What He Needs: Part 5
Title: What He Needs or How Kurt Hummel Finally Learned to Stop Planning His Life and Start Living it
Author: Koinaka
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Character(s):one-sided Klaine, eventual Kurt/Puck, eventual ensemble, Warblers, Kurt, Carole, Burt, mentions of Kurt's mom
Genre: Drama, Romance, AU
Spoilers: Up to Grilled Cheesus with the exception of it being completely AU.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Ryan Murphy
Summary: During one of his last conversations with his mom before she died, she told him that he couldn't always choreograph every moment in his life. When his father has a heart attack and nearly dies, he realizes how right she is.
Warning(s): AU
Word Count: Around 6300
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
What He Needs
or
How Kurt Hummel Finally Learned to Stop Planning His Life and Start Living it
By Koinaka
No, you can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need
- You Can't Always Get What You Want, The Rolling Stones
Chapter Five
Quitting the Warblers caused a chain reaction in Kurt's life.
By the time he left ballet, he had seventeen missed calls and twenty-five text messages. He deleted them without even reading them and turned off his phone-something nearly unheard of for him to do. Most of the texts were from Blaine, though, and since he currently wasn't speaking to Blaine, he figured there was no point in reading them. He didn't have to explain himself to them anyway. The Warblers were a voluntary organization; he had no true obligation to them. The entire point was to have fun, and if he wasn't having fun, there was no reason for him to stay.
When Kurt got back to the dorm, he bypassed the desk where his homework was all laid out ready for him to begin and practically threw himself onto his bed. Practice had been excruciating. And wonderful. Wonderfully excruciating even. Every muscle in his body ached in the best possible way. He wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and fall asleep.
So that's exactly what he did.
The problem was that leaving the Warblers caused him to reevaluate other aspects of his life. He felt a little like he was having some sort of midlife crisis which was completely ridiculous because he was only sixteen-nearly seventeen-and not anywhere near old enough to have some sort of existential crises, but that didn't change the fact that he was.
It started with his uniform. Kurt had always worn uniforms to school-always-and he'd never cared before. They had always just been a complete nonentity to him. He still loved fashion and spent the majority of the week planning outfits for the weekend and for the minute he could shed the uniform on week days, but he'd never been bothered about wearing the actual uniform before. Friday was different though. Suddenly, all he could think about were the negative qualities of the uniform and, quite frankly, there were more than a few.
More than the actual aesthetics of the uniform, it was the way the uniform made him feel that was the problem. The tie was too tight against his throat; the material of the pants too itchy against his sensitive skin; the heat of all of the layers-undershirt, button-down oxford in a shade of white that was completely unflattering to his skin tone, sweater vest, and blazer-suffocating, despite the fact that it was October in Ohio which meant that there was already a chill in the air. The physical reactions were nothing compared to the other reactions. He felt caged and restless. He tapped his foot and drummed his fingers all day, as if he couldn't be still for even a moment.
During French, he loosened his tie as far as he could and still follow standard uniform regulations. During lunch, he took off the blazer-completely allowed though not often done-and pushed up the sleeves of his button-down-less advisable because if certain teachers, namely Langston, were around, he would definitely be given a demerit. During Pop Culture, his last class of the day, he fidgeted, wiggling in his seat in an attempt to stop his crawling skin to such an extent that he did get a demerit and was forced to have a "chat" with his teacher, a pushing forty man who preferred to be called Simon instead of Mr. Regionali because he thought that calling him by his first name made them all his friends.
Shedding the uniform the moment he got back to his room, not even stopping to properly hang it up, helped, but it still wasn't enough. He felt better with his own clothing on, more like himself and better able to breath, but it still wasn't right.
It was completely frustrating because he wanted to fix this, to make it right, but how could he fix something when he wasn't even sure what was wrong in the first place?
All he did know was that he felt like there was this huge weight pressing on his chest-a weight that he hadn't even know was there until he walked out of the Warblers. But know he did know. What he didn't know was how to get rid of it. Taking off the uniform helped some, but it was still there, and now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember the last time it wasn't there. Before his mom got sick? Maybe. Probably.
The last time that stood out in his mind was the Spring Break trip to New York City that he took with his mom the spring before she got sick. She had picked him up on Friday afternoon from Dalton with their bags already packed. They had been on the road for nearly an hour before she had finally broken down to tell him where they were going.
They had spent the entire week in New York City. They went to museums, shopped, saw a musical every night they were there-and a couple of times during the day as well-and did all of the touristy things that people did in the city. They ordered room service and watched pay-per-view movies in their pajamas, went on carriage rides, and visited every location that Kurt could remember from every movie he had seen that had taken place in New York City. It had been the trip of a lifetime. Sometimes he wondered if she had known that she was sick then. Thinking back on it, it seemed likely.
Suddenly he wanted to be anywhere but there, sitting in his dorm room staring at the same pile of homework from the night before. He had expected all of his teachers to reprimand him, but they hadn't. Apparently his father being sick gave him a bit of leeway, so now not only did he have to complete today's homework, but he had to do that homework as well. He didn't have any idea of when he would squeeze it in. His father was being released from the hospital in the morning, so he would probably spend the weekend making sure he got settled in at home and just spending time with him. He still had a bit of time before his vocal lesson. If he started now, he could work through at least the French translation before time to go, but the very thought of opening a book made him feel nauseous. Instead, he grabbed his jacket and headed outside.
He walked aimlessly for a few minutes before sitting down on one of the benches spread across campus. Outside, the weight felt lighter, but it was still there. He watched as a couple of boys near him roughhoused over a football, laughing and playing in the sunlight.
When was the last time Kurt had done that? When was the last time he had spent the afternoon with his friends just hanging out? He had hung out plenty with Sam and Blaine and even Jeff and Nick while his dad was in the coma and afterwards, but now that he thought about it, he couldn't think of the last time he had done that before then. It wasn't that he didn't spend time with his friends because he did, but most of the time it was because one of the boys Kurtnapped him-their words, not his-to ensure that he would go along with whatever shenanigans they had planned. The other times were always highly planned endeavors.
They had to be highly planned in order to work around the other things he had in his life-lessons and classes and homework and clubs took up a lot of his time and the preparation for those things took up the rest of the time. He didn't come home for weekends normally because he needed that time to catch up on his sleep and homework, to work on new fundraising ideas for the GSA, to come up with new numbers for the Warblers to do. The list was never ending, and sure, cutting out the Warblers freed up a lot of his time, but soon SAT prep would take over that time. Then it would be the same thing all over again.
