Disclaimer: Kirk and all other recognizable Gilmore Girls characters belong to Amy Sherman-Palladino, Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions, and the WB. No infringement is intended.
Summary: Give a comedic relief a background story, and they're not so funny anymore … are they? This is Kirk's story. Growing up one of twelve children certainly wasn't easy. AU, angst Kirk
Author's Note: Kirk, let's be honest, is just comedic relief to the main events of Lorelai's and Rory's lives. So this story is less of a history of Kirk and more of an exploration for what his character could have been. It's a what if story. What if Amy Sherman-Palladino had decided to make Kirk an angst-filled character, instead of comedic relief? With what we know about his background, it easily could've gone either way, so I figured I'd explore that. This is a long-winded way of saying I was intentionally writing an OOC Kirk. Hope you enjoy.
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Broken Eggs
by Potterworm
/
Kirk was the twelfth child, and though most of his siblings were planned, they never failed to remind him that he was a mistake. His parents meant to stop at eleven, because eleven was one less than twelve, which meant that it was one less than him.
Twelve children was one extra mouth to feed and one more bed crammed in a room that really was only meant for two people, but instead housed all of the boys of the family. It meant that their parents didn't have the money to get Joe, the second eldest, a car, and it meant that Sue, his second eldest sister, had to get a discount prom dress, instead of the fancy one with the beading up the sides. The one that would have made her whole life better, instead of just a stupid joke.
It meant "Jesus Christ, Kirk, why do you always have to ruin everything? Can't you just disappear?"
Kirk hated the number twelve.
/
When Kirk was four years old, his parents decided that it was time to have a "family night." His brothers and sisters groaned like crazy, trying to get out of it, but for Kirk, it was a little bit like an adventure. It was all of them, crammed together in their tiny living room, sisters on their big brothers' laps. It was his mother paying attention to him, since he was the youngest, after all. It was a night of playing Scrabble and having fun.
Matt groaned at him when he spelled egg wrong. "Kiiiirk," he moaned, "You always mess everything up!" Matt looked down at the eegg tiles and took away the extra e.
His mother wasn't paying attention, was instead breaking up some argument between the girls. Kirk was without a defender. He looked at his brother, stuck out a pouting lip, and reached for the e that Matt had removed.
With force, he put the tile back on the board and said unwaveringly, "I know how to spell egg, but it's just not right, Matty!"
Matt looked taken aback at Kirk's vehemence. He said, a bit more nicely, if a bit amusedly, "What isn't right, Kirk?"
"If egg has two g's, then both the g's can be friends, but the e is all alone and the g's are together, and it isn't right! The e shouldn't have to be alone, so I gave it a friend." Kirk was huffing and puffing by the end of his speech and when he paid attention again, he realized that his sisters had stopped fighting. Everyone was watching him, the poor, youngest mistake.
His brother cleared his throat, looked at him with an unfathomable expression, and said, "Yeah, I guess that makes sense, Kirk." It was the closest his twelve year old brother had ever come to agreeing with him.
Kirk didn't really notice it, but they were a lot nicer to him for the next couple weeks after his egg declaration.
/
Kirk woke up extra early on his fifth Christmas. The whole family was going to Gram's house, which meant that everyone had to shower and bathe and be nice and neat, because Gram was one of those relatives, the ones who made Mother's lips purse and her head ache. It meant she wouldn't put up with talking on the way home, and it meant that today was not going to be a fun visit.
Kirk knew that being clean and looking like a little gentleman meant that Gram wouldn't pay much attention to him at all, so he set his Superman alarm clock for way early, before the sun was even out. He slept with it under his pillow, because if any of his siblings woke up because of it, they'd slaughter him.
It buzzed at four thirty in the morning, a half an hour before Jill would even wake up, and she always woke up insanely early to flat iron her hair. He tip-toed across the bedroom floor, before sure to hop/skip over the part of the floor by the doorway, which always, always, without fail, groaned from the pressure of someone standing on it. Kirk sort of felt bad for that poor wooden plank.
He landed softly, like he always did, and opened the door slowly but surely. He peered around the corner, saw the hallway was empty, and left the quietness of the bedroom. He walked past his parents' room, then his sisters', all the way to the end of the hall, where the bathroom was.
