"Blaine, you're pacing." Kurt is draped in the chair in the waiting room, his voice barely over a whisper. He isn't angry, but even if he was actually yelling, a reaction he has called on his entire life, is so much effort now that he doesn't even try. He lets his body; the tone and the meaning behind the words carry it. If Blaine asks he can always feign politeness, yelling in a doctor's office, no matter how filthy the waiting room is, obviously crosses a line.
"I'm allowed to pace, my [i]mother[/i] is dying." Blaine's remark is louder, both because he is on edge and because he has more, strength, more life, more of everything than Kurt now. The anger that fills him, the blind[i] rage[/i] at the unfairness of it all only makes him stronger. He's gone back to boxing, back to long nights spent throwing himself around in the gym. Kurt is surprised he doesn't care more. But then caring about anything requires so much more energy than Kurt has.
"Pacing doesn't help. Dad was always pacing then." Kurt's voice is even quieter now; emphasizing the stillness of his own frame, so different from what he's been most of his life. "He paced until she was too tired even to watch him. He paced until she died, Blaine, it didn't help." There is no need for Kurt to say who he means; the unspoken name stretches between them, forcing Blaine to pause for a moment.
"This isn't your mother, Kurt. I'm really fucking sorry about all that. But you do not get to tell me how to deal with this." Blaine's voice is steely, the rage boiling just under the surface, they're both so caught up in this that the rage is always right there. Ordinarily Kurt would let it go, he's dealt with Blaine long enough to know when he just needs to cool down. He'd only pushed him past his breaking point once, but then a cracked rib is one hell of a teacher. Now though, it's different, the hunger and fear and [i]hurt[/ i] that is curled inside of him make him want to lash out. So he snaps.
"Fucking look at this place Blaine, it's disgusting." He runs a finger down the back of the chair beside him, pulling it away to reveal dust, not enough that Blaine can see it, but enough that he feels it proves his point. "Why the fuck are we here, Blaine? Why are we not in fucking New York? Where there are good doctors, who know about cancer." Kurt is still not yelling, the anger is not yet enough to counteract the weariness that has settled into his very bones. He knows that Blaine knows him well enough to know how he feels though, the cursing, the repetition of names, all of it points to how much he can't do this in Ohio, not again.
"These are the best doctors in the state Kurt." Blaine's voice is deadly in its evenness. "Either realize that or get OUT." He actually shouts the last word, making Kurt, for all his lethargy, jump. This argument is one they have almost had a hundred times in the past few months. He feels his blood boil, a blush trying its best to force its way across his pale, pale face.
"Fine." Kurt stands quickly, his head spinning from the force of it, shudders running through his empty stomach. He wants to say more, wants to scream about the unfairness of it all, even if it isn't Blaine's fault. Instead he pauses, his thoughts reeling with the effort of trying to explain how scared this entire thing makes him, how lost, how utterly alone he feels in this moment. But Kurt Hummel is, for the first time in his adult life, speechless. So he turns, a fraction too slowly for anger, and stalks out of the waiting room, leaving Blaine infinitely more alone than he felt, the long ago loss of one mother only compounding the awaited death of the other.
Every moment of the week after that fight is heightened for Kurt. Like so much in their current situation, Kurt has no control over Blaine's feelings. Despite the restraint of their fight, the wounds it uncovered were as deep as any they had ever dealt with. Kurt can't accept that he was wrong, his pride is the one constant throughout the ordeal, so he waits, harping on every detail he can change until Blaine finally relents. Kurt knows that Blaine apologized as much out of annoyance as anything else but he can't bring himself to care. But he accepts it so they move on to uneasy silence. The roses help too, paving roads back to his heat.
The fear, always knotted deep in his stomach, is harder to appease. He's been strictly controlling of what he eats for months now, allowing only the basic necessities to cross his lips, allowing himself nothing that would truly be good, that wouldn't be [i]fair[/i]. But now, with the end so close, the fear so real, he almost stops altogether, swallowing only when Blaine is around to notice. It's never more than he needs, never more than the absolute minimum to keep Blaine from being suspicious.
