A/N- Just a little Rane-shower whilst I work on the next Flirt-isode, in celebration of having internet again.
Disclaim- Annnnnnnnnd...Nope.
Shane frowned in concentration as he scratched out words across the stiff card. He was trying his best to make his scrawl neat. He didn't want anything to get in the way of the message he wanted to send Reed.
He looked out the window, but only saw cloud and fog around him. Forty-five minutes until they landed, and half an hour to Dalton. Less than two hours until Reed.
Reed returned from the mail office with a package in his arms.
Kurt was waiting for him at the front door to Windsor, sitting on the bannister edge and swinging his legs slightly.
"Present?" Kurt questioned, looking at the smooth paper wrapping and the airmail stamps on it. Reed looked up, his lips bitten into a thin line.
"Yeah. From my mother. She's in Thailand right now, so she can't be here, but she sent this." Reed stalled and leaned against the rail next to him. A fingernail picked at a seam in the paper.
"You going to open it?"
"Hmmm." Reed shrugged. "It's probably just clothes or something. I'll open it later."
"Open it now!" Kurt insisted and Reed gave him a funny look. Kurt gave him a large unreal smile which wobbled and then collapsed. Kurt rolled his eyes at his own failure.
"Fine. You can't go inside yet." He admitted and Reed looked at him apprehensively.
"Is someone watching the Tweedles?"
"Yes. But I can't imagine that's very comforting anyways."
"I guess not." Reed turned and put the package on the bannister, turning it to expose the edge and start slipping open the coverings.
"Did you ask for anything?" Kurt said quietly, trying to pretend he didn't notice the loud banging noises from inside.
"I mentioned that I wanted some new canvases, but it can't be that. Um, there were some tickets I wanted. To some concerts coming up..." Reed said, and Kurt knew that he certainly wasn't expecting anything music related from Hilde. Reed winced and sucked on the paper cut he got sliding open the bottom seam of the paper. Kurt helped him pull it away. Inside was a thin box, and under the lid...
A deep brown portfolio cover in the softest leather imaginable.
Kurt wanted to reach out and touch it, admiring the simplicity, knowing it was real Hermes. But he knew that this book held a completely different connotation for his friend.
Reed's hand shakily but resolutely opened the cover and Kurt could hear the tiny sigh that escaped him.
He read the note over Reed's shoulder, noticing the image in a plastic sleeve behind the loose paper.
"Dearest Reed, Happy birthday to you. You've grown up so quickly, and now you are almost a man. To make the transition you are facing easier I have put this together for you. It is only a few of your photos and designs, but it is a start for the portfolio you will be needing soon. Hopefully it will serve as an inspiration to the final effort. With much love, Mother."
Reed didn't look at Kurt, just stared at the page before slowly closing the cover and placing the lid of the box back on top.
"Can I please go inside now?"
"Reed, I'm sorry." Reed just shrugged, but still didn't look up, and Kurt wrapped an arm over his cupped shoulders as he led him towards the door.
They made it up the stairs without being accosted, which frankly was a surprise to Reed, even in his depressed state. As such, he wasn't exactly surprised to see a huddle of boys clustered around his doorway. They started nudging each other and turning to face him. Reed couldn't help smiling a little bit.
The Tweedles stepped forwards, both clasping their hands behind their backs. Reed stopped in front of them, submitting to the inevitable force of the Windsor boys' will.
"We knew how sad you were that the bat couldn't make it." Evan said sympathetically.
"So we decided." Ethan continued.
"All of us."
"But mostly us."
"That we would bring some of him to you." The Tweedles cut through the crowd and pushed open the door, revealing Reed and Kurt's room. Aside from the path for the door it was...filled. Filled with life-size cut outs of Shane. Smiling, goofy, handsome, wonderful Shane.
"But this is only part." Evan continued and Ethan followed him.
"We have another present for you."
"We hid it behind one of the Shanes."
"We really think you'll like it."
"When you manage to find it."
"So scurry little dormouse!"
"We'll see you for dinner, alright?" Kurt interrupted, and Reed frowned.
"I'll probably be down in a minute. Or on the way to hospital."
Kurt just smiled.
"Hmmmm. Okay. Well, we'll just see you at some point later then."
At that, Kurt stepped aside and the Tweedles pushed him in, shutting the door behind.
Reed stumbled and almost knocked over one of the Shanes, which would have dominoed them to the ground and likely broken whatever present they had left.
Where was he supposed to begin? There might be eighty or a hundred Shanes here in this room, on his side and Kurt's. Unfortunately none of them were the Shane he wanted most.
He shut the door behind him and laid his mother's present down on the ground. There had to be some way to figure out where his gift was without creating an extraordinary disaster. Mind you, he had enough trouble crossing his room normally. Maybe if he could make a path to his bed, and then look down from a high point.
Reed carefully reached out and took the first Shane by the waist.
He felt strange doing this. It was a bit weird thinking about how he wished he could reach out and touch the boy as easily as he could with his image. Reed placed the cutout to the side, carefully, and moved forwards, two, three more on the way towards his bed. He stopped and stared at the fourth one.
Shane was beautiful. He really was, and Reed could even say that with some degree of objectivity. His face had excellent symmetry, with enough difference to each side to make him interesting. One side of his mouth quirked more that the other. He had a faint freckle on the inside of the bridge of his nose. His ears weren't entirely even.
But Reed didn't mind. He cherished trying to find these tiny things that made Shane so very...Shane.