Kurt didn't even notice Blaine approaching until he sat down next to him on the bench. Neither one of them said anything for a long while.
It was Kurt who finally broke the silence. "Are you happy?" At Blaine's confused look, Kurt clarified. "Are you happy here at Dalton?"
Blaine's eyebrows drew together in concentration. He considered the question for a few minutes. "Yes, I am," he said. "Things at my old school weren't as terrible as they might have been, but they were still pretty bad. I don't have to worry about that here. Here I am accepted. I have friends. I can be myself. Sometimes I wish things could have been different. I wonder if I had tried hard enough, been different-better somehow-would I have had to run here, but the truth is that even if I had tried harder to get along with people none of those things would have been possible at my old school. So, yes, I'm happy here."
Kurt nodded absently, still watching the group of boys across the courtyard. From beside him, he could feel the weight of Blaine's gaze on him.
"Are you happy at Dalton?" Blaine asked. There was an odd tone to his voice that Kurt couldn't place, some double meaning to his question that Kurt's already overly full mind couldn't quite work out.
That's when it hit him, what was wrong, why nothing felt right. He wasn't happy. Genuinely happy. There were things that made him happy, yes, ballet and vocal lessons, certainly, and his friends, but it was all so fleeting and centered around actual events. He was happy for minutes, hours, but he wanted more than that.
There were some people-people like his mom and Sam, for instance-who were just happy people. They woke up in the morning with a smile on their face and went to bed with one as well. He wasn't. Not now, anyway. He used to be happy. He could remember weeks and months at a time when he was happy, genuinely happy. When he would wake up with a smile on his face and go to bed with a smile on his face. When had that changed? When he came to Dalton? When his mom got sick? When she… but he couldn't even think of that because if he thought of it-if he even started to think of it-he wasn't sure he could stop.
"No," Kurt finally replied. "I don't think I am."
When he looked up, Blaine looked stricken. He took a couple of deep breaths and cleared his mind. Then, he pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the tightening of his chest that started when he saw Blaine's inexplicable expression. "Look, I have to go. We'll talk when I get back on Sunday, okay?"
He paused when he'd taken several steps and looked back at Blaine. He felt like he should say something, but he wasn't sure what, so he just put one foot in front of the other and walked away.
Friday's vocal lesson was every bit as demanding as the one before. He began by singing-or attempting to sing-through "Hymn of the Sun" before beginning the process of choosing the other two songs for his audition repertoire. He spent the entire time floundering between two arias-one being an aria from Purcell's The Fairy-Queene, which he liked on the sheer principle of the opera being based on his favorite play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the other being "Delizie Contenti" from Giasone, which he must admit that he was rather uncomfortable singing. His discomfort was largely due to the fact that it was, basically, Giasone singing about how happy he was about pleasure…of the sexual sort, something Kurt was blissfully unaware of. For the most part. He was aware of how uncomfortable talking about it made him, anyway, and he definitely had his doubts on whether or not he would be able to effectively sing about it.
Still, Arthur was insistent about his choosing that particular song.
"You need to showcase your foreign language abilities," he had told him. "Since your other two selections will be in English, it is important for you to have one selection that is not. How about we just try it out for today, hmm? If it isn't a good fit for you, then we will absolutely find another song. The entire point of this is to find songs that will flatter your voice, Kurt, which I think "Delizie Contenti" will do nicely, but if you don't like it, I won't push the matter. All I ask is that you do at least try it today."
Flushing hotly, Kurt had nodded.
When Arthur noticed his blush, he had winked and then proceeded to tell him a lie. "I don't understand a word of Italian, you know, so there's really no need for you to be embarrassed."
Not only was it a lie, but it was a completely shameless lie because Kurt knew that although he had been born and raised in America, both of his parents were Italian, and he had attended a conservatory inItaly. So, the old man was shameless, but at least his words did have the intended effect of calming him down. Kurt's own knowledge of Italian being precursory at best also helped.
They had run through both songs once, and by the time practice was over, Kurt had to admit that while he enjoyed both-and, not that he was vain or anything, sounded wonderful on both-the tone of his voice was more suited for "Delizie Contenti." That was, of course, ignoring the fact that the role of Giasone was originally casted with a castrato in mind.
He listened to the soundtrack of Giasone on the way back to Lima, and though he was scarcely halfway through the soundtrack when he pulled into the McKinley High parking lot to wait for the football game to end, he knew that it was the song for him.
The plan had been to just meet Sam at his house after the game was over, but Sam had sent him a text this afternoon asking if he could pick him up instead. After finding a parking spot, which had been a feat unto itself, he shot a text off to Sam telling him where he was parked-practically across town since the stadium was packed-and turned the cd back to "Delizie Contenti." He knew it might be a while before Sam came out, so he listened to the track several times, and then began to sing along with it, his eyes closed as he did so. A tap at his window caused his eyes to pop open and him to fumble with his volume control on his stereo.
Sam was standing on the passenger side of the Navigator with another boy-a very attractive boy-in tow. Kurt's eyes flitted over to where the boy stood near Sam's elbow. He popped the lock and waited for an explanation. He didn't have to wait long.
"Dude, it's a total mad house out there. You mind giving my friend a ride home? I forgot that I told him I would before my mom decided to take the car tonight," Sam said when he opened the door.
Sam wasn't kidding when he said it was a mad house. It looked like the entire contents of the stadium had reached their cars at the same time. The resulting chaos wasn't pretty.
"It's fine, though it doesn't look like we'll be going anywhere for a while." He ejected the CD and turned his iPod on to the playlist of Sam-acceptable music as the two boys piled into the Navigator and got situated. "Just tell me your address, and I'll program it into my GPS. I'm awful at directions."
"Thanks," the boy muttered after he gave him the address, his fingers flying across his cell phone the entire time.
"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?" Kurt asked Sam with a raised brow. He wasn't looking at Sam, though. His eyes were glued onto the rear view mirror, at the unnamed boy-at his thick eyelashes and his olive complexion, at the curve of his cheekbones and the strong line of his jaw.
"Oh yeah," he laughed. "Kurt, this is Puck. We're in glee and football together."
"Puck? As in A Midsummer Night's Dream's Puck?"
The boy, Puck, looked up from his texting, a confused look on his face. "A Midsummer Night's what? That a movie or something?"
"No…well, yes, there is a movie, quite a few actually, but it's a play. Shakespeare, you know."
Puck shrugged. "Never heard of it."
"Lord, what fools these mortals be?" Kurt asked. The other boy shrugged again, so he continued. "Or how about, Cupid is a knavish lad / Thus to make poor females mad?"
