Kurt gets mail from Blaine every day - letters and photographs and confessions of love. And God, Kurt just wishes it would stop. Everything he sends comes with a plea to get back together. Even the people at Kurt's office want Kurt to get back together with Blaine, inspired by the bevy of love letters that litter his office. So, Kurt has taken to walking his trash to Central Park and throwing it out there. One night, he runs into an obliging owl, who lends Kurt an ear while he tells it all his problems.
After that, things start to turn around.
Mention of Klaine and Blaine. Not Blaine friendly.
This is another late kurtoberfest entry for the prompt 'magic' that I wrote for lovejoybliss. Sorry it took so long to finish. I hope you all like it :)
There's a quote by John Updike that essentially states that people who don't live in New York are kidding themselves. Kurt understands that saying. He feels it deeply. He'd fallen in love with New York the second he laid eyes on it – on television, witnessing in all its theatrical glory the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. At that tender age, Kurt only knew about New York in terms of Broadway and Radio City Music Hall. Thanks to a healthy imagination, he believed that every day in New York was a lot like that parade, or the movie Fame, with artistic types dancing in the streets and on the subway, performing Shakespeare while walking through the Upper West Side on their way to classes.
As Kurt grew older, of course, he knew better, but he still thought the draw for him would be Broadway and Radio City, and all those other places where the great performers flock. And they are – as a performer. But as a New Yorker, it turns out, it's Central Park that captures his imagination.
Kurt absolutely adores Central Park. It's one of the steps in becoming an official New Yorker – falling in love with that strip of heaven in the middle of the city, part peaceful refuge, part magical, fairy tale wonderland. Leisurely strolls through the park had become part of Kurt's daily routine even back when he joked about going there to watch drug deals go down. But the solitude that envelops him the second he steps foot on the lush, green grass; the trees trying their hardest to blot out the grey urban skyscape, or, at the very least, add a splash of color to the tedium; the ducks and geese and other birds and animals who find sanctuary here…it lends a certain ease to the friction that comes from living in such a fast-pace environment, soothes the nerves rubbed-raw from adapting to the constant noise, constant crowds, constant clutter.
But lately, Kurt's trips through the park serve a more practical purpose. It's here that he seeks out random trashcans in the far reaches of the park to throw out the letters and the cards that Blaine sends him – six or seven every single day. Some of them Kurt reads, most of them he doesn't. They make him so sad and sick inside – all the apologies, all the confessions of love, all the remarks about how this break up is tearing Blaine apart without a single inquiry into how Kurt feels.
Kurt had been throwing them away in his tiny office waste basket at Vogue the minute he got them, but when the custodians forget to hit his office (since it's more of a repurposed closet than an office anyway), the letters tend to pile up. Or when other romantically-minded employees spot his trash filled to overflowing with love letters and photographs, they have a habit of rescuing them for Kurt, convinced that this 'lover's spat' will soon blow over if Kurt gives it time, if he takes a moment to remember how much Blaine loves him and how good they were together.
Not because they really care about Kurt's well-being. All they know about Kurt and Blaine's relationship is what they've heard second-hand. But everyone likes to see a happily ever after, and Kurt, though secure in his decision, doesn't always give the appearance of a man who's found his happily ever after.
That's because he hasn't yet, not entirely. He's only in his 20's, for Christ's sake, still attending college, and waiting tables part time at a diner to make ends meet. But he's working on it, and he wishes that people could mind their own business and let him get there on his own without feeling the need to intervene.
Not about this.
To do that, he realized, he needs to rid his office of any evidence of poor, lovesick Blaine, and the only way he can do that is to stuff Blaine's offerings into his bag and dispose of them secretly on his way home.
But the garbage can Kurt picks happens to be one he chose a few days ago, and it hasn't been emptied. Underneath a layer of curdled ice-cream, muster-laden hot dog wrappers, and a few balled-up baby diapers, he can see the edge of a bright yellow piece of stationary peeking out, with the last three letters of someone's signature visible. Kurt recognizes it as Blaine's. He sighs. He can't remember how long he's been doing this, but it seems too long.
