Where Wind and Water Meet - Chapter 5
Title: Where Wind and Water Meet
Artist: morph0fairy
Author: firefly_ca
Rating (art/fic if different): PG
Word Count: 24K
Warnings (if any): Major character death wrapped up in magic realism.
Fic Summary: Inspired by/loosely based on George MacDonald's At The Back of the North Wind. Blaine has never behaved the way normal children do and has always been too quiet and detached from the world around him. Everything changes the day he meets a strange boy named Kurt with the ability to change his appearance and who says he can control the wind. Blaine doesn't know why, but it feels like he's known Kurt forever. AU, but not totally detached from the Glee universe.
Chapter 5
There are a lot of things for Blaine to get used to now that he's back with his family again. The hardest part is what's happened to his hearing. Fortunately, the fever didn't leave him entirely deaf, but tests soon make it clear that the nerve damage will never heal, either. He's lost what seems like an alarming amount of hearing, and the process of finding hearing aids that restore enough of it to let him communicate with his mother and in crowds is long and unpleasant. In the end, they never do find anything that lets him fully hear music again.
At first Blaine is crushed by this realization, because he loves music and he loves singing, but it gets better after the night Kurt finds him listening to the radio and crying, because everything sounds so strange and ugly.
"You can still hear music whenever you want," he promises, sitting next to Blaine on the bed and hugging him gently. "You just have to sit quietly and remember what it used to be like. And it's not like you can't hear the music that matters."
It's true. The music that would wash over Blaine in the waves when he was at the top of the world with Kurt still sits in his ears even back here, like it's found a safe place to hide away inside of him, knowing it can't be crowded out by any other distracting songs. In the end, Blaine supposes that it's better to always have actual living music in his head than it is to have something that someone recorded and sold as a part of their job. But there are still other things that Blaine has to get used to, and even though nothing hurts as bad as the deafness, they aren't very fun, either.
"Why can't I go out with you tonight?" He asks, more than a little petulantly, one night months after he's been sent home from the hospital. Kurt comes to see him almost every night to talk, and sometimes even during the day, but he's only taken Blaine with him on another trip once.
"Because it's hard for you now," Kurt says, the same words he's said so many times before. "You get tired and it's not good for you. You can come the next time you're doing really well and I'm doing something quiet, but you need to take care of yourself, Blaine."
"I can take care of myself just fine," Blaine mutters, a little sullenly. He can't help it if he's not as strong as he used to be.
Kurt only laughs, and it would make Blaine angrier if he didn't love Kurt's laugh as much as he does. Kurt's voice is the only high sound Blaine can hear without any trouble now. His laugh is the only new music Blaine can listen to.
"Blaine," Kurt says, fondly. "Sometimes they have to let you go home to take a nap after recess if you and Tina decide to play tag. You can't pretend it doesn't happen, I've seen you. You need to learn to take everything a little slower now that you're back in this body again."
"It's not my fault I was sick," Blaine protests. "Why do I get in trouble for it?"
"Because in this world the logical thing happens, not the thing that you deserve," Kurt says, with just the tiniest trace of sympathy mixed in with his amusement. It's a little frustrating, but if Blaine wanted sympathy he would be talking to Tina right now.
Tina is much, much younger than Blaine remembers. Having grown so much outside of his body and apart from people while he was gone makes Blaine nervous about his friendship with her at first. He's scared that they might not have anything to talk about anymore, or that his going deaf might mean that Tina might not want him around, but thankfully he was worried about nothing. If anything, now that he's back, Tina is an even better friend than she was before. She's so real and human and everything that Blaine likes most about people, he wants to be around her even more than before. She's funny and happy and all she wants is for someone to notice her and tell her how wonderful she truly is, although Blaine knows she would never come straight out and ask for it. He's more than happy to give her all the attention she craves, and in return she adores him.
"I'm so glad you didn't die," she tells him one day, hugging him tightly and sobbing into his shoulder, because Tina cries when she feels things that are too big for her to explain. "I was so scared you would go away and never come back, and you're the best friend anyone could ever have. I love you even more than I love your stories."
Blaine considers this the highest compliment when it comes from Tina, because Tina loves his stories. He's told her all about the country at Kurt's back, as a part of their continuous discussions about their secret and unseen friends. As months fall away to become years, Tina eventually stops talking about the second Tina, until she seems to forget that she ever created her, but she always wants to hear all there is to be told about Kurt and where he comes from.
"I wish I could think of amazing stories like you can," she says to him, her eyes shining. Of course, none of the things Blaine tells her are things that he's imagined, but he also knows it's pointless to try to correct her. People only ever understand Blaine as far as they're comfortable understanding him. For Tina, she is comfortable with Blaine as a boy her age with a big imagination. He never pushes her to see him as more, because he wants her to be happy.
The only person who seems to be alright with the idea that Blaine has outgrown himself and isn't quite as human as he seems is Cooper, which surprises Blaine. He loves his brother very much, but he never thought he was especially observant when it comes to how people work. Cooper is wonderful and friendly and fun to be around, but he also thinks people are all transparent and easily read. For years he's gotten into trouble at school for thinking teachers "didn't really mean" what they tell him. His parents have a standing threat to ground him if he uses a lack of pointing as an excuse for disobeying. Still, when it comes to Blaine, Cooper approaches everything differently, especially after the hospital.
"Sometimes I think your fever lasted a lot longer for you than it did for us," he tells Blaine one day.
"I think you're right," Blaine says, because he's not sure how much he can say to Cooper without anyone getting upset.
But then Cooper starts to talk to Blaine about the little things he notices more often, and the things he says are all the things that Blaine knows are true. "It's like you're older than I am sometimes," or, "I don't think you belong in this family at all."
Their father overhears the last one and Cooper has to apologize and is grounded for a week. Blaine sneaks into Cooper's bedroom after supper to tell him it's alright and he's not mad.
"I'm not a part of this family," he says. "I never have been, but I'm very glad I'm here."
Cooper smiles at him, relieved.
"I wasn't trying to be mean," he says. "I'm glad you're here, too. But you're not like us. You're not like anyone. That's the best thing about you."
Even though Cooper seems to know on some level that he's not the older brother at all, it doesn't stop him from being fiercely protective of Blaine, either. He lurks around every corner when Blaine first goes to school with his hearing aids, quietly daring anyone who looks at Blaine strangely to give him a reason to push them around. He's not even in the same school as Blaine, so he almost certainly has to skip some classes to do it, but Cooper doesn't seem to care, no matter how much trouble he gets into.
"Someone has to look after him," he mutters when their mom suggests that Cooper go play with some of his own friends instead of shadowing Blaine everywhere. "He doesn't remember to do it on his own."
It's during one of the days that Cooper has decided Blaine doesn't take enough care of himself that he first hears one of Blaine's stories about Kurt and his country, while Tina is over for the afternoon. He listens intently, with a strange look on his face, like he's a little concerned, even more puzzled, and especially like he's trying to remember something from a long time ago. It happens the next time he's around and Blaine is telling Tina stories, too. Finally one day he pulls Blaine aside and asks,
"Why don't you ever talk to me about Kurt?"
"I didn't know if you wanted to listen," Blaine says, carefully.
"You're my brother," Cooper says. "I want to know all the stories in your head."
Cooper calls them stories just like Tina does, but the way Cooper stares at Blaine when he tells them, and the way he sometimes will mention a detail from one of them like he's talking about something from one of his textbooks, makes Blaine certain that Cooper knows on some level that what Blaine is talking about is real. Blaine can tell the idea scares Cooper if he thinks about it for too long, and one time he says,
"I don't like to think about you living so long out of normal time. If you don't have to follow our rules, you could disappear at any time and I wouldn't be able to stop you."
"Everyone dies some time, Cooper," Blaine says, because he can say things like that to Cooper without getting a strange look, like it's wrong for someone who is currently only supposed to be eight to be thinking them.
"People die," Cooper agrees. "But it's different with you. I don't feel like you're ever going to die some days. It's going to be like you walk out the door and never come back. I don't want you to forget me."
Blaine tries to make Cooper feel better after that by focusing on stories that don't have to do with how long he's lived outside of his body, and are more about how much he didn't forget about his family when he was with Kurt.
"You don't forget loving someone," he says. "And it's even harder to forget someone loving you. It rearranges who you are on the inside and changes things around. Even though I don't belong with any of you, you found me and held on when I was nothing. That's not something that ever stops changing you, even after you've left."
For a long time, Blaine never meets anyone else who he feels like he loves like his family and Tina, and he's okay with that. He knows that teachers get worried when he forgets he's in such a young body and uses a word someone in primary school would never know, or when he corrects them on something in history class because he's heard the actual person they're learning about tell him the story. The other students just think he's weird and tend to steer clear of him. Either way, ultimately most people try to avoid him.
It gets better when he finally goes to middle school. When he becomes a teenager, he still doesn't fit in, but it's easier to just shrug and write him off as a smart kid who's hormones are making him act strangely, which they do. Blaine never expected that he would start to act or think like a teenager at all as he got older, and evidently neither did Kurt, because they're both surprised when he starts blushing and tripping over his words when Kurt is over, the year he starts high school. He's always thought Kurt was the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, but now when he looks at him, something unfamiliar pulls at him, making him want to reach out and touch, to see what Kurt really feels like when their skin touches. It's incredibly frustrating and confusing, because he doesn't feel like he loves Kurt any differently than he did a year ago, and he can't tell what's changed. Something has changed though, that much is obvious the first time Kurt comes to visit while Blaine's been daydreaming and they're both shocked to find him stark naked.
"What are you doing?" Blaine hisses, trying not to stare.
"What are you doing?" Kurt demands, equally indignant. He has wings again, for the first time since they came back from his country, but they do nothing to hide the parts of him that Blaine feels incredibly awkward about seeing. "I always look the way you want me to, so that makes this your idea. What exactly were you thinking about?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Blaine mutters, quickly, because what he was thinking about might not be a proper thing to say to the North Wind, no matter how good a friend he is.
"What's gotten into you lately?" Kurt asks, sounding a little frustrated and a lot more amused. Blaine just shakes his head miserably.
"I've been a teenager before," he says, and his face feels like it's on fire. "When I was with you at the top of the world. I don't know why it all feels so different this time."
"You've never been a teenager," Kurt tells him bluntly, as he darts out the window to sit on the roof. Blaine can see his one leg dangling down in front of him. "You're not even one right now. You are acting like one though. Maybe it's from being trapped inside that body."