"Look, I said I've never heard of it, alright? I'm not into that Shakespeare crap. I mean, I'm pretty sure that I read one or two of those Sparknote things for English before, but it's not like I'm some lame-o loser that sits around reading or something," Puck snapped, never taking his eyes off of his phone screen.
Kurt fell silent at once, his eyes narrowed. He might be attractive-okay, no might be about it-but there was no excuse for being rude to someone you barely knew. Especially when the other person was just trying to make conversation with you. Not to mention the fact that he was doing you a favor. Luckily, for him, Kurt had manners.
"I forgot about your obsession with that play," Sam said in an attempt to ease some of the tension. "How many times have you read it anyway?"
"A couple of times. Not that many. Probably not even as many times as you've watched Avatar even. And I'm not obsessed." Of course, Kurt wasn't counting the times his mom had read it to him. A Midsummer Night's Dream had been another of their special things, like The Sound of Music.
"Dude, you and Jeff dressed up as Oberon and Titania for Halloween last year," he pointed out.
Kurt grinned at the memory. Last Halloween had been fun. Blaine had dressed up as the mischievous Puck, but he hadn't quite pulled it off. Still… "Yes, Jeff was a lovely Titania, wasn't he? Remind me, how much did you end up owing him again for dressing up like Titania when you chickened out?"
Sam scowled. "Two hundred."
"So, how was the game? Did you win?" he asked after a couple seconds of silence.
Both boys grimaced. "No."
"How about you?" Sam asked. "I've hardly talked to you all week. Did Wes like the dance thing that you did?"
Now, it was Kurt's turn to grimace. "If by like you mean completely shot down-which, by the way, was an incredibly, incredibly stupid thing to do-then yes, he liked it."
"Why would he shoot it down? I mean, I know pretty much nothing about dancing, but what you told me about your plans last week sounded pretty good. To me, at least."
"'The Warblers have never been about pomp and circumstance in the past. I don't see why we should start now,'" Kurt said in a near-perfect imitation of Wes. "Which is completely fine…if they feel like handing Vocal Adrenaline another National Championship."
From the rearview mirror, he saw Puck's head cock to the side, obviously listening to the conversation now whereas before he had been staring intently at his phone.
"Wes is a dick," Sam said. "I mean, I hardly know the guy, and I know that much."
"Eloquent as ever, but yes, I have to admit. He is a dick. The whole thing is just completely ridiculous. Vocally, they stand a better chance at beating them this year since Jesse graduated-"
"Hold up," Puck said, interrupting him. "You know St. Sucks A Lot?"
"Jesse? A little. Lima's not exactly a booming metropolis, and there's only one dance studio that's actually worth attending, so we were bound to run into one another at some point. We were both in the production of Peter Pan that our ballet studio put on three summers ago, but we weren't friends or anything because I'm pretty sure that there is a dark void where his soul should be."
Puck chortled at that. "Dude's totally a soulless automon."
"Automaton," Kurt corrected, earning a scowl from the boy in question, "but yes, he is."
A tense silence fell over the car after that.
"I feel like I should warn you about my mom," Sam said when they were finally able to pull out of the parking lot. "I told her your dad was coming home in the morning, and she's practically been cooking ever since. The way I figure it, your dad won't have to cook for, like, weeks. She made that weird noodle thing that I know you like even though you complain about how much fat it has it in, too."
Kurt made an appreciative noise. His mom's vegan Mac and (I can't believe it's not) Cheese was amazing, and worth every single calorie it contained. "Well, I won't complain about that tonight. I'm completely starved. It's been an awful week."
"About that," Sam said, turning to face him. "You going to tell me why Blaine's been blowing up my phone with frantic text messages the last couple of days?"
"Well," he said slowly. "We're not exactly talking right now because he took Wes's side in the whole dance fiasco. And he said I didn't have my priorities straight because I thought that it was ridiculous that Wes wanted us to practice three times a day for our upcoming invitational in case someone from Vocal Adrenaline just happens to show up."
"Three times a day?" said Puck, incredulously, from the backseat. "Dude, that's some hardcore shit. Worse than Rachel."
"It is," Kurt agreed. He didn't know Rachel very well, but he had a feeling that she and Wes would get along swimmingly. "But that's probably not why he's been texting you."
"You're right. He never mentioned any of that. He just kept saying I needed to talk some sense into you because you were making a huge mistake, but he never really said what mistake you were making."
Kurt chewed on his bottom lip for a few seconds. "I quit the Warblers."
"Wait, what?"
"I quit the Warblers," he repeated and took a deep breath before adding, "And I think I want to quit Dalton, too."
Sam's mouth fell open in shock.
Spending time with Sam, it turned out, was exactly what he needed. They spent the entire night gorging on food and playing video games-Call of Duty first, but after about half an hour of Kurt trouncing him, they switched to Super Smash Brothers Brawl which Kurt wasn't as good at, but actually liked playing better. Kurt also spent the night trying, and failing spectacularly, not to think any more about "Puck," whose real name, he learned, was Noah Puckerman. That was easier to do after he Sam told him some more things about him.
"He's a cool dude," Sam had said. "But he's kind of a manwhore. He got Quinn pregnant last year, and the talk around glee is that he's pretty much slept with every middle-age mom in Lima. Well, the ones in Lima with pools anyway. Still, he's pretty cool. He plays guitar, and he has this awesome theory about how Super Mario Brothers changed civilization that I think you would completely agree with."
"Well," Kurt said. "Maybe not civilization, but video games certainly. I mean, have you seen the kind of games they had before that? Just… no."
It had gotten a lot easier not to think of him after that because cute or not, Kurt had made it a rule to never crush on straight boys.
By the time he left Sam's house the next morning, he was feeling better-and worse- about the whole Warbler/Dalton situation. Better because he had figured out that that was what he really wanted to do, but worse because he wasn't sure if he could just leave Dalton. It's not like they had a huge drawn out conversation about how he felt or anything because that wasn't exactly Sam's area of expertise or his cup of tea-that was more Blaine's thing-but what little conversation they had had about what he should do had been more than helpful.
"You should do whatever makes you happy."
"But what if my-"
Sam cut him off. "Dude, if they-your dad or even your grandfather-don't support your decision? Screw them. It's your life, y'know? You should be happy, and if you're not happy at Dalton, then you should definitely leave."
And that, as Sam was fond of saying, was that.
Only that wasn't really that. He wished it was, wished it could be as easy as Sam made it seem, but it's not. Not when Kurt still had to talk to his dad and his grandfather about everything. The truth was that Kurt hadn't really even thought about leaving Dalton until the words flew out of his mouth the previous night. But now that he had said it… it was all he could think about.
