Slow Dissolve (fic)
Title: Slow Dissolve
Characters/Fandom: Kurt, Blaine, Rachel, Finn, Santana, Brittany, Burt, Carole (in canon pairings)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~5,000
Spoilers: 4.01, “The New Rachel”
Warnings: possible physical and/or mental health issues, dieting, disordered eating, helplessness
Summary: Kurt changes the summer after he graduates. No one fully understands what it means - not even Kurt.
A/N: The entire fic takes place before Season 4 begins, but it’s essentially a reaction fic to the first episode of Season 4 and how I saw Kurt and his relationships portrayed in it. Title from the song “Slow Motion” by David Gray. Thanks to lavender_love00 and punkkitten2113 for being great betas!
Also on here on tumblr.
Extended author's note/warning: This narrative isn’t what I would consider an angst genre piece. But it’s not a satisfying narrative in which everything gets tied up neatly at the end. I don’t recommend reading this if you have been looking for the meaning of life and are frustrated that you haven’t found it yet, or if you have untreated clinical depression, or if you have a disposition toward hopelessness. I’m being completely sincere here. I’ve read things that lack resolution when I’ve been in those mental states, and I’ve regretted it every time. Come back when you’re in a different space.
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Slow Dissolve
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1.
This is not a story. Stories have beginnings, and middles, and endings. Not every character may be happy as the last letters of the last sentence are placed on the page, but there is some kind of resolution.
This will not happen here.
Life is not a story. There is no structure to it, no overarching narrative. We each have flaws, but we don’t always learn from them. We each have challenges, but we don’t always transcend them. We find ourselves in perplexing situations, and we have no assurance we will solve our way out of them.
Stories, even sad ones, bring comfort. They present questions, like life presents questions, and then they proceed to answer them - sometimes subtly, sometimes didactically, sometimes to the dissatisfaction of the audience - but they always answer them.
Life is not so kind to us. It doesn’t always answer our questions.
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2.
Kurt had always known there was a chance he wouldn't get into NYADA. At first, after that humiliating evening at the prospective students mixer, the chance seemed more like a certainty. But as the year progressed, he started to let himself hope - first when he was selected for an audition, then when Madame Tibideaux offered him her obviously rare praise.
Still, he knew that he and Rachel might not get in. Well, Rachel definitely wouldn't get in after the way her audition went. If he got accepted and she didn't, it would be hard to go to New York alone. But he'd always planned on going there, even before he met her, and he'd make himself do it. He was used to being alone. She'd have Finn and the distraction of marriage to pull her through. And if they both got rejected, they'd figure out, together, what would come next.
But that's not how things played out.
Opening his letter to find out he didn't get in wasn't the worst thing to happen in his life. But hearing Rachel say, "I got in," might have been.
He didn't want to feel that way. He loved Rachel. He wanted her to be happy. He’d cried as hard as she did after she choked in her audition.
But he knew, also, that the situation was patently unfair. The rules of life were different for each of them. He could try as hard as she did, and work as hard, and sing with as much gusto and flair; he could dance better and put more effort into staging and costume and character; he could prove himself over and over again to the Will Schuesters and Shannon Biestes and Carmen Tibideauxs of the world - and still, he was invisible.
She shined like a goddamn star, but he was only dark matter.
He looked in the mirror and tried to understand what made him so easy to dismiss. All these years, he'd tried so hard to be formidable. His elegant poise, his perfect hair, his muscular shoulders - they were all part of that. He wasn't sure if the answer was to become more perfect, or to give up altogether.
Life after high school began. But it didn’t feel like a beginning, even as he pretended to the rest of the world that it did. He talked about reapplying to NYADA. He went over to Rachel's every day to practice dance routines in preparation for his next audition. He worked on expanding both ends of his vocal range. He tried out for the Lima Community Theatre's summer production of Guys and Dolls, and got in. (He was cast as Gambler #12 - in other words, a member of the chorus - while the guy who played Sky Masterson couldn't even sing on key and the ones who sang "Fugue for Tinhorns" kept fumbling their lines).
He worked to be better even as, minute by minute and day by day, he lost a little more hope. On the outside, he kept living his life; on the inside, he wondered, if he was so invisible to the world, when would he disappear completely?
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3.