When is it going to stop?
He's too emotionally exhausted to go hunting down another trashcan, so he decides to fill this one to the top in the hopes that the parks department will notice and empty it. Kurt puts his bag down on a retaining wall and opens it, envelopes from the last few days poking up at the top. He begins tearing up the letters, the envelopes especially since he's certain that disposing of mail in a public trashcan is some sort of crime. He tears and tears until there's barely nothing left to rip, and then sprinkles the pieces over the decaying foodstuffs. It seems depressing that this is where these letters should end up. He's certain that Blaine believes everything he says in them, but as far as Kurt's concerned, it's too little too late. Kurt needs to move on in his life. He wants to move on. There are specific reasons, along with a specific person, that he's hoping to move on to. But it's a hard thing to do when he's hauling five pounds of old relationship baggage around with him nearly every day.
There are a few other reasons that have nothing to do with Blaine's onslaught of mail, but Kurt would rather blame it all on him for the time being.
Kurt starts sniffling halfway through unloading his haul. It's nearly impossible, as he's tearing each item up one by one, not to catch bits of words that flash by and stick in his brain – sorry, love, soulmate, forever. Or to glance at the photographs Blaine sent of the two of them at Dalton, where they first met and fell in love; on stage performing with the Glee club, dancing together during competition; yearbook candids that didn't make the final cut, that Blaine had rescued from being erased forever. Some of those Kurt had had hanging in his locker his senior year. A few of them he'd never seen. Those were the low blow – new images of their past happiness sent to remind Kurt of times he may have forgotten. Kurt stops on a picture of Blaine kissing him on the cheek – one of those pictures Kurt hadn't seen until a couple of days ago. It had been sent incognito in a legal envelope from McKinley, complete with the school's embossed address in the return corner.
Kurt thought it might be a letter requesting permission to print his name and photograph in the McKinley newsletter. It wouldn't have been the first one he's gotten. Since getting his profile officially uploaded to the Vogue website, announcing him as an intern, and then getting accepted into NYADA, he'd probably received seven such requests. He tore into this one, thinking nothing of it, other than trying to compose a polite way to turn them down that would also get them to stop asking. He didn't mind being an inspiration to other students like him, evidence of the fact that, yes, things do get better, but the McKinley newsletter was primarily used to connive money from parents and alumni by showcasing their star graduates – whether McKinley had a hand in getting them to stardom or not. Kurt doesn't want to be linked to McKinley - not in that way.
It was underhanded and cruel, sending the picture to him like that, not giving fair warning to decide whether or not he wanted to see it.
It's a lovely photograph, and Kurt remembers exactly when it was taken – while they were both getting into makeup before the first matinee of West Side Story.
The day after the first time they'd made love.
Looking at it, seeing the joy in their faces, the optimism, that naïve assurance that they would be together for the rest of their lives, feels like a pickaxe tearing away at his heart.
His sniffles turn into sobs that start to choke him as he tears the photo up - in half, in quarters, then into smaller and smaller squares, miniscule slips becoming too difficult to destroy. He grunts with the effort to get the final clutch to rip, but it's too dense, his fingers flying off the glossy surface of the photo paper.
"Just…rip…" he mutters, trying again and again, pieces breaking loose from the stack and fluttering to the ground like dead leaves. "Rip…God…dammit!"
Kurt hears a scream – loud and piercing, coming from nearby - and he freezes. The terrifying sound halts the tears rolling down his cheeks. It about stops his heart. He grabs his bag and hugs it in his arms, since it's the only thing he has with him that can be considered a weapon. He stands still, waiting to see if it will happen again, even though he knows it would probably be a wiser decision to ditch his task and run. When his feet start to act on the solution his head hasn't come to a definitive answer on, he hears the screech again, closer this time.
