip the steering wheel tighter, like they did when the ache of that night was more recent. "I have a new tiara for my collection. It is tacky and cheap, nowhere near the best, but I don't regret a thing, no. It's been a good year, actually - I got Blaine, and Finn and Carole, we went to New York, to Nationals... And I'm just looking forward to how much better next year is going to be."
"Oh my god," Mercedes says, "you've gone over all zen-like. I can hardly believe you're the same person who went into a week-long sulk when Mr Shue wouldn't let us sing Britney."
"That was not a sulk," he tells her archly. "It was perfectly justified. The man was being willfully contrary."
He catches her sceptical gaze in the mirror. She hums the opening to Baby, One More Time.
[LINK MISSING]
"And besides, I am done pretending being less than what I am just to get other people to like me."
Mercedes turns to study him. Her head is tilted to the side and she has a rare, wistful expression on her face. "What?" he asks, a bit shrill, when the silence between them lengthens.
"Nothing," she says slowly. "I was just remembering you being too afraid to own up to being... you, when we joined Glee. I'm happy for you, Kurt. I'm so glad you've come this far," she tells him sincerely; without really taking his eyes off the road he reaches over for her left hand with his right and squeezes tightly.
"Couldn't have done it without you." Given the warmth they are exuding for one another, he thinks this may be the appropriate time to mention what he did the other night. "Mercedes, I got us tickets to see Wicked."
"Oh, hell," she says, snatching her hand back. "The things I do for you."
On the mirror, he gives her his most winsome smile. She eventually relents and smiles back, but still hits next on his iPod when a track from Gypsy starts up.
-
The city is sticky and humid when they arrive, and their carefully orchestrated outfits swiftly succumb to the rivulets of sweat that run down their backs five minutes after stepping outside. But they are undaunted, and they giggle stupidly the first time Kurt's GPS shortens Lake Shore Drive into LSD and tells them to take it all the way up to 13th. They are staying in a youth hostel in the Loop, because their parents were wary of letting them stay somewhere less familiar, and in a private room because their parents were wary of letting them share a room with strangers.
The first day they go to the Art Institute, and the second Mercedes insists they go to the Shedd Aquarium. Parking anywhere, they discover rapidly, is expensive, so once they are done exploring the delights of the Loop and gazing lustfully at shop windows in the Magnificent Mile they brave the public transportation system and ride buses and take the El to the near north side, the Gold Coast and Lincoln Park, weaving through streets and dipping into shops. It is such a wonderment, to be able to try on a Marc Jacobs rather than buying it online, to run their fingers through luxurious fabrics and be able to see how they catch the light, rather than having to trust blurry photographs on a screen; they do it for hours although in the end they buy nothing. They also walk along the lakeshore path, Kurt hiding himself under a ridiculously large straw hat that he insists is wholly in vogue and keeps the sun away from his face. He surprises Mercedes by revealing that he's actually brought swimming trunks, so they go back to the Forever 21 on State to buy her a bikini, and spend an afternoon playing in the cold lake water and lazying on the sand, interrupted only by the alarm on Kurt's phone ringing every forty minutes to remind him to reapply his sunscreen.
When the heat is too much they hide inside a Starbucks because they don't know anywhere else to go and talk about college choices. Mercedes doesn't know what she wants to do, and thinks she's going to go a liberal arts school, maybe somewhere on the East Coast, while Kurt is adamant about his choice of musical theatre or fashion, somewhere in Manhattan. He's been looking at courses, he says, researching, and he cannot wait until it is time. They both know that as soon as school starts again there will be meetings with Ms Pillsbury and all manners of paperwork, common applications and financial aid forms and personal statements; Mercedes has even brought her SAT revision book with her and every night, while Kurt moisturises and washes the city's summer grime off his face, goes through some of the math problems. Meanwhile, Kurt's time at Dalton, where it wasn't so much going to a four year college somewhere east that was a triumph but rather not going that was a failure, has only served to deepen his belief in a future that now includes not only education, but also Blaine. In New York Rachel and him had walked briefly along the streets where they knew Columbia to be, and the sensation of homecoming and belonging, and above all of wanting, combined with the thrill of having just sung inside the Gershwin, had been so strong that it had rendered him speechless it its rightness.
They go higher up, to Belmont and Addison, never wearying of the sight of the city beneath him as the El ferries them up and down its slatted tracks. Kurt lets out an unconscious mewl when they find a thrift store on Clark and Belmont crammed with silk scarves and some dead woman's collection of authentic silk kimonos at ridiculously low prices - he buys three. Mercedes smirks and rolls her eyes whenever she catches him staring at a young man in skinny jeans and calculatedly distressed tops although he reassures her - and Blaine, via constant text messages - that it is just novelty rather than attraction. Sometimes, if they stare back, Kurt freezes and blushes what she tells him is a nearly unnatural shade of red. Once, while Kurt is humming to himself and focusedly going through a display of second-hand ties, there is a low unfamiliar voice at his ear and Kurt jumps and is left stammering, gazing into some stranger's strikingly blue eyes without being able to say a word. Amidst bouts of laughter Mercedes drags him to one of the fitting rooms, where he has to concede that she has a point. It is an impressive shade of red.
On their last night in the city he dresses in clothes he brought for the occasion and they make their way to the Cadillac Palace and Kurt proudly collects their tickets at the box office. The couple sitting next to them shush Kurt every time he gets carried away and starts singing along, but he doesn't care. He snatches glances at Mercedes whenever the action on stage dulls down; she seems to be enjoying herself, but is definitely not as enraptured as he is. He makes a mental note to buy her something super special for her birthday. Afterwards, Kurt is all words and enthusiasm and energy. They walk to Millenium Park and make faces at each other and at their reflections on the Bean in the dimming light, although they give up on photographing them because of the glare of their flash. When he half-heartedly mentions that they should probably start thinking about making their way back to their hostel Mercedes holds out her hand and says, "we're not done yet. Give me the map."
She leads him from the park to one of the El stops, refusing to answer his questions as they climb up the stairs and wait. Only when the rickety train makes its way out of the Loop and heads north does she double check to make sure no one in their compartment is watching them and produces two unconvincing fake IDs that declare their names to be Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly. "I can't tell if the names are Puck's idea of a joke or not," she tells him, "and I know it's not until September, but happy birthday, Kurt. We're going dancing."
Once Kurt finds his voice and is done telling her just how amazing and incredible and amazing again she is, they practice memorizing the details on the cards the rest of the ride to Boystown, just in case they get asked.
-
Off the El they duck into an alley and school their expressions into careful masks of arrogance that do not belie their giddiness. Mercedes does most of the talking at the door, because Kurt may be tall now, but he still sounds like a sixteen year old girl; for the same reason Mercedes is the one in charge of procuring drinks, once they are inside. With a big grin and a fleeting squeeze of his hand she says "I'll be right back. Don't do anything I wouldn't," and vanishes, and Kurt's gaze travels around the room over and over, not knowing where to alight, because everywhere he looks there is novelty, and shock and wonderment, and he lets himself think of going to similar places - better places, probably - with Blaine, when they're together in New York. The idea makes him smile, and he is swaying gently, unconsciously, to the loud music, when a bottle is pressed into his hands.
"That was really quick," he says. "Thank you, Mercedes."
"You're welcome, darling," answers someone who is definitely not Mercedes. "Tell me, do you dance, or do you just stand there looking pretty?"
"Ah," Kurt says, looking up into blond hair and light eyes, "my friend. She'll be back in a second, actually."
"And if she's your friend she won't mind you having some fun without her..."
"No, really, she's coming right back," he repeats, beer suddenly awkward and cold in his hand. It is still unsettling, part of him thinks, to have someone pay attention to him. There is a difference between trepidation and fear, he is discovering, but it is a matter of degree, not of kind.
"Hey, relax, kid. Are you sure you should be here?"
Resolutely, he fights the urge to nod. "Yes, of course!"
"Then you probably should dance, shouldn't you?"