When Burt Hummel got back from a particularly interminable summer session of arguing and getting nothing done in the House, Kurt looked different. Taller, maybe. Except that when they hugged, Kurt was about eye-to-eye with Burt, just as he had been for the last year.
Burt pulled back. He looked carefully at Kurt. They talked. Burt didn't pay much attention to what either of them were saying. He was on autopilot, asking Kurt how he's been and what he's been up to (of course he knew a lot of it already; they talk on the phone every night when Burt is in D.C.) and Kurt talking fast and in detail about a new recipe from some guy named Jamie Oliver that he would make that night.
It wasn't that Burt didn't care what Kurt was saying. Of course he cared. It's just that there was something different about Kurt's face, or the way he held himself, or something - and Burt was distracted trying to figure out what it was.
So Kurt talked, and Burt stepped back and looked his son up and down. The way he dressed hadn’t changed - Kurt was, unsurprisingly, taking advantage of the air conditioning to show off a new scarf and tailored jacket combination. At first, Burt thought the jeans were new, too. They were cut more generously than the skinny things Kurt usually opted for.
But then Burt took a closer look, and he recognized the jeans. They’d been the subject of an “Are you seriously planning to leave the house in jeans that are that tight? Don’t you want to hold on to your option to have biological kids someday?” argument two months ago. But now - well, they could still be described as fitting, but they weren't tight. They didn't make Burt want to cover his eyes and look the other way.
Kurt had lost weight. That's what it was.
Kurt was still talking about this recipe and something about brunoise and chiffonade. Burt listened a bit more attentively. Occasionally, his mind wandered to how genuinely skinny Kurt had become. He thought about when he himself was that age, gaunt and unable to gain weight even though he ate like Finn, especially (ironically) after he'd started playing football in junior college. Kurt was even more active than usual this summer, with play rehearsals and dance practices with Rachel. His diet just hadn't caught up yet.
Burt decided not to say anything to Kurt about it. He'd hated his own mother's comments about his weight; he'd been self-conscious enough without her needing to point out his shortcomings. It would take care of itself soon.
That night at dinner, Burt was so distracted by the conversation and by the happiness of being back with his wife and son that he didn't notice how much Kurt ate or didn't eat. He didn't notice how much he ate himself, for that matter.
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4.
Carole wanted to get in shape. She wouldn't mind shedding a few pounds, either, although she'd been on enough Good Housekeeping diet plans to know that the odds of both losing weight and keeping it off were slim to none. On the bright side, not being skinny meant she was at really low risk for osteoporosis.
Still, it wouldn't hurt to get more muscle. Her posture wasn't what it used to be, and with Finn (and probably Kurt) moving out soon, she'd like to be able to carry the groceries into the house by herself without having to stop for a breather halfway to the kitchen.
So when Kurt strode into the kitchen in his unitard and sweatband one afternoon while Carole was packing her dinner for work, she asked him, "What's this workout you do, anyway?"
"The Tracy Anderson Method," he said breathlessly, pouring himself a glass of water. "It's grueling, but worth it." He reached into the refrigerator and grabbed a cucumber, bringing it to the sink to rinse, then slicing it into coins and dropping a few into his glass.
"You think I could join you next time? I need to get in better shape." Carole took a slice from the cutting board and popped it into her mouth.
"Sure." He smiled and took a sip of his cucumber water. "A lot of women love it. Makes you strong without bulking you up."
The next day, Kurt brought his collection of Tracy Anderson DVDs down to the living room. Carole kept searching the back covers for one that was only twenty minutes long, but none was shorter than forty. So she told Kurt to pick. "This one," he finally said, "would probably be good to start. If it's too much, you can stop halfway through and we can do the second half tomorrow."
Five minutes in, Carole wondered if maybe working out was overrated. Ten minutes in, she started to worry about whether she'd already used up her legs for the day and wouldn't be able to stand at work. Thirteen minutes in, she started to wonder why Tracy Anderson hated her so much. Sixteen minutes in, when Kurt said, "You're doing great, Carole," she had the urge to throw something at him; but it was only an urge, because she'd already wrung all the strength out of her arms by doing these weird wavy things.