He thought about how it would be to actually live with his dad as opposed to just staying with him for a couple of weeks in between school vacations. He was surprised to discover that he might actually want that. He never had before. He had always been perfectly content with things the way they were, even when he got old enough to be actively involved in his own custody arrangement, but now he wanted that. He wanted him and his dad to be a family, like he and his mom used to be.
He thought about how it would be wearing his own clothes to school, something he had never been able to do. He thought about there being an actual separation in his life for school and for everything else, unlike now where it all blended together and there was hardly any time he wasn't either at school or doing school related activities. He thought about how it would be to attend classes that didn't involve copious amounts of study time in order to keep ahead. Even Sam, whose dyslexia had always made things difficult for him academically, seemed to be thriving at McKinley.
He wanted that. He wanted all of that.
The problem was how to get it. He knew that his dad would probably go along with whatever Kurt wanted. He never seemed to think much of Kurt going to Dalton anyway. One part was the financial aspect of it-Dalton wasn't cheap by any means-and another part was him being so far away. After his mom had died, he had even tried to pull him out, citing financial difficulties as the reason for him doing so. After all, with his mom gone, it was up to him to pay for all of the fees-the tuition, the room and board, books-alone.
His grandfather, his mom's father, would not hear of it. He had simply talked to the Headmaster, which considering the fact that they were old friends wasn't very difficult, and paid the tuition himself. He was already paying for Kurt's private lessons, and Kurt suspected that he was paying for quite a bit of his mother's portion of his tuition because even though she worked, he didn't think her salary from the art gallery she had opened was enough to cover everything.
Kurt hadn't ever thought about it before his dad had mentioned him transferring because of the money. He'd never had to think about it. His grandparents were wealthy. He wasn't sure exactly how wealthy they were, to be honest, because he had been taught when he was young by his grandmother that it wasn't the sort of thing you talked about in polite society, which he was happy about because he didn't like talking about it. He just knew that they were wealthy and that he was wealthy-well, sort of-by default because his mom had been their only child and he was her only child. He knew he had a credit card that was connected to his trust fund and that there was a limit on how much he could spend in a month. Of course, since he'd never actually met that limit, he'd never had to worry about it. He knew that when his mom had died that he'd had to sign so much paperwork, most of which he hadn't even understood. But he wasn't alone in that. Not at Dalton anyway, pretty much everyone had wealthy parents and trust funds, and nobody talked about it-ever.
His dad talked about it though. Not only did he talk about it, but he had always had a huge problem with it, the money and the way his grandfather did things-Kurt had heard him refer to his grandfather as "heavy-handed" once-and the part that his grandfather played in Kurt's life.
Kurt didn't think his grandfather was heavy-handed. He just wanted the best for him and thought he knew what that was. Not that Kurt was really complaining because he loved his grandfather. It was his grandfather that had introduced Kurt to opera when he ten. Most kids wouldn't have cared anything about opera, but had loved it almost immediately. It was also because of his grandfather that he had some of the opportunities that he had, like his lessons with Arthur who happened to be an old friend of his.
He sometimes thought that all of this money stuff may have even been the reason that his parents divorced in the first place. He wasn't sure though because he didn't think that they would have married in the first place if the money had really been a problem. He couldn't remember them fighting about it as he was growing up anyway. He could, however, remember his mom and grandparents fighting about it. They had fought about it a lot, and now his dad and his grandfather fought about it, too, at least they did whenever they had a chance.
They had certainly fought when his grandfather had bought him the Navigator the previous summer after he turned sixteen. His dad had wanted to return it, but when his grandfather had pointed out the logistics of Kurt being away at a boarding school where he would need transportation to his private lessons, he hadn't been able to think of another solution other than Kurt scaling back his lessons which hadn't been a solution at all.
His dad hadn't ever said anything negative to him about all of it, but he did things like have Kurt answer the phone in his shop when he was home for the summer and do chores around the house. Once he had told Kurt that he wanted him to understand the value of the dollar and an honest day's work.
It was going to be a mess.
Kurt thought about it-all of it-all day long. He thought about it while he was making sure the house was clean-it was-that there was room in the refrigerator and freezer for the casseroles and dishes that Molly had sent home with him-there was-he thought about it when he drove to the hospital, while they went through the lengthy process of checking his dad out and loading him in the car. He thought about it while he flitted around the house trying to get his dad settled into the living room. He thought about it while he made lunch.
All day long his dad had been giving him odd looks, like he was trying to figure Kurt out, but since that was generally how he looked at him, Kurt didn't think anything about it. Finally, after lunch, his dad cornered him in the kitchen. Perhaps cornered was being a bit overly dramatic because the man wasn't exactly at top speed, so Kurt was pretty sure that he could avoid the conversation if he wanted to. Only he didn't want to, not really anyway.
"Alright, so here's the deal, kid," his dad started off. "I want to know what has you all worked up, so just sit still a minute and tell me. You haven't sat for more than five minutes all day."
Kurt was quiet for a minute. Even after all of the thinking he had been doing, he hadn't been able to think of a way to solve his problem. And he was just so tired of thinking, so tired of worrying about all of it.
"It's school," he said. "It's not…I'm not…" he took a deep breath and tried again. "I don't want to go back to Dalton. I want to transfer. To McKinley."
His dad didn't say anything for a minute or two. "Is that what you really want? You know that McKinley won't be the same, right? It doesn't have that IB thing you were so gung-ho about before, and it doesn't have half of those smart classes you like taking. Or your Garglers."
Kurt chewed on his bottom lip. He did know. Mostly, anyway. Sam had told him the biggest differences he found between the two schools the night before. "Warblers, Dad, and I know. I don't care about them, though, because even if I stayed there, I wouldn't be a Warbler. I'm not happy there, at Dalton. It's just…" he paused, looking for the right word. "It's too much, and I don't want to do it all. Not anymore."
"You sure about that? A hundred percent positive that's what you want?"
"I am. I want to live here. With you. I want us to be a family."
"Then, that's enough for me. We'll go pick up your stuff and start the paperwork on Monday."
"What about-" Kurt hadn't even said his name before he was silenced with a look.
His dad looked positively fierce in that moment. "You let me worry about him. You just concentrate on doing whatever it takes to make you happy."
Stunned, Kurt just nodded.
"Why don't you go down and see if there's anything you want to change in the basement? You've never lived here during the school year before, so you'll need to make sure you got room for a desk and those practice bars of yours. We can even see about installing some of those bars and mirrors like your studio has later."