Perfect.
No one was awake. Finally, he'd get to have a bath, and maybe even play with his rubber duck, and no one would yell at him. With a slight lunge, he pushed the bathroom door open, but it slammed into something. Then, there was a blood curdling screech.
He ripped the door open and saw Jill, lying on the ground, grasping her arm. A split moment later, she looked at him, her eyes furious, behind their watering. "KIRK!" she screamed. "You're such a brat! A loser, jerk, BRAT!" She proceeded to call him names, sputtering in annoyance, for the next two and a half minutes, before their mother came out.
Next thing Kirk knew, he had been banished to his bedroom, or rather, half the family's bedroom. His brothers stared at him as he tightened himself into the tiniest ball he could manage, down on his cot. His brothers all had bunk beds, but there was an uneven amount of boys, and Kirk was the last, so he had been shoved in the corner.
"What did you do, Kirky?" Joey asked him. He looked shocked, as they listened to cursed whispers from the other room.
It would be a while before Kirk realized exactly what had happened. Jill had been holding her flat iron, fixing her hair while leaning up close to the mirror, which was on the same wall as the door. When Kirk opened the door, it slammed into her foot, sending her falling onto the ground, and the flat iron down with her, landing straight on her arm. It wasn't a very serious burn, but it was a burn nonetheless.
Hours later, Gram, after seeing the bandages on Jill's arm, turned to Mother and said, "Watching the children very carefully, I see."
Kirk didn't understand why his mother's nostrils flared at what seemed to be a compliment or why she didn't talk to him as kindly for the next few days.
At that moment, Gram's door opened with a creek and a strange man walked in. He seemed like a giant to Kirk. He walked around the room, hugging everyone and stood for a few minutes, chatting with their parents. Then, he turned to Kirk.
"Why, last time I saw you, you were just a baby, Kirk."
Kirk blinked at him, still taken aback by the hostility he was experiencing from his family. Now, this new person seemed to want to talk to him. It was all very confusing.
Taking pity on him, Kirk's father turned to him and said, "Kirk, this is your oldest brother, John."
Kirk looked up at this tall man, who seemed almost as old as his own parents. "But you're so big!" he said accusingly. None of his siblings were that big.
John let out a bark of a laugh. "That's right, I am. That's because I'm the oldest." He exchanged a set of amused looks with everyone in the room and said. "How old are you, Kirk?"
Kirk held up the appropriate number of fingers.
"Well," John said, holding up ten fingers. "I'm this many." He flashed ten twice, then another five.
Kirk said dumbly, "That's old."
"I know, Kirk," John said.
For a moment, with the way John was conversing with him, Kirk thought that he had finally found a sibling who would take him seriously and actually talk to him, like really talking about grown-up things. Maybe someone who would play games with him too. But then John turned to Sue and his parents and mentioned something about his new job and how his degree really was working out for him, but those college loans sure were a bitch. (At that, Mother gasped and hushed John.)
Kirk was bored already.
/
Things were different after that, for Kirk. His mother, though she never said anything, seemed to hold a grudge against him. She didn't actually do anything, per say; it was just clear that she found him less amusing than she had in the past.
Jill turned his siblings against him for the next few weeks and when their miniscule attention spans forgot that they were mad at him, well it was too late. Kirk was the one who was mad then. They didn't like him; they didn't want to be one big, happy family. Fine. He didn't either.
Insert a line in the sand there. Kirk wasn't going back.
/
Kirk was twelve when his mother got called into the school's principal's office. He sat, dejectedly staring at his hand-me-down sneakers. He heard his mother knock on the principal's door, heard the principal rise to greet her, but he refused to raise his head or meet her eyes. His legs kicked back and forth, almost of their own volition.
"Principal Jacobs," he heard her say, her voice sounding timid and resigned, "what's this about?"
"Kirk?" Jacobs prompted him.
Kirk could feel the eyes on his head, the clearing of the throats, the exchange of looks that all took place above him. He looked up, seeing his mother's tired face and his principal's waiting eyes.
The principal indicated to him, like he was supposed to explain to his mother why he was sitting here. Kirk looked from Jacobs to his mother, still a bit angry at him from his latest clumsy disaster of the previous week, and remained silent.