At twenty minutes, she excused herself (Kurt's response: "This was so fun, Carole! I can't wait until we do this tomorrow”), somehow made it to the shower, and swore she would never exercise again for the rest of her life.
But it was the first thing Kurt asked her about when she came down for coffee the next morning, and she realized that she'd been so distracted by fatigue during the slow times at work yesterday that she'd totally forgotten to worry about Finn. So she told him, "Sure, can't wait!"
It got easier as the days progressed, although Carole still couldn't fathom how Kurt could do both this and dance practice every single day and still, on occasion, go for a run with Blaine. She shrugged to herself. It wasn't that much more than Finn's football practices - although how Finn had gotten through those was a little mind-boggling, too.
Teenagers.
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5.
A few weeks before the wedding, Finn noticed that Kurt had taken to eating salad for breakfast. But he didn't think much of it. Kurt had always eaten weird things - some of them good, like crepes with serviceberry sauce (Finn had no idea what a serviceberry was, but it tasted awesome), and some of them frightening, like paella (the mussels freaked Finn out).
He didn't think much of it, but he still commented on it. "Dude, why are you eating salad for breakfast? That's just … weird."
Kurt glared at him. "It's lettuce season, Finn."
"Lettuce is always in season."
"Local lettuce, Finn. Anyway, someone who eats Cap'n Crunch topped with Cocoa Krispies for breakfast is hardly in a place to judge."
"I'm not judging."
"You just called it 'weird.'"
Finn thought for a second. Maybe Kurt was right. "Huh. I hadn't thought of that. Sorry, dude. Enjoy your lettuce."
Kurt stabbed his fork into his salad and held it up to Finn's face. "You can try some, if you want. Maybe then you'll come around."
"What kind of dressing did you use?"
"Just a little balsamic with a touch of nonfat yogurt."
"Not ranch?"
"No."
"Mmm, no thanks. Maybe I'll make my own salad later."
Finn was not converted to eating salad for breakfast, but he did sometimes try a little of whatever Kurt made for lunch, even though that was usually nothing but vegetables, too. It turned out that when you put a bunch of vegetables in a blender with garlic, it's pretty good.
Kurt called it gazpacho. Finn called it 'blender soup.' Finn liked to have a big bowl of it with a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich and potato chips and a cookie or three for dessert.
Kurt ate the gazpacho by itself. He said he could appreciate the flavors better that way.
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6.
Rachel launched in as soon as she heard the phone click on the other end of the line. "Kurt, I need to go on a diet."
"Well, hello to you, too."
"Kurt, this is an emergency. There is no time for formalities."
"Okay then, Miss Rachel Berry. How can I be of service?"
"I put my wedding dress on like I do every morning to practice my steps down the aisle, and it -" She lowered her voice. "It felt tighter, Kurt."
"Please don't tell me you're pregnant."
"No, no." She lowered her voice further. "My period just started."
"Thank god," Kurt said with what Rachel thinks is exaggerated relief. "That explains why we've been so grumpy the past few days. Damn PMS."
The conversation was veering too far off topic. Rachel needed to steer it back to the emergency at hand. "Kurt, I need to lose weight. This is urgent. Talk of our monthly cycles can wait."
"But isn't it your monthly cycle that's making your dress tighter? I mean, won't it fit again when you're done?"
"Well, maybe, but when I get stressed out, my period sometimes comes early, and what if I have it during the wedding and I can't fit into the dress? Plus, I just looked up more information about Cassandra July - you know, the lead dance instructor at NYADA? - and she won't even let you in her class if you don’t have a body mass index under eighteen-and-a-half. I need to lose another nine pounds."
"So you either have a year to do that or, if you’re a sane person like I want you to be and don’t defer your enrollment in NYADA …” Rachel ignored the comment. Kurt was her best friend. She would never, never leave him, unless he did something crazy like pushing her into a moving train against her will. Which, actually, she wouldn’t put past him. But she’d come back and get him, even if he did. “Two months is plenty of time to lose the weight,” Kurt announces cheerily. “I have the perfect book for you."
Kurt hung up and drove over to Rachel’s house for dance practice and the first breakfast of her new diet. Although it hardly seemed like breakfast, because all they had was 6 ounces each of kale-beet-spinach juice, which tasted awful and gave Rachel a terrible case of gas. Kurt said not to worry, though; his body always adjusted fast enough, and hers would, too.