The moment that Blaine's mother, a woman who had done more than just accept him, despite her husband's misgivings, is dead, Kurt feels it. It brings back everything that he felt at eight; every terrifying emotion that crossed his heart then is back. Everything he's learned about the world since then just feeds it, all the miracle stories he's read, all the new drugs he's researched, everything, just amplifies the emptiness that he feels. He can't even begin to process how to make that emptiness go away.
So he doesn't. He feeds the hollow feeling by not feeding himself. He spends a week appeasing it with sex, the only thing that he and Blaine can cling to. Their hands cling to each other from the second they crash through the doorway of the house, clothes lost in the time it takes to stagger into their bedroom.
In that first week he doesn't eat a bite, he's stopped caring that Blaine might notice, because nothing is right in a world where mothers, not just his, but everyone's, can just die. His mother left him, but that was a one-in-a-million shot, exactly the sort of odds that make you think that bad things are done for mothers, or at least for your mothers.
When Blaine emerges from the haze of grief, Kurt can almost feel the gasp of shock escape his lips. He feels the way Blaine's eyes trace his bones, lingering on the way his hips jut and his spine crawls. He's spent enough time considering the lines of his own body in the last few months that these looks feel normal to him. This abstract consideration of ribs and elbows is just something that happens. The startling way that the gaze of Blaine's hazel eyes shifts from concern to love and back again is more real than anything else and more necessary than any food.
He sustains himself on those looks, and on morsels swallowed to appease, for months. Eventually he starts to feel as though he's hovering on the edge of a cliff. He eats more then, he doesn't want to leave Blaine alone, doesn't want to rip his world apart again. But with the return of normal food comes the heavy march of fear. Fear of having to live a normal life, fear of dealing with the pain, all of it rushes back far quicker than he would like.
So he hovers near the cliff, never letting himself fall over the edge, but never withdrawing enough to let the fear come back. Constant hunger is easier to deal with; everything is so physical, so immediate that it makes him cry with relief. The fact that it is not fair to Blaine is just one mark against this perfect way of living, one tiny black mark in the damn holding back a sea of encroaching terror. He notices when Blaine stops cooking for two, a sad look on his face as he watches the water boil or the eggs fry. He also notices when Blaine starts going to the beach.
They'd picked this place because of the beach, that and the utter perfection of the architecture. Kurt's strange love of the exposed rafters and Blaine's need for the beach drawing them in. The beach is close enough that they can walk down whenever they like, yet far enough that any kids they have later will be safe. Kurt smiles briefly at that thought. The kids had always been far enough away that he could laugh about them, naming and numbering them in ways that made Blaine's eyes dance. These days that reality feels farther and farther from the cliff he's hovering around, but that's how life treats Kurt Hummel. Every time he sets a goal, even one as simple as having a child and letting Blaine's mother be a grandmother, it gets toppled. Kurt has long given up being bitter, Blaine cured him of that, but he can't help but shake his head, every so often, about the simple fact that life is unfair. He accepts it, but that doesn't mean he likes it.
His position right now was unrelated to that unfairness, perched gently on the kitchen table, his bare feet leaving smudge marks on its pristine surface. He's here not because of something that happened but because of a shift inside himself. He's suddenly planted firmly on the ground side of the cliff in his mind, and it's all he can think of to get back over the edge.
He'd briefly contemplated other methods, thinking of the poetry that razors could enact with the blood-red liquid on his too-pale skin. But that would leave a mess and require him to be far more precise than he thought he could be right now. His body is practically humming, filled with more energy than he's had in months. He'd thought of pills too, thought of slipping slowly away, like the most restful of sleeps. But that seemed to quiet for his shaking nerves, he wanted to feel the end, really feel that moment when his terror could stop.