"I hate this," Blaine says, because he's certain that however old he might be, he's never felt as human as he does right now, and it's as stifling and uncomfortable as it is exciting and terrifying.
"You might feel better if you stopped thinking about me naked," Kurt suggests. "I mean, I certainly don't mind if you'd like to carry on like this - clothes are entirely too human for me to bother with when there are none of them around, but - "
"I'm not thinking about you naked," Blaine insists, feeling his face go even redder.
"It's sort of obvious from where I'm sitting that you are," Kurt says, actually laughing now. Blaine shuts the window in mortification and spends the next hour on the phone with Cooper, who has now moved out to go to college, complaining about the baser aspects of human nature until his brother suggests using a sock in exasperation, and Blaine hangs up in a panic, remembering that this is all still intensely embarrassing.
(click for link to high quality) (alt link)
Thankfully, things seem to have evened out by the time freshman year is over. He can talk to Kurt face-to-face again without feeling like he's going to throw up, and he's more or less gone back to being the quiet, happy kid with the hearing aids who manages to avoid slushie attacks despite his lack of popularity. Tina insists that it's because the first time he got hit, a hearing aid shorted out, which awoke the mothering instinct of the terrifying cheerleading coach. Now anyone who touches a hair on Blaine's head gets a one-way ticket to expulsion.
"I saw her with a lady at the mall one weekend," she says. "I don't know who she was, but she had Downs and Coach Sylvester was helping her adjust a hearing aid. She was looking at the lady the same way she looks at you when people laugh about how you can't hear what people are saying in a crowd. Like she's going to destroy anyone who makes things any harder for you."
Blaine would like to say that Coach Sylvester is just a secretly nice person who doesn't like to see anyone suffer, but they've both watched her laugh when Artie Abrams got a stick pushed through the spokes of his wheelchair, so he supposes that Tina's right. After that happened, Blaine makes an effort to spend more time with Artie, hoping that some of the protection he gets will be extended to him, because Artie's a nice guy, and even though he sometimes stares at Blaine like he's talking a made-up language, he's really nice and seems to enjoy hanging out with him and Tina. He's a good addition for the group, and especially good for Tina, since he likes to do so many new things, he starts to push her to be a little braver just so she can keep up.
Artie is the one who tells them about the auditions for the newly re-made glee club. Blaine assumes right away that Tina will join Artie and audition. She loves singing and is always singing a new song she's just heard for Blaine when they're alone together. Blaine thinks Tina has a beautiful voice, but she always just laughs at him, not unkindly, and asks how he can tell.
"You ears are tricking you," she insists. But for as much as she pretends she's no good, Blaine knows how much she loves it, and that she had lessons for years, until her instructor got mad at her one day for not warming up properly before she practised. Tina had run to Blaine's house in tears, vowing to never take lessons again, but she still sang, and Blaine is surprised when she tells him she's not going to audition.
"What if they don't like me?" she frets, wringing her hands together. "What if I mess up and forget the words, or get so nervous I start to stutter and can't stop, or what if Mr. Schuester hates my voice? I've never had him before for any classes, I don't know what he's like."
"He's alright," Blaine offers. "He doesn't pay much attention to what we do in class, but he's always excited when we learn something and remember it later."
"What if I can't learn?" She asks, her voice shaking. "What if I'm already as good as I'll ever be?"
"You should audition with her," is Kurt's suggestion that night. "If she's so scared about sounding bad."
"If she sounds bad, I sound worse than terrible," Blaine points out. "Even you say that sound like a cat being thrown into a lake when I try to sing new songs."
Kurt smiles a little, like he's still pleased he came up with that description, but he also says,
"That's my point. If she's scared she'll sound bad, she should audition with someone who's not afraid of sounding much worse. She'll feel much better about it, and you love helping people. This is a good way to do it."
Blaine mentions the idea to Tina the next day, although he doesn't say where it came from, because she always looks at him strangely when he talks about Kurt like he's anything more than a nice story. But even though she doesn't believe he's real, she likes his idea just fine, and soon Blaine talks her into walking up and putting her name on the signup sheet with trembling hands.
She auditions with "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry, and Blaine laughs a little when he see's Mr. Schue start a little at the powerful, aggressive performance. He's a little surprised himself. He's always known Tina likes to pretend she's more than just a scared shy girl who doesn't know what to do with a lot of attention, but he didn't know she would be so convincing as soon as she got onto a stage. Mr. Schuester is smiling widely by the time that she's finished, and Blaine thinks it's a very good sign.
He's a little more reserved when he sees Blaine walk onto the stage after, and Blaine doesn't blame him. He's seen Blaine after school many times whenever he assigns small group work, because he needs to know if he's missed anything important in the confusion. He knows that hearing things properly isn't something Blaine's capable of. Blaine smiles a little apologetically and says,
"I know I'm not what you need to win in competitions, but I love music and I have a good sense of rhythm. If I get in, I promise I'll contribute by finding more members instead of singing solos."
He's not lying. He might be doing this for Tina's sake, but now that he's here, watching how dejected Mr. Schue looks after only seeing two other people come in to try out, he wants to help out in any way he can. He sings "Good Morning" from Singin' in the Rain and by the time he's finished, it's impossible to ignore the way his teacher is politely cringing at the cacophony.
"Well, you do have good timing," Mr. Schuester says, obviously trying hard to find something nice to say. "And if we don't have enough members we can't compete or qualify as an official club, so I have instituted an open audition policy. But..."
He trails off a little helplessly, and Blaine can see him wrestling with how to make this glee club work with a shy girl who looks like she wants to run every time someone looks twice at her, a great singer who can't use his legs, and a terrible singer who can.
"It's okay, Mr. Schue," he says, reassuringly. "I'll make it up to you by bringing in some people who will help you win."
***
Blaine knows Mr. Schuester doesn't think Blaine will be able to get anyone to join the club. After all, he doesn't have a lot of pull with anyone other than Tina at McKinley High. His ears make a lot of the students feel awkward and they don't like having to slow down when they talk before he can understand. It's not that Blaine is especially disliked, but he's a nuisance. Still, he does know a few people who don't mind him, and he also knows the Glee club will only survive if it's popular, which is why he stays late one night after their first, lackluster meeting to talk to some of the cheerleaders.
Blaine has known Quinn Fabray since his time in the hospital. When he was well enough to be moved onto the pediatrics floor, Quinn had been there too. She was a year older than him and sitting up straight in her bed like a little princess, staring hard at a book like she was reading, even though Blaine never saw her eyes move across the page and quickly decided that she was just trying to look like she wasn't waiting for someone she knew to walk through the door. Her leg was raised up into the air in a sling and covered in a big pink cast. She always looked miserable, and scared, and lonely, so Blaine had started talking to her.
At first she just stared at him like he was disgusting and not worth her time, but then one day when he couldn't adjust his hearing aids properly no matter how hard he tried and everything was ringing and he just felt awful, she ordered him to come sit on her bed and cautiously reached up to his ears and gently fiddled with the controls until the shrieking in Blaine's head stopped.
They started talking a lot after that. Blaine found out that she had hurt her ankle in gymnastics, and that her daddy was an important person with an important job so he couldn't come see her much, and that her mommy didn't like hospitals and didn't come to see her ever. For the week they shared a room they were inseparable, and even though they never had much to do with each other after, they would always smile and say hello when they passed one another at school. Now that they were in high school together, Quinn made sure none of her own powerful circle ever gave Blaine a hard time.
When he walks up to her after Cheerios practise, she's talking angrily to Brittany Peirce and Santana Lopez, two other cheerleaders who Blaine doesn't know that well, but who he recognizes as good friends of Quinn. They're just who Blaine needs. It's hard to catch their attention at first, because the more important people seem to be, the harder it is to get them to look at you, and even in high school this is how things work. All three of them are in an intense discussion about finding Quinn an acceptable boyfriend who will give her the best chance at becoming prom queen. Blaine isn't sure why that's important, but they're so focused on their discussion that Blaine has to actually block Quinn's path before they see him.
"Oh," she says, awkwardly shifting from one foot to another, smiling at him in a very strained way. "Hi Blaine. How are you?"
"I'm fine," Blaine says. "How are you?"
"Same," Quinn says, still awkward.
"Quinn why are you talking to the boy with scary robot ears?" Brittany asks, glancing back and forth between them in her sleepy, inquisitive way.
"They aren't scary robot ears," Quinn snaps, taking a step closer to Blaine. "How many times do I have to tell you?"
"If they were robot ears he'd have an excuse for reading in that awful monotone," says Santana. "He's just defective, Britt."
"Santana, just shut up," Quinn hisses. "What was it you wanted, Blaine?"
"Mr. Schuester's re-starting the old glee club," Blaine says, not wasting any time.
Quinn just smiles at him, like he's the sweetest, silliest boy in school. "Blaine, why would you think I'd be interested in joining a glee club? I have my reputation to worry about."
"Actually, I wasn't going to ask you, although of course the invitation is open to everyone," Blaine says, a little guiltily. "The person I wanted to talk to was Brittany."
Brittany's eyes get big, like no one's ever asked her about anything as if she were an actual person apart from the influence of Quinn and Santana. Blaine wonders if she likes knowing that people see her as more than her friends, but before she can say anything, Santana is stepping forward, literally standing between Blaine and Brittany. She's scowling so hard Blaine has to fight not to step back a little.
"Look, Frodo Bushy Eyebrows of the Shire or whatever your name is," she says. "Just because you've got nothing to lose singing like an idiot in front of an entire school who has unlimited access to the slushie machine, you don't need to drag Brittany down with you."
Blaine might not have good hearing anymore, but he still sees and notices just as well as he used to. He can see the fierce protectiveness that's sitting just beneath all the insults. He raises his hands placatingly.
"I don't want anyone to get made fun of, I want to help. Glee club needs someone like Brittany."
"Why me?" Brittany asks.
"We had our first meeting earlier this week," Blaine explains. "Mr. Schue's choreography? It's not very good. I know I've seen Coach Sylvester yelling at you when you try to add new choreography to her routines, but I thought if you joined glee club, you'd actually be able to try it without getting into trouble."
"How do you know she's any good?" Quinn asks, narrowing her eyes at him.
