Glee/Highlander - PG, AU
Title: you’re listening for a song that I don’t know, that no one has yet sung
Fandom: Highlander/Glee
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Denise Levertov
Warnings: AU after “Born This Way” for Glee; post-series for Highlander
Pairings: one-sided Karofsky/Kurt; pre-Kurt/Puck
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 390
Point of view: third
Notes: for maldeluxx , who wanted either boy’s pov in this 'verse
When his mom’s nephew shows up and is a blackbelt in everything ever, Kurt doesn’t think too much about it. Matt is on a quest to reconnect with his family and Dad’s been looking for someone to train Kurt in self-defense. Win-win all around.
Puck hanging around is a surprise at first, until Kurt realizes that Puck will take any opportunity to learn how to kick ass. And Matt knows how to kick ass.
Matt is funny, at times bitingly so. He doesn’t take it easy on Kurt, and for the first few months it hurts-Matt is more demanding than Coach Sylvester at her worst, which Kurt would never have believed possible.
One night, Puck and Matt both miss the lesson. Neither calls. Kurt is too relieved to worry about it until the next morning, but then both are there that afternoon, and Matt introduces sword drills. Kurt grumbles about it, but he hasn’t gotten his way yet, and he doesn’t this time, either.
And then comes a second encounter in the locker room, and Azimio’s rage is so out of the blue-there has been no bullying since Kurt’s return to McKinley, and Azimio catches him off-guard.
One hard shove is all it takes. Kurt’s head slams into the locker and breaks. Kurt doesn’t even know he’s died till he wakes up to Karofsky crying. Karofsky refuses to let him go as he walks out of the school, stumbling in shock because he knows. He feels fine, better than, but he knows.
Matt’s face confirms it. And his gentle hands, his bittersweet touch. They don’t talk on the way home, and Matt tucks him into bed like a child, with murmured apologies and a kiss on the brow. Puck arrives and Kurt turns into him when he stretches out at Kurt’s side.
Kurt feels them both, Puck and Matt, in his head. Matt is ginormous, all-encompassing, like a deep pool of water engulfing him whole. Puck is a light spring rain, just enough to know it’s there.
Mat tells them to rest, that he’ll call Dad. So Kurt just lays his head on Puck’s shoulder and pretends he doesn’t know, that nothing has changed. His dreams are terrifying, and he wakes to Puck holding him and humming a lullaby.
“It’ll get better,” Puck whispers. “I promise.”
Kurt believes him.
Title: you’re listening for a song that I don’t know, that no one has yet sung
Fandom: Highlander/Glee
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Denise Levertov
Warnings: AU after “Born This Way” for Glee; post-series for Highlander; character death
Pairings: Kurt/Puck, Rachel/Finn
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 385
Point of view: third
Notes: for maldeluxx , who wanted either boy’s pov
Dad dies in a car accident when Kurt is thirty-five. Kurt goes home for the funeral, carefully disguising himself to look his actual age. Noah doesn’t join him.
Kurt holds Carole and Finn while they grieve and tries not to have a breakdown. He stays for three days, taking care of the family he hasn’t seen in over a decade, not since he graduated college. He has three more degrees now, and a dozen different names.
He hasn’t aged a day since he was seventeen. In their grief and pain and fury at the senselessness of Dad’s death, no one notices.
0o0
When Kurt is forty-six, Carole has a stroke. Finn calls him in a panic and Kurt goes running. If everyone wasn’t so worried, they’d notice he looks thirty years too young.
Carole dies. Kurt arranges everything with Rachel’s help. He hugs Finn goodbye and leaves right after he sees Finn home.
0o0
Kurt is eighty-three when Finn dies in his sleep. He is the last of Kurt’s friends. Kurt pretends to be his own grandson for the funeral and claims his father and grandfather are too ill to travel.
Noah goes home with him this time. They stand in the back of the room and hold hands. Before they leave, they visit the graves of everyone they’ve loved and outlived.
“I would’ve come with you,” Kurt says softly as Noah traces the name on his sister’s stone.
“I know,” Noah says.
0o0
Matt calls them his boys. Kurt calls him Matt until he changes his name, and then calls him whatever that is until the next time. Kurt never loses track of anyone’s identity and Noah leaves him in charge of that part of their lives. Noah calls their teacher Old Man, never anything else.
When they’re three hundred and twelve and barely recognize the world anymore, their teacher (named Adam today) takes them to an old sanctuary in the mountains, a place of stone forgotten by time.
Nathaniel and Karl are shed; Noah and Kurt hold each other close and remember when they were children, before swords and before lightning, before Death and his lessons, before they never aged anymore.
0o0
“When were you young?” Kurt asked his teacher once.
The man he still called Matt laughed then and said, “Oh, my dear, a long time ago.”
Title: you’re listening for a song that I don’t know, that no one has yet sung
Fandom: Highlander/Glee
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Denise Levertov
Warnings: AU after “Born This Way” for Glee; post-series for Highlander
Pairings: Kurt/Puck
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 240
Point of view: third
Notes: for maldeluxx , who wanted a gleek future!pov
Rachel spent ten years on Broadway. She called Mercedes once and told her that she’d seen Puck and Kurt after a show.
Kurt was a mystery to everyone who knew him in Lima. He’d broken up with Blaine the summer between junior and senior year, graduated top of their class, gone to NYU, graduated top of his class there-and vanished. He still called and emailed, but hadn’t been home in five years. Finn said he called his father the most, once or twice a week, and he emailed Finn little tidbits about his life.
Puck disappeared after graduation, but Finn said he sent money home to his mom and sister, which was more than his father ever had.
But one night, Rachel told Mercedes, who shared the story with everyone else, Rachel was leaving after a performance and saw Kurt leaning against the wall outside, smiling at someone whose face Rachel couldn’t see. Broad shoulders, yes, and adorably curly hair, and a deep laugh that sounded familiar.
Kurt caught her eye and smiled, then his companion turned and it took Rachel a moment to recognize Noah Puckerman. They both still looked so young, like they were in McKinley’s halls again.
Noah winked at her, Kurt smiled again, and they were gone.
“She probably just saw two boys who looked like ‘em,” Mercedes said to Quinn at their monthly lunch.
“Most likely,” Quinn replied, and the conversation moved on.