This is my first piece of fiction with Carole at the centre so I hope I did her justice. It was inspired by a prompt at the Glee Angst Meme which you can find here: . ?thread=2397520#t2397520
I've also never written a dream sequence before either so keep that in mind. I would love to get any comments, good or bad, so please remember to leave a review. :-)
It was one of those things you did when you were young, wasn't it? Experiment.
Even as she had told herself that, Carole had known that it had to stay a secret. Her parents would have never listened to her explanations.
Her mother and father had their own ideas of how her life should go. She would marry a soldier like her mother did. Like her grandmother did. She would have three children and a dog, cook all her own meals, keep her house spic and span, and why would she need to go to university? Her husband would take care of her.
Elizabeth had other ideas about the future. She was going to go to study in another state. She was going to learn journalism and not take no for an answer. She was going to fight crime and corruption on capital hill.
She was everything Carole wanted to be but couldn't.
They sat together in English in Freshman year for two months before they spoke. They ran in different circles, Elizabeth the straight A student who wrote for the school paper, Carole the wannabe cheerleader who worked as hard as she could to ace home economics but could bring home a C in maths without a word of reproach from her father.
Maybe is Elizabeth hadn't been such a perfectionist they would have gone the next three and a half years without realizing the other excited.
"It's an E," she said.
"What?" She'd been dithering over the spelling of a word, finally deciding to write it as it sounded and try again later.
"You put an I. It should be E." She pointed to the spot on the page where the rubbing out had almost pierced it and had sent the clean white of the page a dirty grey.
"You aren't supposed to help me," Carole said. "If Miss Haskins finds out we'll both get in trouble."
"What good will learning it on your own do if you learn it wrong?"
She couldn't fault the logic but she still eyed the teacher warily while she rubbed it out one last time and wrote in the right collection of letters.
"I can help you out with it if you want. You've got three more mistakes in your first paragraph."
Carole looked over her page. She couldn't see anything wrong, but when she got it back on Friday she knew it would be covered in red ink.
She knew if she carried on this way she was heading for a D for sure. Even if Miss Haskins wasn't the crulest teacher she had to be one of the strictest.
"I can't pay you," she heard herself say. "I don't get much pocket money and if I ask my parents they'll just say I need to work harder."
"That's okay," Elizabeth said, smiling, showing a row of straight white teeth that made Carole want to run her tongue along her braces. "Consider it a little favor between future friends."
Elizabeth stuck out her hand to shake on it and Carole took hold hesitantly. The fingers were warm and dry, and a pink and blue ring nudged her palm.
"What are you two up to?" Miss Haskins barked from the front.
"Nothing Miss," they called in unison, but they shared a secret smile that made Carole chest thump.
As the memories seemed to fade before her eyes Carole placed Finns dog eared workbook back on the dining room table. He had his mothers spelling.
She collected the books into a pile, two work books, one textbook, one neatly annotated novel and one well loved copy of Vogue, and moved them to the sideboard to make room for Dinner.
Finn's laugh rang out through the house from his usual post-homework perch in front of the TV. Kurt would be sitting next to him with a book or a magazine or texting on his phone, making sarcastic comments and pretending not to be interested.
Kurt looked so much like her. Burt had said it once and then felt embarrassed for bringing up his first wife with his second, but she couldn't help but agree. No one could look at his son, having known his mother, and say they were anything other than mother and child.
The exact same intelligent blue eyes looking out over a perfectly straight nose and thin, quirked lips.
If she hadn't become so close to Elizabeth before she met Burt and Kurt she would have suspected he was adopted. Even now, when they were together as a family, she struggled to see her husband in him.
The kitchen timer pinged and she went to dole out the lasagne onto four plates. Her step-son would complain about the calories but he would eat it anyway, a guilty pleasure.
Anyway, it wouldn't hurt him to put on a bit of weight. He was far to skinny for a growing boy. A curve or two wouldn't hurt him.
"Do you see how it works now?" Elizabeth asked.
They lay on Carole's bed side by side with their math books open in front of them. They'ed finished their English half an hour ago and created a spelling list for each of them to practice, Elizabeth saying 'You can't wait for the teachers to suggest things first. You'll still be waiting in the spring break.