Kurt wants to say, 'leave me alone, I have a boyfriend, here's your beer back,' but the words die in his throat. If he wanted to he could reach out, curl a hand around the nape of this stranger's neck and pull the two of them together, and even after months of Dalton, and of Blaine and his constant warm love, that possibility is so novel that he feels himself nodding, the beginnings of a smile on his face again, and leaving behind the safety of the darkness until they are standing at the edge of the dance floor, where he moves just for himself. The music is hideous but he doesn't care, there's rhythm to his movements, grace and vitality as under the flickering strobe lights he can construct a better semblance of the other man's features, as he tries to move in closer and closer. Kurt forgives the stranger his watery eyes and his bottle-light hair, and dances, cold beer spilling from the bottle and onto his hand, until suddenly there's a tugging in his arm and someone is pulling him back. He hears Mercedes snarl "sorry, but you are really not his type," somewhere on his left and then she's dragging him outside the club, to the street where the heat of the day still lingers. He knows the colour has drained out of his face, except for those two spots on his cheek that are flushed with ire, and his lips are pressed into a thin grim line until he snaps, "what on Earth was that all about!" at her.
Mercedes just looks at him disdainfully, "If you're going to act like a slut you need to learn to think like one too."
"Excuse me?"
"What's that you're holding?" she asks in return.
In his hand, there is that beer still, condensation beading all over it, "This is a club, Mercedes," he tells her instead. "Is this not what we came here for?"
"No, we came here to dance and have fun, not for you to cheat on Blaine and suck the face of the first man who buys you a drink because you're too awestruck to learn to say no."
"Mercedes!" he sputters, wishing the undercurrent of horror and shrillness was not so clearly audible. "I was not going to suck his face! I was dancing!"
"Uh huh." she says, her eyes flickering back to the bottle he is still holding.
That's what does it. He drops the bottle, watches as it cants away, liquid frothing at the opening, spilling onto the sidewalk. "You know what, Mercedes, whatever. I don't care. Let's go back."
It's too late to take the train back, so they have to find a bus stop. The wait is lengthy, and they remain silent throughout; he takes his phone out and texts Blaine but receives no immediate reply. Kurt thinks he hears Mercedes hesitantly open her mouth once or twice to speak but he strides to the other side of the bus shelter, pretending to be interested in the schedule in front of him whenever that happens. They enter the bus in silence, and when Mercedes slides into one of the four-seaters he feels he has no choice but to sit across from her, although he stubbornly refuses to meet her eyes. As he is thinking that there is something so much more intimate to riding the El, to being able to look into people's second-floor windows and their back yards rather than storefronts and doorways, Mercedes tries again. "The chick at the bar busted me. I asked her for two Breezers, she took one look at me, asked me for ID and called the security guy over. They barely let me collect you before kicking me out of the door."
"I am not a slut," he repeats, still staring pointedly out the window.
"I know that," Mercedes says, a lot softer this time. "I just care about you, that's all."
(2. And if someone were to write his biography, page 27 would begin Kurt's first taste of the Great White Way, came in his junior year of high school, when he competed in the Glee Club Nationals held in New York as part of McKinley High's New Directions. It was this trip that finally crystalised his long-running desire to pursue an undergraduate career in the city.)
[This part is so small because in the original version of this story, roughly until January of this year, pt 1 above was actually pt 2. It was still set in the summer between Kurt (and Mercedes') junior and senior years of high school. Pt 1 was set in New York, at Nationals, with Kurt still a member of the Warblers and attending Dalton, and with Blaine being a graduating senior. Kurt missed ND badly in that version (it was all about cage!Dalton) and ended up hanging out with them in NYC, no one in the group really questioned this; his conversation with Mercedes in the car in the previous part was therefore somewhat different. He broke up with Blaine at La Guardia, on the way back to Ohio after losing, because he didn't see the point of continuing anymore - their relationship was nowhere near as adorable as it has turned out to be in canon, obvs. I had to retconn all of this when it became clear that
a. Blaine was stupidly head over heels with Kurt
b. Blaine and Kurt were very much in the same year together
I tried and tried to find ways of breaking them up, and it proved to be nearly fucking impossible, save for the solution outlined above. I didn't like it, because I wanted the big reveal in pt 3 to be, well, a big reveal, but seriously, these boys are solid - if one of them pulls some sort of self-defeating stupidity, it only takes the other about half a page before they try to snap one another out of their funks.]
pt 2 notes:
get no admissions - say only gets into safety
hang up on blaine
talk to pillsbury tell her she must be able to fix it
"well," she says, "let's not worry. you still have options, kurt. you can, um, go to your safety school and transfer after one year. or, if you want, you can not go anywhere and try again next year."
"kurt," her voice is softer and kinder. "last year was hard for you, i understand that. you transfered schools twice, your father was ill. your transcript is"
not
blaine is all well i won't go without you
some more stuff
ends with knows he's going to say goodbye
He breaks up with Blaine on a non-descript day in August. Technically, Blaine breaks up with him, but it is only after a summer of increasing listlessness where Kurt's unhappiness looms unspoken and malignant around them and the only way they can communicate becomes kisses and touches when no one else is there and there is no danger of being found out. Words are clumsy when Blaine wields them, and too sharp when Kurt does, and this is something they will never overcome.
On the day he knows Blaine is boarding a plane to New York he texts him goodbye and deletes his number off his phone.
3. (Were critics to comment on his career, they would tell of how "from the first time he was cast in a lead role, in his early university days, Mr Hummel [...]")
any of the girls here, so I can understand why you wanted me for this role. But I am not actually a girl." By now some of the people in the room are giving him horrified looks, although one or two also seem to be struggling to contain their laughter, and he does not want to discover whether it is tinted with mockery. Kurt knows he should try to cultivate friendships here, if he wants the next four years to be something other than a slog up a steep incline, but he is not going to do it at the expense of his dignity, or his self. "And much as I may love the opportunity to sing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas onstage I am not going to prowl around in a dress and in heels and two tonnes of stage make-up. So find yourself another Esther, because I am not the one you're looking for."
Storming off the room feels good, at least for a few seconds, and by the time he is questioning the wisdom of turning down his first star role the door has shut and his pride will not let him open it again.
Never mind. There will be more auditions. If he is going to do things, he is going to do them his way, because this is what he has been waiting for, what he has been promised, all of his life.
-
Kurt hates Chicago. He hates Chicago because the streets are laid out on an unforgiving grid and once he's outside the Loop there are no skyscrapers and there is no glamour and only two theatres playing Broadway shows and the pizza is so greasy that he feels ill every time he walks past a shop. He hates the bitter winter cold, which he has yet to experience in its full, and the sweltering summer humidity, which he recalls from his trip with Mercedes last year. He hates Lake Michigan because it is not the Atlantic Ocean, and the Chicago river for not being the Hudson, and Wicker Park for not being Williamsburg. But most of all he hates Chicago for being second best, for not being New York City, that city where he has always indubitably known he belongs, and he hates himself for exactly the same reason.
It's not that Kurt is not smart, but rather that he had never been interested by most of what he had been taught, and nobody had ever tried to engage him in any way; when faced with the rigours of motivated teachers who expected him to work, Kurt, who at McKinley had always sat in class with his iPhone at the ready because there was no accounting for time zones, had found most of his grades consistently hovering between the low and middle Bs - not a big difference from his marks at McKinley, where most teachers would regularly comment that with some minimal additional effort he could be a 4.0 student - but at Dalton he was trying. Yet remedying ten years of insouciance and lacklustre education in the middle of his junior year was unfeasible, when in less than a semester he had to choose between advanced placement and normal classes and to learn far more science than he had ever wanted to just so he could meet the graduation requirements. So in the end he was left with a mediocre transcript from a decent prep school, a generous scholarship from Columbia College and an earnest rejection from Columbia proper, and the choice was not so much heart-rending as it was nonexistent. Kurt could almost shed tears of frustration, and sometimes he still does.
