He craddles the powder in his hands. He takes a breath, snorts it. It burns going up his nostrils.
Everything is still, and then it hits, a wave of pleasure. He mewls. Everything is too sensitive and blurry and he loves it. Nothing hurts. He doesn't know his own name right now. It's perfect.
He's so numb. His fist hits his lip,the snakebites there, and they cut his lip. He wipes his mouth and blood is all over his fingers. There's a vague metallic taste in his mouth, but nothing else.
A week later he can't really tell who's speaking as the voices of Puck and Finn tangle in midair and assault his ears, sounding slurred and soft, and far away. They're stuck in the past, but he's here in the future. One phrase doesn't mix, though. One stays solidary, strikes him.
"You won't even be able to tell when you're dead, high as you are."
The nights are the worst. He trembles and he sobs and he cries. He has night terrors and he's always cold, so cold. Fire lights up his muscles. But he remains strong, resisting that urge to just get back the numbness.
He can see. Everything is vivid and colourful. He breathes in, air and life. Sunlight hits off the shingles. He sees his shadow. Birds sing. He is here. He is alive.
He suddenly remembers what that entails.
The pain hits in a wave and he clutches his chest. It's time to go inside. Too much living today. He curls up in the blankets and falls asleep.
The memories of numbness haunts him in the night. Being so unaware of everything. Painless. LIfe is too hard. He'll remain resilient, he decides. He's got this.
Two months later, he meets Blaine. Blaine is addicted to painkillers. He carries a bottle in his pocket. Two bottles. His process is simple. Pop a pill. Feel nothing. Wait for the numbness to fade. Repeat.
Blaine holds him one night. Asks him if he's even felt such wonderful numbness before. He nods. He knows it well, he says. It's an old friend. One he left behind in fifth grade before the transition to middle school and new friends. One whose phone calls he started ignoring. One who he stopped looking for in the cafeteria and in the hallway.
His hand reaches in, coming back up with powder, for the first time in a long time. He draws in a deep breath. Blaine applauds his technique. The burning in his nostrils. The wonderful feelings. The heightened senses. Being just a bit too tired to function. This is living.
He is kissing Blaine. Blaine tastes of alcohol. Blaine licks at his upper lip, catches just a bit off the white powder there. Their eyes meet. They don't love each other. They don't know each other. Not even a little bit. Kurt doesn't want this.
What does it feel like to feel, anymore? He doesn't know.
He takes off his shoes, places them near the fountain. Angels dance on the edges, raindrops bouncing off the tips of their wings. The edges are blurry. Water splashes off the ground and hits his ankles. He can feel. The rain soaks his hair, hanging long over his eyes, soaked to his skull. The rain is cold and it soaks his clothes, making them cling to his skin, like a mother's arms, yet so very cold. The sky is murky, a dark blue. The sky is so dim.
He walks barefoots over to Blaine, who stands sluggishly. His eyes are dim. He wraps his arms around his neck, clings to him. Blaine is his lifeline. He stretches out over seas and demensions, and he holds on.
The distant lightning threatens to cut them apart.
"What is it?" he breathes, his voice slurred, somewhere distant. He is numb. Might not even recognise Kurt.
"Rain." he says, though he knows it's not the answer he wants. He doesn't want to tell him the real answer. He buries his face in Blaine's chest, turn it sideways so he can look at the sky, at the rain. Hear the orchestra hit the orchestra hit the ground, and more importantly, Blaine's heartbeat.
It is the quiet, constant base that holds the song together.
It's a pretty song for the rain to sing. He hums. It's a ghost of a song that Kurt sings on autopilot. The rain wakes something inside of him, a sleeping monster, undisturbed for a thousand years. Blaine takes a familiar bottle out of his pocket, pops another pill. Kurt raises his head from Blaine's chest. Kurt's eyes, so dim, so tired, open wide and shine bright blue. They meet his. Kurt takes the bottle, shakes it. At least five pills clatter around inside the bottle. He unscrews the cap and dumps the pills out on the wet ground, collects rain drops inside of it.
Blaine looks at him like he's gone mad.
"What are you doing? Why would you do that?" he asks, seeming more worried about the fact that he won't have pills than Kurt's mental state.
"I'm sorry." Kurt whispers.
"Blaine?" he says, hushed, a few minutes later.
"Yes, babe? What's wrong?"
"There are ghosts dancing on the floor."
"I- what?"
"It's just an open wound. Here, this floor. You could sink right into it."
"You sound foggy, Kurt. Too far away."
"Why wouldn't I? We're in two different dimensions. Do you even know my last name?" Blaine doesn't answer.
"You've been drugged again, of your own accord. This is a sacred place. The demons are dancing, joining in with the ghosts. Perhaps I should join them, too. Now that I can breathe without that weight, Blaine...I want to join them! I want to live!"
"Kurt, what's happened to you?"
"I'm not high anymore." He doesn't understand.
"So you must be low."
"No. Just alive." They are both quiet for a moment.
"What will it take for you to come back up here with me?"
"Nothing will make me. But come here with me. Join me." Once again, Blaine doesn't answer.
"Blaine.." Kurt says softly. "Blaine, can you even feel the rain?" He asks honestly. Blaine shoots him a sleepy look.
"Not really." he says. "I used to."
"Do you want me to tell you how it feels?"
"I..I suppose that would be okay." Blaine says softly.
