Being Born Is the Hardest Thing (fic)
Title: Being Born Is the Hardest Thing
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Kurt/Blaine, Burt Hummel, Mrs. Anderson, David Karofsky
Spoilers: 3.14 ("On My Way")
Word Count: 2,881
Warnings: Triggers that appeared in the episode, one instance of homophobic language, one instance of misogynistic language, non-explicit sex, non-explicit violent thoughts.
Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, and I don't make any money writing this stuff.
Summary: Blaine is sleeping in Kurt's bed while the rest of the family is home because, this week, no one has the energy for pretense. Feelings, with hope.
Author's note: Thanks to anxioussquirrel and lavender_love00 for betaing. The story is also here on Tumblr. My other 3.14 reaction fic, about a discussion between Burt and Kurt, is here. I LOVE COMMENTS, but I like to stay unspoiled for future episodes; please don't mention anything that's coming up, including guest stars and song choices. Thanks!
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Blaine is sleeping in Kurt's bed because, this week, no one has the energy for pretense.
Of course, Blaine's slept over before. But it's been when Burt and Carole have been out of town on campaign stops or, more recently, orienting themselves to Washington. Occasionally, it's when either or both of them have been home and it's gotten late and Blaine looked pathetically tired and they insisted he not drive back home, but sleep in the living room. (Each of those times, he's just lain on the couch until the house has fallen asleep, and then snuck up to Kurt's room, returning to the couch just before dawn.)
But this week, the formalities go by the wayside. Kurt is a wreck, and Blaine's not much better. Burt wants to save them both, but he knows he's not the one to do it. They’re facing something that he’s never had to.
He tries to understand the degree of devastation the Karofsky kid felt when he saw those words scrawled on his locker and his Facebook wall - Burt imagines it must have been something akin to when he began to lose Kurt’s mom. And as much as he wants to believe it’s not true, he knows in his gut that Kurt and Blaine have both felt it before, and are reliving it now, all over again.
So when Kurt starts crying in the middle of dinner for the second night in a row, and the only thing that keeps him from completely breaking down is Blaine's hand on his shoulder, Burt makes his decision.
Apparently Blaine is thinking the same thing. He stays in the kitchen afterward to help Burt with the dishes while Kurt assembles tomorrow's lunch for himself and his father. Kurt puts a sliver of prosciutto on Burt's sandwich, because Burt loves ham and a slice that thin is not going to kill him, even if Kurt sometimes worries that it will.
"Burt," says Blaine, wiping the dishtowel around the rim of the salad bowl. "I - Kurt and I - " With a deep breath, he sets the bowl down on the counter. "I'd like to stay over tonight, with Kurt, if it's okay with you."
Burt looks at Blaine. The kid should be nervous, and maybe he is a little. But mostly, what Burt sees is the set of Blaine's jaw, resolute and protective. It's weird. Sometimes, when he looks at Blaine, it's like looking at himself. It shouldn't be that way, with a kid who is not his son. But there it is. Kurt is the center of both of their worlds, and it makes them both fearless, sometimes.
Burt turns away from the sink and glances at Kurt, whose eyes are fixed on him, a strange mix of expectant and resolute. He has no idea how he raised such a strong young man.
Burt turns back to the sink and pretends to know what to do in this situation. "It's a school night," he says.
Kurt's the one to speak. "So was last night, and I didn't sleep at all. Well, hardly at all. I'll sleep better with Blaine here." He pauses, arranging the spinach just so before topping the first sandwich with its second slice of bread. "I always do."
Okay. That was ballsy.
There's this rigmarole that Burt figures he ought to go through right now with the two of them. He probably should lecture them about sneaking behind his back, even if he already knew, without being told, that they've been doing this. He should act fearful about them sleeping in the same bed, and warn them that it's going to make it all the much harder when Kurt goes off to New York in the fall. This is what parents are supposed to do.
But his son, and his son's boyfriend, are always being told that their choices are wrong. Burt doesn't want to be another voice in that chorus. Not this week. He doesn't know if that makes him a bad parent, but he can't really bring himself to care right now.
At least they're not threatening to get married. Not yet, anyway.
Burt turns to Blaine. "Have you asked your parents?"
Blaine grabs a spatula from the rack and starts rubbing it against the dishtowel. "I more told them it was a possibility. I didn't wait for an answer."
"I'll talk to your mom," Burt says. They finish the dishes in silence.
------
"It's a school night," is what Mrs. Anderson says when Burt brings up the proposal. Burt is surprised that that is her first objection, even though it was also his. Maybe she's cut from different cloth than he thought.
"I know," Burt says. "But Kurt was up until at least 2 a.m. last night, and I'm pretty sure it was Blaine he was talking to for most of it, so - Maybe they'd get more sleep this way."
He hears her sigh. "He's so shaken. I really don't know what to do."