He would defriend Rachel Berry on Facebook in an instant if it meant not having to be confronted with her success and her status updates ever again, but he knows it would be a short-lived reprieve at best. Within twenty-four hours there would be a friend request in his inbox, and with equal odds, a message about either how in a few years he can tell people that he knew her before she was famous, or a sad smiley face and a lengthy digression about the reliability of digital systems and their strange similarities to the fickleness of the human heart.
-
The Meet Me in St Louis debacle is not an isolated event, although of all of his early experiences in Chicago it is the one that leaves the foulest taste in his month. College life is proving to be, on the whole, rather disappointing. Absent from it are the glamour, the driven students - companions, really - and the long cups of coffee over scintillating conversations he was promised, not only by Columbia College's prospectus, but also by every single television show he has ever watched, every book he has ever read, and every story he has ever been told. Whatever enthusiasm he initially mustered at the thought of university, of getting out of Ohio seems so distant and alien now that he can barely remember how it felt, or why he felt it. He was not just leaving Ohio, he was going to New York, and those two things were so inextricably linked that now that he has one without the other he cannot help but to feel rudderless and adrift. His performances in class are perfunctory, rote; his singing guilty of the same sin he often levelled against Rachel's voice: soullessness.
Sometimes when he feels a particular kind of down he will go to Millenium Park and walk around the Bean, peering intently at his shifting reflection until he looks uglier outside than he feels inside, and thus calibrating the extent of his misery in a way he feels is suitably melodramatic but also undeniably objective. When that doesn't work he buys a cheap ticket for whatever is showing at the Cadillac Palace, and in the darkness of the theatre murmurs, sotto voce, the lyrics to the songs, and claws some warmth back from this city that is trying to snatch it all. And sometimes, if not even that cuts it, he goes back to his dorm room, locks the door so no one can interrupt him, and calls his father.
It is during one of those phone calls that Burt tells him not to worry about booking flights to come home for Thanksgiving because he's more than happy to drive up to Chicago and pick him up there. Kurt replies, "That is foolish, dad," and tries not to sigh so loudly that his father will be able to hear.
"I don't mind, son," his father insists. "I'm going to be up in South Bend the weekend before anyhow and that's pretty much half way already."
"No, Dad. You're not going to drive twenty hours in five days just to come and pick me up and drive me back again. I'll take a plane on Tuesday or Wednesday - driving to Columbus and back is enough!"
"Fine, kid," his father relents, taking Kurt aback with the sudden surge of weariness in his voice. "Let me know the dates when you have them, will you?"
-
In the summertime, most of the hours when he had not been hanging out with Mercedes had been spent giving careful thought about what bits of himself to slough off in the transition from high school to college. Early on he decided that under no circumstances would he join any of the a cappella groups on campus. By attempting to make it something to be, if not embarrassed by, then at least somewhat uneasy about, Dalton had limned his love for his individuality; for all that it provided a safe haven from the intolerance of the rest of the world, Kurt is not sure he will ever be ready, or willing, to forgive that most fundamental of sins. Nowadays his outfits are more elaborate, his tongue sharper and his voice clearer than ever before, and if people don't like him the way he is, well, that is their problem and not his.
Except that no matter how much he tells himself this, maybe it is Kurt's problem after all, insofar as blaming his loneliness and misery on others does little to abate the ache of any of these feelings. He has steadfastly kept his distance from everyone he meets, repeatedly coming to the conclusion that none of these people are capable of understanding who he really is, so attempting to explain it; opening himself up to their inspection and curiosity is hardly going to be worth the effort. So when the week before Thanksgiving he makes a friend on accident he does not even realise it has happened until much later.
"Hey - it's you! Our original Esther?"
Kurt nods, and the elevator doors shut. "For about thirty minutes, yes."
"Right, yeah. That was pretty special of you. Rather bossy, really. But," he leans over, "you totally did the right thing, to be honest."
Kurt
"It's a bit of a disaster," the other teen confirms, and Kurt can't help but smile a bit at that. "Philip," he adds, and, "here we are - what way are you going?"
-
His father, pulling him into a tight hug.
You look good, kiddo.
"Lima was hell, and now I'm stuck here for four years and it's like being in purgatory and I just... I'm just tired of waiting for my life to start, Dad."
"This is your life, Kurt. It may not be the one you wanted, but it's the one you-"
"It's not the one I wanted," he interrupts, rotund.
"It may not be, Kurt, but it's the one you have," his father repeats. "And it's not a bad life, from what you've been telling me."
Kurt's only answer is to sniff desultorily. His father sighs. "Listen to me, son. I am so proud of you, you know. So your grades weren't good enough for what you truly wanted, so you try hard this year and transfer if you really hate it there. But you need to give people a chance, Kurt."
[missing - the ending of pt 3 - he was going to make friends and settle, but it was going to most certainly end before he actually got cast for anything. I think, internet, you may be beginning to see what the little parenthetical texts are all about... and if not, perhaps pt 4 will sort you out.
ALSO, BONUS STORY BRANCH:
In some revisions Kurt was going to actually start in fashion, and switch to drama halfway through his second year - and then, as per pts 4 and 5, switch again. This is probably from one of those:]
He discovers new music, catches himself singing snatches of old folksy melodies sometimes, his voice slightly thinner and raspier with a lack of practice. When Judy Collins sings about the embroidery of her life as he is bent over one of the sewing machines in the fashion department, after hours, he can't help but smile, and it is mostly free of bitterness.
Mature singing voices that he could never emulate but that in an art school are inescapable. Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Marianne Faithful all suit him better now than the music from his high school years.
4. (Being interviewed he would demurely reminisce, "I'm no a big drinker, no. Wine and champagne occasionally, sure, and if I am feeling peculiarly mischievous a cocktail or two. But never White Russians, I simply cannot abide them. I think it's the milk.")
[missing an intro - we have fastforwarded to Kurt's final year - there are problems with the dates here - Blaine was meant to be older and finish school a year earlier, meaning that Kurt was indeed turning 21 in these scenes, like he says he is. In later versions Kurt switched to an MFA program so I could maintain that extra year of schooling difference, but what there is here is caught in between the two and not really right for either. I think this is actually set in September of Kurt's fifth year of university. But, Blaine returns!
There were many problems with this part, including the huge temporal gap between it and pt 3 - you go from seeing Kurt settle and be grossly unhappy and self-hating to seeing him four years later having made an unclear amount of progress on getting over things. I struggled a lot with that, and with the temporal spacing of the parts. Briefly I thought of making this story a Seven Things story, while still continuing my fight against the trope by having the seven titular things be misleading, irrelevant, or just plain wrong - this scene begins with Kurt quoting himself and saying he does not drink, and yet the first thing you see him do is get terribly drunk. I wanted to tell a story about Kurt lying to himself, and lying to people, and just in general about the lies we tell about our lives, and how we spin stories. I wanted to write him thinking he has come to terms with his failure to make it to New York, but by this point he hasn't yet, he just thinks he has. It's a subject I'm far too comfortable with.]
Kurt leans over and says "I don't feel so good."
"Sheesh, Kurt, how much have you had to drink?"
"Before midnight or after," he asks, impish.
"Does it matter?"
"Before midnight it was illegal. Now it's not!"
[dialogue]
"I don't know," he says. "I never drink this much. It ruins my voice," he explains, "and you know how I get about my voice, and..." He's swaying clumsily, and the world is a bit unsteady. When he feels himself pitching forwards into Blaine he doesn't try to stop himself so much as he tries to simply not topple gracelessly. He finds it in himself to be intensely grateful to his drama II teacher, who taught him how to swoon convincingly and fall on his knees without bruising them black and blue. "I think," he confesses, trying not to push back into the one arm Blain has awkwardly wrapped around him, "that maybe someone put something in my drink? And now I don't feel so good."
"Oh," Blaine says, going all rigid and brittle under him, his arm tensing at Kurt's shoulder and pulling him back, so they can do that stupid soulsearching stuff and see straight into each other's eyes. "I think you should go home - let me take you home, Kurt. Where is your stuff?"
"That's a stupid ploy," Kurt says instead. He cannot remember where he left his coat, with his keys and very thin wallet in it. "I broke up with you years ago."