It doesn't sound human; that's a good thing.
But it does sound like it's coming from directly above him, and that might not be such a good thing.
Kurt rolls his eyes up. In the tree beside him, on a branch growing perpendicularly out from the trunk and stretching its woody fingers over his head, sits an owl, peering down at him, with what seems to be a curious expression on its feathery, white face.
"Oh," Kurt yelps in surprise, since he hasn't seen an owl in the park before. He knows they live there, he just hasn't happened upon one himself. He steps back to get a better look at the snowy bird practically glowing beneath the setting dandelion sun. "It's only you, huh?"
The owl inclines its head questioningly, eyes flitting down to the contents of Kurt's messenger bag that he's emptying into the trash.
"Oh, this?" Kurt asks, jostling the bag to be positive.
The owl chirps.
"This…is just trash," he explains, rummaging through the envelopes with his hand. "They're from my ex. I'm tossing them out here so I can forget about him. So people will stop bothering me about keeping them. So that I'm not tempted to go through them, and read them, and possibly forgive…him." Kurt looks at the owl staring down at him and frowns. "And…you're an owl. You don't understand a word I'm saying."
The owl makes a series of clicks and chirps that sound something like an answer. Then it sits on its branch and tilts its head, as if waiting for Kurt's response.
Kurt knows it's not. He knows rationally that a bird in Central Park is not listening to him talk about his ex and giving him advice. But, Kurt is tired. He has things he needs to get off his chest, but he hasn't been able to find a non-biased ear anywhere.
He's had no luck talking to Santana. Lately, her advice on everything from school to relationships to scheduling snafus down at the diner has been, "Fuck him." But she doesn't ever signify which 'him' she's referring to, nor does she elaborate on her chosen definition of the verb 'fuck'.
Rachel's suggestions tend to flip-flop between Kurt getting back together with Blaine so they can live out their high school dream of being the perfect New York trio (a.k.a. Rachel and Her Best Gays), and telling Kurt to finally break free of the Lima establishment and everything that goes with it, including Blaine, so he can fully install himself as a New Yorker.
Aside from his boss, Isabelle (who's already given Kurt her two cents on the matter), Kurt can't talk to anyone else at work, and not just because mixing work life and home life is a bad idea overall. He happens to work at a publication that devotes an entire segment to gossip – any kind of gossip – so opening the flood gates on his personal life could be unwise.
Considering his limited options, bird it is.
"Alright," Kurt says. "If you want to know, then here it is." Kurt crosses his arms, put off, as if this bird is forcing him to spill his guts. But for all of the ridiculous this is, the owl takes a step closer, and leans a hair in. "I moved to New York expecting everything to change for the better, but, as it turns out, I packed up my troubles and brought them with me. Except, I didn't know that some of them were troubles until I got here." The owl takes a step closer, tilts its head in the opposite direction, and continues to stare, patiently waiting for more. Kurt sighs. "Because when I was in Ohio, my life sucked – and I mean really sucked - but my boyfriend still loved me. Now, I'm out here, in the greatest city on earth, and my life is a thousand times better. But, as it turns out, my boyfriend's a cheater. Ugh!" Kurt puts a hand to his forehead in frustration. "I don't want to sound reductive. I don't want my life to be about him, because it's not. It's about me. Me, me, me. I know that. I really do, but…it felt so good having someone standing in my corner, cheering me on, holding my hand when things got rough. Someone who wasn't my dad. Someone who looked at me and saw the things that have been so hard for me to see my whole life." Kurt puts up a defensive hand, as if afraid the owl is going to butt in before he gets the chance to finish. "Don't get me wrong, I've always known that I was better than Lima, better than McKinley, better than the bullies and the drama and the small town politics. I didn't necessarily need him to point that out to me." Kurt shakes his head. "But it was nice, you know?"
The owl ruffles it wings, hoots softly, and Kurt can't help the crazy feeling that the thing seems honestly interested.