"It feels like your first kiss. It's a cool spray, a thousand needles hitting your skin at high speed, yet they cause no harm. Tell me, Blaine, what would you say if I told you that you're alive and worth more than all of this? That your eyes could see things with so much colour?"
"I'd tell you, you were mental."
"And I'd tell you I'm alive. Do you love me?"
"I do."
"Then wait for that pill to wear off, and when it does, leave it. Your heart will beat fast, struggling. It's become as basic a need as oxygen or water, but you deny your body and when the pain eases just enough that you can walk, meet me here again. Rain or shine, I'll be here. I promise."
and then he walks away, holding his soaked shoes in his hands and a hopeful glint in his eye. A drop of rain drips off his left snake bite.
That night Blaine shakes and shivers and feels unbearably cold no matter how many blankets he puts on or how many degrees he turns up the heat. Everything is too much. Every breath is a struggle. Terrible flashes of his past appear in the middle of the night. He doesn't know why he does it.
Maybe he's just a bit curious about how rain feels first hand.
When he walks up to the fountain, Kurt is sitting on the edge, barefoot again, a tin of cocaine in the other. It's a small tin. A very small tin, expensive. Kurt holds it out. Blaine appears with a bottle of painkillers.
Kurt whispers "I love you." and his cool breath mixes with the wind, cool and quick, and Blaine can feel it. There's a spark in his heart and his eyes light up and suddenly everything is so much more vivid, and it's raining again, and Blaine reaches out a calloused hand to the sky and spreads out his palm, little droplets collecting in the middle, and he smiles. He smiles a beautiful, bright smile.
"What do you like to do?" Kurt says very quietly, softly, and it feels like they are meeting in that coffee house a long time ago. This is how it should have gone. This small talk.
They are strangers. They get to know each other all over again, and without the phantoms hiding behind him, Blaine answers honestly, for once.
"I liked to play guitar. I used to play out on the streets for money, in the indie music part of the city. I lived off that for a while. I was good, but then, one day, I-"
"You?" Kurt prompts softly.
"My father wasn't very open to me being homosexual. He had long since passed but my mother- She died and then everything went black and white. My mother, she was the one who kept the family from falling apart. She was the one who supported me and loved me no matter what. It hurt, loosing her. So I took one of those magic pulls and..it stopped hurting.
"It's okay to hurt." Kurt says, taking Blaine's hand. He digs a nail into Blaine's wrist and Blaine cringes. "But you see, that pain? It's what makes everything real, reminds us that we are real. Even when everything around us goes blurry and nothing makes sense.
"A-and what about you?" Blaine says, feeling as though he really does know nothing about Kurt.
"I loved to act, to sing, and to make fashion. I applied to NYADA, a theatre school, and I didn't get in, but it wasn't until I remembered, until I.." Kurt pales visibly. He starts shaking. His voice sounds far too distant, much too far away. Blaine places a hand on Kurt's knee, kisses his hand.
"Until what?" He prompts just as Kurt did, working through their mangled pasts together.
"My mother was murdered when I was eight, and I witnessed it, I was there, but..I mean, I forgot about it. For a long time. Suppresed memories I guess? But when my father died, and I went to the funeral I remembered my mother's funeral, and everything came back.." Kurt's voice is here again, but his mind isn't. He's remembering things, awful things. He's shaking again and tears are running down his cheeks. Blaine kisses them away, Kurt breathes, heavy, and then screams. Blaine digs his nail into Kurt's wrist, cuts off the scream with a kiss, bites Kurt's lip, bites his snakebites. A drop of blood dribbles down Kurt's face.
His eyes are wide and glassy, but he is here now. He is not back in the living room with the guns and the screaming and the corpses. Blaine looks Kurt in the eye, his fingernail still digging into Kurt's flesh.
"Do you feel that? That pain? That, well, it means that you're alive."
How far they have come. Kurt still rocks back and forth a little, still recovering. Blaine wraps his arms around him, though, places his hand on Kurt's little hips and pulls onto his lap, holds him close.
"You're okay." he whispers, kissing Kurt's shoulder. "You're alive."
And that's all Kurt needs. He pulls Kurt off of him, moves him to his side.
"Come on." Blaine says, taking Kurt's hand, standing up.
They make their way to a spot in front of the fountain, barefoot and soaking wet. Blaine pulls Kurt close and starts to sway.
They initiate a strange dance, full of a secret understanding. People who pass by think them insane, and maybe they are, but they're here, they're alive, they feel the rain.
And that's much more than they can say for a lot of other people.
They sway slowly, for a long time. Blaine feels strong and solid. Kurt feels just a little bit like he's going to blow away, but both of their feet are on the ground, moving side to side. Kurt pulls his head up from Blaine's chest, places a hand on his cheek, and tilts down his head so they kiss.
Fireworks explode inside their stomachs. This is love.
Later they find out they're both from Ohio. They were both in choir and they even went against each other. Burt even fixed Blaine's car once. They kiss each other and smile Kurt giggles. When they fall asleep and Blaine holds Kurt, they feel the press of their bodies against each other.
They meet up in the dangerous district of town, by a trash can. They each take deep breaths and then Kurt takes a step forward. He drops the tin inside. Blaine dumps the pills out one by one and then lets the whole bottle go. They look up at each other.
They grow wings and soar high above the clouds. They can't even hear the world beneath them. They hold hands and fly into a secret place that only they know, their wings brushing.
This is what it's like to feel.