On the bus Kurt struggles to stay awake, his eyelids drooping, struggling to focus on the red LED display every time he opens them. When they get to Harrison he mumbles, "This is us. One mediocre president for another," even if it's actually Blaine who's guiding him out of the bus.
"Thanks. Thanks a lot," he slurs, and drops his keys. Blaine picks them up and Kurt sways unsteadily on his feet as the other boy opens his door and guides him inside, his hand warm at the small of Kurt's back.
"Here," he says, "have some water."
"I'm so tired," Kurt whines. "Why am I so tired?"
"You've just had a lot to drink," Blaine tells him. "Which one is your room?"
Kurt absently notices Blaine helping him take his shoes off, and he wants to tell him that they need to go back into their box or else, but his eyes are closing and he is drifting off to sleep and he is just so weary...
-
When he wakes up in the morning he has no memory of getting home, although if he had enough presence of mind to leave a full glass of water and some ibuprofen on his bedside table he can't have been too drunk, which is always good. But he hazily remembers dreaming of Blaine walking him home, which makes little to no sense because Kurt
Gingerly he rises and stretches. His head is thrumming and his fingertips tingle oddly, but walking is not as much of a hardship as he was afraid it was going to be, and he thinks he will in fact brave the shower. On his desk, not hanging on the hook by the door where he always puts them, are his keys, atop a sheet of paper folded in two.
please be more careful next time.
call me if you want to meet up,
i'd like for last night not to be my
last memory of you.
-b
There's a phone number below, and Kurt immediately knows that it is the same one he deleted four years ago, because he has too good a memory for these things.
[missing transition]
His roommate Kevin is idly shooting robots on their communal Xbox. "Hey man. You ok? The guy who brought you home last night said someone tried to slip you a pill, and that you should just drop him a text message or something to let him know you're ok."
-
He does not want to be alone with Blaine; he loathes both the possibility of them becoming friends again and the discovery that Kurt's years in Chicago have cost them all their similarities, all their complementary nooks and groves.
"I got a job here," Blaine says around his biscotti.
"Doing what," asks Kurt.
"It's for a charity; right now I do mostly admin support and grant writing. We help gay kids."
"It sounds nice," Kurt says. "Soul-satisfying."
"There's little bliss in grant writing," chuckles Blaine, "But yeah, it's always nice to know you're making a difference. What about you?"
"Last year undergrad," shrugs Kurt. "Directing and art-directing."
"No singing?"
"Only in my free time."
"That's surprising. How come? I always figured you would be on a stage, not behind it."
"I did some writing, but it was too dramatic, in the bad sense of the word," he admits. "Then for one of my sophomore classes we all ended up having to direct little plays and everybody said that I did not know how to delegate but in the end it was undeniable that my group was by far the best and most successful. Once I recovered from the fright of becoming Rachel Berry I started leaning more and more in that direction, and well... here I am. Anyhow, I have one more year left. MFA." How civilised and cautious they both are, Kurt thinks, high school friends that over time have become little more than acquaintances, like their mutual past encompassed little more than brushing past each other in marble corridors and standing nearby for the Warblers' yearbook photograph. How fake, how disgusting.
-
"So," Blaine says eventually. "Directing. I think we all knew you were... firm in your convictions-"
[Kurt ends up getting an MFA in direction with a minor in art direction. No acting for him, which was something I had to explain in the story, although I think it actually works with his character]
"You once told me I was overwrought," Kurt interjects.
"Well, I was kind of right," counters Blaine and Kurt is annoyed at him for saying that, but also happy when he continues. "But, anyhow, really, how come? I always figured you would be on a stage, not behind it."
"I did some writing, but it was too dramatic, in the bad sense of the word," he admits. "Then for one of my sophomore classes we all ended up having to direct little plays and everybody said that I did not know how to delegate but in the end it was undeniable that my group was by far the best and most successful. Once I recovered from the fright of becoming Rachel Berry I started leaning more and more in that direction, and well, now, here i am, directing my own play.
5. (And at a retrospective of his career the programme would comment on how "even his early work was characterised by consistent shows of precocious maturity and drive")
final year production + bf
rediscovering one another.
[Blaine spends the bulk of pt 4 pushing to rebuild their friendship, but Kurt has internalised a lot of his self-loathing and hatred at having failed etc. For all that he is happy enough with his life, he is still fundamentally lacking in conviction in himself etc and he wants nothing to do with Blaine - he doesn't want to revisit the past and spends the bulk of pt 4 being standoffish and abrupt and avoiding him, although they do eventually get to a warmer place. I also strongly resisted having Kurt come into his own just as Blaine returns into his life, I didn't want to imply causation but I was afraid everyone would read exactly that into it. The one missing ingredient in Kurt's life was not Blaine, it was confidence in himself.
On the other hand Blaine, knowing all the back story, was in a position to come in and say to Kurt, "listen, you are being needlessly harsh on yourself, you are still punishing yourself for things that were outside your control, for things that happened years ago and it's not fair to yourself to deny yourself an objective look at how far you've come. You deserve better than this."
The two fragments above are pretty much all the notes I have for pt 5 - that, and the fact that Kurt's final year production was, of course, an all-male production of Wicked.
It's gone through many iterations in my mind. I don't write sex, but I wanted them to be in bed together, and for Kurt to feel cherished and loved and come to full terms with his life not being what he had envisioned but abandoning that mad need to be what he had always imagined he would become - there was a sub-plot of sorts with Kurt's relations with the actors he casts in the roles, and how he finds himself suddenly in a role to mentior some kids and succeeds at it; he's gone into a field he didn't think he'd go into and not only is he good at it, he can do good for other people. This was going to come as a surprise to him, and snag him out of the final remnants of his self-loathing.
However, I also wanted to end this story with Kurt and Blaine just good friends for the reasons I outlined above, rather than back in a relationship (although with the possibility of one looming large in the horizon), but I did legitimately fear for my death at the hands of the fandom if I pulled that.]
I'm posting this because I have finally given up all hope of ever finishing it, and because someone over at kurt_blaine has beaten me to sending Kurt to Columbia College Chicago.
I started writing this story at the end of November last year - back when Blaine was OLDER than Kurt and cage!Dalton seemed a totally real possibility, and it has gone through many revisions since, but I have never committed to it enough to actually finish it, and every time I try I keep on getting jossed by new canon. This story is about twenty different things, some of which are described below. One which isn't is that it is not-quite-songfic set to Judy Collins' Albatross, which is where the title comes from. This was the first story I tried to write in this fandom and it shows so fucking much, but whatever, man, see if I care! There is a lot of meta and missing bits associated with this story. Ed notes and commentary are in a rather eye-catching shade of green. Gross spacing indicates lots of missing text. Only pt 1 is complete, and even that is missing one or two sentences. Everything else is in different states of development, most of them embryonic.
1. (If Kurt Hummel were to have a Wikipedia page, lovingly curated by a handful of obsessive fans, under 'influences' it would say Although his love of Wicked dates back to his childhood [27], he first saw it professionally performed in the summer of 2011, at a showing attended with his friend Mercedes Jones [28].)
The plan had been born nearly a year ago, before Kurt met Blaine, and Mercedes met Sam; it was something they had discussed last summer, when the air was hot and sticky and unsettlingly still and they would play at escaping Lima with their minds. When driving to New York seemed outside the reach of feasibility - mostly because neither Kurt not Mercedes thought their parents would let them attempt it - Chicago, only five hours away, presented itself as a cosmopolitan haven; the Windy City ready to blow their ennui away.
Over Christmas they smoothed over the harsh words left over from the autumn and as the winter deepened their friendship recovered. He enlisted Carole's help over spring break, and contained his smile every time she made a comment at the dinner table about how good a driver Kurt was, driving back and forth from Westerville that whole spring with nary a scratch on the car, or whenever she insisted he take her to the grocery store or made offhanded comments about how much more mature than other kids his age he was. She was subtle, and when Burt eventually became suspicious at their unrelenting closeness and complicit smiles and demanded to know what they were scheming he had proudly agreed with her too many times to justify saying no. It is a cloudy April Saturday when his father finally, inevitably, relents, and Kurt calls Mercedes and breathlessly says, "He said yes. We are going to Chicago. I need to get on eBay yesterday," and dissolves into giddy laughter as Mercedes shouts, "I'll be at yours in fifteen minutes!" down the phone.
