The Night
"Come home. Please, babe, just…stop hiding."
Kurt doesn't even register the tears streaming down his face anymore, trailing his fingers through the wet pools they're dripping on the dirty motel sheets.
"I can't. I already told you, Noah, I…just can't."
He should've hung up before he even picked up the damn phone. It's been like this for months now, the insistent ringing following him in his dreams, the ghost of Noah's smile and his touch making Kurt doubt his every decision.
"Don't. Don't pull that crap on me again. You never even told me why, Kurt!"
He shakes his head, finger hovering over the end button. He has to get a new number. A new life. One that doesn't have the man he loves in it, as much as that hurts. He'd never understand.
"I love you, Noah. Stop calling."
And then he's done, ending the call, tears blurring his vision, and throwing the piece of plastic out of the window. He hears it smash against the dirty sidewalk underneath with a satisfying crack.
"Daddy?" a small voice calls from the bed next to his, and Kurt is on his knees in a second.
"I'm here, Princess."
His little girl is blinking sleepily, beautiful brown eyes not quite focused on Kurt's face. Her hair is sticking up everywhere, electrified by the cheap pillowsheet, and he wishes he could pull it together and get them to a decent place that doesn't require them to move out after the time he'd paid for is up.
"You're sad. Were you on the phone again?"
Kurt nods, slow and painful. "Don't worry, nobody's going to be calling anymore."
She sniffs a little. "Not even the nice man?"
Kurt's blood freezes in his veins. She didn't. She couldn't have. "What nice man?"
Audrey shrugs, rubbing her face against the pillow like a kitten, already falling back to sleep. "Dunno. Said 's name was Noah…" and then she's out like a light.
Kurt can now feel the cracks in the display of his phone burning, like it was his heart that's fallen out of a fourth story window instead, and he knows there isn't anything he could possibly salvage. The tears come again, and he doesn't bother stopping them as he climbs into the bed next to his daughter and presses a kiss into her hair.
He's ruined everything.