As they sipped, they pored over Tracy Anderson's 30-Day Method. Kurt had already marked the important pages with sticky tabs, and when he promised Rachel he would do the diet with her for moral support, she hugged him and squealed, "You really are my best gay!"
They danced in her basement for the next hour and a half. By the end of it, Rachel felt a little like she was drunk. She thought she liked the feeling, but she wasn't sure. She asked Kurt if she should worry.
"That's just your body detoxing," he said. "After a few days, you'll get used to it."
He showed her how to make sweet-potato pudding (half a sweet potato blended with a cob's worth of raw corn kernels) and carrot-parsnip puree (exactly what it sounds like) for lunch. They ate, and then he made her a pitcher of gazpacho (he said it should last the next three or four days). He told her she could have that and miso soup for dinner - no noodles, not more than four ounces of tofu, and a scallion, a little broccoli and half a carrot thrown in if she wanted.
"Oh, and definitely take some calcium and Vitamin D if you don't already," he added. "Gwyneth Paltrow got osteopenia on this diet." He sucked his lower lip in, then sighed. "But you have to admit, she does look fabulous."
Rachel tried to stick to Kurt's instructions at dinner, but she ended up eating the entire block of tofu and every last bit of gazpacho.
She was still hungry when she went to bed.
She stuck to the diet until her wedding day. Well, mostly stuck to it. She made everything the book told her to, but ate twice as much of it - unless she was eating with Kurt, and then she followed the rules because he always did, even though he didn't have to.
She lost weight all the same.
And then her wedding day came, and no wedding.
The first thing she did after finding her seat on the train was go to the snack car and order three veggie burgers. They were the worst veggie burgers she'd ever had, and they were delicious.
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7.
When Finn moved out, the full-time occupancy of the household shrank by one-third, but the grocery bill went down by half.
Carole always did say that Finn had a hollow leg; she just hadn't realized how hollow it was.
She set aside the savings into two new budget items: care packages for Finn, and a New York nest egg for Kurt.
She worried, sometimes, that Kurt had given up on New York. Sure, he still talked about reapplying to NYADA, but it was without the enthusiasm or the certainty that he had before. And he hadn't started to look elsewhere in New York for education or employment, no matter how many web links she emailed to him.
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8.
It had been a while since Santana and Brittany has been to the Lima Bean. There had been Puerto Rico in June - Santana's other abuelos had taken quite fondly to Brittany, although that might have been because no one from the Ohio contingent mentioned exactly what the young women were to each other, and because Santana let tu amiga slide even though she would have preferred tu novia. And then there'd been Montana for the first half of July, because Brittany's family like to be cold in summer.
"I like that barista," Brittany said as they got in line. "He's like a bobblehead doll, but prettier."
Santana followed Brittany's eyes and found herself looking at Kurt Hummel. He was behind the counter, smiling broadly as he handed a to-go tray of four iced coffees to a woman with a toddler on her hip.
Santana squeezed Brittany's hand. "Sweetie, that's Kurt."
Brittany cocked her head and looked at Kurt some more. Santana could see the gears turning as Brittany searched for clues and tried to put them all together.
Santana had known for a long time - since tenth grade, at least - that Brittany doesn't recognize people by their faces. She'd tried asking Brittany a few times how she does recognize people, but the conversation never really went very far. It was like asking someone with an outie belly button what it felt like not to have an innie. No one's had both, so how can you expect them to explain the difference?
But Santana had picked up a few things over time. Hair was pretty important, at least with guys - Santana figured that out when Puck came back from juvie without a mohawk and Brittany didn't recognize him. Body language had something to do with it, too, and maybe the shape of the body itself.
The line was long, so Santana had a chance to study Kurt as carefully as Brittany was. But while Brittany was trying to figure out how this guy could be Kurt, Santana was trying to figure out the ways in which he wasn't. Strands of his hair had escaped from his semi-pompadour and were falling loose across his forehead, most likely displaced from repeated exposure to steam from the espresso machine. His posture was … good, but not ramrod perfection. His shoulders were a little rounded, and when the manager started bitching at him about a broken scone, they slumped even farther.
His movements between the espresso machine and the bakery case and the milk cooler were efficient, but lacked grace or pride.