A return to McKinley, Prom, Nationals and New York all stand between them and their trip, but Kurt can't wait until the summer comes and the two of them are off, together again, and with no one to interrupt them.
-
There are hours of research on the internet after that, haphazardly squeezed around the rest of their lives - where to stay, what to see, where to go, what to do, what to wear - and intense bidding wars on eBay for vintage McQueen trousers and DVF print scarves. The third time he is outbid within a second of a sale closing, Kurt is forced to concede to a glib Mercedes that all his time with Blaine, and his fancy uniformed school have both atrophied his reflexes. When one night Kurt discovers that Wicked is playing in a place called the Cadillac Palace he buys two tickets without consulting Mercedes, because how can he not?
[Wicked was indeed playing at the Cadillac theater... until February 2011. It ran for about five or six years, I think, and anyhow I was like fuck it he's totally going to see Wicked, authorial privilege.]
They set the date for early July, in the middle of their long summer break, and when the morning finally arrives they set off against a perfectly blue sky. Kurt watches in the rearview mirror as his father recedes into the distance, his last words a question on whether he'd checked the air on the spare tire and has brought the GPS charger. Mercedes and him have made separate playlists for the drive and once they're in the car they laugh every time a song they've both chosen comes on, warm because despite the tyranny of distance and the anguish of this year they have managed to remain Kurt and Mercedes, BFF.
Kurt is a good driver, self assured and confident and prudent in his big black car, and the drive is a smooth experience, soundtracked not only by their music but also by their incessant chatter. Soon after they cross into Indiana the conversation turns to their next - their last - school year, and then to the future that lies beyond.
"Do you ever regret coming back?" she asks him, concern creeping into her tone. "I know we didn't really talk about it, but prom--"
"Prom is over," he says, and his fingers don't grip the steering wheel tighter, like they did when the ache of that night was more recent. "I have a new tiara for my collection. It is tacky and cheap, nowhere near the best, but I don't regret a thing, no. It's been a good year, actually - I got Blaine, and Finn and Carole, we went to New York, to Nationals... And I'm just looking forward to how much better next year is going to be."
"Oh my god," Mercedes says, "you've gone over all zen-like. I can hardly believe you're the same person who went into a week-long sulk when Mr Shue wouldn't let us sing Britney."
"That was not a sulk," he tells her archly. "It was perfectly justified. The man was being willfully contrary."
He catches her sceptical gaze in the mirror. She hums the opening to Baby, One More Time.
[LINK MISSING]
"And besides, I am done pretending being less than what I am just to get other people to like me."
Mercedes turns to study him. Her head is tilted to the side and she has a rare, wistful expression on her face. "What?" he asks, a bit shrill, when the silence between them lengthens.
"Nothing," she says slowly. "I was just remembering you being too afraid to own up to being... you, when we joined Glee. I'm happy for you, Kurt. I'm so glad you've come this far," she tells him sincerely; without really taking his eyes off the road he reaches over for her left hand with his right and squeezes tightly.
"Couldn't have done it without you." Given the warmth they are exuding for one another, he thinks this may be the appropriate time to mention what he did the other night. "Mercedes, I got us tickets to see Wicked."
"Oh, hell," she says, snatching her hand back. "The things I do for you."
On the mirror, he gives her his most winsome smile. She eventually relents and smiles back, but still hits next on his iPod when a track from Gypsy starts up.
-
The city is sticky and humid when they arrive, and their carefully orchestrated outfits swiftly succumb to the rivulets of sweat that run down their backs five minutes after stepping outside. But they are undaunted, and they giggle stupidly the first time Kurt's GPS shortens Lake Shore Drive into LSD and tells them to take it all the way up to 13th. They are staying in a youth hostel in the Loop, because their parents were wary of letting them stay somewhere less familiar, and in a private room because their parents were wary of letting them share a room with strangers.
The first day they go to the Art Institute, and the second Mercedes insists they go to the Shedd Aquarium. Parking anywhere, they discover rapidly, is expensive, so once they are done exploring the delights of the Loop and gazing lustfully at shop windows in the Magnificent Mile they brave the public transportation system and ride buses and take the El to the near north side, the Gold Coast and Lincoln Park, weaving through streets and dipping into shops. It is such a wonderment, to be able to try on a Marc Jacobs rather than buying it online, to run their fingers through luxurious fabrics and be able to see how they catch the light, rather than having to trust blurry photographs on a screen; they do it for hours although in the end they buy nothing. They also walk along the lakeshore path, Kurt hiding himself under a ridiculously large straw hat that he insists is wholly in vogue and keeps the sun away from his face. He surprises Mercedes by revealing that he's actually brought swimming trunks, so they go back to the Forever 21 on State to buy her a bikini, and spend an afternoon playing in the cold lake water and lazying on the sand, interrupted only by the alarm on Kurt's phone ringing every forty minutes to remind him to reapply his sunscreen.
When the heat is too much they hide inside a Starbucks because they don't know anywhere else to go and talk about college choices. Mercedes doesn't know what she wants to do, and thinks she's going to go a liberal arts school, maybe somewhere on the East Coast, while Kurt is adamant about his choice of musical theatre or fashion, somewhere in Manhattan. He's been looking at courses, he says, researching, and he cannot wait until it is time. They both know that as soon as school starts again there will be meetings with Ms Pillsbury and all manners of paperwork, common applications and financial aid forms and personal statements; Mercedes has even brought her SAT revision book with her and every night, while Kurt moisturises and washes the city's summer grime off his face, goes through some of the math problems. Meanwhile, Kurt's time at Dalton, where it wasn't so much going to a four year college somewhere east that was a triumph but rather not going that was a failure, has only served to deepen his belief in a future that now includes not only education, but also Blaine. In New York Rachel and him had walked briefly along the streets where they knew Columbia to be, and the sensation of homecoming and belonging, and above all of wanting, combined with the thrill of having just sung inside the Gershwin, had been so strong that it had rendered him speechless it its rightness.
They go higher up, to Belmont and Addison, never wearying of the sight of the city beneath him as the El ferries them up and down its slatted tracks. Kurt lets out an unconscious mewl when they find a thrift store on Clark and Belmont crammed with silk scarves and some dead woman's collection of authentic silk kimonos at ridiculously low prices - he buys three. Mercedes smirks and rolls her eyes whenever she catches him staring at a young man in skinny jeans and calculatedly distressed tops although he reassures her - and Blaine, via constant text messages - that it is just novelty rather than attraction. Sometimes, if they stare back, Kurt freezes and blushes what she tells him is a nearly unnatural shade of red. Once, while Kurt is humming to himself and focusedly going through a display of second-hand ties, there is a low unfamiliar voice at his ear and Kurt jumps and is left stammering, gazing into some stranger's strikingly blue eyes without being able to say a word. Amidst bouts of laughter Mercedes drags him to one of the fitting rooms, where he has to concede that she has a point. It is an impressive shade of red.
On their last night in the city he dresses in clothes he brought for the occasion and they make their way to the Cadillac Palace and Kurt proudly collects their tickets at the box office. The couple sitting next to them shush Kurt every time he gets carried away and starts singing along, but he doesn't care. He snatches glances at Mercedes whenever the action on stage dulls down; she seems to be enjoying herself, but is definitely not as enraptured as he is. He makes a mental note to buy her something super special for her birthday. Afterwards, Kurt is all words and enthusiasm and energy. They walk to Millenium Park and make faces at each other and at their reflections on the Bean in the dimming light, although they give up on photographing them because of the glare of their flash. When he half-heartedly mentions that they should probably start thinking about making their way back to their hostel Mercedes holds out her hand and says, "we're not done yet. Give me the map."
