His breath leaves him when Kurt touches his hand and just holds it - gently, sweetly, without judgment. Warmth blossoms up into his chest and all he can register is that he is being told that he's cared for and that he's loved and that he matters. Tears threaten to fall again as he recalls Abeline's heartcrushing line "You is kind, you is smart, you is important". He feels selfish for wishing that Kurt would hold him now like Abbey did under the mattress during the hurricane, but that doesn't alter the fact that the desire is extant.
A thumb comes up to brush across his cheek, and to do so a torso leans so far over - so close to his body. His eyes flicker closed, and in this moment he is so distant from the loneliness that has haunted him for months. Words are whispered in his ear, a dangling conversation he's barely part of. The words barely hold comprehensible meaning, only an emotional weight that settles deep his heart and makes him feel alive.
There is a nuance to the air in the room, a delicate pulsing sensation that was not present earlier. This little room that has warehoused him for days on end as father cried, mother cried, as he - the son, cried. As father wept tears of joy and ecstatic pleasure, mother wept tears of mourning. Her grieving period has only begun, a son is lost to her. This stagnant pool, drenched with the spiraling odor of misery, has become a paradise to him now. The room lives and breathes, as if he has made peace with it. It is not his tomb, it is his dressing chamber - his hidden quarters where, as time passes, he will emerge from. Reborn.
Nothing can touch him now. The colors, dull and pastel as they are, are vibrant. The hospital's polluted noise and smell of sorrow is gone from the air, and it is sweet to taste. The numbness is gone and there are micro-sensors on his skin, every millimeter of his hands are buzzing with the electric shock of contact - the textures driving his mind wild and the sensation of Kurt's hand still in his driving his heartrate to a frenzy. He has come face to face with death, he has been washed clean of sin and shame, he is a new man. Nothing about him has remained unchanged.
"I'm so happy right now"
And he truly is.
originally posted on tumblr as a gift, and then on AO3
I was always a little baffled by people that saw this as a heavy shipping scene, because to me it was so beautifully pure. I have at least three more chapters planned that I'll probably put up within the week.