Pairing(s): Kurtofsky
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count: 1,428
Warnings: Coarse language, supernatural themes, homophobia, KIND-OF-MUTANTY-AU.
Spoilers: Season 2. The song is Sia Furler's 'Breathe Me'.
Summary:
Dave leans against the tiles, feeling them heat under his arms, and clenches a fist so that yellow and red pulse along the lines of his veins – fire glowing in the highways of his body, especially hot at his wrists and throat, and in the big femoral arteries in his bare thighs. His heart is a furnace, his spine a ladder of molten gold.
Author's Note: Okay, this happened in literally twenty minutes during my lunch break on Friday. The idea was boiling away in my brain for a while as a sort of mental video clip for the song and then boiled out of me mid-sandwich and I pretty much wrote the scenes as they occurred to me and then stirred the lyrics through, so it's not really linear, but it felt right, so.
Breathe Me
The comets rain overhead. Children turn their faces up and hold their parents hands.
"Look, David, look at all the falling stars…"
Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Steam pours from his skin, light growing below it. Dave leans against the tiles, feeling them heat under his arms, and clenches a fist so that yellow and red pulse along the lines of his veins – fire glowing in the highways of his body, especially hot at his wrists and throat, and in the big femoral arteries in his bare thighs. His heart is a furnace, his spine a ladder of molten gold.
He clenches his fist again, breathes sparks, and flames lick along his furled fingers and up his forearm, hissing when the water hits them.
Kurt's breath gathers in opaque patches on the glass. He smudges it and watches the comets come down. The soft light falls on Burt's sleeping face behind him, the living room dim and cool.
Tomorrow at his mother's funeral, frost will linger on the grass 'til midday, and his father's fingers will be cold where they grasp Kurt's hand.
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there's no-one else to blame
He singes his clothes when he's not careful – when he's angry and not paying attention. He dreams and the bedding burns.
The ceiling of his bedroom is lined with glow in the dark stars and smoke detectors.
But they melt before the smoke starts.
The house goes up in flames.
It's just a small cut, but the tinkling of his blood shattering as it hits the linoleum in the kitchen draw's his father's gaze.
Four tiny frozen beads, already melting.
Kurt's blood freezes, then clots.
Burt says nothing as he wraps a Band-Aid around his son's thumb and rinses the vegetable knife. This is not the first time.
Behind Kurt, the window is laced with frost.
Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
Dave puts his hands in his jacket, rain evaporating before it touches him, and only turns when he hears the umbrella open. His sister looks back at him with warm eyes, and Dave smiles, trying not to notice the scars on her arms.
He sees the words on the gravestone without reading them. Knows them by heart.
Beloved wife and mother.
The slushy hits him hard. He feels the impact, but it doesn't hurt and he has to fake it. He could stop the ice before it hits him – fling it away with a flick of the wrist – but never does.
It doesn't do to be different.
The sound of Hummel's body hitting a locker is a slap of cold, and when he's safely out of sight, Dave fights for breath, fights for warmth, hiding in the empty locker room and stirring the napalm in his veins.
When he looks in the mirror, the capillaries in his eyes are gold.
Mercedes finds him.
The school pool is frozen solid, the ice drawn into spires and twisted towers of glittering crystal. Snow litters everything. Kurt is curled in a drift of it, under the overhang of one of his icy turrets. He sobs, and the tears freeze on his face.
Mercedes says nothing. She puts a blanket around his shoulders, and holds him, and prays silently for Burt Hummel's heart.
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me
Dave makes sparks dance like fireflies for his sister as she laughs in her hospital bed. He puts them out with a thought when they hear footsteps. His father has yet to say a word to him.
He remembers this, years later, and his dreams are full of falling stars.
When Kurt tries to talk to him the next morning, he snarls at him.
"You don't know anything."
"David, you're not the only one who lost a mother."
"Yeah, but at least you didn't kill yours."
He tries to walk away, but the small pale hand on his back won't let him.
He never sees them coming. The first blow is a baseball bat to the back of his head and he's too woozy to fight back as they knock him over and start kicking.
Kurt can feel blood, hot for a moment, then colder than the pavement under him.
He can hear them jeering, can hear them even if he can't see them.
But then everything fades and it's just him and the snow now.
Just the cold…
They all call Kurt Hummel an ice queen with no real understanding of the phrase.
Kissing him is like kissing a snow bank. Breathing his air is like walking into the forerunner of a winter storm.
Dave's hands are cold where they touch Hummel's face.
Ouch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found
Rachel pulls him through the blizzard, their laughter mingling as the flakes part for them.
"You're magic, Kurt!"
Sometimes he can't stand her, but sometimes she's his favourite person in the world, and then he just wants to make her happy.
He pulls the snow into fantastic shapes, breathes snowflakes, and it feels so good.
In the middle of a wet field, Dave closes his eyes, and lets the fire fall from his skin. His insides glow hot – white and red and yellow – and when he opens his eyes he can see his sister smiling at him from the fence, four dozen feet away.
Dave lights up like a human candle, a pillar of flame, a cascade of light that touches the underbellies of the low hanging clouds.
He hears his sister laughing.
Yeah I think that I might break
I've lost myself again and I feel unsafe
"…good. Because if you tell anyone, I'll kill you."
Kurt eyes him coldly and slams his locker shut.
"I'd like to see you try."
Around them, the air flushes ten degrees cooler.
Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
Blaine's face is blank when Kurt draws his hand back. The medium drip is a solid mass in Blaine's cup.
"Just call me Ice Man," Kurt jokes weakly.
Blaine slowly gets up, and backs away.
"Kurt…Kurt, I can't…I don't…"
Then he's gone, and Kurt is alone on a park bench in Westerville.
They find him frozen solid in a snow bank, blood smeared in red and white across his skin.
Dave ignores Finn's frantic yelling, and Rachel and Mercedes sobs, and pulls the boy into his arms.
"Come on, Kurt," he breathes. "I know you're in there."
Yellow and red pulse under his skin, fire rising in his veins. The snow melts around Dave's knees. Kurt softens in his arms and presses his face to Dave's neck.
The first words out of his mouth are, "I dreamed of falling stars…"
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me
He reports it because no one should be able to get away with threatening another person. He reports it because if he were different than he is, he would be afraid.
But he saw the whites of Karofsky's eyes when the air cooled around them, and he knows he's safe.
He's good at faking things. He's a good actor.
He puts his hand to his forehead and says, "The worst part is the fear. I don't know what this kid is capable of…"
Forgiveness comes when Scott Cooper's slushy boils over in his hand. The hockey player shrieks and drops the cup, spilling steaming cordial and dye #40 across the hallway floor. The air reeks of glucose and chemical raspberries.
Kurt walks away from the encounter unscathed and slushy-free.
No one sees him exchange hesitant smiles with Dave as he calmly goes about retying his shoelaces.
Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I'm needy
"I'm nothing like you," he hisses at Hummel, planting a fist in the locker beside him. The metal bows, soften by heat, and the paint scorches.
Dave knows he's in trouble when Hummel's face goes blank.
And then the other boy reaches out, and puts his hand over Dave's. Frost spills from Kurt's fingers (breath catching in his throat) and the flames hiss in Dave's fist.
"You're exactly like me," Kurt says.
And beneath their hands, the metal cracks like a gunshot.
Warm me up
And breathe me...
Endnote: Yeah I don't know. Fun to write though. Comments? Questions? Banana cream pie?