The Things We Leave Behind
Blaine had felt Kurt's presence before he'd ever seen him.
It had been back in November during his sophomore year at Dalton. He'd stopped short on the main staircase when he'd felt an inexplicable chill push across the right side of his body, as though a mass of frozen vapor was brushing past him. If that had been disconcerting, it was nothing to how he'd felt when a breathy and disembodied voice had whispered, "excuse me" right against the shell of his ear.
The first time Kurt had materialized in front of him - the shapeless cloud of mist that had been hovering in the student lounge coalescing into the hazy image of a teenage boy - Blaine had nearly had a heart attack.
If someone had told Blaine then that nearly two years later he'd be tiptoeing through the school in the dead of night, trying to keep pace with Kurt, who is gliding soundlessly through the air ahead of him, he most certainly would not have believed them.
"Can you please just tell me where we're going?" Blaine whispers, willing the sounds of his voice and his footsteps not to reverberate in the empty hallway.
Kurt stops moving, hovering indistinctly in the dim lighting, and turns around to face Blaine. "Not enjoying the element of surprise, I take it?" he says with a low laugh. "Fine, fine. We're going to the alumni hall."
Blaine cannot imagine what could be so pressing in that room that Kurt had needed to float through his dormitory door and wake him up at one-thirty in the morning, but Kurt asks so few favors of Blaine that he can't help wanting to grant him this one.
0000
0000
There is an eerie beauty to the Dalton Academy alumni hall at night. Kurt hovers in the air for a few seconds before gliding smoothly past the gleaming trophy cases and the framed photographs on the wall that depict the accomplishments of Dalton's most successful graduates. The light of the full moon streams in through the large rectangular windows, showing his features more clearly than in any other lighting. Kurt fades in the sunlight, the harsh illumination rendering him almost completely transparent. The moonlight pulls him into focus and sharpens the blurry, opalescent outlines of his body and face.
"What are we looking for?" Blaine whispers as he steps forward, treading lightly and willing his footsteps not to reverberate.
"The yearbooks," answers Kurt briskly. "For the years 1950-1959. I watched Mrs. Pryce move them from the archives onto the shelves yesterday afternoon."
"Okay," says Blaine softly, his eyes sweeping nervously around the room. "And what are we looking for in those?"
Kurt glances at him sidelong. "Well," he says, "one of them has a picture of me in it. And I know it sounds stupid because it hardly matters now but... it's been so long since I've seen a picture of myself that I can barely remember what I looked like. And I'm not able to get the book myself obviously. Not that I'm just using you for your corporeal form - I thought you might like to see the picture too, or at least I hoped you might."
"I'd love to," says Blaine, touched and surprised that Kurt would choose to share something so personal with him.
Blaine opens the book to the page Kurt indicates - and nearly drops it on the floor. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of Kurt's lively, vivid face: the fullness of his lips, the fine arch of his eyebrows, the sweep of his hair, the refinement of his posture, and the coolness in his gaze. Blaine's heart feels like it's caught somewhere in his throat, and he shuts the book with the painful and pointless knowledge that he would have been hopelessly in love with the boy in that photograph.
It has never fully struck Blaine until this moment that he isn't really friends with Kurt Hummel. He's friends with the ghost of Kurt Hummel. To know Kurt was to know him when he was alive; to see the color of his eyes and to hear the sounds of his footsteps and to know what he liked to eat and to feel the warmth of his skin. It occurs to Blaine suddenly that he knows next to nothing about Kurt's life or death, including the most obvious question, which is out of Blaine's mouth before he can stop it:
"Kurt... how did you die?"
Kurt is silent for a long moment and Blaine is certain that he must have offended him terribly. But before he can quickly retract the question, Kurt answers him with a question of his own. "Did you ever wonder," he asks finally, "why a school as stodgy and conservative as Dalton has such a progressive zero-tolerance bullying policy?"
Blaine's eyes snap open. "I - no, I -"
"And did you ever wonder," Kurt continues, refusing to meet Blaine's eyes, "how far back it dates?"
The blood freezes solid in Blaine's veins. His palms break out into a cold sweat-
"It dates back to 1957," says Kurt, "when the school fairy died from a cruel prank gone wrong."
Blaine can't move. Can't speak. Can't breathe.
"They weren't trying to kill me, of course," continues Kurt conversationally. "They couldn't have known how much I'd panic. But the end result was that I died, and the Dalton bullying policy is the only legacy I managed to leave in my short life. I always thought I'd do something that actually mattered, but-"
"It mattered," blurts out Blaine. There are a million things he wants to say, a million thoughts simmering in his brain, but this is the one that breaks through the surface. "Kurt, you matter. The fact that I could be safe here after what happened to me at my old school, the fact that I was safe, that no one judged me or taunted me - Kurt, you have no idea-"
"No," says Kurt grimly. "I really don't."
"Kurt," whispers Blaine with an agonized breath, reaching for Kurt's hands and then gasping at the sudden chill that envelops his fingers.
Kurt looks almost apologetic and Blaine turns his head so that Kurt won't see the tears he's having to blink back. Because no matter how many times he is presented with the evidence - no matter how many times Kurt's fingers have slipped uselessly through Blaine's outstretched hand, the contact both icy and ephemeral - Blaine has never been able to shake the feeling that their hands are meant to hold each other's.
FIN