He gets his first when he's 18 and finally moved into New York.
Sure, he's wanted it for years now, but he'd never ask his father. Does he need another heart attack?
It's simple. No pain, really. He just watched the ink pour onto his skin and form into a quarter note.
It rests just above his heart, just like his mom does.
It's awhile before he can bring himself to get the other. It was a shock really, everyone thought he had a few years left, but his heart…
He walks into the same tattoo parlor a month after the funeral. He asks the artist to join the last with another. The artist asks what this note means. He says it's for the same reason really.
Just someone else to add to it now.
He remembers what his dad once said to him about how he and his mother used to have a song, a melody. They had made it together, sitting on the couch, humming. His father used to whistle it on their anniversary . It had been years since it was a duet.
Kurt knows most of it, though. More and more, he finds himself zoning out. He doodles and along the margins of his papers, the melody rests in bits a pieces.
On a whim, he writes it down, drawing the staff lines himself on a blank piece of paper.
He finally brings himself back to parlor, asking to complete the melody. He hands the artist his latest doodle, the final song.
He wants it on his skin just above his heat, starting with the first note.
This one hurts a lot more than the last, but its fine. Its finished. Their song has been preserved. At least for as long as he's alive.
Years later, he wakes up to their melody. Its disorienting- he's not humming it. But his partner is and tracing along his skin in time to the music and it sounds right. He smiles when the humming doesn't stop after the notes do.
He realizes his tattoo isn't finished.
He smiles brighter.