"Neither do I. I'm grasping at straws."
"No," she says. "I don't think it's grasping. I think they're right, actually. I think they can help each other through this better than we can. They both feel - " She clears her throat, but not enough to prevent it from shaking. "They both feel what that kid's been going through."
When Burt says goodnight to them, the only law he feels compelled to lay down is that they get up a bit early so they both have time to take showers. He's not going to give them a lecture about being inappropriate. Finn has won the prize for that in the household this week. Whatever they decide to do in Kurt's room tonight - as long as it's not a wedding, well, it's their business.
------
So Blaine is lying in Kurt's bed tonight, face to face in the moonless dark with the boy he's pretty sure he wants to spend the rest of his life with - even the parts that completely suck, like tonight. Or maybe especially the sucky parts.
Blaine's hand is curled under Kurt's cheek and it's soaking wet, because every time Kurt tries to stop crying, he starts again. Blaine does, too, but for different reasons. The feelings aren't as complicated for him. All he personally knows of Dave are those two times they fought at McKinley, and that look of utter defeat and hopelessness on Dave's face when he left Kurt on the dance floor at prom.
That face flashes through Blaine's mind every time he tries not to think about the loop tightening around Dave's neck.
The rest of what he knows of Dave has come through Kurt. He's followed his evolution from Neanderthal to really-messed-up-closet-case to less-messed-up-closet-case to almost-friend to thwarted lover. When Kurt told him about the butterscotch last week, it made Blaine's heart ache. He knows what it's like to be in love with Kurt. He can't imagine what it would to have that love, but not have him.
On Blaine's first day back at school after the Sadie Hawkins dance, his ensemble completed by a cast and two crutches, he expected to find an anonymous note or two inside his locker before first period. That was the usual way the morning started.
What he hadn't thought about was that his tormentors had been at school for the whole week that he was gone, keeping up their routine in his absence. So instead of one or two slips of paper, he found a dozen notes peppered with words he hoped his future children might never hear.
When he showed them to his guidance counselor, she made a few disgusted faces before putting them through the shredder. "When people say bad things about you, just imagine in your mind that those words are pieces of paper, and then put them through an imaginary shredder so they can never hurt you again," she said, clapping her hands together as if that took care of the whole thing.
But that wasn't the worst part.
Neither was the worst part when he hobbled around a corner on the way to math and a foot came out in front of him - the foot of a boy he didn’t even recognize, but was later told was the cousin of one of the kids from the Sadie Hawkins dance. "Too bad they didn't break both your legs, faggot."
No. The worst part was when Amber, his lab partner in science class, tried to help him up. Something snapped in him - at the wrong time and the wrong person - and he pushed her away. "Just because I'm gay doesn't mean I'm some kind of pussy who needs the help of a girl."
It was the first and last time he ever uttered that word.
She wouldn't look at him all through science class later that day.
On the bus ride home, he stuck his earbuds in his ears, ignored the jeering, and thought about ways to kill himself. He wanted something perfect and painless - a quick transition from tumult to calm. But they all seemed messy, and distressing, and convoluted. Worse, he worried about surviving the attempt and having to lie in a hospital bed again, this time for weeks, maybe months, not quite alive and not quite dead. He worried about having to look his mother in the eye when she asked why.
So instead, when he got home, he told his mother that he was never going back to that school ever again.
And that day, his life started over.
------
When Blaine was nine, he went to visit his cousin Anna in the hospital just after she'd given birth to her first child. "You look so tired," he told her, because although he was raised to be polite, he somehow loses his filter around the people he deeply loves.
And then he saw the baby. It was the first time he'd ever seen a newborn, and if he'd though Anna looked bad - well, this creature looked horrible. Its head was grotesquely large, its belly button stuck out almost as much as its penis, and its face contorted into a hundred different expressions, all of which looked like reactions to pain. It kept opening its mouth stiffly, as if it was trying to force out vomit.
"It looks so miserable," he said, and Anna laughed.
"That's because he was just born, sweetheart. Being born is the hardest thing we ever go through."
------
Blaine reaches for Kurt's hand and wraps his fingers around it.
"I'm so glad you're here," Kurt says.
"Me, too," Blaine says. "It's the only place I want to be."
"Sobbing with your boyfriend?"
"Yes."
A sound comes from Kurt's throat that sounds something like a laugh, but then it turns into a hiccup.
"Your hiccupping, sobbing, pallid boyfriend who didn't even do his complete moisturizing routine tonight."
"Yes," Blaine says. "Although I probably should have made you do the complete moisturizing routine. Creating a semblance of normalcy can be helpful, I've heard."
"I'll start up again tomorrow. And I'll talk you through yours, on the phone or in person. Deal?"
"Deal."