"I'm sure you know," Kurt jokes to get over the awkwardness that he's pouring his heart out in public…to an owl. "If you live in Central Park, you must see couples fall in love all the time, right? Isn't that what they say? New York is for lovers? Or is that New Jersey?"
The owl gives out a sudden, angry shriek that makes Kurt jump.
"Ok, ok, ok," Kurt chuckles. "Not New Jersey."
The owl makes a series of high-pitched sounds, like it might be laughing, and Kurt laughs with it.
"I want to be over him so badly," Kurt continues when the owl quiets down. "I should be by now, shouldn't I? It's pathetic and sad to be hung up over a cheating ex-boyfriend. I broke up with him, so my recovery time should be significantly shorter, right? And besides" – Kurt smiles subconsciously – "there's this other guy from school. His name's Adam." Kurt shoots a nervous glance around to make certain no other ears are overhearing this part of the conversation. "He's older, sophisticated, and he seems to like me, which I don't understand. Not because I'm not worth liking, mind you, but because Adam has to get offers from tons of guys, falling over themselves to ask him out."
The owl hoots, and hops down a few branches to get closer to him.
"It's not just that he's handsome," Kurt muses with a far off look, "but he's talented, kind, and flattering. He always knows what to say, but he's so so sincere about it. I've never met anyone like him. He's confident, self-sufficient, he doesn't seem to have any hang-ups. It's almost like he's not human or something. Or…you know…too good to be true." Kurt sighs. "And you know what they say – if something's too good to be true, it usually is." Kurt picks one of the envelopes out of his bag and starts toying with it, working open the flap while he talks. "I wish I was better at the casual flirting thing, you know?" He asks the question, expecting an answer, then makes a face for being stupid, but for some reason, he feels compelled to continue. "I wish I had some kind of sign, that I knew for certain that he and I are on the same wavelength. That he's not just that way with everybody. That he actually wants to go out with me."
Kurt pulls the letter out of its envelope and unfolds it. He hasn't read this one, not that there's anything in it that he wants to read. Before he gets the chance to set eyes on it, the owl swoops down from its branch and snatches it out of Kurt's hands.
"Hey!" Kurt yells as the owl flies off with it, more startled than angry. Kurt watches the owl take the letter to its branch, latch on to it with one clawed foot, and shred the thing. It gives the letter three good swipes, then deposits it in the passing wind, where it swirls above Kurt's head and floats away.
"O-kay," Kurt says as he watches the letter disappear into the treetops. "I guess I'm not reading that one, then."
The owl makes that laughing sound again, and Kurt rolls his eyes.
"I'm glad you find that funny. Littering's a crime in New York. Who do you think's going to be paying a fine if some anal retentive police officer finds that letter? Huh? They're not coming after your feathery butt."
Clouds pass overhead, and the sky suddenly darkens. The owl twists to look over its shoulder, at the light barely breaking through the cover, then back at Kurt, giving him an apologetic sounding chirp.
"Yeah, yeah, sure. Go on." Kurt waves the bird away. "I know you've got…owl things to do. Thanks for the ear. I'd better get going, too."
The owl hops up to a higher branch. It spreads its wings beneath the final rays of the sun. It gives Kurt a parting look, then takes off silently into the sky. Kurt watches the owl fly away, swiftly climbing higher and disappearing into the muted golden glow. Kurt wishes he could fly away, too. Not from New York, but from himself for a while. Take a break from his hectic life and his confusing feelings so he can come up with an answer to this. Pluck up the courage to do what he wants to do, what needs to be done. Birds have long been thought of as messengers of the natural world, right? Maybe the owl shredding that letter was proof that what Kurt needs to do is cut Blaine off completely – give him no access whatsoever. Don't return just the presents, but the letters, too. Anything that comes from Lima that he's sure isn't from his dad needs to go back to the hellmouth from whence it came.