He relished and was frustrated by trying to put them to canvas or paper.
And he wished so so much right now that he could see them in person, in all their warmth and dimension. Reed ran a finger down the line of Shane's nose, blushing even in the solitude of his room as the point of his finger stalled at his lips.
He hadn't really thought about kissing Shane...not...actively. It had just happened to sort of fall into his mind once or twice, when he wasn't keeping a close enough reign on his thoughts.
There wasn't much point to it anyways. He had never kissed anyone. Never been kissed. Certainly didn't know what it felt like to have someone be so particularly invested in you that they weren't able to use words alone to let you know how they felt. Not beyond the mild extent of a few friendly hugs or affection from his parents.
And yet... it was his birthday. And he was standing in a room full of something that was meant to make him happy, because that's what Tweedles did best, and it was a boy. A strange, wonderful, flighty, clearly deeply deluded boy that Reed missed so much it hurt like a stone grip in his chest.
He let out a slightly pathetic cry of frustration and pushed, as hard as he could. The first image toppled and it started a reaction that saw Shane after Shane falling down to the floor.
"Ow!"
Reed glanced around the room suddenly at the exclamation.
"Who's there?" Reed scrambled back towards the door. He scanned the room and saw, over by the window, a pile of cardboard start to heave and be pushed back. A head of shaggy curls, now in full dimension and form, emerged and he gave Reed an absurd frown.
"Your birthday surprise, silly." Shane pushed another cut-out aside, mumbling something about how creepy it was to be in a room full of hims, and scrambled up to his feet.
He noticed Reed take a step forward and he held out his hands.
"No, wait. Let me come to you." Reed just stood, glancing hopelessly around the room for something, anything else to focus on except the boy literally falling all over versions of himself to get to him.
Shane was here. Here in his room. On his birthday. In front of him now.
"Hi birthday boy." Shane said, cocking his head to catch Reed's eye.
"Hi." Reed choked out.
This was all too much. His mother's gift and the note, and the cut outs and Shane and his birthday and it was all just...too much.
Reed's face screwed up tightly, trying not to cry, but tears started leaking out anyways. He squeezed his eyes shut even more tightly, but it didn't work, it just hurt.
"I...I'm a mess!" Reed wailed, suddenly scrambling away from Shane and over the ranges of toppled cardboard towards his bed. He slipped several times and banged up his knee, but he managed to get through to his bed and curl up as far away from the edge as possible. Shane was less than a moment behind him, crawling over the mattress and kneeling in front of him.
"Reed? Did I do the wrong thing? I just wanted to be here for your birthday, and the Brightmans called and said that they could fly me out and back in time for my exam tomorrow, and so I took that chance. Are you mad at me?"
Reed shook his head, pushing his forehead against his knees. Shane's hands twitched in desperation, unsure what had happened, let alone how to fix it.
"Reed. Reed, what...what's wrong. Don't cry on your birthday angel." Shane pleaded, clasping Reed's hand and pulling it to his chest.
"Why isn't what I want ever the right thing?"
"Reed-" Shane hated the smallness of Reed's voice right now. It was nothing like the sound when he sang or laughed or they were just talking, the two of them.
"I want to sing, and I want to choose my future, and I want to choose you, and everything and everyone just keeps telling me no and that I'm not worth it, and I just can't get anything right!" Reed spat out miserably. Shane shifted quickly, sliding in beside Reed and pulling him against his chest.
"You are worth everything. Everything I can ever think of." Shane whispered fiercely, desperate for the other boy to believe him.
"I do everything wrong. I can't even walk properly. I can't even like someone properly!" Reed snuck a peek at Shane with his red eyes and Shane's heart flopped hopelessly.
"You are amazing. You can sing and paint, and you're sweet and wonderful and smart, and Reed...if anyone is ever so lucky to have you like them...then there is no way that you could do that wrong."
Shane freed one hand and fished around in his pocket, pulling out a slightly bent card in a bright envelope.
"I um, I wish I could draw like you, and make my own card, but it would have looked terrible, so I bought you one with a puppy on it, cause of what you said about your dog, and then I wrote something inside. Here."
Reed sniffed and wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, before taking the card. He pulled the flap free and tugged it out clumsily. The picture on the front at least made him smile a little. Shane tried not to stare as Reed opened the card and read his inevitably untidy scrawl.
Reed's soft, sweet voice read out the words in an almost inaudible tone.
"I know you like songs. And I know how everyone around here uses them to send a message so...
Pretty pretty please, if you ever ever feel like you're nothing, you are perfect to me. Love, your Shane."
"Your Shane?" Reed wobbled out when he could finally expel his voice from his mouth. "Mine?"
"Don't act so surprised. I've been lost to anyone else since December." Shane admitted playfully, but the sincere nature of his words, all of them, shone through. Reed flushed deeply and shook his head.
"Why do you wait for me?"
Shane just sighed.
"Because one day..." He stared hard at the other boy. "One day you are going to realize how perfect you are. How just amazing and wonderful everyone else thinks you can be. And maybe, just maybe, then you'll be ready to trust yourself to make the right choices for you, and maybe you'll be willing to give me a chance. I refuse to miss that, so I will wait for it as long as I have to. Because it's going to happen Reed. one of these days its going to happen even if I have to be the one to tell you everyday how wonderful you are."
Reed's eyes were shining now. Not so much with tears as with gratitude and affection.
"I...I think I'd be okay with that." Reed murmured.