She leads him from the park to one of the El stops, refusing to answer his questions as they climb up the stairs and wait. Only when the rickety train makes its way out of the Loop and heads north does she double check to make sure no one in their compartment is watching them and produces two unconvincing fake IDs that declare their names to be Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly. "I can't tell if the names are Puck's idea of a joke or not," she tells him, "and I know it's not until September, but happy birthday, Kurt. We're going dancing."
Once Kurt finds his voice and is done telling her just how amazing and incredible and amazing again she is, they practice memorizing the details on the cards the rest of the ride to Boystown, just in case they get asked.
-
Off the El they duck into an alley and school their expressions into careful masks of arrogance that do not belie their giddiness. Mercedes does most of the talking at the door, because Kurt may be tall now, but he still sounds like a sixteen year old girl; for the same reason Mercedes is the one in charge of procuring drinks, once they are inside. With a big grin and a fleeting squeeze of his hand she says "I'll be right back. Don't do anything I wouldn't," and vanishes, and Kurt's gaze travels around the room over and over, not knowing where to alight, because everywhere he looks there is novelty, and shock and wonderment, and he lets himself think of going to similar places - better places, probably - with Blaine, when they're together in New York. The idea makes him smile, and he is swaying gently, unconsciously, to the loud music, when a bottle is pressed into his hands.
"That was really quick," he says. "Thank you, Mercedes."
"You're welcome, darling," answers someone who is definitely not Mercedes. "Tell me, do you dance, or do you just stand there looking pretty?"
"Ah," Kurt says, looking up into blond hair and light eyes, "my friend. She'll be back in a second, actually."
"And if she's your friend she won't mind you having some fun without her..."
"No, really, she's coming right back," he repeats, beer suddenly awkward and cold in his hand. It is still unsettling, part of him thinks, to have someone pay attention to him. There is a difference between trepidation and fear, he is discovering, but it is a matter of degree, not of kind.
"Hey, relax, kid. Are you sure you should be here?"
Resolutely, he fights the urge to nod. "Yes, of course!"
"Then you probably should dance, shouldn't you?"
Kurt wants to say, 'leave me alone, I have a boyfriend, here's your beer back,' but the words die in his throat. If he wanted to he could reach out, curl a hand around the nape of this stranger's neck and pull the two of them together, and even after months of Dalton, and of Blaine and his constant warm love, that possibility is so novel that he feels himself nodding, the beginnings of a smile on his face again, and leaving behind the safety of the darkness until they are standing at the edge of the dance floor, where he moves just for himself. The music is hideous but he doesn't care, there's rhythm to his movements, grace and vitality as under the flickering strobe lights he can construct a better semblance of the other man's features, as he tries to move in closer and closer. Kurt forgives the stranger his watery eyes and his bottle-light hair, and dances, cold beer spilling from the bottle and onto his hand, until suddenly there's a tugging in his arm and someone is pulling him back. He hears Mercedes snarl "sorry, but you are really not his type," somewhere on his left and then she's dragging him outside the club, to the street where the heat of the day still lingers. He knows the colour has drained out of his face, except for those two spots on his cheek that are flushed with ire, and his lips are pressed into a thin grim line until he snaps, "what on Earth was that all about!" at her.
Mercedes just looks at him disdainfully, "If you're going to act like a slut you need to learn to think like one too."
"Excuse me?"
"What's that you're holding?" she asks in return.
In his hand, there is that beer still, condensation beading all over it, "This is a club, Mercedes," he tells her instead. "Is this not what we came here for?"
"No, we came here to dance and have fun, not for you to cheat on Blaine and suck the face of the first man who buys you a drink because you're too awestruck to learn to say no."
"Mercedes!" he sputters, wishing the undercurrent of horror and shrillness was not so clearly audible. "I was not going to suck his face! I was dancing!"
"Uh huh." she says, her eyes flickering back to the bottle he is still holding.
That's what does it. He drops the bottle, watches as it cants away, liquid frothing at the opening, spilling onto the sidewalk. "You know what, Mercedes, whatever. I don't care. Let's go back."
It's too late to take the train back, so they have to find a bus stop. The wait is lengthy, and they remain silent throughout; he takes his phone out and texts Blaine but receives no immediate reply. Kurt thinks he hears Mercedes hesitantly open her mouth once or twice to speak but he strides to the other side of the bus shelter, pretending to be interested in the schedule in front of him whenever that happens. They enter the bus in silence, and when Mercedes slides into one of the four-seaters he feels he has no choice but to sit across from her, although he stubbornly refuses to meet her eyes. As he is thinking that there is something so much more intimate to riding the El, to being able to look into people's second-floor windows and their back yards rather than storefronts and doorways, Mercedes tries again. "The chick at the bar busted me. I asked her for two Breezers, she took one look at me, asked me for ID and called the security guy over. They barely let me collect you before kicking me out of the door."
"I am not a slut," he repeats, still staring pointedly out the window.
"I know that," Mercedes says, a lot softer this time. "I just care about you, that's all."
(2. And if someone were to write his biography, page 27 would begin Kurt's first taste of the Great White Way, came in his junior year of high school, when he competed in the Glee Club Nationals held in New York as part of McKinley High's New Directions. It was this trip that finally crystalised his long-running desire to pursue an undergraduate career in the city.)
[This part is so small because in the original version of this story, roughly until January of this year, pt 1 above was actually pt 2. It was still set in the summer between Kurt (and Mercedes') junior and senior years of high school. Pt 1 was set in New York, at Nationals, with Kurt still a member of the Warblers and attending Dalton, and with Blaine being a graduating senior. Kurt missed ND badly in that version (it was all about cage!Dalton) and ended up hanging out with them in NYC, no one in the group really questioned this; his conversation with Mercedes in the car in the previous part was therefore somewhat different. He broke up with Blaine at La Guardia, on the way back to Ohio after losing, because he didn't see the point of continuing anymore - their relationship was nowhere near as adorable as it has turned out to be in canon, obvs. I had to retconn all of this when it became clear that
a. Blaine was stupidly head over heels with Kurt
b. Blaine and Kurt were very much in the same year together
I tried and tried to find ways of breaking them up, and it proved to be nearly fucking impossible, save for the solution outlined above. I didn't like it, because I wanted the big reveal in pt 3 to be, well, a big reveal, but seriously, these boys are solid - if one of them pulls some sort of self-defeating stupidity, it only takes the other about half a page before they try to snap one another out of their funks.]
pt 2 notes:
get no admissions - say only gets into safety
hang up on blaine
talk to pillsbury tell her she must be able to fix it
"well," she says, "let's not worry. you still have options, kurt. you can, um, go to your safety school and transfer after one year. or, if you want, you can not go anywhere and try again next year."
"kurt," her voice is softer and kinder. "last year was hard for you, i understand that. you transfered schools twice, your father was ill. your transcript is"
not
blaine is all well i won't go without you
some more stuff
ends with knows he's going to say goodbye
He breaks up with Blaine on a non-descript day in August. Technically, Blaine breaks up with him, but it is only after a summer of increasing listlessness where Kurt's unhappiness looms unspoken and malignant around them and the only way they can communicate becomes kisses and touches when no one else is there and there is no danger of being found out. Words are clumsy when Blaine wields them, and too sharp when Kurt does, and this is something they will never overcome.
On the day he knows Blaine is boarding a plane to New York he texts him goodbye and deletes his number off his phone.
3. (Were critics to comment on his career, they would tell of how "from the first time he was cast in a lead role, in his early university days, Mr Hummel [...]")
any of the girls here, so I can understand why you wanted me for this role. But I am not actually a girl." By now some of the people in the room are giving him horrified looks, although one or two also seem to be struggling to contain their laughter, and he does not want to discover whether it is tinted with mockery. Kurt knows he should try to cultivate friendships here, if he wants the next four years to be something other than a slog up a steep incline, but he is not going to do it at the expense of his dignity, or his self. "And much as I may love the opportunity to sing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas onstage I am not going to prowl around in a dress and in heels and two tonnes of stage make-up. So find yourself another Esther, because I am not the one you're looking for."