Elizabeth had packed up her pens slowly and Carole felt a wave of panic, desperate for her new friend to stay, at least for a little bit. She's mentioned, pho-casual, that she wished someone could give her the same kind of help in Math.
She had smiled and looked at Carole curiously, her dark lashes fluttering. "I can, if you want? It makes sense, since I'm already here."
A single dark curl of hair fell over Carole's arm as Elizabeth reached out to turn the page. It danced with every movement of the other girls head and made her skin tingle. She shivered.
Elizabeth turned and their eyes met, noses practically touching. Carole suddenly found herself very aware of their sides pressed together, arms touching, and the heat that seemed to radiate from her new friends skin. It warmed her like the midday sun in July.
"I can show you all kinds of things," Elizabeth said.
She slipped a bookmark between the pages of her newest romance as Burt dropped his clothes in the washing basket and pulled back the covers on his side of the bed.
He ran his hand down her side and kissed her gently on the lips as they cuddled up together, then pulled the light switch cord and plunged them into darkness.
She lay still with her eyes closed, a welcome reprieve from the busyness of the day.
As the waking world faded and a new one takes it's place she opens her eyes to see crystal blue eyes framed by long lashes. Their hands run all over each other as they make love and their kisses taste like coffee and mint.
She pushes a lock of hair from Elizabeth's eyes and suddenly there's a baby between them with fluffy black hair and Lizzy's eyes. It gurgles and squirms in the blankets so she cradles it and brings it to her breast. It suckles contently.
Elizabeth stands up from the bed and walks out through the window. Carole isn't surprised. She scoops up the toddler that's wearing her lovers face and follows her through the window and into the kitchen.
She places little Kurt, because that's who she knows it is, into the high-chair and goes to the dressing gown clad figure making pancakes on the stove.
She combs her hand through dark wavy strands but as she does they fall away leaving a balding head and Burt turns to look at her. He pours milk and then eggs onto the ring of the gas hob and offers her a slice of toast, and she can feel the wrongness of seeing him there but she doesn't know why.
She shakes her head to the toast and it's sad. When she turns to the high-chair it's empty and Kurt and Finn sit at the kitchen table and beacon her over.
She sits with them and crumbles a bullion cube over her cereal. It tastes wet and bland.
Burt sits next to her with his burger and takes a bite. He swallows it whole and turns to her. His mouth opens to ask a question and he lets out a buzzing, mechanical screech.
She flinched and blinked sluggishly as Burt reached over her to turn off the alarm.
"I'm telling you Carole, I think I'm in love," Elizabeth said, smiling to herself and doodling tiny hearts on her notebook.
Carole watched her hand move, the fine fingers bending and flexing, and felt a pang of... something.
"Who?" she asked.
"There's this guy in my history class, Burt, and he's been passing me notes for ages." Elizabeth hugged her book to her chest and flopped back on her bed. "Today he finally asked me out and I made him work for it but of course I said yes. We're going to the bowling ally and after that, dancing. I'm telling you, Carole, I've never felt this way about anyone before!"
Carole drew a circle on her page. She looked at it for a moment then started drawing a spiral inside it, slowly running inwards and inwards, smaller and smaller.
"What about me?" she asked.
"Oh, sweety. I love you so much but this is different!" She sighed and turned over onto her front to face Carole. "I think I'm going to marry him," she said.
Carole smiled a wet smile. "Good luck," she said.
Movie nights had become a thing they did together. If Friday night family dinners were a Hummel tradition then Sunday night movies were a Hudson one.
Carole sat nestled in the cruck of her husbands arm, an old woollen blanket wrapped around them both.
Finn sat at their feet with an open bag of doritos, and orange fingers and Kurt was in the kitchen making popcorn in the microwave.
Burt kissed the top of her head as the previews played and she laughed at her sons awkward expression, ruffling his hair till he leaned away, a smile on his face.
Kurt came in with a glass bowl of sugared popcorn and looked, a bit nervous, at the two seats left. The easy chair was free but it faced the TV at a funny angle.
When he started that way Carole called his name. "Room for one more," she said, lifting up the edge of the blanket. He hesitated for a second before relenting and climbing under and placing the bowl on her lap.
In that moment, with the four of them cuddled together, things were perfect.