Fic: The Couple Who Dances Together
Title: The Couple Who Dances Together
Fandom: Glee/Klaine
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The evolution of Kurt Hummel (and thus Kurt and Blaine's relationship) through dancing.
Word Count:3, 410
A/N: Kurt centric. This is for you Brilee!
Kurt Hummel had always liked to dance.
He had always taken a liking to the limber movements of professional dancers, the way they could move their body in such hypnotic ways. At the tender young age he had taken up a liking to dance, he didn’t quite understand how they could do it, but he was transfixed nonetheless. He couldn’t pretend he could dance at such a young age, but he worked tirelessly at it. He didn’t even pretend to come up to any level set by Mike Chang or the more suitable representatives for dancing that were out there, but he waltzed around his room in clumsy movements every night anyways. He liked the way that although the only thing he could do was flail his arms around in a vaguely circular movement and shimmy his shoulders, he could still do that, and that was his form of expression as much as singing was.
People didn’t always appreciate that, or understand how much he really did love dancing, even if he wasn’t the best at it.
Until Blaine.
~~
Blaine didn’t hesitate to admit that he wasn’t a dancing supernova. In fact, he was pretty sure that his patented two step and the tempo keeping snaps of his fingers were about the only ways he could ever attempt to dance, but he still enjoyed it. Most people laughed at him and his inability, but Blaine happened to like that about himself. He had always had this scenario in his head. When he would find that perfect boy with those piercingly beautiful eyes and a tender sense of compassion, perhaps even a thick hair to entangle his hands in and a soft mouth, they would dance together. Blaine knew he would probably do no more than awkwardly shuffle back and forth, but he always imagined it like he would be too busy bowing his head onto his shoulder and laughing breathless little laughs to notice.
~~
The first time Kurt Hummel danced was at a party thrown by his parents. He remembered his mother’s vibrant laugh and his father’s gruff laughter as he was unwillingly pulled onto the dance floor for a “dance”. Really, it was more of a merry traipsing across the surface of the carpet than dancing, but the sentiment still stood that Kurt saw that and wanted to do it. There were other adults comingling around him, but he saw a spotlight and reached to claim it. His dad showed him the video of it sometimes, how his tiny face scrunched up in a smile and his short legs half ran half skipped around the carpet. He could hear his mother’s faint laughter in the background and the din of conversation of the background. His precariously happy face gleamed through the filmy video medium. Really, though, Kurt was embarrassed by what he had considered as “dancing”, but it had sparked a love for it within him that had never really gone away. This was when he had begun to retire to his room every night and romp around its borders, occasionally knocking down things and making a “hell of a ruckus”, as his father would say.
~~
The next time Kurt seriously danced weren’t entrenched in the same cheery circumstances. He was still young, only 6 years old, and he was sitting up in his room. He heard a soft whimper from downstairs, and so clambered down the wooden stairs to investigate, his small footfalls casting a small echo around the house and alerting Burt to his son’s presence. He found a smooth armrest to sit down in and hastily wiped his eyes and adjusted his shirt.
“Kurt,” he mumbled, “didn’t see you coming.”
Kurt’s cerulean eyes stared, liquid and shiny, back into his.
“It’s your mother.”
Kurt kept staring, understanding coasting over his head.
“She’s uh, she’s gone, and I’m afraid, that, that, she’s not coming back.”
Kurt gasped, a sudden popping noise. “Daddy, what did you do? Did you and Mommy get into a fight? Is she at the TJ Maxx a few blocks from here? I’ll go get her back, Daddy, and you can apologize and then everything will be good again. Right?” Kurt had a vague memory that he had been proud of himself for using the term “blocks from here”, because he hadn’t known what it had meant but had heard it around.
“No, Kurt; she’s not coming back. She’s up there.” He pointed to the ceiling and gestured beyond.
“She’s really… she’s really not coming back. She’s… dead.” Even saying the word Kurt had felt sinister and dreary. He had always seen actors in television shows and dramas wear black at funerals, so he naturally thought of black when he thought of death. He figured black would’ve been an accurate description of his feelings then. His insides felt charred and ashen, his bright clothes were terribly out of place.
“Ye- yes kid.”