"Sometimes she dances in the halls on the way to her classes," Blaine says. He always watches the people who seem to hear their own music wherever they go. It makes him feel less awkward knowing that even if the music isn't the same, he's not the only one who hears something. "You're amazing, Brittany. Our glee club doesn't stand a chance without you."
Blaine is being transparently sycophantic; he's always been good at being persistent, but his subtlety can be so laughable he often doesn't even try. Still, Brittany doesn't seem to mind, and Blaine realizes he's not entirely certain if subtlety would even work on someone like Brittany anyhow.
"Santana," she says, tugging excitedly on Santana's sleeve. "He knows I'm amazing and wants to let me choreograph!"
"No," Santana shakes her head adamantly. "No way. No one is popular enough to survive joining a club with those losers, not even you." She looks at Blaine and sneers, "Go find someone else to trick into joining your misfit brigade, you little twerp. We're not interested."
"We never do what I want," Brittany complains sadly as Santana starts hustling her away. Quinn remains behind, staring at Blaine with her arms across her chest.
"Nice try," she says, "but going after the weakest link won't change anything. You'll never get us involved in your club."
"It's not really anyone's club yet," Blaine corrects. "There's only three of us. If enough cool people joined it wouldn't take long before no one bothered to think about us at all. It's hard for a club to be lame when it's not really anything."
Quinn purses her lips tightly and stares at him for another long moment before she rolls her eyes at him fondly and says,
"Go home, Blaine. I've got things to do."
***
Blaine wisely doesn't ask whose decision it was to go through with it, but by the time the next glee club practise rolls around, Mr. Schuester is beaming wildly as he introduces "three very talented new singers" to the group. A beaming Brittany prances into the room, followed by an equally wary Quinn and Santana. Tina lets out a terrified squeak and seems to try to blend in with her chair and Blaine pats her knee reassuringly. The Cheerios aren't so terrifying. He already knows how great Quinn can be when she's not worried about her image, and as much as even he isn't brave enough to think about making Santana angry, Blaine's seen the way Brittany leads her around the school, literally by her little finger. Blaine's seen Brittany tear up when she sees a teacher kill a fly, and anyone who can keep a girl like that happy can't be as angry as she looks.
Whoever finally gave the final approval for glee club out of the three girls, Quinn is the one who wastes no time bringing New Directions up to her code of social acceptability. The first thing she tries to tackle is the name, which is less successful than Blaine thinks she was expecting.
"I'm sorry, I just don't hear it," Mr. Schue says, shrugging helplessly.
Quinn's perfect posture sags a little before she points to Artie and commands him to, "Say it. Say it right now and Mr. Schue, pay as much attention as you can."
Artie is beet red as he dutifully repeats, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are the New Directions."
"Great job, Artie!" Mr. Schue beams at him. "I just don't understand what you're not telling me, Quinn. New Directions is a strong name that shows all of Ohio what we're really about. Everything begins here, with the music we're making together. Our name isn't afraid to take a stand and say, 'Get ready, world. Here we come!'"
Artie makes a strangled noise and rolls out into the hallway as fast as he can while Quinn heaves a sigh of frustration. Her other efforts to raise the level of glee go a lot closer to plan. It's two weeks and a fairly concentrated word-of-mouth campaign later when she drags the first of her victories into the choir room by the hand, fullback Noah Puckerman.
"Puck owes me a very big favour," she says, shortly, like she says everything these days. "He's going to begin the very long process of making it up to me by joining glee club."
"Whatever," Puck says, in a fairly futile attempt to look like he's his own person and not entirely under Quinn's command. "I've got nothing better to do on Tuesdays after class anyways."
Things pick up speed after that and soon two other jocks, Matt and Mike, join their ranks as well. Matt and Santana join Tina and Artie as early standout voices, but both Tina and Matt are almost phobic of being the centre of attention. It's a long time before Mike finally suggests that if they choreograph the numbers a little differently, it could be staged so the audience is more drawn towards the group instead of a single singer.
"You're too good at this to spend all your time humming in the background, man," he tells Matt, who smiles at him gratefully.
Brittany is thrilled when Mike ends up being as big a fan of dancing as she is, although you'd never know it to look at him, and before long it becomes commonplace to see the two of them huddled up close to each other, whispering in the hallway as Santana looks on in disapproval. Blaine really wants to talk to her about it, but he's not certain if he wouldn't get hit for his efforts, especially because he's certain the person Santana is jealous of is Mike and not Brittany.
"I don't understand these people sometimes," he tells Kurt, on one of the rare nights Kurt has decided Blaine can handle coming to keep him company as he works. Their hands are laced together tightly and if Blaine looks straight ahead instead of at his feet, he doesn't even notice that they're walking across rooftops, clearing entire streets in single strides. "She's so worried that she might like a girl, she has no idea what to do about it. She must spend so much time thinking there's something wrong with her. It's sad."
"Do you think a girl liking another girl is wrong?" Kurt asks, curiously.
"Of course not," Blaine says. "I like you, and you look like a boy and I look like a boy, but there's nothing wrong with it."
"You just look like a boy?" Kurt sounds even more interested now.
"I still don't know what I am," Blaine says after a moment. "I know what I look like and I know what you look like, but it doesn't seem as simple as that. Inside I feel like I might not be anything at all, or almost like I could change what I am or what you are whenever I need or want to. I don't know exactly how to explain it."
"You mean you're fluid?" Kurt asks and it sounds like he's choking a little on his laughter. Blaine's not sure he appreciates that.
"What if I am?" He demands. "What's wrong with saying that?"
"Absolutely nothing," Kurt says, as he stops walking altogether to pull Blaine into an abrupt, unexpected hug. "Sometimes I'm sad at how much you don't remember, but sometimes you talk like this and I hear how much you still know, even if you don't understand anymore. It just makes me happy."
***
"If that asshole Schuester seriously thinks I won't beat his sorry ass just because he's a teacher, he's got a very unpleasant surprise headed his way. I won't be blackmailed. I won't."
"Calm down, Davina," is the immediate and unsympathetic response. "So Mr. Schuester planted weed in your locker to make you join the club. Big deal. Like you've got any room on the moral high ground? Last week you tried to toss Beethoven in a dumpster. You can't pick on deaf kids and act like you don't deserve a little blackmail every now and then."
Blaine could point out several things right now. He could tell them that Beethoven was a composer not a singer. He could tell them that technically he's not deaf, he just deals with significant hearing loss. He could point out that he's actually in the choir room with Santana and glee's newest recruit Dave Karofsky right now, and maybe they might want to stop threatening the lives of teachers while there are witnesses. He stays silent and waits. Blaine is very good at waiting, almost as good as other people are at forgetting he's in the room.
"I can't sing in a fucking show choir," Karofsky says, and he sounds defeated and tired. He also sounds scared.
"Don't make it sound like we're lepers," Santana sounds slightly offended. "There are a lot of very popular jocks in the club now. We've worked very hard to rebrand this joke of a campfire sing-a-long, and I don't appreciate your slander."
She sniffs and starts to file her nails imperiously. Dave sighs and lets his head fall into his hands, the angry tension in his body draining away to be replaced with a tired defeat.
"I hate this so much," he almost whispers. "My life is just... my life is just way too confusing right now to deal with prancing around on a stage in front of my team members with a big stupid smile on my face while I sing show tunes from Mary fucking Poppins or whatever. I just don't need their stupid emasculating bullshit right now, and I don't care how popular this club is, there's no way it's not going to happen."
"It is gay," Santana agrees, now filing her nails with a little more severity. "It's so gay just joining almost qualifies us for our own float in a pride parade."
"You're so lucky you're a girl," Dave says. "You can actually go and make out with another girl and no one bothers to treat you any differently. If a girl's gay it's just hot. You get the option of taking it as a compliment."
"Only when there's alcohol involved," Santana snarls, hissing as she pushes too hard on her nail and gouges into the nail bed when the file slips. The odd conversation comes to an end as Artie wheels into the room laughing about some movie with the club's other newest member Lauren, and both Dave and Santana act like it never even happened. Dave stays in the club, but his eyes never lose that nervous uncertainty, like he's waiting for someone to vocalize how much they dislike him, or how hard they're judging him. Blaine thinks about what it all means for a long time.
***
It's strange, but the thing that makes everything come to a head is when the club finds out that Quinn has gotten pregnant. It starts when Schue is giving them an admittedly heavy-handed lecture about how if everyone plays their cards right, high school will be the best years of their lives, and everyone should try to make the most of them. It has absolutely nothing to do with the sectionals competition that he's supposed to be working on the set list for. Lauren snorts at him derisively and pointedly ignores him, while everyone else around Blaine wears the same pained and vaguely stunned expressions they always wear when Mr. Schue is trying to teach a life lesson, but when he actually starts to point out individuals in the room, everything goes to hell.
"Quinn, you are hands down the most popular girl in school, and you're extremely intelligent besides. You're not afraid to make the hard decisions, like dropping out of cheerleading when you felt Sue wasn't fully acknowledging your contributions, and all it's done is make you even more popular. When I look at you I see a girl who is going to go so far and do so many great things. It hurts to see you so worried about what people might think of you. Have more confidence in yourself, and it will shine through on the stage!"
"Is that really what you think?" She says after a moment of stunned silence. "You want to know what the other kids in this school really see when they look at me? A walking target. I'm at the top of the food chain, and the only thing I get to count on is knowing that one day someone will come along to knock me out of it. Every morning I get up and wonder, who's going to knock me out of the running? Who's going to notice first? And then I start to think, why hasn't anyone noticed yet? Does anyone at this school actually see me?"
"I don't think I -" Mr. Schue starts, but Quinn cuts him off.
"I've gained 15 pounds in one month," she spits. "None of my clothes fit me and no one cares. Where are the fat jokes? Why isn't anyone calling me a whale? Telling me I look pregnant? I don't understand why no one sees, and if I have to wait any longer for someone to just say it, I think I'll go crazy."
Santana raises her hand and offers,
"I've been starting a rumour that you're training for a pie-eating contest if that makes you feel any better. I thought about doing the pregnancy one, but then I realized you'd have to steal the keys to your chastity belt from your parent's Bible room before that would ever happen, so I thought the compulsive eating was more believable."
Quinn's face crumbles a little and she tries to hold in a little shudder before she whimpers,
"They're going to kill me for doing this to them."
There's a heavy silence in the room, and then Tina ventures,
"Quinn? You're not really pregnant, are you?"
