Five Times They Noticed

Spoilers: Up to and including some events of Never Been Kissed, season 2

Summary: From Livejournal's Glee-Angst-Meme: "Five times a glee member noticed Kurt jumping when a locker slammed shut or flinching when he turned a corner."

Author's Note: I like prompts. And angst. And Kurt. So you know, this fic happened.

Rachel

First he stops competing as vehemently for solos, and then he stops completely. She doesn't realise she misses the competition until its gone. Once upon a time, she wouldn't have. But at some point, she became someone who started measuring her talent by how good her colleagues were, and had started to really respect the way her fellows with the strongest voices were demanding more time. Besides, she'd never tell anyone, but the timbre of Kurt's voice was amazing, and sometimes she just liked to listen to him.

Then he starts losing weight. This she can't help but notice, because he was skinny to begin with. His clothes become a little baggier, a little shapeless. And that's when she realises that he's actually starting to hide his body in bigger, less flamboyant sweaters. He radically tones down his choices in fashion. Still clearly better than anything she could ever pick out for herself (not that she'd ever admit that to anyone either), but there's conservatism there. She notices that, because one of her fathers changed the way he dressed so he could keep his job at his law firm. He'd quoted Brian Kinney, Lothario of Queer as Folk to her about it when she'd asked him why it was okay that he do something so untrue to his spirit.

'It's not lying, if they make you lie.' He said. But he'd seemed sad about it.

Kurt also seemed sad about it. Fashion was a form of identity. It might be an unfortunate identity for her, but it was an amazing one for him. Seeing it change, well, she couldn't help but notice that.

She notices the way some of the other Glee kids don't notice. How oblivious they are. This makes her sad. It also makes her pay attention to Kurt more, because she's always been a sucker for an ingénue who's downtrodden and put upon by life. And even though Kurt doesn't express the classic definition of an ingénue, that's definitely what he is, inside and out. She spends time romanticising his pain and loneliness; thinking about the songs he could sing about it.

But she has a tough time romanticising it when she sees the way his body locks up, almost violent, when he turns a corner and she's right there in front of him. For a second he doesn't see or recognise her, and then he does, and the fear's still present. It's something toothy and it obliterates all her daydreaming about it. There's something terribly real about it, terribly there.

He walks around her without saying anything, which isn't unusual for them at all. They occupy a strange space, orbiting each other with their similarities and avoiding each other because they've both been pretty vicious to one another at different points in their lives. Almost friends, not quite enemies. She can't help but care.

She spends the day thinking about it, she can't let it go. There has to be something that she can do.

Mercedes

Mercedes is pissed. She's pissed at a lot of things, but today she's mostly pissed that people are so determined to control what she eats for her. Like she's helpless. Like she can't decide for herself. She's been ranting at Kurt for the better part of five minutes, and now she yanks her books out of her locker and glares at it with the same rage that she feels for all those people who have a problem with her, how she looks, how she eats. Don't they know how it makes her feel? Don't they even care?

She slams the locker shut as though it is the face of the whole school, as though – if she could just slam it hard enough – she could make everyone feel her wrath.

Kurt violently jumps, he gasps high, the colour drains from his face so quickly that Mercedes hasn't even finished turning to him to look at him more closely when it's all gone.

Her anger fades. Like his reaction has taken some of the fire away.

She can see him trembling. He stuffs the shaking hand into his pocket even as she sees. He's not looking at her, but staring instead at the laminate of the floor. She examines him in the seconds following the aftermath of his reaction. She knows he's scared, she knows something is very wrong, she knows he's uncomfortable, she knows he doesn't want her to notice. She knows things have been getting worse. She knows that he wasn't this bad only last week. Things have gotten worse in only a week, and he hasn't told her.

She will feel hurt about that later, but she only feels concern about it now.

'Kurt?' She says gently, 'didn't mean to scare you.' She adds.

'Oh,' he says, breathless, 'you didn't, I just...' But he couldn't brush it off so easily. Not with her. His eyes wandered up from the floor to her eyes and her heart ached for the pain she saw in them.

'You gotta talk to someone.' She said, low and persistent, an issue they've covered before that he hates to talk about. The thing she's noticed about Kurt, over the months, is that he'll rant about fashion victims and his father not subbing the cost of clothing and he'll rant about the inability to find good chai in Lima; but he'll almost never rant about the big stuff, the serious stuff, the stuff that actually hurts him. Then he just shuts up, shuts down, closes off, says he's fine. Sometimes she respects that, but she can't right now. She loves him too much.

'Who?' He says, and laughs the tiniest amount under his breath. It's a self-deprecating, bitter sound. 'Who should I talk to? The guidance counsellor who'll offer me a cookie-cutter pamphlet about bullying? Or the Principle, who got his credentials from a cereal box? Or my Dad, who will just...' he trails off. Kurt hates hurting his father. He hates it more than anything.

'Look, I know McKinley sucks, I go here too, remember? I don't know who you can talk to who could actually do anything to get you out of this situation, or to change it. It's not what I meant. I mean, you need to talk to a friend about it. We want to be here for you. I know I do.'

'I don't want to bother you.'

'Seeing you scared like this bothers me, I just want to help.'

But she's said the wrong thing, she's navigated the minefield poorly. She can almost see him clam up at her words, she can already tell what he's going to say.

'You weren't supposed to notice...' He said. 'I'm sorry.' He added. 'I know you're concerned, but really, there's nothing to talk about.'

'It might make you feel better.' She says, realising belatedly that they're going to be late for class with the added time her rant and this has taken. She doesn't care.

'Just,' he pauses, takes a breath, 'just you being in my life helps me feel better, you're a good friend, Mercedes.'

He offers her a gentle smile, the kind that isn't stretched and dazzling, but soft. The one she loves the most. She lights up at this, smiles back. They share a moment.