Then Burt did a strange thing. His face seized up and he started crying. Rivulets of tears streaked down his worn face, like water on a tin roof. They flowed freely and unconsciously, while Burt tried to halt their fall with several errant swipes of his hand.
Kurt wasn’t used to seeing his father cry, and was desperate to make him smile, so he did one of the things that made him smile. He took his father’s hand, and jabbed it at a vintage record player resting on a table a few feet away from them. Burt started it playing, a lilting waltz parading through the room. Kurt beckoned for his dad to get on his knees, and then Kurt waltzed with him, taking a confident lead.
Burt’s face was a combination of laughter and tears. His voice was rough with emotion as he spoke.
“Thanks, kiddo.”
Kurt replied with a brilliant, toothy smile.
~~
Kurt didn’t dance much after that. He soon began to associate dancing with that heavy sadness and, as he matured, a strong sense of nostalgia. That didn’t correspond with his attempts at erasing those painful memories of his past from his mind either, so he stopped. Dancing couldn’t fit into the new lifestyle he had, and he was of a mind of progress. He couldn’t allow this one thing to bog him down, and so dancing was cut out of his life.
~~
It was reintroduced when he joined Glee Club. He had joined purely because he had intentions of becoming a star, of moving to New York and fully realizing his potential, and he reasoned that the more experience he acquired singing and of the show business world, the better his odds were of making that his reality. The Glee Club’s reputation didn’t matter much to him either; he knew it would only compound the already demoralizing reputation he owned.
That first day of Glee Club was the first day he genuinely danced again for enjoyment, even if it was a frankly awful dance and a song that Kurt wasn’t even sure was legal to perform, much less with Rachel Berry in those gloves and tights.
He had rediscovered the joy of dancing though, and with that he had rediscovered his smile and mirth. Sure, he was slushied weekly and constantly had to protect his designer clothes from dumpster filth, but there was a raw joy in Glee Club that he hadn’t had in a long time. Dancing no longer reminded him of that miserable day he found his dad crying and lost his mother, but instead of his fellow Glee Clubbers and their horrible, and yet so wonderful, self-imposed sentence of social suicide. He had found a haven of understanding within a school whose small-mindedness, he had thought, could envelop the world and still have room for the sun and the stars.
~~
That bubble had been shattered the day Karofsky stepped into Kurt’s life.
He had been casually bullied by Karofsky before, and by now was used to the occasional shove and fiery look thrown his way, but one day it had suddenly escalated.
What was once a shove was now a thrust into a locker; what was once a look was now a threat. Everyday he lived his life in fear that this hulking mass of ignorance would carry through his threats and impose the violence he always promised Kurt.
Kurt was strong, yet everyday he inspected his scars and bruises and was told a different thing. They screamed weak, woman, not manly enough. They unfurled at the same pace of the hardening of his heart, and Kurt could never reclaim his joy at the sight of them disappearing because another layer always masked their recovery.
But still, this was something he could deal with. Being different was something he was used to, and although he denied the hopelessness of it, Kurt still sometimes mourned the underlying theme of his experiences. When did being different become something bad?
However, it was four simple words that rocked him from his familiar, even if uncomfortable, place in the world of Lima, Ohio.
I’m gonna kill you.
With those four words he was swept into a whirlwind of action, of paperwork and stiff, starchy uniforms, and of embraces and regrets.
It was called Dalton Academy.
~~
When Kurt had met Blaine, he was on a spy mission for New Directions, checking out their competition.
When Kurt had met Blaine, he was broken.
He hid behind his sunglasses and designer coats, looking out unto a sea of blue and red. They all looked the same to him.
Then he had picked a face from the crowd, and suddenly a new world expanded right before his eyes.
A boy with dark hair, slicked with gel, and shining eyes turned to face him. His face was contoured and his mouth hung slightly agape.
Kurt was struck by his beauty. He had never imagined encountering a boy with such loveliness and grace, a boy that seemed to have stepped out of his fruitless dreams. He stammered asking about their Glee Club, and then even more upon learning that the Glee Club here was actually cool.
In fact, according to this Blaine, the Warblers were like rock stars.