Storming off the room feels good, at least for a few seconds, and by the time he is questioning the wisdom of turning down his first star role the door has shut and his pride will not let him open it again.
Never mind. There will be more auditions. If he is going to do things, he is going to do them his way, because this is what he has been waiting for, what he has been promised, all of his life.
-
Kurt hates Chicago. He hates Chicago because the streets are laid out on an unforgiving grid and once he's outside the Loop there are no skyscrapers and there is no glamour and only two theatres playing Broadway shows and the pizza is so greasy that he feels ill every time he walks past a shop. He hates the bitter winter cold, which he has yet to experience in its full, and the sweltering summer humidity, which he recalls from his trip with Mercedes last year. He hates Lake Michigan because it is not the Atlantic Ocean, and the Chicago river for not being the Hudson, and Wicker Park for not being Williamsburg. But most of all he hates Chicago for being second best, for not being New York City, that city where he has always indubitably known he belongs, and he hates himself for exactly the same reason.
It's not that Kurt is not smart, but rather that he had never been interested by most of what he had been taught, and nobody had ever tried to engage him in any way; when faced with the rigours of motivated teachers who expected him to work, Kurt, who at McKinley had always sat in class with his iPhone at the ready because there was no accounting for time zones, had found most of his grades consistently hovering between the low and middle Bs - not a big difference from his marks at McKinley, where most teachers would regularly comment that with some minimal additional effort he could be a 4.0 student - but at Dalton he was trying. Yet remedying ten years of insouciance and lacklustre education in the middle of his junior year was unfeasible, when in less than a semester he had to choose between advanced placement and normal classes and to learn far more science than he had ever wanted to just so he could meet the graduation requirements. So in the end he was left with a mediocre transcript from a decent prep school, a generous scholarship from Columbia College and an earnest rejection from Columbia proper, and the choice was not so much heart-rending as it was nonexistent. Kurt could almost shed tears of frustration, and sometimes he still does.
He would defriend Rachel Berry on Facebook in an instant if it meant not having to be confronted with her success and her status updates ever again, but he knows it would be a short-lived reprieve at best. Within twenty-four hours there would be a friend request in his inbox, and with equal odds, a message about either how in a few years he can tell people that he knew her before she was famous, or a sad smiley face and a lengthy digression about the reliability of digital systems and their strange similarities to the fickleness of the human heart.
-
The Meet Me in St Louis debacle is not an isolated event, although of all of his early experiences in Chicago it is the one that leaves the foulest taste in his month. College life is proving to be, on the whole, rather disappointing. Absent from it are the glamour, the driven students - companions, really - and the long cups of coffee over scintillating conversations he was promised, not only by Columbia College's prospectus, but also by every single television show he has ever watched, every book he has ever read, and every story he has ever been told. Whatever enthusiasm he initially mustered at the thought of university, of getting out of Ohio seems so distant and alien now that he can barely remember how it felt, or why he felt it. He was not just leaving Ohio, he was going to New York, and those two things were so inextricably linked that now that he has one without the other he cannot help but to feel rudderless and adrift. His performances in class are perfunctory, rote; his singing guilty of the same sin he often levelled against Rachel's voice: soullessness.
Sometimes when he feels a particular kind of down he will go to Millenium Park and walk around the Bean, peering intently at his shifting reflection until he looks uglier outside than he feels inside, and thus calibrating the extent of his misery in a way he feels is suitably melodramatic but also undeniably objective. When that doesn't work he buys a cheap ticket for whatever is showing at the Cadillac Palace, and in the darkness of the theatre murmurs, sotto voce, the lyrics to the songs, and claws some warmth back from this city that is trying to snatch it all. And sometimes, if not even that cuts it, he goes back to his dorm room, locks the door so no one can interrupt him, and calls his father.
It is during one of those phone calls that Burt tells him not to worry about booking flights to come home for Thanksgiving because he's more than happy to drive up to Chicago and pick him up there. Kurt replies, "That is foolish, dad," and tries not to sigh so loudly that his father will be able to hear.
"I don't mind, son," his father insists. "I'm going to be up in South Bend the weekend before anyhow and that's pretty much half way already."
"No, Dad. You're not going to drive twenty hours in five days just to come and pick me up and drive me back again. I'll take a plane on Tuesday or Wednesday - driving to Columbus and back is enough!"
"Fine, kid," his father relents, taking Kurt aback with the sudden surge of weariness in his voice. "Let me know the dates when you have them, will you?"
-
In the summertime, most of the hours when he had not been hanging out with Mercedes had been spent giving careful thought about what bits of himself to slough off in the transition from high school to college. Early on he decided that under no circumstances would he join any of the a cappella groups on campus. By attempting to make it something to be, if not embarrassed by, then at least somewhat uneasy about, Dalton had limned his love for his individuality; for all that it provided a safe haven from the intolerance of the rest of the world, Kurt is not sure he will ever be ready, or willing, to forgive that most fundamental of sins. Nowadays his outfits are more elaborate, his tongue sharper and his voice clearer than ever before, and if people don't like him the way he is, well, that is their problem and not his.
Except that no matter how much he tells himself this, maybe it is Kurt's problem after all, insofar as blaming his loneliness and misery on others does little to abate the ache of any of these feelings. He has steadfastly kept his distance from everyone he meets, repeatedly coming to the conclusion that none of these people are capable of understanding who he really is, so attempting to explain it; opening himself up to their inspection and curiosity is hardly going to be worth the effort. So when the week before Thanksgiving he makes a friend on accident he does not even realise it has happened until much later.
"Hey - it's you! Our original Esther?"
Kurt nods, and the elevator doors shut. "For about thirty minutes, yes."
"Right, yeah. That was pretty special of you. Rather bossy, really. But," he leans over, "you totally did the right thing, to be honest."
Kurt
"It's a bit of a disaster," the other teen confirms, and Kurt can't help but smile a bit at that. "Philip," he adds, and, "here we are - what way are you going?"
-
His father, pulling him into a tight hug.
You look good, kiddo.
"Lima was hell, and now I'm stuck here for four years and it's like being in purgatory and I just... I'm just tired of waiting for my life to start, Dad."
"This is your life, Kurt. It may not be the one you wanted, but it's the one you-"
"It's not the one I wanted," he interrupts, rotund.
"It may not be, Kurt, but it's the one you have," his father repeats. "And it's not a bad life, from what you've been telling me."
Kurt's only answer is to sniff desultorily. His father sighs. "Listen to me, son. I am so proud of you, you know. So your grades weren't good enough for what you truly wanted, so you try hard this year and transfer if you really hate it there. But you need to give people a chance, Kurt."
[missing - the ending of pt 3 - he was going to make friends and settle, but it was going to most certainly end before he actually got cast for anything. I think, internet, you may be beginning to see what the little parenthetical texts are all about... and if not, perhaps pt 4 will sort you out.
ALSO, BONUS STORY BRANCH:
In some revisions Kurt was going to actually start in fashion, and switch to drama halfway through his second year - and then, as per pts 4 and 5, switch again. This is probably from one of those:]
He discovers new music, catches himself singing snatches of old folksy melodies sometimes, his voice slightly thinner and raspier with a lack of practice. When Judy Collins sings about the embroidery of her life as he is bent over one of the sewing machines in the fashion department, after hours, he can't help but smile, and it is mostly free of bitterness.
Mature singing voices that he could never emulate but that in an art school are inescapable. Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Marianne Faithful all suit him better now than the music from his high school years.
4. (Being interviewed he would demurely reminisce, "I'm no a big drinker, no. Wine and champagne occasionally, sure, and if I am feeling peculiarly mischievous a cocktail or two. But never White Russians, I simply cannot abide them. I think it's the milk.")
[missing an intro - we have fastforwarded to Kurt's final year - there are problems with the dates here - Blaine was meant to be older and finish school a year earlier, meaning that Kurt was indeed turning 21 in these scenes, like he says he is. In later versions Kurt switched to an MFA program so I could maintain that extra year of schooling difference, but what there is here is caught in between the two and not really right for either. I think this is actually set in September of Kurt's fifth year of university. But, Blaine returns!