Don't return Blaine's texts.
Change his phone number altogether.
Buy a new cell phone, and donate the old one to charity.
Wake up in the morning and start over fresh. He did it once, he could do it again.
And…is there a possibility that Adam might have a place somewhere in this new life? Is Kurt ready for a new relationship? Ready to put his heart on the line again?
Only Kurt can answer that question. No mystical bird can make that decision for him.
But like he said before, a sign would be nice. Nothing huge or made out of neon; just a subtle message from the beyond letting him know that he can take this leap and, land or fall, everything will turn out fine. Though, to be fair, he spent the last half hour getting romance advice from a bird. He can't expect the universe to lend him a hand twice in one day.
It's around nine o'clock in the evening when a knock on the door to Kurt's loft lures him out of his room, where he's been practicing for hours, perfecting his stage fighting choreography. He flies through the living room on socked feet, shooting for the door, practically salivating at the thought of food.
"Thank god!" he calls out for the benefit of the delivery guy. "I called you guys forty-five minutes ago," he rambles while he fishes his wallet out of the pocket of his jacket, hanging by the door. "You're three blocks away! How come it takes you so long to get…" Kurt throws open the loft door, expecting to see the pudgy, sandy-haired pizza guy from Di Cicco's, but instead comes face to face with Adam, standing somewhat strangely with one arm tucked behind his back. "…here," Kurt finishes. "Hey."
"Hey," Adam says, a guilty look on his face. "I'm sorry. I'm not the pizza guy."
"No, no, no. That's okay." Kurt closes his wallet and stuffs it in his back pocket. "This is a surprise. I didn't know you knew where I lived."
"Uh, I didn't," Adam admits. "Not until a few days ago. Your roommate told me, actually."
"Rachel?" Kurt didn't realize that Rachel even remembered who Adam was, let alone had started talking to him behind Kurt's back.
"Yes." Adam peeks over Kurt's shoulder, eyes sweeping the interior of the loft. "Is she here?"
Kurt's face drops. "You…you came all this way…to see Rachel?"
Adam's eyes move from the living room behind Kurt to Kurt's disappointed face. "No" – Adam grins – "I came all this way to see you, and only you. So, I was hoping I could talk to you alone."
Kurt's face lifts. "Oh. Oh, yes, I'm alone. But…you have my cell phone number. You could have just called." Stop arguing, Kurt! he yells at himself. He's here! Adam's here! So…just…stop arguing!
"I could have, but I really rather to talk to you in person."
"Alright." Kurt steals a quick glance at Adam's attire, and notices that he's a bit less casually dressed than usual. Instead of his normal khakis and plaid shirt combination, he's wearing tan slacks and a green button down, the top button undone. "Shoot. What's so important that you came down to Brooklyn at nine o'clock at night to talk to me?"
"You are, actually." Adam pulls his hand from behind his back, and with it, a single white rose, recently open and perfectly white – snowy white, if Kurt had to put a name to the shade. "Because I was beginning to realize that there might be a possibility I haven't been completely clear all those times I've tried to tell you how wonderful and amazing you are. That's not lip-service, Kurt. That's me saying that you're an exceptional human being, and I would be honored if you might consider going out on an official date with me."
Kurt looks at Adam's beautiful white rose in awe. He had hoped for an invite to coffee, but he hadn't allowed himself to dream of anything like this. He reaches out and takes the flower from Adam's fingers, smiling until his beet red cheeks go sore. "How…do you always know the right thing to say?" Kurt shakes his head, disbelieving. He had gone from despairing that he would ever get over his ex and move past the friend stage with one of the most incredible men he's ever met to this exquisitely romantic gesture in a single evening. Maybe that owl was a sign. Maybe his luck was finally changing. "I'm really beginning to think you're psychic or something."
"Call it intuition," Adam shrugs, smiling as Kurt puts the rose to his nose and sniffs. "Or we can say a little birdy told me."