He'd come back, at the end, to the slender rope and the exposed rafters. It made for an elegant combination, and he liked the idea of his body dangling, like a ragged doll held lightly in fate's hand or like a ghost, hung from a tree as a Halloween decoration. The fact that it fits with the cliff in his brain is just a nice coincidence, the final nail in his coffin, as it were. The imagery his brain is conjuring, even now, a moment before he finally plunges into the terror he feels, is exhilarating.
Kurt is careful, tying the knots, choosing the length of the rope to use. All of it perfectly selected so this won't fail, because that would be so much worse than anything he has ever experienced. Every disappointed look his father ever gave him, ever time Blaine told him how much he'd missed him, those would be amplified a million times inside his brain, and he knew they would force the other terrors forward, making him deal with everything until he wants to scream. But no, that can't happen. He'd tied every knot exactly how the internet suggests, the rope selected so that he could fall far enough to break his neck, but not far enough to let his feet it the ground.
The final step is to place the rope around his neck and orient himself so he is facing the door. Blaine is down at the beach, thinking about everything he wants from the future. Kurt hopes his futures are happy, filled with the sort of joy he knows they will never have. Blaine deserves that much at least, deserves an imagination that is free of the pain Kurt brings to his real life. Pain that is about to be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, Kurt cannot even begin to fathom how many times worse he is making things.
But it doesn't seem like a choice. He's nearly vibrating with a need to fall, a need to just plummet off the edge of the table into the sharp crack of oblivion. This need doesn't scare him; he understands why it's there. Dying like this, on his own terms, frees him from the stupid grasp of reality, frees him from the cruel choices of the world. He no longer has to accept that he is different, that despite Blaine's love he has always carried the double edged sword of being special. This end, all alone in a house by a beach, lets him escape that, he is dying, just like everyone else dies, the physics are exactly the same. It is exactly that predictability, the fact that his body will react just like everyone else's lets him finally take the ultimate control. It's almost ironic that it is only by letting his body hang, limbs sprawling, everything messy and chaotic, that he will finally get to control everything.
He wishes he could explain this all to Blaine, explain how important this is, and how much he really does love him. But letter he tried to write just seemed anti-climactic; he can't find the words to explain the feeling of overwhelming terror and chaos. So he doesn't. He leaves his half-hearted attempts open for Blaine to see, letting him in on the struggle; Blaine will realize how much it hurts even to leave that small detail lacking in perfection. He wanted his death to be the perfection that his life never was, but that is not his lot either.
With a last look around the room Kurt focuses his eyes briefly on the door, his mind parsing thoughts of failure and perfection, of opening new worlds or of never seeing again. He lets the briefest of smiles twist across his face as he steps off the table, his body dropping with a crunch as his neck snaps.
He is exactly like that when Blaine comes home, two hours later, shuffling and shivering with the cold. A smile is still intact on his face, only the weird angle of his head, the sickly hang of his body, to distinguish him from the living. Blaine has only to glance at the laptop monitor to understand, their uncanny unspoken communication working even from beyond the grave. Somehow, it doesn't even hurt that much. He feels detached, as if every choice that matters has already been made.
Blaine is light on his feet as he makes dinner that night, whistling a bit as he fries twice the eggs he himself would eat, placing two on the table for Kurt before sitting down to eat himself. The futures he'd spun on the beach are getting away from him now, swirling out of control. He knows he should cry, should call the police, should do [i]anything[/i] other than calmly eat dinner but he just can't. So he mindlessly eats the dinner he's made, the food a more tangible barrier than death could ever be.
So, last week I wrote all of this from Blaine's perspective. If you want to read something equally light and happy go check that out. I have such a fascination with things that are dark and twisty and imperfect inside. It leads to a weird fascination I apparently have with killing off my favourite character. But it's all in good fun, right?
On a serious note, if you feel like this, any of this, get help, things get better your life should not be about fear and pain. Let people help you.