Even as tired as his dad must be and as sick as he had been, Kurt had never seen him look so happy before. That was when he knew that he had made the right decision.
Author: Koinaka
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Character(s):one-sided Klaine, eventual Kurt/Puck, eventual ensemble, Warblers, Kurt, Carole, Burt, mentions of Kurt's mom
Genre: Drama, Romance, AU
Spoilers: Up to Grilled Cheesus with the exception of it being completely AU.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Ryan Murphy
Summary: During one of his last conversations with his mom before she died, she told him that he couldn't always choreograph every moment in his life. When his father has a heart attack and nearly dies, he realizes how right she is.
Warning(s): AU
Word Count: Around 6300
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
What He Needs
or
How Kurt Hummel Finally Learned to Stop Planning His Life and Start Living it
By Koinaka
No, you can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need
- You Can't Always Get What You Want, The Rolling Stones
Chapter Five
Quitting the Warblers caused a chain reaction in Kurt's life.
By the time he left ballet, he had seventeen missed calls and twenty-five text messages. He deleted them without even reading them and turned off his phone-something nearly unheard of for him to do. Most of the texts were from Blaine, though, and since he currently wasn't speaking to Blaine, he figured there was no point in reading them. He didn't have to explain himself to them anyway. The Warblers were a voluntary organization; he had no true obligation to them. The entire point was to have fun, and if he wasn't having fun, there was no reason for him to stay.
When Kurt got back to the dorm, he bypassed the desk where his homework was all laid out ready for him to begin and practically threw himself onto his bed. Practice had been excruciating. And wonderful. Wonderfully excruciating even. Every muscle in his body ached in the best possible way. He wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and fall asleep.
So that's exactly what he did.
The problem was that leaving the Warblers caused him to reevaluate other aspects of his life. He felt a little like he was having some sort of midlife crisis which was completely ridiculous because he was only sixteen-nearly seventeen-and not anywhere near old enough to have some sort of existential crises, but that didn't change the fact that he was.
It started with his uniform. Kurt had always worn uniforms to school-always-and he'd never cared before. They had always just been a complete nonentity to him. He still loved fashion and spent the majority of the week planning outfits for the weekend and for the minute he could shed the uniform on week days, but he'd never been bothered about wearing the actual uniform before. Friday was different though. Suddenly, all he could think about were the negative qualities of the uniform and, quite frankly, there were more than a few.
More than the actual aesthetics of the uniform, it was the way the uniform made him feel that was the problem. The tie was too tight against his throat; the material of the pants too itchy against his sensitive skin; the heat of all of the layers-undershirt, button-down oxford in a shade of white that was completely unflattering to his skin tone, sweater vest, and blazer-suffocating, despite the fact that it was October in Ohio which meant that there was already a chill in the air. The physical reactions were nothing compared to the other reactions. He felt caged and restless. He tapped his foot and drummed his fingers all day, as if he couldn't be still for even a moment.
During French, he loosened his tie as far as he could and still follow standard uniform regulations. During lunch, he took off the blazer-completely allowed though not often done-and pushed up the sleeves of his button-down-less advisable because if certain teachers, namely Langston, were around, he would definitely be given a demerit. During Pop Culture, his last class of the day, he fidgeted, wiggling in his seat in an attempt to stop his crawling skin to such an extent that he did get a demerit and was forced to have a "chat" with his teacher, a pushing forty man who preferred to be called Simon instead of Mr. Regionali because he thought that calling him by his first name made them all his friends.
Shedding the uniform the moment he got back to his room, not even stopping to properly hang it up, helped, but it still wasn't enough. He felt better with his own clothing on, more like himself and better able to breath, but it still wasn't right.
It was completely frustrating because he wanted to fix this, to make it right, but how could he fix something when he wasn't even sure what was wrong in the first place?
All he did know was that he felt like there was this huge weight pressing on his chest-a weight that he hadn't even know was there until he walked out of the Warblers. But know he did know. What he didn't know was how to get rid of it. Taking off the uniform helped some, but it was still there, and now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember the last time it wasn't there. Before his mom got sick? Maybe. Probably.
The last time that stood out in his mind was the Spring Break trip to New York City that he took with his mom the spring before she got sick. She had picked him up on Friday afternoon from Dalton with their bags already packed. They had been on the road for nearly an hour before she had finally broken down to tell him where they were going.
They had spent the entire week in New York City. They went to museums, shopped, saw a musical every night they were there-and a couple of times during the day as well-and did all of the touristy things that people did in the city. They ordered room service and watched pay-per-view movies in their pajamas, went on carriage rides, and visited every location that Kurt could remember from every movie he had seen that had taken place in New York City. It had been the trip of a lifetime. Sometimes he wondered if she had known that she was sick then. Thinking back on it, it seemed likely.
Suddenly he wanted to be anywhere but there, sitting in his dorm room staring at the same pile of homework from the night before. He had expected all of his teachers to reprimand him, but they hadn't. Apparently his father being sick gave him a bit of leeway, so now not only did he have to complete today's homework, but he had to do that homework as well. He didn't have any idea of when he would squeeze it in. His father was being released from the hospital in the morning, so he would probably spend the weekend making sure he got settled in at home and just spending time with him. He still had a bit of time before his vocal lesson. If he started now, he could work through at least the French translation before time to go, but the very thought of opening a book made him feel nauseous. Instead, he grabbed his jacket and headed outside.
He walked aimlessly for a few minutes before sitting down on one of the benches spread across campus. Outside, the weight felt lighter, but it was still there. He watched as a couple of boys near him roughhoused over a football, laughing and playing in the sunlight.
When was the last time Kurt had done that? When was the last time he had spent the afternoon with his friends just hanging out? He had hung out plenty with Sam and Blaine and even Jeff and Nick while his dad was in the coma and afterwards, but now that he thought about it, he couldn't think of the last time he had done that before then. It wasn't that he didn't spend time with his friends because he did, but most of the time it was because one of the boys Kurtnapped him-their words, not his-to ensure that he would go along with whatever shenanigans they had planned. The other times were always highly planned endeavors.
They had to be highly planned in order to work around the other things he had in his life-lessons and classes and homework and clubs took up a lot of his time and the preparation for those things took up the rest of the time. He didn't come home for weekends normally because he needed that time to catch up on his sleep and homework, to work on new fundraising ideas for the GSA, to come up with new numbers for the Warblers to do. The list was never ending, and sure, cutting out the Warblers freed up a lot of his time, but soon SAT prep would take over that time. Then it would be the same thing all over again.
Kurt didn't even notice Blaine approaching until he sat down next to him on the bench. Neither one of them said anything for a long while.