Quinn only sobs out, "I'm going to lose everything," and then the entire room seems to swarm around her, even Santana, reaching out to offer hugs or to stroke her hair. Only Puck hangs back with a guilty expression on his face that Blaine files away to think over later. For now he only worms his way next to Quinn and pulls her into a hug, letting her fall into his shoulder and lean against him. Everyone's talking all at once and he's having trouble hearing what they're all saying, so he just looks at her and says,
"You won't lose us. No one here is ever going to leave you when you need us."
Quinn smiles at him a little.
"Big words from the guy with a bad heart."
"What's wrong with Blaine's heart?" asks Artie, curiously.
"It's going to quit on him," Quinn says softly, snuggling closer.
"It's the same thing that almost made me deaf," he explains. He's never told any of them except for Quinn and Tina this before, but somehow it feels like now is as good a time as any to talk about it. If nothing, it will get the rest of the club to stop brainlessly staring at Quinn's stomach, and the more people there are talking about serious things, maybe the less alone she'll feel. "There's a muscle in my heart that doesn't work very well anymore. It's not a very big deal, at least not right now. It's not making me sick or anything."
Tina rolls her eyes a little.
"No," she says, a little shortly, because Tina has never liked to think about Blaine's heart. "It just might stop one day and be too tired to start again. Not a big deal at all."
"That sucks, dude," Mike says, and he looks worried. "Should we be working so much on choreography with you?"
"Exercise can be good for people with bad hearts," Blaine shrugs. "If it was a problem, I wouldn't do it."
There's a long awkward pause in the room before Artie can't take it any longer and pipes up,
"I don't remember what it feels like to walk anymore. I mean, I still remember walking, but I've been in this chair ever since I was eight. Sometimes I try to remember what my legs used to feel like when everything worked, and I can't do it."
There's another very long pause and finally Santana speaks, staring straight at the floor and looking like she's going to be sick,
"I have sex with guys because when I was ten my grandmother pointed to two women walking down the street holding hands and told me they were dykes and going to burn in hell. Then I got to middle school and if you didn't put out, that's what the boys called you. I don't think you're a bad person if you like girls, but everyone else does, so I pretend."
Brittany leans over and links their pinkies together, smiling sadly. Karofsky fidgets nervously in his chair. No one else speaks. Finally Mr. Schue clears his throat and manages,
"It's good that you feel safe enough here to talk about these things. Quinn? Do you maybe want to stay a little later so we can set up an appointment for you with Ms. Pillsbury? As for the rest of you, you know that if you ever want to talk, I'm here to listen, right?"
Blaine raises his hand.
"I'm not trying to be rude," he says, which is the truth, even though he knows that he probably will be anyway. "But if you tried to watch for when we need to talk, instead of just waiting to listen, it might work a little better for you."
Mr. Schue's mouth opens and closes like a goldfish, and Blaine can feel Quinn's small smile pressing against his collarbone.
***
"You sound tired," is the first thing Cooper says when Blaine answers the phone.
"I am tired," Blaine says. "We've been working hard to get ready for Nationals. There's a lot to get ready."
Sometimes Blaine feels like he blinks and misses entire months of his life at a time. He remembers everything that happens between each blink but he only feels like he's really present for the moments when his eyes are all the way open. It's a common complaint that he's had ever since going away with Kurt, but it's been getting worse lately. He barely even registered beating Vocal Adrenaline at Regionals, even though Mr. Schue insists that Blaine was the one to give him the winning strategy of turning their competition's strength into their weakness. All Blaine had actually said, after a meeting that consisted entirely of watching old Vocal Adrenaline performances on YouTube, was that they didn't seem to think much of sharing their solos, and that "they make one person do all the work while everyone else dances around him." Mr. Schue took that to mean that their only hope of winning was to choose numbers that had an almost overwhelming amount of solos and group interaction.
"This is a choir competition, not a solo competition," he'd said. "Let's show them we can work as a team!"
Brittany and Mike created some of the cleverest choreography to go with the numbers that Blaine had ever seen, making it look like everyone was much more talented than they actually were, and by the time they performed their chaotic, feel-good, infectiously enthusiastic 80s medley at Regionals, not even "Bohemian Rhapsody" could manage to overshadow them. It's all so overwhelming that Blaine wonders if the hazy floating feeling that surrounds him is ever going to lift, or if he'll drown in all the activity that surrounds him these days at school, but eventually he rises to the surface like always, listening to Cooper's voice over the phone. Cooper always helps Blaine sort out who and where he is. He never tries to make Blaine feel like something he's not, or like he needs to fit in with the people around him.
"You shouldn't be working so hard," Cooper insists. "Tell that teacher of yours that he needs to lay off. You can't take chances with your heart, Blaine."
"I'm not," Blaine promises. "I saw the doctor last week. I'm still fine."
He doesn't lie to Cooper exactly. The doctor did say he was fine, but something's changing, and Blaine can't quite decide what it is. It might be as simple as the fact that he hasn't seen Kurt in as long as a month, but while he thinks that's part of it, he's not convinced it's the entire reason he feels as restless and impatient as he does. In a strange way it feels like he might be getting ready to go somewhere. He doesn't say this to Cooper, though. There's no point in worrying him about anything until he knows for sure. Besides, Cooper will be home in a month, anyhow. He's sure that whatever is going to happen can wait until then.
***
Kurt waits until Blaine is ready to leave. Blaine appreciates it, but he's always known it would happen this way. Or at least he's known for a long time, ever since he started to fully understand the music, which has been getting steadily louder and louder in his ears over the past few days, until he has trouble hearing anything else at all. Tonight it's so loud he can't even sleep, so after he says goodnight to his family (he makes sure to tell them all that he loves them, which makes them smile, and thank you, which makes them look confused, but both need to be said), he lies down with his eyes wide open and waits for Kurt.
"You haven't been around much lately," is the first thing he says when Kurt slips in through the open window.
"I thought you might like some time to get everything in order," Kurt says. "You had to know this was coming. I wanted to give you time to say goodbye."
"Thank you," Blaine says. "But I really don't like it when you're not here. I hope it doesn't happen again, no matter what the reason is."
"We've been apart a lot longer," Kurt points out, and Blaine can only nod in agreement. He understands.
"Do you have any questions before we leave? About what you are maybe?" Kurt asks, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet like an excited child. Blaine can tell that he doesn't want to waste any time, but he wants to be sure nothing important is missed, either.
"I know what I am," Blaine says, and at Kurt's expectant look he elaborates, "I don't know how to say it the right way in these words, but I think that whatever you are to the north wind, I might be to the water."
Kurt smiles encouragingly, so Blaine continues.
"I understand that part, but I still don't understand why I left or how I got into this body or what any of this means."
"There are stories," Kurt says slowly, "adventures that humans seem to create out of nothing and tell their children. You probably had a lot of them told to you."
He looks at Blaine carefully, like he's trying to vocalize something he's never tried to vocalize before, although he's obviously thought about often.
"Those stories are full of magic and incredible things and people who fall into trouble for no understandable reason, or for a reason that seems silly or simple when you say it out loud. People like to think they're just stories, but even nothing comes from somewhere, and sometimes what they call a fairy tale is only a small piece of something that they don't understand. You were always going to get lost and I was always going to find you. It's a part of what we are that goes deeper than what we're made of. It's who we have to be."
Blaine is hopelessly confused and he must look it, so Kurt sags a little and tries again.
"I think soon you'll understand better than I can explain," he says. "But you've always loved life, Blaine. For as long as I've known you, you see living things and you care. You want them to grow and you want them to thrive. No one else cares like you do. Not me or Finn or any of the other winds. It's what makes you special. But maybe one day you got a little too close while you were watching and decided to slip away so you could feel what it was like for yourself."
Blaine thinks about how Cooper will come into the room once the sun's been up for a few hours, good-naturedly scolding Blaine for sleeping the whole day away. He wonders if Cooper will notice the difference in the air right away or if it will be like that morning when he first got sick. If he'll keep talking and talking, before finally coming over to the bed, frowning as he reaches out to touch Blaine's face, this time finding it cold instead of burning hot.
"Why are you the one who came for me?" Blaine asks. "Why has it always been you instead of one of the other winds?"
Blaine worries a little about his parents, who are going to be devastated. He supposes that when they ask the doctors, they'll be told it was his heart. In a way the doctors won't be wrong, because his heart feels so full right now, he doesn't think it could possibly hold out much longer. But they were always so scared that this would happen, that he would go away for good. He's told them that he loves them, that he'll always love them. He hopes that they'll realize that he meant it for forever, not for as long as he stays.
Kurt smiles widely at Blaine.
"I came because you're the beginning," Kurt says, sitting down next to him on the bed and leaning over slowly. "And I'm the end. We need each other."
Deep inside of Blaine are memories of coaxing the world to life around him, but if it hadn't been for the people he's met in the past sixteen years, who have let him into their world, he would have never gotten to know what it was like to actually be alive. If he'd never been able to feel that spark of life, there would have been nothing real for him to hold onto and he might have drifted lost forever. Without these people he's not sure if he would have ever found Kurt. Blaine remembers how not long after that big talk in the choir room Brittany helpfully volunteered the glee club to sing at his funeral, and how Quinn had hidden her face in her hands, mortified. Now he hopes they go along with Brittany's suggestion, because his friends meant something to him when he was here.
He thinks of all the games he used to play with Tina growing up, all the times one of their parents would drive them down to the community pool, where they'd play for hours, until their hands were all wrinkled. Mrs. Cohen-Chang would laugh at him and say Tina never played as much in the water before she met him.
"You're turning my daughter into a fish."
He wonders if Tina will look at water and think about when they were small, if she'll think about him before he got sick. He hopes she never forgets him, that none of his friends forget him, because he knows he'll never forget any of them.
Blaine smiles back at Kurt. The last thing he remembers thinking is that maybe all the fuss he's put everyone through is worth it, because without life he would never understand love the way he's understanding it right now. Even though it's strange that he would have to go so far away to find something that he's always had, whenever Kurt is with him. Maybe that's why he isn't afraid to go back. Then Kurt's lips are on his own, and he's kissing Blaine, and Blaine is kissing back and suddenly it feels as though Blaine is boneless, without form and suspended inside a perfect moment. The music is everywhere. He opens his eyes, finally awake after sleeping for over a hundred years, and Kurt is looking at him, holding out his hand, and waiting.