Brittany was right. This wasn't the Kurt they knew. Their Kurt could turn any mundane task into an art form just by the way he moved his body.
Kurt-who-wasn’t-quite-Kurt pushed up his sleeves, exposing his muscular forearms, except - they weren't that muscular anymore. They were getting wispy and bird-like, and the knobs of his wrists stuck out more than they used to.
Santana blinked, looked at Brittany, looked back at Kurt. She understood the bobblehead reference: his body had shrunk inward toward his bones, but his head had stayed the same. So now, it was disproportionate to everything else - large and looming. She wouldn't have chosen the word bobblehead, because coming from her, it would have been mean, and she actually liked Kurt - but she understood why Brittany had chosen it.
After her stateside abuela stopped talking to Santana, Santana barely ate for a week. She wasn't on one of Sue's insane cayenne-and-ipecac diets; she just didn't have the will to lift food from her plate to her mouth. She didn't want to kill herself, but she didn't see the point in maintaining her body just so it could live a cruel and pointless life. Brittany's smile - and numerous protein shakes, which she made Santana suck through a straw when she felt too exhausted to do anything else - pulled her through.
Rejection must make a lot of people want to disappear, although Santana would never have expected it to happen to Kurt. She'd thought Kurt was unbreakable - he bounced back from Karofsky and Prom Queen and Finn's douchebaggery and Will Schuester constantly silencing him, and always seemed the stronger for it. But maybe not getting into NYADA - the one place he might finally expect to want him - was too much.
"Nonfat mocha!" Kurt chirped out, setting a cup on the counter to be collected by one of the waiting customers. Santana tried to catch his eye with a small finger wave, but he turned back toward the espresso machine without looking in her direction.
Brittany made a little hop on her toes. "Oh, you're right, that is Kurt! No one else sounds like him."
"I can see why it would be confusing, though,” Santana said. "He is a little … smaller than he was at the beginning of the summer.”
Brittany shrugged. "Yeah, but unicorns can grow backwards when they want to - that's what helps them live forever. I can't believe I forgot that."
When they got to the front of the line and ordered their drinks, Kurt finally noticed them. "Hail, Satan!" he said excitedly from behind the cashier, "and Brittany. What brings you two lovely ladies here?"
"Stop flirting with the customers and get them their drinks," chided the cashier, a bald hipster with a lovepatch and a lip piercing that looked slightly infected.
"Flirting is part of his job, Howie Mandel," Santana said, even though Kurt had already turned away. "It makes the customers feel welcome. Then they come back and buy more stuff. Get it?"
"Whatever," said Howie. She didn't put any money in the douchebag's tip jar.
Later, when Kurt personally delivered their order to their table and announced he was on a five-minute break, Santana slid her scone toward him and told him to eat.
"I'm not hungry," he said. "I just wanted to say hi."
"I don't care if you're not hungry," Santana replied, and stared at him until he'd nibbled half of it away.
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9.
If there had been one constant about Kurt's body in the time that Blaine had known him, it's that it was always changing. Blaine's growth spurt started suddenly at the age of 13, and ended just as abruptly the next year. But Kurt's transformation was ongoing. When he wasn't getting taller, he was getting leaner and more muscular. His shoulders would broaden and his feet would get longer and his hands would grow both more masculine and more elegant, day by day. The shadow that bloomed on his chin a few days after shaving started appearing earlier, and over the following months it started to spread up his jaw and down his neck, tickling Blaine's lips when he kissed there. By last winter, Kurt began shaving every morning. Blaine showed Kurt how to use shaving soap and a brush for a closer shave and, sometimes, on weekends and later on lazy summer days, Kurt let Blaine shave him with his straight razor. It was one of Blaine's favorite things to do for Kurt. It made him feel trusted.
Blaine was always hyper-aware when he shaved Kurt. He didn't want to hurt him, and things were made more complicated by the fact that the contours of Kurt's face were constantly changing. His chin was becoming more angular, the rounds of his cheeks more flat. So Blaine would study Kurt's face carefully before starting (even more carefully than when they lay together in bed, unable to keep their eyes off of each other as they regained their breath). Blaine would map the shifting landscape with his eyes, then with his fingers ("Is that really necessary? I think you're just looking for an excuse to touch me," Kurt would say coyly), then with the soap-laden hairs of the badger-bristle brush Blaine's father had given him for his sixteenth birthday.