Kurt squeezes Blaine's hand. There are no repeats of the hiccup, and Kurt's breath becomes slow and steady, although a little raspy. Blaine wonders if Kurt might be asleep. But then Kurt speaks. "I don't feel guilty for not being in love with him."
Blaine waits. He doesn't want his answer to come too quickly, in case that will make Kurt think it's somehow less true. "I know," he finally says.
"I just - I wish I'd called him back. Just one of those calls. Even if it was to tell him to leave me alone. Because then he would have had the chance to say something."
"You didn't know."
"But - that guy who saw us at Breadstix. I knew he was bad news. But when the phone calls came, I conveniently forgot all about him." Kurt hiccups again. "He should have known that he wasn't alone."
"Come here," Blaine says, opening his arms and pulling Kurt in until Kurt is just where he should be, snug with his back against Blaine's chest, Blaine's arms wrapped around his body like armor. "It's not too late, you know."
Kurt sighs. "I was thinking of visiting him at the hospital. Maybe tomorrow."
"I think that's a good idea." Blaine buries his nose in the nape of Kurt's neck. "Maybe - " He's about to offer to come, too. He wants to show Dave his support. But maybe it would come across instead as Blaine being the protective boyfriend, marking his property, rubbing in the wound of a broken heart on top of everything else.
So, instead, Blaine says, "Would you bring him flowers from me?"
"Of course," Kurt says, craning his neck around to kiss Blaine. It's chaste and warm and sleepy, full of gratitude and sorrow.
Until it's something different. Until Kurt turns his body in the circle of Blaine's arms and begins pressing desperately against Blaine's lips, and warmth becomes all-consuming fire.
This is not what either of them had in mind when they asked Burt if Blaine could sleep over. They thought what they needed was each other's presence.
But it suddenly occurs to Kurt that this is the antidote to everything that is trying to destroy Dave, and Blaine, and himself. All that evil and hate can try to tear them down, but they can never turn this into anything other than it is: beautiful, and transcendent, and life-affirming.
If he could believe in a god, this would be his offering. He would present it on the altar again and again, ask the gods to transform it into strength and hope for all the kids like them who've been cast aside, as comfort in the afterlife for the ones who have died.
They abandon themselves to each other's sweat and skin as if the fate of the world hangs on it. Maybe it does.
One of Mrs. Anderson's favorite yoga videos begins with a meditation that Blaine, until this moment, has always thought was kind of corny. The instructor talks about the muscles being a warehouse for pent-up emotions, and how the stretching and movement in the workout can unlock those warehouse doors, freeing old emotions to escape the body: "Don't be alarmed if you suddenly begin to laugh or cry during a pose. Let the feeling run over you. It's the wisdom of the body healing your heart."
Well, maybe the way she says it is still kind of corny, but he understands the point now. He alternates between weeping and laughing into Kurt's shoulder as they move together, his muscles contracting and stretching and burning for his lover, for love. He's not sure if the feeling coursing through him is joy or grief or exultation - maybe it's all three. Whatever it is, it's glorious.
------
Across town, in his room in Saint Agnes' Hospital, Dave Karofsky sleeps. It's a sleep made easier by trazodone, pain killers and the lulling hum of the pulse monitor.
It should be harder to sleep here, where everything is so unfamiliar and clinical. But the lack of familiarity is what makes it comforting. The trappings of Dave's life are gone; all he has of what he's been and what he may become are his body and his thoughts. He has been stuck with the same thoughts for so long. But maybe here, in this generically serene room with its dusky blue walls and its soothing beige art, where nothing is as he would choose it to be and yet everything is somehow what he needs - maybe here, he can learn to have new thoughts.
The nurse comes and checks on him every hour. His face looks peaceful in the shaft of light from the corridor. She has never been able to understand how some of them can look so content in their sleep, when their waking hours are spent in fits and tears and tormented stares. She supposes that this - a small taste of tranquil rest - is what they were aiming for, is what brought them here in the first place. She's glad that some of them find it on this side.
The trazodone makes it hard for Dave to remember his dreams in the morning, and he assumes that this is a blessing. Lately, his dreams have been blurs of anxiety, ribbons of ugly words and heart-pounding animosity. He wakes up in a sweat, cursing at the top of his lungs, wanting to punch someone but afraid that, even if he knocks the other guy out, another one will come for him - and another, and another, until he is just pulp and blood.
But here in the hospital, without Dave's waking knowledge, his dreams have started to change.
He's enveloped in warmth, his ear leaning against a heartbeat, his head riding the rise and fall of someone else's chest.
A door opens. It's gray at first, then red, then blue. Beyond it is a man's voice, warm and deep and resonant. He doesn't recognize it, but it dawns on him that it’s everything he has ever wanted.
Hands take his, and there is the comforting sense of lips against lips, stubble against stubble, heart against heart.
"You're finally here," the voice says. "I'm so glad you made it."