To Chapter 4 | To Masterpost
Artist: morph0fairy
Author: firefly_ca
Rating (art/fic if different): PG
Word Count: 24K
Warnings (if any): Major character death wrapped up in magic realism.
Fic Summary: Inspired by/loosely based on George MacDonald's At The Back of the North Wind. Blaine has never behaved the way normal children do and has always been too quiet and detached from the world around him. Everything changes the day he meets a strange boy named Kurt with the ability to change his appearance and who says he can control the wind. Blaine doesn't know why, but it feels like he's known Kurt forever. AU, but not totally detached from the Glee universe.
Chapter 5
There are a lot of things for Blaine to get used to now that he's back with his family again. The hardest part is what's happened to his hearing. Fortunately, the fever didn't leave him entirely deaf, but tests soon make it clear that the nerve damage will never heal, either. He's lost what seems like an alarming amount of hearing, and the process of finding hearing aids that restore enough of it to let him communicate with his mother and in crowds is long and unpleasant. In the end, they never do find anything that lets him fully hear music again.
At first Blaine is crushed by this realization, because he loves music and he loves singing, but it gets better after the night Kurt finds him listening to the radio and crying, because everything sounds so strange and ugly.
"You can still hear music whenever you want," he promises, sitting next to Blaine on the bed and hugging him gently. "You just have to sit quietly and remember what it used to be like. And it's not like you can't hear the music that matters."
It's true. The music that would wash over Blaine in the waves when he was at the top of the world with Kurt still sits in his ears even back here, like it's found a safe place to hide away inside of him, knowing it can't be crowded out by any other distracting songs. In the end, Blaine supposes that it's better to always have actual living music in his head than it is to have something that someone recorded and sold as a part of their job. But there are still other things that Blaine has to get used to, and even though nothing hurts as bad as the deafness, they aren't very fun, either.
"Why can't I go out with you tonight?" He asks, more than a little petulantly, one night months after he's been sent home from the hospital. Kurt comes to see him almost every night to talk, and sometimes even during the day, but he's only taken Blaine with him on another trip once.
"Because it's hard for you now," Kurt says, the same words he's said so many times before. "You get tired and it's not good for you. You can come the next time you're doing really well and I'm doing something quiet, but you need to take care of yourself, Blaine."
"I can take care of myself just fine," Blaine mutters, a little sullenly. He can't help it if he's not as strong as he used to be.
Kurt only laughs, and it would make Blaine angrier if he didn't love Kurt's laugh as much as he does. Kurt's voice is the only high sound Blaine can hear without any trouble now. His laugh is the only new music Blaine can listen to.
"Blaine," Kurt says, fondly. "Sometimes they have to let you go home to take a nap after recess if you and Tina decide to play tag. You can't pretend it doesn't happen, I've seen you. You need to learn to take everything a little slower now that you're back in this body again."
"It's not my fault I was sick," Blaine protests. "Why do I get in trouble for it?"
"Because in this world the logical thing happens, not the thing that you deserve," Kurt says, with just the tiniest trace of sympathy mixed in with his amusement. It's a little frustrating, but if Blaine wanted sympathy he would be talking to Tina right now.
Tina is much, much younger than Blaine remembers. Having grown so much outside of his body and apart from people while he was gone makes Blaine nervous about his friendship with her at first. He's scared that they might not have anything to talk about anymore, or that his going deaf might mean that Tina might not want him around, but thankfully he was worried about nothing. If anything, now that he's back, Tina is an even better friend than she was before. She's so real and human and everything that Blaine likes most about people, he wants to be around her even more than before. She's funny and happy and all she wants is for someone to notice her and tell her how wonderful she truly is, although Blaine knows she would never come straight out and ask for it. He's more than happy to give her all the attention she craves, and in return she adores him.
"I'm so glad you didn't die," she tells him one day, hugging him tightly and sobbing into his shoulder, because Tina cries when she feels things that are too big for her to explain. "I was so scared you would go away and never come back, and you're the best friend anyone could ever have. I love you even more than I love your stories."
Blaine considers this the highest compliment when it comes from Tina, because Tina loves his stories. He's told her all about the country at Kurt's back, as a part of their continuous discussions about their secret and unseen friends. As months fall away to become years, Tina eventually stops talking about the second Tina, until she seems to forget that she ever created her, but she always wants to hear all there is to be told about Kurt and where he comes from.
"I wish I could think of amazing stories like you can," she says to him, her eyes shining. Of course, none of the things Blaine tells her are things that he's imagined, but he also knows it's pointless to try to correct her. People only ever understand Blaine as far as they're comfortable understanding him. For Tina, she is comfortable with Blaine as a boy her age with a big imagination. He never pushes her to see him as more, because he wants her to be happy.
The only person who seems to be alright with the idea that Blaine has outgrown himself and isn't quite as human as he seems is Cooper, which surprises Blaine. He loves his brother very much, but he never thought he was especially observant when it comes to how people work. Cooper is wonderful and friendly and fun to be around, but he also thinks people are all transparent and easily read. For years he's gotten into trouble at school for thinking teachers "didn't really mean" what they tell him. His parents have a standing threat to ground him if he uses a lack of pointing as an excuse for disobeying. Still, when it comes to Blaine, Cooper approaches everything differently, especially after the hospital.
"Sometimes I think your fever lasted a lot longer for you than it did for us," he tells Blaine one day.
"I think you're right," Blaine says, because he's not sure how much he can say to Cooper without anyone getting upset.
But then Cooper starts to talk to Blaine about the little things he notices more often, and the things he says are all the things that Blaine knows are true. "It's like you're older than I am sometimes," or, "I don't think you belong in this family at all."
Their father overhears the last one and Cooper has to apologize and is grounded for a week. Blaine sneaks into Cooper's bedroom after supper to tell him it's alright and he's not mad.
"I'm not a part of this family," he says. "I never have been, but I'm very glad I'm here."
Cooper smiles at him, relieved.
"I wasn't trying to be mean," he says. "I'm glad you're here, too. But you're not like us. You're not like anyone. That's the best thing about you."
Even though Cooper seems to know on some level that he's not the older brother at all, it doesn't stop him from being fiercely protective of Blaine, either. He lurks around every corner when Blaine first goes to school with his hearing aids, quietly daring anyone who looks at Blaine strangely to give him a reason to push them around. He's not even in the same school as Blaine, so he almost certainly has to skip some classes to do it, but Cooper doesn't seem to care, no matter how much trouble he gets into.
"Someone has to look after him," he mutters when their mom suggests that Cooper go play with some of his own friends instead of shadowing Blaine everywhere. "He doesn't remember to do it on his own."
It's during one of the days that Cooper has decided Blaine doesn't take enough care of himself that he first hears one of Blaine's stories about Kurt and his country, while Tina is over for the afternoon. He listens intently, with a strange look on his face, like he's a little concerned, even more puzzled, and especially like he's trying to remember something from a long time ago. It happens the next time he's around and Blaine is telling Tina stories, too. Finally one day he pulls Blaine aside and asks,
"Why don't you ever talk to me about Kurt?"
"I didn't know if you wanted to listen," Blaine says, carefully.
"You're my brother," Cooper says. "I want to know all the stories in your head."
Cooper calls them stories just like Tina does, but the way Cooper stares at Blaine when he tells them, and the way he sometimes will mention a detail from one of them like he's talking about something from one of his textbooks, makes Blaine certain that Cooper knows on some level that what Blaine is talking about is real. Blaine can tell the idea scares Cooper if he thinks about it for too long, and one time he says,
"I don't like to think about you living so long out of normal time. If you don't have to follow our rules, you could disappear at any time and I wouldn't be able to stop you."
"Everyone dies some time, Cooper," Blaine says, because he can say things like that to Cooper without getting a strange look, like it's wrong for someone who is currently only supposed to be eight to be thinking them.
"People die," Cooper agrees. "But it's different with you. I don't feel like you're ever going to die some days. It's going to be like you walk out the door and never come back. I don't want you to forget me."
Blaine tries to make Cooper feel better after that by focusing on stories that don't have to do with how long he's lived outside of his body, and are more about how much he didn't forget about his family when he was with Kurt.
"You don't forget loving someone," he says. "And it's even harder to forget someone loving you. It rearranges who you are on the inside and changes things around. Even though I don't belong with any of you, you found me and held on when I was nothing. That's not something that ever stops changing you, even after you've left."
For a long time, Blaine never meets anyone else who he feels like he loves like his family and Tina, and he's okay with that. He knows that teachers get worried when he forgets he's in such a young body and uses a word someone in primary school would never know, or when he corrects them on something in history class because he's heard the actual person they're learning about tell him the story. The other students just think he's weird and tend to steer clear of him. Either way, ultimately most people try to avoid him.
It gets better when he finally goes to middle school. When he becomes a teenager, he still doesn't fit in, but it's easier to just shrug and write him off as a smart kid who's hormones are making him act strangely, which they do. Blaine never expected that he would start to act or think like a teenager at all as he got older, and evidently neither did Kurt, because they're both surprised when he starts blushing and tripping over his words when Kurt is over, the year he starts high school. He's always thought Kurt was the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, but now when he looks at him, something unfamiliar pulls at him, making him want to reach out and touch, to see what Kurt really feels like when their skin touches. It's incredibly frustrating and confusing, because he doesn't feel like he loves Kurt any differently than he did a year ago, and he can't tell what's changed. Something has changed though, that much is obvious the first time Kurt comes to visit while Blaine's been daydreaming and they're both shocked to find him stark naked.
"What are you doing?" Blaine hisses, trying not to stare.
"What are you doing?" Kurt demands, equally indignant. He has wings again, for the first time since they came back from his country, but they do nothing to hide the parts of him that Blaine feels incredibly awkward about seeing. "I always look the way you want me to, so that makes this your idea. What exactly were you thinking about?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Blaine mutters, quickly, because what he was thinking about might not be a proper thing to say to the North Wind, no matter how good a friend he is.
"What's gotten into you lately?" Kurt asks, sounding a little frustrated and a lot more amused. Blaine just shakes his head miserably.
"I've been a teenager before," he says, and his face feels like it's on fire. "When I was with you at the top of the world. I don't know why it all feels so different this time."
"You've never been a teenager," Kurt tells him bluntly, as he darts out the window to sit on the roof. Blaine can see his one leg dangling down in front of him. "You're not even one right now. You are acting like one though. Maybe it's from being trapped inside that body."