Blaine would learn every curve and angle and hollow as he worked, hold it in his memory until the last swipe of the razor was complete, then let it go - because Kurt's face would no doubt be leaner and more angular the next time they did this.
The first minutes of August found Blaine watching Kurt sleep in the dark. Blaine was usually the first to doze - or so Kurt told him - but the moon was bright tonight, flooding the room with blue light, and Blaine didn't feel tired at all. Kurt hadn't put his pajamas back on (it was warm in the room, even with the air conditioning), and he'd thrown off the top sheet in his sleep.
Blaine watched Kurt's chest rise and fall. When it sank, the skin lay draped like fabric over Kurt's ribs, creating slight dips between each pair of bones. The shadows they created reminded Blaine of venetian blinds.
This was a new thing, too, about Kurt's body - this slow revealing of the skeleton beneath that gave it structure. Kurt wasn't gaunt, but he was steadily growing thinner, and it's not like Kurt had had much spare fat or flesh to begin with when they'd first met. Blaine had loved Kurt's slenderness then, had loved how Kurt's body was so different from his own - ethereal and otherworldly and refined.
He still loved Kurt's body - his smooth skin and his strong arms, his supple spine and the lovely arches of his feet. But he worried sometimes, usually in the solitude of nights like these, that Kurt's body was changing more than it should.
The next morning, Blaine suggested they make ice cream for lunch. Kurt didn't protest, the way Blaine expected him to - ice cream eating was no longer the daily ritual it had been for them last summer, what with Kurt's new obsession with vegetables. (His idea of a good dessert was now a ripe tomato from the vine. Delicious, yes. But dessert? No.)
Instead, Kurt smiled, told Blaine he was adorable, and dug the ice cream maker out of the cabinet.
They chose a recipe for cardamom ice cream that included egg yolks and heavy cream and plenty of sugar, and it wasn't ready by noon so they still had gazpacho for lunch (Blaine snuck extra olive oil into the blender when Kurt wasn't looking), but by mid-afternoon it was perfect: thick and weighty and substantial, like what Ben & Jerry would make if they made soft serve - except, with the sweet lure of cardamom, much more seductive than that.
Blaine dished out three generous scoops for Kurt and three for himself and they went to the back porch. Kurt exclaimed that it was the best ice cream he'd ever tasted, but he ate it so slow that he'd downed less than one scoop before the rest pooled into sun-warmed soup. Kurt set the bowl on the porch floor.
Blaine kept glancing at that bowl the rest of the afternoon, as they rocked in the porch swing and flipped through their stack of magazines. He became angrier every time he looked at it, but he wasn't sure what he was angry about - the audacity of the ice cream for melting, or Kurt's body for changing, or the world for trying to make Kurt disappear, or Kurt himself.
He was angry, but he didn't show it. With Kurt, he critiqued the outfits of the Royals and the religion of Tom Cruise. Then, next to Kurt, he dog-eared the fashion pages of GQ.
That evening, after saying goodbye to Kurt, Blaine went to the gym and punched the heavy bag until he thought his arms might fall off. Then he punched it for 10 minutes more.
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10.
If this were a story, we would have a scene now with Kurt. We might follow him through his week, eat his meals with him, work out with Tracy Anderson and Carole and Rachel, suffer the daily humiliations and occasional small triumphs of working in the same coffee shop where he used to snap his fingers to get the attention of the barista. We might learn that no amount of Blaine asking him to not do that had any effect, but two shifts at the Lima Bean made the affectation disappear permanently from his repertoire, without effort or awareness.
More importantly, we would understand clearly what is going on inside of Kurt. The world has always loved throwing defeat at him, and Kurt has always loved throwing it back in the world’s face. Is this another one of those seeming defeats that he, with his magic, will transform into victory?
Or is this the final defeat, the one that will break his spirit and leave him an empty shell that not even New York can revive?
If this were a story, there would be hints and clues as to what comes next.
But Kurt doesn’t know, and neither to the people around him. None of them can see beyond the moment they're in, no matter how hard they try.
We can’t, either.
---End---
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