"Kirk," Jacobs began, "decided it would be a good idea to sell his old possessions to classmates."
His mother looked down at his hunched shoulders, sighed, and took the seat next to him. "Kirk," she asked him, more gently than he had expected, "is this true?"
She smiled at him gently, and he gulped in that expression, that calmness and ease that she was exuding. "Kirk?" she said again.
He had been about to betray himself, but with that, his openness flicked off like a light switch. "Yes," he said simply, no explanation, no elaboration.
Unlike Kirk, educated by life as one of a dozen, she had never learned to shudder off her emotions. Years of having children, some honor roll students, others high school drop-outs had made her experience both ends of the spectrum of parenting - and yet, with Kirk, she never quite seemed to have adapted.
Her emotions right now were telling Kirk that she was mortified. She looked from him to the principal and back again, before clearing her throat.
"I'll talk to him about it," she said to Jacobs. She stood up and indicated to Kirk that he should do the same.
Just as he stood, Principal Jacobs made an indistinct sound from the back of his throat. "I'm afraid, it's not quite that simple."
"Pardon?" she said, clutching her pocketbook close to her body. She raised an eyebrow and halted her movement.
"Kirk was breaking school rules -"
"By making a few extra dollars, selling meager items to willing customers?" she shot back instantly.
"Students are not allowed to fund-raise or sell items on school property."
"Was he skipping class to do so?" she asked. Jacobs shook his head, and she continued. "Were these students buying the possessions under duress?" A shake of the head. "Has he been disrespectful to your faculty throughout any of this?"
"Well," Jacobs hesitated, "no, but -"
She turned and walked towards the door, Kirk quickly scurrying after her. "Until which time as my son has committed a more grievous error, I'm certain that the school will trust me to deal with the problem. Otherwise they may have to be held accountable for the lack of supervision which they have over their students, allowing such frowned upon actions to take place on school property."
Kirk turned to watch Jacobs' dumbstruck expression.
"Come, Kirk," she said, and he pranced after her, like he was her pet. Following commands was very important.
The door shut with a quiet close. "Mother," Kirk said, still reeling from her defense of him. "Thank you."
She didn't reply, instead remaining silent all the way up until they were in her car, and Kirk was buckling his seat belt.
"You sold your possessions like some sort of poor, street urchin," she said, putting the car into drive and merging into traffic. He sucked in a breath, but she continued. "It makes no difference to me, but you should expect your classmates to remember this moment."
Kirk had a million comebacks. The sneakers that were thrice hand-me-downed. The new record he desperately wanted to buy. He had saved his trading cards - passed onto him whenever his siblings grew bored of the hobby- for years. What business of hers was it if he wanted to sell them off to his classmates, just so he could have something brand new (and just his) for once in his life?
He was silent.
She pulled up to their house and parked the car. "Go to your room, Kirk."
Kirk scampered away.
/
She had said it was fine, and yet that night, it was clear that it wasn't.
"This is your fault."
"What is?"
"Our son has no confidence, doesn't even care that his classmates are probably laughing at him right now."
"So he sold some possessions. That's hardly cause for alarm."
"Our son wouldn't need to sell his possessions if we had any money!"
"I work three jobs!"
"Oh, I'm sorry. When did you want me to work? Before or after I raised twelve children?"
"And whose fault is it that we have twelve kids?"
"You said you wanted kids."
"I didn't know that meant having enough kids to form a sports team!"
"So now it's my fault that this is our lives? You had no say the entire time?"
"That's not what I meant."
Kirk rolled over, shoving a pillow over his head to block out the conversation his parents were having downstairs. They never seemed to realize how much their voices carried throughout the house. He heard two of the other beds shift in the room and knew his brothers were listening to the conversation too.
"What'd you do, Kirk?" Billy asked, curious.
"Nothing," he murmured and tuned out everything.
/
A year later, when Kirk's dad packed his bags and moved to a hotel, Kirk wasn't all that surprised. The only surprise was when his mother turned to him that day, as they watched his father drive away, and said, "Well, I guess it's you and me now."
Kirk was the youngest and would be around the longest now, and he guessed that meant he was the golden child again.