"I hate this," Blaine says, because he's certain that however old he might be, he's never felt as human as he does right now, and it's as stifling and uncomfortable as it is exciting and terrifying.
"You might feel better if you stopped thinking about me naked," Kurt suggests. "I mean, I certainly don't mind if you'd like to carry on like this - clothes are entirely too human for me to bother with when there are none of them around, but - "
"I'm not thinking about you naked," Blaine insists, feeling his face go even redder.
"It's sort of obvious from where I'm sitting that you are," Kurt says, actually laughing now. Blaine shuts the window in mortification and spends the next hour on the phone with Cooper, who has now moved out to go to college, complaining about the baser aspects of human nature until his brother suggests using a sock in exasperation, and Blaine hangs up in a panic, remembering that this is all still intensely embarrassing.
(click for link to high quality) (alt link)
Thankfully, things seem to have evened out by the time freshman year is over. He can talk to Kurt face-to-face again without feeling like he's going to throw up, and he's more or less gone back to being the quiet, happy kid with the hearing aids who manages to avoid slushie attacks despite his lack of popularity. Tina insists that it's because the first time he got hit, a hearing aid shorted out, which awoke the mothering instinct of the terrifying cheerleading coach. Now anyone who touches a hair on Blaine's head gets a one-way ticket to expulsion.
"I saw her with a lady at the mall one weekend," she says. "I don't know who she was, but she had Downs and Coach Sylvester was helping her adjust a hearing aid. She was looking at the lady the same way she looks at you when people laugh about how you can't hear what people are saying in a crowd. Like she's going to destroy anyone who makes things any harder for you."
Blaine would like to say that Coach Sylvester is just a secretly nice person who doesn't like to see anyone suffer, but they've both watched her laugh when Artie Abrams got a stick pushed through the spokes of his wheelchair, so he supposes that Tina's right. After that happened, Blaine makes an effort to spend more time with Artie, hoping that some of the protection he gets will be extended to him, because Artie's a nice guy, and even though he sometimes stares at Blaine like he's talking a made-up language, he's really nice and seems to enjoy hanging out with him and Tina. He's a good addition for the group, and especially good for Tina, since he likes to do so many new things, he starts to push her to be a little braver just so she can keep up.
Artie is the one who tells them about the auditions for the newly re-made glee club. Blaine assumes right away that Tina will join Artie and audition. She loves singing and is always singing a new song she's just heard for Blaine when they're alone together. Blaine thinks Tina has a beautiful voice, but she always just laughs at him, not unkindly, and asks how he can tell.
"You ears are tricking you," she insists. But for as much as she pretends she's no good, Blaine knows how much she loves it, and that she had lessons for years, until her instructor got mad at her one day for not warming up properly before she practised. Tina had run to Blaine's house in tears, vowing to never take lessons again, but she still sang, and Blaine is surprised when she tells him she's not going to audition.
"What if they don't like me?" she frets, wringing her hands together. "What if I mess up and forget the words, or get so nervous I start to stutter and can't stop, or what if Mr. Schuester hates my voice? I've never had him before for any classes, I don't know what he's like."
"He's alright," Blaine offers. "He doesn't pay much attention to what we do in class, but he's always excited when we learn something and remember it later."
"What if I can't learn?" She asks, her voice shaking. "What if I'm already as good as I'll ever be?"
"You should audition with her," is Kurt's suggestion that night. "If she's so scared about sounding bad."
"If she sounds bad, I sound worse than terrible," Blaine points out. "Even you say that sound like a cat being thrown into a lake when I try to sing new songs."
Kurt smiles a little, like he's still pleased he came up with that description, but he also says,
"That's my point. If she's scared she'll sound bad, she should audition with someone who's not afraid of sounding much worse. She'll feel much better about it, and you love helping people. This is a good way to do it."
Blaine mentions the idea to Tina the next day, although he doesn't say where it came from, because she always looks at him strangely when he talks about Kurt like he's anything more than a nice story. But even though she doesn't believe he's real, she likes his idea just fine, and soon Blaine talks her into walking up and putting her name on the signup sheet with trembling hands.
She auditions with "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry, and Blaine laughs a little when he see's Mr. Schue start a little at the powerful, aggressive performance. He's a little surprised himself. He's always known Tina likes to pretend she's more than just a scared shy girl who doesn't know what to do with a lot of attention, but he didn't know she would be so convincing as soon as she got onto a stage. Mr. Schuester is smiling widely by the time that she's finished, and Blaine thinks it's a very good sign.
He's a little more reserved when he sees Blaine walk onto the stage after, and Blaine doesn't blame him. He's seen Blaine after school many times whenever he assigns small group work, because he needs to know if he's missed anything important in the confusion. He knows that hearing things properly isn't something Blaine's capable of. Blaine smiles a little apologetically and says,
"I know I'm not what you need to win in competitions, but I love music and I have a good sense of rhythm. If I get in, I promise I'll contribute by finding more members instead of singing solos."
He's not lying. He might be doing this for Tina's sake, but now that he's here, watching how dejected Mr. Schue looks after only seeing two other people come in to try out, he wants to help out in any way he can. He sings "Good Morning" from Singin' in the Rain and by the time he's finished, it's impossible to ignore the way his teacher is politely cringing at the cacophony.
"Well, you do have good timing," Mr. Schuester says, obviously trying hard to find something nice to say. "And if we don't have enough members we can't compete or qualify as an official club, so I have instituted an open audition policy. But..."
He trails off a little helplessly, and Blaine can see him wrestling with how to make this glee club work with a shy girl who looks like she wants to run every time someone looks twice at her, a great singer who can't use his legs, and a terrible singer who can.
"It's okay, Mr. Schue," he says, reassuringly. "I'll make it up to you by bringing in some people who will help you win."
***
Blaine knows Mr. Schuester doesn't think Blaine will be able to get anyone to join the club. After all, he doesn't have a lot of pull with anyone other than Tina at McKinley High. His ears make a lot of the students feel awkward and they don't like having to slow down when they talk before he can understand. It's not that Blaine is especially disliked, but he's a nuisance. Still, he does know a few people who don't mind him, and he also knows the Glee club will only survive if it's popular, which is why he stays late one night after their first, lackluster meeting to talk to some of the cheerleaders.
Blaine has known Quinn Fabray since his time in the hospital. When he was well enough to be moved onto the pediatrics floor, Quinn had been there too. She was a year older than him and sitting up straight in her bed like a little princess, staring hard at a book like she was reading, even though Blaine never saw her eyes move across the page and quickly decided that she was just trying to look like she wasn't waiting for someone she knew to walk through the door. Her leg was raised up into the air in a sling and covered in a big pink cast. She always looked miserable, and scared, and lonely, so Blaine had started talking to her.
At first she just stared at him like he was disgusting and not worth her time, but then one day when he couldn't adjust his hearing aids properly no matter how hard he tried and everything was ringing and he just felt awful, she ordered him to come sit on her bed and cautiously reached up to his ears and gently fiddled with the controls until the shrieking in Blaine's head stopped.
They started talking a lot after that. Blaine found out that she had hurt her ankle in gymnastics, and that her daddy was an important person with an important job so he couldn't come see her much, and that her mommy didn't like hospitals and didn't come to see her ever. For the week they shared a room they were inseparable, and even though they never had much to do with each other after, they would always smile and say hello when they passed one another at school. Now that they were in high school together, Quinn made sure none of her own powerful circle ever gave Blaine a hard time.
When he walks up to her after Cheerios practise, she's talking angrily to Brittany Peirce and Santana Lopez, two other cheerleaders who Blaine doesn't know that well, but who he recognizes as good friends of Quinn. They're just who Blaine needs. It's hard to catch their attention at first, because the more important people seem to be, the harder it is to get them to look at you, and even in high school this is how things work. All three of them are in an intense discussion about finding Quinn an acceptable boyfriend who will give her the best chance at becoming prom queen. Blaine isn't sure why that's important, but they're so focused on their discussion that Blaine has to actually block Quinn's path before they see him.
"Oh," she says, awkwardly shifting from one foot to another, smiling at him in a very strained way. "Hi Blaine. How are you?"
"I'm fine," Blaine says. "How are you?"
"Same," Quinn says, still awkward.
"Quinn why are you talking to the boy with scary robot ears?" Brittany asks, glancing back and forth between them in her sleepy, inquisitive way.
"They aren't scary robot ears," Quinn snaps, taking a step closer to Blaine. "How many times do I have to tell you?"
"If they were robot ears he'd have an excuse for reading in that awful monotone," says Santana. "He's just defective, Britt."
"Santana, just shut up," Quinn hisses. "What was it you wanted, Blaine?"
"Mr. Schuester's re-starting the old glee club," Blaine says, not wasting any time.
Quinn just smiles at him, like he's the sweetest, silliest boy in school. "Blaine, why would you think I'd be interested in joining a glee club? I have my reputation to worry about."
"Actually, I wasn't going to ask you, although of course the invitation is open to everyone," Blaine says, a little guiltily. "The person I wanted to talk to was Brittany."
Brittany's eyes get big, like no one's ever asked her about anything as if she were an actual person apart from the influence of Quinn and Santana. Blaine wonders if she likes knowing that people see her as more than her friends, but before she can say anything, Santana is stepping forward, literally standing between Blaine and Brittany. She's scowling so hard Blaine has to fight not to step back a little.
"Look, Frodo Bushy Eyebrows of the Shire or whatever your name is," she says. "Just because you've got nothing to lose singing like an idiot in front of an entire school who has unlimited access to the slushie machine, you don't need to drag Brittany down with you."
Blaine might not have good hearing anymore, but he still sees and notices just as well as he used to. He can see the fierce protectiveness that's sitting just beneath all the insults. He raises his hands placatingly.
"I don't want anyone to get made fun of, I want to help. Glee club needs someone like Brittany."
"Why me?" Brittany asks.
"We had our first meeting earlier this week," Blaine explains. "Mr. Schue's choreography? It's not very good. I know I've seen Coach Sylvester yelling at you when you try to add new choreography to her routines, but I thought if you joined glee club, you'd actually be able to try it without getting into trouble."
"How do you know she's any good?" Quinn asks, narrowing her eyes at him.