When Kurt watched Blaine perform Teenage Dream as the head of the Warblers, well, things just seemed to be getting better and better. Kurt blushed as he watched Blaine dance, a fluid two step and playful snaps of the fingers. There was something so loose about Blaine’s dancing, something so happy and lively. It reminded him of how he would dance around his room before, how he didn’t care what he looked like but danced to dance. Blaine wasn’t doing quite that, but he was coming as close as he could in a simple dance routine.
Kurt wanted to dance like that again, and as Blaine shot a broad smile at him, he finally felt like he finally had the chance to again. When he transferred to Dalton later, he cherished that thought through his first weeks, his first weeks of trying to fit in and learning the ropes, of lingering apparitions of Karofsky’s words running through his head for him to suddenly realize that he was safe, that he was fine.
~~
Dancing sort of became their thing. Whenever things would be bringing Kurt down, he would sneak to Blaine’s dorm room, and they would play the cheesiest songs they knew and dance to them. They would dance and Kurt would laugh at Blaine and his inability to dance, and Blaine would grin not so inconspicuously and act like he never heard that and pull Kurt back to the center of the floor. Kurt learned the little nuances of Blaine’s laughter and the differences between his real and fake smiles, and after a time he started to notice the ghosts in Blaine’s eyes too. Sometimes, though, he would look back at Blaine and they would be gone just as suddenly as they came.
Of course, it was all completely platonic.
~~
When Kurt and Blaine started dating, their dancing became something much more sentimental, but they still weren’t fully together in it. They did everything Blaine had dreamed about, laughs and awkward shuffles alike, but it wasn’t completely their thing yet.
In fact, the day Blaine’s dancing truly conjoined with Kurt’s was the day of prom.
Everyone’s eyes were shining with anticipation and an assumption of victory when Principal Figgins took the stage. Kurt stood faithfully by Blaine, fervently wishing his mind could disconnect from his body before he subconsciously took Blaine’s hand for a reassuring squeeze or pulled him into a fierce hug. He had been restraining it’s twitch all day, restraining his need to show the world that he had this beautiful boy next to him that was his. Finally, for once, he had gotten something he wanted, and he wasn’t about to let that go uncelebrated. He didn’t know how he had gotten Blaine or under what blessing he apparently was, but Blaine was there and had always been there and suddenly Blaine realized his feelings for him and suddenly Blaine was his. Just his. In a perfect world, Kurt would’ve liked to have won the award of Prom King. He would have liked to take Blaine’s hand in his and stand in front of a crowd of smiling faces and finally say, he’s mine. But he didn’t live there. He lived in Lima, where such things were unthinkable.
Principal Figgins cleared his throat and pronounced very clearly the name “David Karofsky” as Prom King.
Kurt rolled his eyes for a look at Blaine, watched him seethe as Dave claimed his crown.
“He’s apologized,” Kurt whispered just a little bit patronizingly, because he was mostly very flattered that Blaine still flared up like this when the memories of his harm reared their heads.
“I don’t care,” Blaine whispered back.
Kurt redirected his attention to Principal Figgins, who was about to announce Prom Queen.
There was a moment of silence, and then a flat “Kurt Hummel”.
Kurt ran.
~~
Kurt was running, perpetually running. He ran from the hurt, he ran from the pain, and now he was running from Blaine too. He just ran and ran and ran, until he heard a distressed voice call from behind him.
“Kurt! Kurt, Kurt wait!”
He slowed, turning to face Blaine.
“Don’t you get how stupid we were? We thought that, because no one was teasing us or beating us up, that no one cared.”
Blaine looked positively broken.
“Like some kind of progress had been made. But it’s still the same.”
“It’s just a stupid joke.” Blaine said, approaching Kurt with an optimistic but untrue word of encouragement.
“No it’s not. All that hate, they were just afraid to say it out loud, so they did it by secret ballot! Like one big, ominous, practical joke.”
“You’re not a joke,” Blaine replied quietly, “anything but.”
~~
They can’t touch us, or what we have.
Blaine kept Kurt’s words in mind as they returned, stared down the McKinley High student body as they gazed steadily at his boyfriend with humor and malice in their eyes.
He assumed a quiet position in the back, watched as Kurt gracefully accepted his mar. “Eat your heart out, Kate Middleton.”