/
The kids at school thought he carried the duffel bag because he was traveling from home to home, a child of a broken family. Kirk let the rumor spread. Oh, poor, Kirk. Traveling from mother to father. A custody hearing. Divorce, what a nasty business.
It was better than the truth. Kirk came home from school, dumped the duffel bag upside on his bed and pulled out the empty newspaper. He tossed them away and then, on the days he had told people at school that he was switching houses, he filled it up again, crumpling newspapers to form a makeshift life.
Like his father wanted him to visit or something like that. (Kirk laughed so he wouldn't cry.)
/
So he carried a duffel bag with him and didn't invite kids over. It wasn't as though he really cared if he visited his father - mother was enough for him - but kids could be cruel. He wanted to contain that cruelness.
And one by one, his siblings graduated high school, then college, left Stars Hollow, and came back once a year for holidays (if they had the time).
And then there were - no, not none.
But two.
/
He had neither the grades, the desire, nor the money to go to college. You didn't need college to become successful, his father had always said. So Kirk worked one job, then two, then twelve, and tried to pretend that his father wasn't the reason he was doing so.
But he had never been that good at pretending.
/
He sat in Luke's diner. "Luke," he whined, used to getting what he wanted that way.
Luke came out from the kitchen and said, gruffly, "Back again, Kirk?"
Slightly insulted, Kirk bit his tongue, realizing that two visits in one day, unless you were Lorelai or Rory, was a bit excessive. Instead, he just pointed to the menu, jabbering about some delicious lunch sandwich he wanted, cut in a star shape, please.
Luke stared at him for a too long moment, and Kirk thought for a second that he was going to get kicked out of the diner (he always felt so bad for people that Luke didn't tolerate), but instead, Luke said he'd cut the sandwich whatever damn way he wanted to.
Five minutes later, a star-shaped sandwich was dropped in front of him. Kirk looked up to thank Luke, but saw him disappearing into the kitchen.
He figured Luke understood.
/
Years later, Kirk fell in love with a girl named Lulu, and it wasn't about his past. His siblings questioned him, and he blushed like a school girl, and his mother refused to leave them alone in a room together. (Truth be told, he was a bit thankful for that at first.) He was still the poor, fatherless child who had no friends growing up.
Yet, loving Lulu was about more than that.
And in a way, it was about that too. It was about how Lulu didn't really care that the town thought he was quirky (the nicest adjective he had overheard). It was about how Lulu was just like him.
Kirk had been lonely for a long time, in spite of never really being alone. Growing up, he had been suffocated with that crowded loneliness.
He wasn't lonely with Lulu and that was more than enough.
/
"Kirk?" Lulu asked him one day.
He tilted his head to the side, reaching for a box of Raisin Bran to put away. He still bought Mother's groceries, and Raisin Bran was the only cereal she would eat.
"Why did you buy two dozen eggs for your mother?" Lulu indicated to the cartons of eggs in her hands as she opened the refrigerator door. "Oh." Lulu let out an excited, little squeal. "Is she planning on baking? I can help."
(Lulu actually getting along with his mother did contribute - slightly - to his feelings for her.)
"No," he said slowly. "I just always buy two dozen."
She put the eggs away and closed the fridge, twirling then to face him. "But why? I didn't know your mother loved eggs." She looked confused, almost upset that there was a detail about his mother that she hadn't filed away in her memory. It was endearing.
"It's not that…" Kirk said slowly.
Growing up, his mother had always bought two dozen eggs at a time, even though only half of the family enjoyed eggs. Kirk had asked her why once, and she had explained it simply.
When there were a dozen of something, crammed into a fragile package, there were always going to be those few, cracked up eggs. Shattered shells and splattered innards. It was, she had always said, a fact that some eggs were going to be broken. She just liked to have the second dozen as back-ups, second-strings, even if nobody in the family ever really missed those broken eggs. After all, with a dozen eggs, even if one got messed up, the rest were normally alright.
"Kirk?" Lulu asked. "The eggs?"
This was one of those epiphany moments Mother had told him about. Mother wasn't right about everything. "I don't know," he lied, "but I'm only going to buy a dozen at a time from now on."
Lulu looked at him confusedly and said, "Okay."
She leaned forward, and they hugged each other tight, never breaking.
end.