"Sometimes she dances in the halls on the way to her classes," Blaine says. He always watches the people who seem to hear their own music wherever they go. It makes him feel less awkward knowing that even if the music isn't the same, he's not the only one who hears something. "You're amazing, Brittany. Our glee club doesn't stand a chance without you."
Blaine is being transparently sycophantic; he's always been good at being persistent, but his subtlety can be so laughable he often doesn't even try. Still, Brittany doesn't seem to mind, and Blaine realizes he's not entirely certain if subtlety would even work on someone like Brittany anyhow.
"Santana," she says, tugging excitedly on Santana's sleeve. "He knows I'm amazing and wants to let me choreograph!"
"No," Santana shakes her head adamantly. "No way. No one is popular enough to survive joining a club with those losers, not even you." She looks at Blaine and sneers, "Go find someone else to trick into joining your misfit brigade, you little twerp. We're not interested."
"We never do what I want," Brittany complains sadly as Santana starts hustling her away. Quinn remains behind, staring at Blaine with her arms across her chest.
"Nice try," she says, "but going after the weakest link won't change anything. You'll never get us involved in your club."
"It's not really anyone's club yet," Blaine corrects. "There's only three of us. If enough cool people joined it wouldn't take long before no one bothered to think about us at all. It's hard for a club to be lame when it's not really anything."
Quinn purses her lips tightly and stares at him for another long moment before she rolls her eyes at him fondly and says,
"Go home, Blaine. I've got things to do."
***
Blaine wisely doesn't ask whose decision it was to go through with it, but by the time the next glee club practise rolls around, Mr. Schuester is beaming wildly as he introduces "three very talented new singers" to the group. A beaming Brittany prances into the room, followed by an equally wary Quinn and Santana. Tina lets out a terrified squeak and seems to try to blend in with her chair and Blaine pats her knee reassuringly. The Cheerios aren't so terrifying. He already knows how great Quinn can be when she's not worried about her image, and as much as even he isn't brave enough to think about making Santana angry, Blaine's seen the way Brittany leads her around the school, literally by her little finger. Blaine's seen Brittany tear up when she sees a teacher kill a fly, and anyone who can keep a girl like that happy can't be as angry as she looks.
Whoever finally gave the final approval for glee club out of the three girls, Quinn is the one who wastes no time bringing New Directions up to her code of social acceptability. The first thing she tries to tackle is the name, which is less successful than Blaine thinks she was expecting.
"I'm sorry, I just don't hear it," Mr. Schue says, shrugging helplessly.
Quinn's perfect posture sags a little before she points to Artie and commands him to, "Say it. Say it right now and Mr. Schue, pay as much attention as you can."
Artie is beet red as he dutifully repeats, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are the New Directions."
"Great job, Artie!" Mr. Schue beams at him. "I just don't understand what you're not telling me, Quinn. New Directions is a strong name that shows all of Ohio what we're really about. Everything begins here, with the music we're making together. Our name isn't afraid to take a stand and say, 'Get ready, world. Here we come!'"
Artie makes a strangled noise and rolls out into the hallway as fast as he can while Quinn heaves a sigh of frustration. Her other efforts to raise the level of glee go a lot closer to plan. It's two weeks and a fairly concentrated word-of-mouth campaign later when she drags the first of her victories into the choir room by the hand, fullback Noah Puckerman.
"Puck owes me a very big favour," she says, shortly, like she says everything these days. "He's going to begin the very long process of making it up to me by joining glee club."
"Whatever," Puck says, in a fairly futile attempt to look like he's his own person and not entirely under Quinn's command. "I've got nothing better to do on Tuesdays after class anyways."
Things pick up speed after that and soon two other jocks, Matt and Mike, join their ranks as well. Matt and Santana join Tina and Artie as early standout voices, but both Tina and Matt are almost phobic of being the centre of attention. It's a long time before Mike finally suggests that if they choreograph the numbers a little differently, it could be staged so the audience is more drawn towards the group instead of a single singer.
"You're too good at this to spend all your time humming in the background, man," he tells Matt, who smiles at him gratefully.
Brittany is thrilled when Mike ends up being as big a fan of dancing as she is, although you'd never know it to look at him, and before long it becomes commonplace to see the two of them huddled up close to each other, whispering in the hallway as Santana looks on in disapproval. Blaine really wants to talk to her about it, but he's not certain if he wouldn't get hit for his efforts, especially because he's certain the person Santana is jealous of is Mike and not Brittany.
"I don't understand these people sometimes," he tells Kurt, on one of the rare nights Kurt has decided Blaine can handle coming to keep him company as he works. Their hands are laced together tightly and if Blaine looks straight ahead instead of at his feet, he doesn't even notice that they're walking across rooftops, clearing entire streets in single strides. "She's so worried that she might like a girl, she has no idea what to do about it. She must spend so much time thinking there's something wrong with her. It's sad."
"Do you think a girl liking another girl is wrong?" Kurt asks, curiously.
"Of course not," Blaine says. "I like you, and you look like a boy and I look like a boy, but there's nothing wrong with it."
"You just look like a boy?" Kurt sounds even more interested now.
"I still don't know what I am," Blaine says after a moment. "I know what I look like and I know what you look like, but it doesn't seem as simple as that. Inside I feel like I might not be anything at all, or almost like I could change what I am or what you are whenever I need or want to. I don't know exactly how to explain it."
"You mean you're fluid?" Kurt asks and it sounds like he's choking a little on his laughter. Blaine's not sure he appreciates that.
"What if I am?" He demands. "What's wrong with saying that?"
"Absolutely nothing," Kurt says, as he stops walking altogether to pull Blaine into an abrupt, unexpected hug. "Sometimes I'm sad at how much you don't remember, but sometimes you talk like this and I hear how much you still know, even if you don't understand anymore. It just makes me happy."
***
"If that asshole Schuester seriously thinks I won't beat his sorry ass just because he's a teacher, he's got a very unpleasant surprise headed his way. I won't be blackmailed. I won't."
"Calm down, Davina," is the immediate and unsympathetic response. "So Mr. Schuester planted weed in your locker to make you join the club. Big deal. Like you've got any room on the moral high ground? Last week you tried to toss Beethoven in a dumpster. You can't pick on deaf kids and act like you don't deserve a little blackmail every now and then."
Blaine could point out several things right now. He could tell them that Beethoven was a composer not a singer. He could tell them that technically he's not deaf, he just deals with significant hearing loss. He could point out that he's actually in the choir room with Santana and glee's newest recruit Dave Karofsky right now, and maybe they might want to stop threatening the lives of teachers while there are witnesses. He stays silent and waits. Blaine is very good at waiting, almost as good as other people are at forgetting he's in the room.
"I can't sing in a fucking show choir," Karofsky says, and he sounds defeated and tired. He also sounds scared.
"Don't make it sound like we're lepers," Santana sounds slightly offended. "There are a lot of very popular jocks in the club now. We've worked very hard to rebrand this joke of a campfire sing-a-long, and I don't appreciate your slander."
She sniffs and starts to file her nails imperiously. Dave sighs and lets his head fall into his hands, the angry tension in his body draining away to be replaced with a tired defeat.
"I hate this so much," he almost whispers. "My life is just... my life is just way too confusing right now to deal with prancing around on a stage in front of my team members with a big stupid smile on my face while I sing show tunes from Mary fucking Poppins or whatever. I just don't need their stupid emasculating bullshit right now, and I don't care how popular this club is, there's no way it's not going to happen."
"It is gay," Santana agrees, now filing her nails with a little more severity. "It's so gay just joining almost qualifies us for our own float in a pride parade."
"You're so lucky you're a girl," Dave says. "You can actually go and make out with another girl and no one bothers to treat you any differently. If a girl's gay it's just hot. You get the option of taking it as a compliment."
"Only when there's alcohol involved," Santana snarls, hissing as she pushes too hard on her nail and gouges into the nail bed when the file slips. The odd conversation comes to an end as Artie wheels into the room laughing about some movie with the club's other newest member Lauren, and both Dave and Santana act like it never even happened. Dave stays in the club, but his eyes never lose that nervous uncertainty, like he's waiting for someone to vocalize how much they dislike him, or how hard they're judging him. Blaine thinks about what it all means for a long time.
***
It's strange, but the thing that makes everything come to a head is when the club finds out that Quinn has gotten pregnant. It starts when Schue is giving them an admittedly heavy-handed lecture about how if everyone plays their cards right, high school will be the best years of their lives, and everyone should try to make the most of them. It has absolutely nothing to do with the sectionals competition that he's supposed to be working on the set list for. Lauren snorts at him derisively and pointedly ignores him, while everyone else around Blaine wears the same pained and vaguely stunned expressions they always wear when Mr. Schue is trying to teach a life lesson, but when he actually starts to point out individuals in the room, everything goes to hell.
"Quinn, you are hands down the most popular girl in school, and you're extremely intelligent besides. You're not afraid to make the hard decisions, like dropping out of cheerleading when you felt Sue wasn't fully acknowledging your contributions, and all it's done is make you even more popular. When I look at you I see a girl who is going to go so far and do so many great things. It hurts to see you so worried about what people might think of you. Have more confidence in yourself, and it will shine through on the stage!"
"Is that really what you think?" She says after a moment of stunned silence. "You want to know what the other kids in this school really see when they look at me? A walking target. I'm at the top of the food chain, and the only thing I get to count on is knowing that one day someone will come along to knock me out of it. Every morning I get up and wonder, who's going to knock me out of the running? Who's going to notice first? And then I start to think, why hasn't anyone noticed yet? Does anyone at this school actually see me?"
"I don't think I -" Mr. Schue starts, but Quinn cuts him off.
"I've gained 15 pounds in one month," she spits. "None of my clothes fit me and no one cares. Where are the fat jokes? Why isn't anyone calling me a whale? Telling me I look pregnant? I don't understand why no one sees, and if I have to wait any longer for someone to just say it, I think I'll go crazy."
Santana raises her hand and offers,
"I've been starting a rumour that you're training for a pie-eating contest if that makes you feel any better. I thought about doing the pregnancy one, but then I realized you'd have to steal the keys to your chastity belt from your parent's Bible room before that would ever happen, so I thought the compulsive eating was more believable."
Quinn's face crumbles a little and she tries to hold in a little shudder before she whimpers,
"They're going to kill me for doing this to them."
There's a heavy silence in the room, and then Tina ventures,
"Quinn? You're not really pregnant, are you?"