And then Principal Figgins suggested the traditional dance between Prom King and Queen, and Blaine watched disheartened as Kurt descended the steps and met Dave at the floor.
It all happened so quickly. There were a brief of words from Kurt, and then Karofsky ran. Kurt looked around helplessly, and Blaine recognized the struggle in his eyes and he fought to keep his tears in their rightful place.
They can’t touch us, or what we have.
He repeated this mantra in his head, taking quickened steps and staring only at Kurt as he advanced.
“Excuse me,” he started, willing his eyes to stay on Kurt’s hopeful face. “May I have this dance?”
That dance had strengthened them; it had brought them infinitely closer. They danced with brittle feet, with a cold fear but a warmer love. They danced their fears and troubles away, danced themselves together and healed.
~~
There was one other instance of significance in which dancing was involved. Of course, Kurt and Blaine frequently would drive to either of their houses after school and merrily dance the night away many times, but there was one instance that really solidified the meaning of dancing to them.
Blaine was Tony. Kurt had grappled with this idea tirelessly over the past few days, and he was genuinely happy for Blaine, but it was the implications it placed on himself that really troubled Kurt.
It reminded Kurt of his bruises. They were thankfully healing now, and Kurt did not have to bathe every day to be reminded of his horrendous present, but rather of a horrendous past. But that didn’t matter. They were softening like his heart was now, now that Blaine had entered and stayed in his life. But his rejection still stood as a reminder, much as his bruises were. They shouted much the same insults at him as his bruises had. Womanish, weak, not good enough. It seemed like no matter what he did, he could not escape their omnipresent whisperings of defeat and subjugation.
He had confessed this all one night in a phone call to Blaine, listened as Blaine’s breath hitched and his voice strained.
“Don’t listen to them Kurt, you’re better than that. I think you’re good enough, and that should make up for at least some of this.”
Kurt smiled feebly and offered a sincere, “Thanks Blaine.”
“But,” he continued, “it just doesn’t seem right that I’m always archetypically cast in a effeminate light. I can’t help the way I look, so why should I be punished for it? It’s not fair to look like this and have a whole range of opportunities taken away from me just because of it.”
“If you didn’t look the way you looked,” Blaine began tenderly, “I would’ve never turned around that first day and thought, ‘Wow, he’s gorgeous and I want him in my life’. If you didn’t look the way you looked, I would’ve never kissed you that first time, I would’ve never cuddled with you or held your hand or shared my life with yours because none of you and me would’ve ever happened. You’re you, Kurt, don’t change that.”
“I don’t want my perfect boyfriend changing on me,” he added with a laugh.
“When you say things like that, how am I supposed to live up to it?” Kurt chuckled, mostly to hide the breathless tone of his voice.
“I’m coming over there,” Blaine said abruptly, hanging up quickly.
Kurt just sat back down on his bed, staring hazily at his bedroom wall, laughing to himself.
~~
Kurt opened the door to find an enthusiastic Blaine on his doorstep.
“Not that I don’t enjoy your presence, but why exactly are you here?”
“Let’s go up to your room,” Blaine replied.
Once up in Kurt’s room, Blaine closed the door, sat on Kurt’s bed, and tugged him down to sit next to him.
“I love you, and you are a man to me.”
Kurt smiled affectionately, leaning into Blaine’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” he replied softly.
“And I wanted to prove it to you,” Blaine replied.
He got up, took out of his iPod, and took a minute to select a song. He slid up the volume and took Kurt’s hand.
L is for the way you look at me.
Blaine started dancing, automatically assuming an improvised girl’s part and allowing Kurt to be the male lead.
O is because you’re the only one I see.
Kurt beamed, pressing a faint kiss to Blaine’s forehead.
V is for very, very extraordinary.
They danced lazily but meaningfully around the Kurt’s room, occasionally knocking down papers and then laughing vibrantly afterwards.
E is even more than anyone that you adore and
The music crescendoed with Blaine and Kurt’s hearts, it lifted higher and higher as they left all fears behind and fell into each other.
Love is all that I can give to you
Love is more than just a game for too
Two in love can make it
Take my heart and please don’t break it
Love was made for me and you.
They collapsed onto Kurt’s bed, both laughing and grinning.
“You know,” Kurt began, “I always loved dancing.”