There were many problems with this part, including the huge temporal gap between it and pt 3 - you go from seeing Kurt settle and be grossly unhappy and self-hating to seeing him four years later having made an unclear amount of progress on getting over things. I struggled a lot with that, and with the temporal spacing of the parts. Briefly I thought of making this story a Seven Things story, while still continuing my fight against the trope by having the seven titular things be misleading, irrelevant, or just plain wrong - this scene begins with Kurt quoting himself and saying he does not drink, and yet the first thing you see him do is get terribly drunk. I wanted to tell a story about Kurt lying to himself, and lying to people, and just in general about the lies we tell about our lives, and how we spin stories. I wanted to write him thinking he has come to terms with his failure to make it to New York, but by this point he hasn't yet, he just thinks he has. It's a subject I'm far too comfortable with.]
Kurt leans over and says "I don't feel so good."
"Sheesh, Kurt, how much have you had to drink?"
"Before midnight or after," he asks, impish.
"Does it matter?"
"Before midnight it was illegal. Now it's not!"
[dialogue]
"I don't know," he says. "I never drink this much. It ruins my voice," he explains, "and you know how I get about my voice, and..." He's swaying clumsily, and the world is a bit unsteady. When he feels himself pitching forwards into Blaine he doesn't try to stop himself so much as he tries to simply not topple gracelessly. He finds it in himself to be intensely grateful to his drama II teacher, who taught him how to swoon convincingly and fall on his knees without bruising them black and blue. "I think," he confesses, trying not to push back into the one arm Blain has awkwardly wrapped around him, "that maybe someone put something in my drink? And now I don't feel so good."
"Oh," Blaine says, going all rigid and brittle under him, his arm tensing at Kurt's shoulder and pulling him back, so they can do that stupid soulsearching stuff and see straight into each other's eyes. "I think you should go home - let me take you home, Kurt. Where is your stuff?"
"That's a stupid ploy," Kurt says instead. He cannot remember where he left his coat, with his keys and very thin wallet in it. "I broke up with you years ago."
On the bus Kurt struggles to stay awake, his eyelids drooping, struggling to focus on the red LED display every time he opens them. When they get to Harrison he mumbles, "This is us. One mediocre president for another," even if it's actually Blaine who's guiding him out of the bus.
"Thanks. Thanks a lot," he slurs, and drops his keys. Blaine picks them up and Kurt sways unsteadily on his feet as the other boy opens his door and guides him inside, his hand warm at the small of Kurt's back.
"Here," he says, "have some water."
"I'm so tired," Kurt whines. "Why am I so tired?"
"You've just had a lot to drink," Blaine tells him. "Which one is your room?"
Kurt absently notices Blaine helping him take his shoes off, and he wants to tell him that they need to go back into their box or else, but his eyes are closing and he is drifting off to sleep and he is just so weary...
-
When he wakes up in the morning he has no memory of getting home, although if he had enough presence of mind to leave a full glass of water and some ibuprofen on his bedside table he can't have been too drunk, which is always good. But he hazily remembers dreaming of Blaine walking him home, which makes little to no sense because Kurt
Gingerly he rises and stretches. His head is thrumming and his fingertips tingle oddly, but walking is not as much of a hardship as he was afraid it was going to be, and he thinks he will in fact brave the shower. On his desk, not hanging on the hook by the door where he always puts them, are his keys, atop a sheet of paper folded in two.
please be more careful next time.
call me if you want to meet up,
i'd like for last night not to be my
last memory of you.
-b
There's a phone number below, and Kurt immediately knows that it is the same one he deleted four years ago, because he has too good a memory for these things.
[missing transition]
His roommate Kevin is idly shooting robots on their communal Xbox. "Hey man. You ok? The guy who brought you home last night said someone tried to slip you a pill, and that you should just drop him a text message or something to let him know you're ok."
-
He does not want to be alone with Blaine; he loathes both the possibility of them becoming friends again and the discovery that Kurt's years in Chicago have cost them all their similarities, all their complementary nooks and groves.
"I got a job here," Blaine says around his biscotti.
"Doing what," asks Kurt.
"It's for a charity; right now I do mostly admin support and grant writing. We help gay kids."
"It sounds nice," Kurt says. "Soul-satisfying."
"There's little bliss in grant writing," chuckles Blaine, "But yeah, it's always nice to know you're making a difference. What about you?"
"Last year undergrad," shrugs Kurt. "Directing and art-directing."
"No singing?"
"Only in my free time."
"That's surprising. How come? I always figured you would be on a stage, not behind it."
"I did some writing, but it was too dramatic, in the bad sense of the word," he admits. "Then for one of my sophomore classes we all ended up having to direct little plays and everybody said that I did not know how to delegate but in the end it was undeniable that my group was by far the best and most successful. Once I recovered from the fright of becoming Rachel Berry I started leaning more and more in that direction, and well... here I am. Anyhow, I have one more year left. MFA." How civilised and cautious they both are, Kurt thinks, high school friends that over time have become little more than acquaintances, like their mutual past encompassed little more than brushing past each other in marble corridors and standing nearby for the Warblers' yearbook photograph. How fake, how disgusting.
-
"So," Blaine says eventually. "Directing. I think we all knew you were... firm in your convictions-"
[Kurt ends up getting an MFA in direction with a minor in art direction. No acting for him, which was something I had to explain in the story, although I think it actually works with his character]
"You once told me I was overwrought," Kurt interjects.
"Well, I was kind of right," counters Blaine and Kurt is annoyed at him for saying that, but also happy when he continues. "But, anyhow, really, how come? I always figured you would be on a stage, not behind it."
"I did some writing, but it was too dramatic, in the bad sense of the word," he admits. "Then for one of my sophomore classes we all ended up having to direct little plays and everybody said that I did not know how to delegate but in the end it was undeniable that my group was by far the best and most successful. Once I recovered from the fright of becoming Rachel Berry I started leaning more and more in that direction, and well, now, here i am, directing my own play.
5. (And at a retrospective of his career the programme would comment on how "even his early work was characterised by consistent shows of precocious maturity and drive")
final year production + bf
rediscovering one another.
[Blaine spends the bulk of pt 4 pushing to rebuild their friendship, but Kurt has internalised a lot of his self-loathing and hatred at having failed etc. For all that he is happy enough with his life, he is still fundamentally lacking in conviction in himself etc and he wants nothing to do with Blaine - he doesn't want to revisit the past and spends the bulk of pt 4 being standoffish and abrupt and avoiding him, although they do eventually get to a warmer place. I also strongly resisted having Kurt come into his own just as Blaine returns into his life, I didn't want to imply causation but I was afraid everyone would read exactly that into it. The one missing ingredient in Kurt's life was not Blaine, it was confidence in himself.
On the other hand Blaine, knowing all the back story, was in a position to come in and say to Kurt, "listen, you are being needlessly harsh on yourself, you are still punishing yourself for things that were outside your control, for things that happened years ago and it's not fair to yourself to deny yourself an objective look at how far you've come. You deserve better than this."
The two fragments above are pretty much all the notes I have for pt 5 - that, and the fact that Kurt's final year production was, of course, an all-male production of Wicked.
It's gone through many iterations in my mind. I don't write sex, but I wanted them to be in bed together, and for Kurt to feel cherished and loved and come to full terms with his life not being what he had envisioned but abandoning that mad need to be what he had always imagined he would become - there was a sub-plot of sorts with Kurt's relations with the actors he casts in the roles, and how he finds himself suddenly in a role to mentior some kids and succeeds at it; he's gone into a field he didn't think he'd go into and not only is he good at it, he can do good for other people. This was going to come as a surprise to him, and snag him out of the final remnants of his self-loathing.
However, I also wanted to end this story with Kurt and Blaine just good friends for the reasons I outlined above, rather than back in a relationship (although with the possibility of one looming large in the horizon), but I did legitimately fear for my death at the hands of the fandom if I pulled that.]