It was Kurt who finally broke the silence. "Are you happy?" At Blaine's confused look, Kurt clarified. "Are you happy here at Dalton?"
Blaine's eyebrows drew together in concentration. He considered the question for a few minutes. "Yes, I am," he said. "Things at my old school weren't as terrible as they might have been, but they were still pretty bad. I don't have to worry about that here. Here I am accepted. I have friends. I can be myself. Sometimes I wish things could have been different. I wonder if I had tried hard enough, been different-better somehow-would I have had to run here, but the truth is that even if I had tried harder to get along with people none of those things would have been possible at my old school. So, yes, I'm happy here."
Kurt nodded absently, still watching the group of boys across the courtyard. From beside him, he could feel the weight of Blaine's gaze on him.
"Are you happy at Dalton?" Blaine asked. There was an odd tone to his voice that Kurt couldn't place, some double meaning to his question that Kurt's already overly full mind couldn't quite work out.
That's when it hit him, what was wrong, why nothing felt right. He wasn't happy. Genuinely happy. There were things that made him happy, yes, ballet and vocal lessons, certainly, and his friends, but it was all so fleeting and centered around actual events. He was happy for minutes, hours, but he wanted more than that.
There were some people-people like his mom and Sam, for instance-who were just happy people. They woke up in the morning with a smile on their face and went to bed with one as well. He wasn't. Not now, anyway. He used to be happy. He could remember weeks and months at a time when he was happy, genuinely happy. When he would wake up with a smile on his face and go to bed with a smile on his face. When had that changed? When he came to Dalton? When his mom got sick? When she… but he couldn't even think of that because if he thought of it-if he even started to think of it-he wasn't sure he could stop.
"No," Kurt finally replied. "I don't think I am."
When he looked up, Blaine looked stricken. He took a couple of deep breaths and cleared his mind. Then, he pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the tightening of his chest that started when he saw Blaine's inexplicable expression. "Look, I have to go. We'll talk when I get back on Sunday, okay?"
He paused when he'd taken several steps and looked back at Blaine. He felt like he should say something, but he wasn't sure what, so he just put one foot in front of the other and walked away.
Friday's vocal lesson was every bit as demanding as the one before. He began by singing-or attempting to sing-through "Hymn of the Sun" before beginning the process of choosing the other two songs for his audition repertoire. He spent the entire time floundering between two arias-one being an aria from Purcell's The Fairy-Queene, which he liked on the sheer principle of the opera being based on his favorite play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the other being "Delizie Contenti" from Giasone, which he must admit that he was rather uncomfortable singing. His discomfort was largely due to the fact that it was, basically, Giasone singing about how happy he was about pleasure…of the sexual sort, something Kurt was blissfully unaware of. For the most part. He was aware of how uncomfortable talking about it made him, anyway, and he definitely had his doubts on whether or not he would be able to effectively sing about it.
Still, Arthur was insistent about his choosing that particular song.
"You need to showcase your foreign language abilities," he had told him. "Since your other two selections will be in English, it is important for you to have one selection that is not. How about we just try it out for today, hmm? If it isn't a good fit for you, then we will absolutely find another song. The entire point of this is to find songs that will flatter your voice, Kurt, which I think "Delizie Contenti" will do nicely, but if you don't like it, I won't push the matter. All I ask is that you do at least try it today."
Flushing hotly, Kurt had nodded.
When Arthur noticed his blush, he had winked and then proceeded to tell him a lie. "I don't understand a word of Italian, you know, so there's really no need for you to be embarrassed."
Not only was it a lie, but it was a completely shameless lie because Kurt knew that although he had been born and raised in America, both of his parents were Italian, and he had attended a conservatory inItaly. So, the old man was shameless, but at least his words did have the intended effect of calming him down. Kurt's own knowledge of Italian being precursory at best also helped.
They had run through both songs once, and by the time practice was over, Kurt had to admit that while he enjoyed both-and, not that he was vain or anything, sounded wonderful on both-the tone of his voice was more suited for "Delizie Contenti." That was, of course, ignoring the fact that the role of Giasone was originally casted with a castrato in mind.
He listened to the soundtrack of Giasone on the way back to Lima, and though he was scarcely halfway through the soundtrack when he pulled into the McKinley High parking lot to wait for the football game to end, he knew that it was the song for him.
The plan had been to just meet Sam at his house after the game was over, but Sam had sent him a text this afternoon asking if he could pick him up instead. After finding a parking spot, which had been a feat unto itself, he shot a text off to Sam telling him where he was parked-practically across town since the stadium was packed-and turned the cd back to "Delizie Contenti." He knew it might be a while before Sam came out, so he listened to the track several times, and then began to sing along with it, his eyes closed as he did so. A tap at his window caused his eyes to pop open and him to fumble with his volume control on his stereo.
Sam was standing on the passenger side of the Navigator with another boy-a very attractive boy-in tow. Kurt's eyes flitted over to where the boy stood near Sam's elbow. He popped the lock and waited for an explanation. He didn't have to wait long.
"Dude, it's a total mad house out there. You mind giving my friend a ride home? I forgot that I told him I would before my mom decided to take the car tonight," Sam said when he opened the door.
Sam wasn't kidding when he said it was a mad house. It looked like the entire contents of the stadium had reached their cars at the same time. The resulting chaos wasn't pretty.
"It's fine, though it doesn't look like we'll be going anywhere for a while." He ejected the CD and turned his iPod on to the playlist of Sam-acceptable music as the two boys piled into the Navigator and got situated. "Just tell me your address, and I'll program it into my GPS. I'm awful at directions."
"Thanks," the boy muttered after he gave him the address, his fingers flying across his cell phone the entire time.
"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?" Kurt asked Sam with a raised brow. He wasn't looking at Sam, though. His eyes were glued onto the rear view mirror, at the unnamed boy-at his thick eyelashes and his olive complexion, at the curve of his cheekbones and the strong line of his jaw.
"Oh yeah," he laughed. "Kurt, this is Puck. We're in glee and football together."
"Puck? As in A Midsummer Night's Dream's Puck?"
The boy, Puck, looked up from his texting, a confused look on his face. "A Midsummer Night's what? That a movie or something?"
"No…well, yes, there is a movie, quite a few actually, but it's a play. Shakespeare, you know."
Puck shrugged. "Never heard of it."
"Lord, what fools these mortals be?" Kurt asked. The other boy shrugged again, so he continued. "Or how about, Cupid is a knavish lad / Thus to make poor females mad?"