Quinn only sobs out, "I'm going to lose everything," and then the entire room seems to swarm around her, even Santana, reaching out to offer hugs or to stroke her hair. Only Puck hangs back with a guilty expression on his face that Blaine files away to think over later. For now he only worms his way next to Quinn and pulls her into a hug, letting her fall into his shoulder and lean against him. Everyone's talking all at once and he's having trouble hearing what they're all saying, so he just looks at her and says,
"You won't lose us. No one here is ever going to leave you when you need us."
Quinn smiles at him a little.
"Big words from the guy with a bad heart."
"What's wrong with Blaine's heart?" asks Artie, curiously.
"It's going to quit on him," Quinn says softly, snuggling closer.
"It's the same thing that almost made me deaf," he explains. He's never told any of them except for Quinn and Tina this before, but somehow it feels like now is as good a time as any to talk about it. If nothing, it will get the rest of the club to stop brainlessly staring at Quinn's stomach, and the more people there are talking about serious things, maybe the less alone she'll feel. "There's a muscle in my heart that doesn't work very well anymore. It's not a very big deal, at least not right now. It's not making me sick or anything."
Tina rolls her eyes a little.
"No," she says, a little shortly, because Tina has never liked to think about Blaine's heart. "It just might stop one day and be too tired to start again. Not a big deal at all."
"That sucks, dude," Mike says, and he looks worried. "Should we be working so much on choreography with you?"
"Exercise can be good for people with bad hearts," Blaine shrugs. "If it was a problem, I wouldn't do it."
There's a long awkward pause in the room before Artie can't take it any longer and pipes up,
"I don't remember what it feels like to walk anymore. I mean, I still remember walking, but I've been in this chair ever since I was eight. Sometimes I try to remember what my legs used to feel like when everything worked, and I can't do it."
There's another very long pause and finally Santana speaks, staring straight at the floor and looking like she's going to be sick,
"I have sex with guys because when I was ten my grandmother pointed to two women walking down the street holding hands and told me they were dykes and going to burn in hell. Then I got to middle school and if you didn't put out, that's what the boys called you. I don't think you're a bad person if you like girls, but everyone else does, so I pretend."
Brittany leans over and links their pinkies together, smiling sadly. Karofsky fidgets nervously in his chair. No one else speaks. Finally Mr. Schue clears his throat and manages,
"It's good that you feel safe enough here to talk about these things. Quinn? Do you maybe want to stay a little later so we can set up an appointment for you with Ms. Pillsbury? As for the rest of you, you know that if you ever want to talk, I'm here to listen, right?"
Blaine raises his hand.
"I'm not trying to be rude," he says, which is the truth, even though he knows that he probably will be anyway. "But if you tried to watch for when we need to talk, instead of just waiting to listen, it might work a little better for you."
Mr. Schue's mouth opens and closes like a goldfish, and Blaine can feel Quinn's small smile pressing against his collarbone.
***
"You sound tired," is the first thing Cooper says when Blaine answers the phone.
"I am tired," Blaine says. "We've been working hard to get ready for Nationals. There's a lot to get ready."
Sometimes Blaine feels like he blinks and misses entire months of his life at a time. He remembers everything that happens between each blink but he only feels like he's really present for the moments when his eyes are all the way open. It's a common complaint that he's had ever since going away with Kurt, but it's been getting worse lately. He barely even registered beating Vocal Adrenaline at Regionals, even though Mr. Schue insists that Blaine was the one to give him the winning strategy of turning their competition's strength into their weakness. All Blaine had actually said, after a meeting that consisted entirely of watching old Vocal Adrenaline performances on YouTube, was that they didn't seem to think much of sharing their solos, and that "they make one person do all the work while everyone else dances around him." Mr. Schue took that to mean that their only hope of winning was to choose numbers that had an almost overwhelming amount of solos and group interaction.
"This is a choir competition, not a solo competition," he'd said. "Let's show them we can work as a team!"
Brittany and Mike created some of the cleverest choreography to go with the numbers that Blaine had ever seen, making it look like everyone was much more talented than they actually were, and by the time they performed their chaotic, feel-good, infectiously enthusiastic 80s medley at Regionals, not even "Bohemian Rhapsody" could manage to overshadow them. It's all so overwhelming that Blaine wonders if the hazy floating feeling that surrounds him is ever going to lift, or if he'll drown in all the activity that surrounds him these days at school, but eventually he rises to the surface like always, listening to Cooper's voice over the phone. Cooper always helps Blaine sort out who and where he is. He never tries to make Blaine feel like something he's not, or like he needs to fit in with the people around him.
"You shouldn't be working so hard," Cooper insists. "Tell that teacher of yours that he needs to lay off. You can't take chances with your heart, Blaine."
"I'm not," Blaine promises. "I saw the doctor last week. I'm still fine."
He doesn't lie to Cooper exactly. The doctor did say he was fine, but something's changing, and Blaine can't quite decide what it is. It might be as simple as the fact that he hasn't seen Kurt in as long as a month, but while he thinks that's part of it, he's not convinced it's the entire reason he feels as restless and impatient as he does. In a strange way it feels like he might be getting ready to go somewhere. He doesn't say this to Cooper, though. There's no point in worrying him about anything until he knows for sure. Besides, Cooper will be home in a month, anyhow. He's sure that whatever is going to happen can wait until then.
***
Kurt waits until Blaine is ready to leave. Blaine appreciates it, but he's always known it would happen this way. Or at least he's known for a long time, ever since he started to fully understand the music, which has been getting steadily louder and louder in his ears over the past few days, until he has trouble hearing anything else at all. Tonight it's so loud he can't even sleep, so after he says goodnight to his family (he makes sure to tell them all that he loves them, which makes them smile, and thank you, which makes them look confused, but both need to be said), he lies down with his eyes wide open and waits for Kurt.
"You haven't been around much lately," is the first thing he says when Kurt slips in through the open window.
"I thought you might like some time to get everything in order," Kurt says. "You had to know this was coming. I wanted to give you time to say goodbye."
"Thank you," Blaine says. "But I really don't like it when you're not here. I hope it doesn't happen again, no matter what the reason is."
"We've been apart a lot longer," Kurt points out, and Blaine can only nod in agreement. He understands.
"Do you have any questions before we leave? About what you are maybe?" Kurt asks, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet like an excited child. Blaine can tell that he doesn't want to waste any time, but he wants to be sure nothing important is missed, either.
"I know what I am," Blaine says, and at Kurt's expectant look he elaborates, "I don't know how to say it the right way in these words, but I think that whatever you are to the north wind, I might be to the water."
Kurt smiles encouragingly, so Blaine continues.
"I understand that part, but I still don't understand why I left or how I got into this body or what any of this means."
"There are stories," Kurt says slowly, "adventures that humans seem to create out of nothing and tell their children. You probably had a lot of them told to you."
He looks at Blaine carefully, like he's trying to vocalize something he's never tried to vocalize before, although he's obviously thought about often.
"Those stories are full of magic and incredible things and people who fall into trouble for no understandable reason, or for a reason that seems silly or simple when you say it out loud. People like to think they're just stories, but even nothing comes from somewhere, and sometimes what they call a fairy tale is only a small piece of something that they don't understand. You were always going to get lost and I was always going to find you. It's a part of what we are that goes deeper than what we're made of. It's who we have to be."
Blaine is hopelessly confused and he must look it, so Kurt sags a little and tries again.
"I think soon you'll understand better than I can explain," he says. "But you've always loved life, Blaine. For as long as I've known you, you see living things and you care. You want them to grow and you want them to thrive. No one else cares like you do. Not me or Finn or any of the other winds. It's what makes you special. But maybe one day you got a little too close while you were watching and decided to slip away so you could feel what it was like for yourself."
Blaine thinks about how Cooper will come into the room once the sun's been up for a few hours, good-naturedly scolding Blaine for sleeping the whole day away. He wonders if Cooper will notice the difference in the air right away or if it will be like that morning when he first got sick. If he'll keep talking and talking, before finally coming over to the bed, frowning as he reaches out to touch Blaine's face, this time finding it cold instead of burning hot.
"Why are you the one who came for me?" Blaine asks. "Why has it always been you instead of one of the other winds?"
Blaine worries a little about his parents, who are going to be devastated. He supposes that when they ask the doctors, they'll be told it was his heart. In a way the doctors won't be wrong, because his heart feels so full right now, he doesn't think it could possibly hold out much longer. But they were always so scared that this would happen, that he would go away for good. He's told them that he loves them, that he'll always love them. He hopes that they'll realize that he meant it for forever, not for as long as he stays.
Kurt smiles widely at Blaine.
"I came because you're the beginning," Kurt says, sitting down next to him on the bed and leaning over slowly. "And I'm the end. We need each other."
Deep inside of Blaine are memories of coaxing the world to life around him, but if it hadn't been for the people he's met in the past sixteen years, who have let him into their world, he would have never gotten to know what it was like to actually be alive. If he'd never been able to feel that spark of life, there would have been nothing real for him to hold onto and he might have drifted lost forever. Without these people he's not sure if he would have ever found Kurt. Blaine remembers how not long after that big talk in the choir room Brittany helpfully volunteered the glee club to sing at his funeral, and how Quinn had hidden her face in her hands, mortified. Now he hopes they go along with Brittany's suggestion, because his friends meant something to him when he was here.
He thinks of all the games he used to play with Tina growing up, all the times one of their parents would drive them down to the community pool, where they'd play for hours, until their hands were all wrinkled. Mrs. Cohen-Chang would laugh at him and say Tina never played as much in the water before she met him.
"You're turning my daughter into a fish."
He wonders if Tina will look at water and think about when they were small, if she'll think about him before he got sick. He hopes she never forgets him, that none of his friends forget him, because he knows he'll never forget any of them.
Blaine smiles back at Kurt. The last thing he remembers thinking is that maybe all the fuss he's put everyone through is worth it, because without life he would never understand love the way he's understanding it right now. Even though it's strange that he would have to go so far away to find something that he's always had, whenever Kurt is with him. Maybe that's why he isn't afraid to go back. Then Kurt's lips are on his own, and he's kissing Blaine, and Blaine is kissing back and suddenly it feels as though Blaine is boneless, without form and suspended inside a perfect moment. The music is everywhere. He opens his eyes, finally awake after sleeping for over a hundred years, and Kurt is looking at him, holding out his hand, and waiting.
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