"Look, I said I've never heard of it, alright? I'm not into that Shakespeare crap. I mean, I'm pretty sure that I read one or two of those Sparknote things for English before, but it's not like I'm some lame-o loser that sits around reading or something," Puck snapped, never taking his eyes off of his phone screen.
Kurt fell silent at once, his eyes narrowed. He might be attractive-okay, no might be about it-but there was no excuse for being rude to someone you barely knew. Especially when the other person was just trying to make conversation with you. Not to mention the fact that he was doing you a favor. Luckily, for him, Kurt had manners.
"I forgot about your obsession with that play," Sam said in an attempt to ease some of the tension. "How many times have you read it anyway?"
"A couple of times. Not that many. Probably not even as many times as you've watched Avatar even. And I'm not obsessed." Of course, Kurt wasn't counting the times his mom had read it to him. A Midsummer Night's Dream had been another of their special things, like The Sound of Music.
"Dude, you and Jeff dressed up as Oberon and Titania for Halloween last year," he pointed out.
Kurt grinned at the memory. Last Halloween had been fun. Blaine had dressed up as the mischievous Puck, but he hadn't quite pulled it off. Still… "Yes, Jeff was a lovely Titania, wasn't he? Remind me, how much did you end up owing him again for dressing up like Titania when you chickened out?"
Sam scowled. "Two hundred."
"So, how was the game? Did you win?" he asked after a couple seconds of silence.
Both boys grimaced. "No."
"How about you?" Sam asked. "I've hardly talked to you all week. Did Wes like the dance thing that you did?"
Now, it was Kurt's turn to grimace. "If by like you mean completely shot down-which, by the way, was an incredibly, incredibly stupid thing to do-then yes, he liked it."
"Why would he shoot it down? I mean, I know pretty much nothing about dancing, but what you told me about your plans last week sounded pretty good. To me, at least."
"'The Warblers have never been about pomp and circumstance in the past. I don't see why we should start now,'" Kurt said in a near-perfect imitation of Wes. "Which is completely fine…if they feel like handing Vocal Adrenaline another National Championship."
From the rearview mirror, he saw Puck's head cock to the side, obviously listening to the conversation now whereas before he had been staring intently at his phone.
"Wes is a dick," Sam said. "I mean, I hardly know the guy, and I know that much."
"Eloquent as ever, but yes, I have to admit. He is a dick. The whole thing is just completely ridiculous. Vocally, they stand a better chance at beating them this year since Jesse graduated-"
"Hold up," Puck said, interrupting him. "You know St. Sucks A Lot?"
"Jesse? A little. Lima's not exactly a booming metropolis, and there's only one dance studio that's actually worth attending, so we were bound to run into one another at some point. We were both in the production of Peter Pan that our ballet studio put on three summers ago, but we weren't friends or anything because I'm pretty sure that there is a dark void where his soul should be."
Puck chortled at that. "Dude's totally a soulless automon."
"Automaton," Kurt corrected, earning a scowl from the boy in question, "but yes, he is."
A tense silence fell over the car after that.
"I feel like I should warn you about my mom," Sam said when they were finally able to pull out of the parking lot. "I told her your dad was coming home in the morning, and she's practically been cooking ever since. The way I figure it, your dad won't have to cook for, like, weeks. She made that weird noodle thing that I know you like even though you complain about how much fat it has it in, too."
Kurt made an appreciative noise. His mom's vegan Mac and (I can't believe it's not) Cheese was amazing, and worth every single calorie it contained. "Well, I won't complain about that tonight. I'm completely starved. It's been an awful week."
"About that," Sam said, turning to face him. "You going to tell me why Blaine's been blowing up my phone with frantic text messages the last couple of days?"
"Well," he said slowly. "We're not exactly talking right now because he took Wes's side in the whole dance fiasco. And he said I didn't have my priorities straight because I thought that it was ridiculous that Wes wanted us to practice three times a day for our upcoming invitational in case someone from Vocal Adrenaline just happens to show up."
"Three times a day?" said Puck, incredulously, from the backseat. "Dude, that's some hardcore shit. Worse than Rachel."
"It is," Kurt agreed. He didn't know Rachel very well, but he had a feeling that she and Wes would get along swimmingly. "But that's probably not why he's been texting you."
"You're right. He never mentioned any of that. He just kept saying I needed to talk some sense into you because you were making a huge mistake, but he never really said what mistake you were making."
Kurt chewed on his bottom lip for a few seconds. "I quit the Warblers."
"Wait, what?"
"I quit the Warblers," he repeated and took a deep breath before adding, "And I think I want to quit Dalton, too."
Sam's mouth fell open in shock.
Spending time with Sam, it turned out, was exactly what he needed. They spent the entire night gorging on food and playing video games-Call of Duty first, but after about half an hour of Kurt trouncing him, they switched to Super Smash Brothers Brawl which Kurt wasn't as good at, but actually liked playing better. Kurt also spent the night trying, and failing spectacularly, not to think any more about "Puck," whose real name, he learned, was Noah Puckerman. That was easier to do after he Sam told him some more things about him.
"He's a cool dude," Sam had said. "But he's kind of a manwhore. He got Quinn pregnant last year, and the talk around glee is that he's pretty much slept with every middle-age mom in Lima. Well, the ones in Lima with pools anyway. Still, he's pretty cool. He plays guitar, and he has this awesome theory about how Super Mario Brothers changed civilization that I think you would completely agree with."
"Well," Kurt said. "Maybe not civilization, but video games certainly. I mean, have you seen the kind of games they had before that? Just… no."
It had gotten a lot easier not to think of him after that because cute or not, Kurt had made it a rule to never crush on straight boys.
By the time he left Sam's house the next morning, he was feeling better-and worse- about the whole Warbler/Dalton situation. Better because he had figured out that that was what he really wanted to do, but worse because he wasn't sure if he could just leave Dalton. It's not like they had a huge drawn out conversation about how he felt or anything because that wasn't exactly Sam's area of expertise or his cup of tea-that was more Blaine's thing-but what little conversation they had had about what he should do had been more than helpful.
"You should do whatever makes you happy."
"But what if my-"
Sam cut him off. "Dude, if they-your dad or even your grandfather-don't support your decision? Screw them. It's your life, y'know? You should be happy, and if you're not happy at Dalton, then you should definitely leave."
And that, as Sam was fond of saying, was that.
Only that wasn't really that. He wished it was, wished it could be as easy as Sam made it seem, but it's not. Not when Kurt still had to talk to his dad and his grandfather about everything. The truth was that Kurt hadn't really even thought about leaving Dalton until the words flew out of his mouth the previous night. But now that he had said it… it was all he could think about.
He thought about how it would be to actually live with his dad as opposed to just staying with him for a couple of weeks in between school vacations. He was surprised to discover that he might actually want that. He never had before. He had always been perfectly content with things the way they were, even when he got old enough to be actively involved in his own custody arrangement, but now he wanted that. He wanted him and his dad to be a family, like he and his mom used to be.
He thought about how it would be wearing his own clothes to school, something he had never been able to do. He thought about there being an actual separation in his life for school and for everything else, unlike now where it all blended together and there was hardly any time he wasn't either at school or doing school related activities. He thought about how it would be to attend classes that didn't involve copious amounts of study time in order to keep ahead. Even Sam, whose dyslexia had always made things difficult for him academically, seemed to be thriving at McKinley.
He wanted that. He wanted all of that.
The problem was how to get it. He knew that his dad would probably go along with whatever Kurt wanted. He never seemed to think much of Kurt going to Dalton anyway. One part was the financial aspect of it-Dalton wasn't cheap by any means-and another part was him being so far away. After his mom had died, he had even tried to pull him out, citing financial difficulties as the reason for him doing so. After all, with his mom gone, it was up to him to pay for all of the fees-the tuition, the room and board, books-alone.
His grandfather, his mom's father, would not hear of it. He had simply talked to the Headmaster, which considering the fact that they were old friends wasn't very difficult, and paid the tuition himself. He was already paying for Kurt's private lessons, and Kurt suspected that he was paying for quite a bit of his mother's portion of his tuition because even though she worked, he didn't think her salary from the art gallery she had opened was enough to cover everything.
Kurt hadn't ever thought about it before his dad had mentioned him transferring because of the money. He'd never had to think about it. His grandparents were wealthy. He wasn't sure exactly how wealthy they were, to be honest, because he had been taught when he was young by his grandmother that it wasn't the sort of thing you talked about in polite society, which he was happy about because he didn't like talking about it. He just knew that they were wealthy and that he was wealthy-well, sort of-by default because his mom had been their only child and he was her only child. He knew he had a credit card that was connected to his trust fund and that there was a limit on how much he could spend in a month. Of course, since he'd never actually met that limit, he'd never had to worry about it. He knew that when his mom had died that he'd had to sign so much paperwork, most of which he hadn't even understood. But he wasn't alone in that. Not at Dalton anyway, pretty much everyone had wealthy parents and trust funds, and nobody talked about it-ever.
His dad talked about it though. Not only did he talk about it, but he had always had a huge problem with it, the money and the way his grandfather did things-Kurt had heard him refer to his grandfather as "heavy-handed" once-and the part that his grandfather played in Kurt's life.
Kurt didn't think his grandfather was heavy-handed. He just wanted the best for him and thought he knew what that was. Not that Kurt was really complaining because he loved his grandfather. It was his grandfather that had introduced Kurt to opera when he ten. Most kids wouldn't have cared anything about opera, but had loved it almost immediately. It was also because of his grandfather that he had some of the opportunities that he had, like his lessons with Arthur who happened to be an old friend of his.
He sometimes thought that all of this money stuff may have even been the reason that his parents divorced in the first place. He wasn't sure though because he didn't think that they would have married in the first place if the money had really been a problem. He couldn't remember them fighting about it as he was growing up anyway. He could, however, remember his mom and grandparents fighting about it. They had fought about it a lot, and now his dad and his grandfather fought about it, too, at least they did whenever they had a chance.
They had certainly fought when his grandfather had bought him the Navigator the previous summer after he turned sixteen. His dad had wanted to return it, but when his grandfather had pointed out the logistics of Kurt being away at a boarding school where he would need transportation to his private lessons, he hadn't been able to think of another solution other than Kurt scaling back his lessons which hadn't been a solution at all.
His dad hadn't ever said anything negative to him about all of it, but he did things like have Kurt answer the phone in his shop when he was home for the summer and do chores around the house. Once he had told Kurt that he wanted him to understand the value of the dollar and an honest day's work.
It was going to be a mess.
Kurt thought about it-all of it-all day long. He thought about it while he was making sure the house was clean-it was-that there was room in the refrigerator and freezer for the casseroles and dishes that Molly had sent home with him-there was-he thought about it when he drove to the hospital, while they went through the lengthy process of checking his dad out and loading him in the car. He thought about it while he flitted around the house trying to get his dad settled into the living room. He thought about it while he made lunch.
All day long his dad had been giving him odd looks, like he was trying to figure Kurt out, but since that was generally how he looked at him, Kurt didn't think anything about it. Finally, after lunch, his dad cornered him in the kitchen. Perhaps cornered was being a bit overly dramatic because the man wasn't exactly at top speed, so Kurt was pretty sure that he could avoid the conversation if he wanted to. Only he didn't want to, not really anyway.
"Alright, so here's the deal, kid," his dad started off. "I want to know what has you all worked up, so just sit still a minute and tell me. You haven't sat for more than five minutes all day."
Kurt was quiet for a minute. Even after all of the thinking he had been doing, he hadn't been able to think of a way to solve his problem. And he was just so tired of thinking, so tired of worrying about all of it.
"It's school," he said. "It's not…I'm not…" he took a deep breath and tried again. "I don't want to go back to Dalton. I want to transfer. To McKinley."
His dad didn't say anything for a minute or two. "Is that what you really want? You know that McKinley won't be the same, right? It doesn't have that IB thing you were so gung-ho about before, and it doesn't have half of those smart classes you like taking. Or your Garglers."
Kurt chewed on his bottom lip. He did know. Mostly, anyway. Sam had told him the biggest differences he found between the two schools the night before. "Warblers, Dad, and I know. I don't care about them, though, because even if I stayed there, I wouldn't be a Warbler. I'm not happy there, at Dalton. It's just…" he paused, looking for the right word. "It's too much, and I don't want to do it all. Not anymore."
"You sure about that? A hundred percent positive that's what you want?"
"I am. I want to live here. With you. I want us to be a family."
"Then, that's enough for me. We'll go pick up your stuff and start the paperwork on Monday."
"What about-" Kurt hadn't even said his name before he was silenced with a look.
His dad looked positively fierce in that moment. "You let me worry about him. You just concentrate on doing whatever it takes to make you happy."
Stunned, Kurt just nodded.
"Why don't you go down and see if there's anything you want to change in the basement? You've never lived here during the school year before, so you'll need to make sure you got room for a desk and those practice bars of yours. We can even see about installing some of those bars and mirrors like your studio has later."
Even as tired as his dad must be and as sick as he had been, Kurt had never seen him look so happy before. That was when he knew that he had made the right decision.