'Come on, let's get to class.'

It's not until much later that she realises he managed to deflect her again, to put her off actually talking about it. She still doesn't know what's happened that's made it so much worse, and she's scared to imagine what it could be. Every time she sees him flinch or jump, she feels it like a sharp pain in her heart. She can't be angry at Kurt about for not talking about it, but she's scared for him, and she hates how powerless she feels about it. She knows what she feels is only the tip of the iceberg, compared to him; and it breaks her heart.

Puck

'You know what they say...' Puck drawls as he sidles up to the clearly terrified boy in front of him. Kurt seems to shake off the fear and glares at him.

'What do you want?' He says, the same fire and spit that had him demanding that people hold his man-purse and girl-jackets when they used to dumpster-toss him. Puck would never admit it to anyone, ever, but he respected the scrawny boy, even if he didn't get him.

'That the ones who hate the gays the most are, you know, total flaming homos themselves.'

Kurt pauses, he doesn't look remotely comforted by this. He looks around, furtive, like Puck's told him a huge secret. He looks horrified.

'Do you know?' He says.

'Know what?' Puck says, totally confused now. He was just coming up to try and throw the kid a bone. He'd seen the way he'd flinched away from the football uniform, and then a moment later squeezed his eyes shut in fear when a locker was closed nearby. He wasn't a total idiot. He knew Kurt had thought it was Karofsky. He'd decided to offer what equated to 'Puck's words of wisdom.' And now what the hell was Kurt talking about?

'Nothing.' Kurt was saying.

'Whatever.' Puck said. 'I'm just saying...'

'I don't care what you're saying, it doesn't make it okay.' He said, voice shaky. 'It's not okay that someone like him, like you, gets away with that behaviour, when people like me can find the time to not be complete Neanderthals.'

'The world's a bitch.' He says in reply, feeling way out of his depth and wondering why he even bothered. Maybe he should've just gone and punched Karofsky in the face instead. Now that's something he understood.

'No, really?' Kurt snipes.

'Dude, welcome to reality. The whole world sucks.'

'Geez, Puck, thanks for that gem of wisdom. Got any others?'

There's a way Kurt gets with Puck sometimes, all cynicism and acid. It's like something he saves for when the two of them are talking on their own, which almost never happens. He doesn't know if it's a result of the kid disliking him for years of bullying and shitty treatment, or if it's just actually how Kurt is when he's pissed off. Or both.

'Yeah, actually, I do.' Puck says. 'I'm not as big as that dick, but I'm stronger than him, and I'm better at fighting. You say the word, and I will take him down.'

Kurt's eyes widen, he puts a hand out on a locker to steady himself.

'You'd go back to juvie.'

'I'd bolt before that ever happened, for serious. I'd go underground. Like something out of the movies. I'd Shawshank it.'

'Of course you would,' Kurt says, sarcastic. 'Because stuff like that never backfires in the real world.'

'It's like I told you, man, the real world sucks.'

Kurt opens his mouth, closes it again, and then tilts his head like he's seeing Puck in an entirely new light.

'It does,' he says suddenly, with a level of sincerity that Puck knows he shouldn't be hearing. The way Kurt's entire demeanour changes, like he was just waiting for a knight in shining armour. Christ, where were his actual friends? He can see pain on Kurt's face and he's not prepared for it. It's blinding and terrible.

'Seriously? Let's not get all deep and meaningful about it,' he's grateful for the way Kurt's face closes up again, because he knows he's doing the kid a favour. He's the wrong person to open up to about this shit. It's not his style, and he doesn't offer words of comfort, it's not who he is.

'But I mean it,' he says, because it's important that Kurt know that actually, he really does mean it. 'Just say the word, and I'll take him down.'

'I don't understand you.' Kurt says in confusion, as Puck turns to leave. He turns back and shrugs.

'You don't need to. The offer still stands.'

Sam

Sam sees it from a distance. He's metres and metres away, bending down to pick a file off the floor that some girl had dropped. He hands it back to her and sees the reaction in the distance before he even realises who it is.

Kurt turns into the corridor and some junior kid brushes against him, and the reaction is extreme. He jumps, shifts, his face changes to pure terror, and it's not like Kurt had been looking that relaxed in general lately. Sam stands and watches from his relative anonymity; this far away, Kurt doesn't even know he's there.

Sam knows that bullies exist. And he knows there's no such thing as good bullying. At his previous school, he was pretty lucky in that aside from his body, he wasn't picked on much. And yet, sometimes he reluctantly acknowledged that even that did its damage. He wasn't the most self-aware of guys, but he knew he obsessed about his looks a little too much, he knew that there were days when all he wanted was a chocolate shake and he'd mentally beat himself up for even considering it. Like, how dare he. He knew maybe that wasn't so great.

He also knows that there are different levels of bullying. He knows that some people die from it, either directly or indirectly. He knows it's serious stuff. He can tell that Kurt is really suffering. He doesn't know him well, but he knows him well enough to recognise the pride that stops him from reaching out for help.

Well, that doesn't mean that he can't reach out to offer, he decides.

He walks up to Kurt, who doesn't even really see him at first, lost in some other place, some other fear.

'Hey.' Sam says, flanking the boy's side, deciding that he can escort Kurt to wherever he needs to go without Kurt even realising that's what he's doing. He doesn't point out the flinch he sees when he talks to him, he decides to go with not drawing attention to the latent fear that has that small chest rising and falling with each rapid breath.

Kurt looks at him with an expression of 'can I help you?'

'I heard you're good with languages,' Sam fumbles, awkward, under the intensity of that questioning gaze. 'I've always been so bad at them. Can I just ask you about some stuff quickly, on the way to your next class?'

'Sure. But don't be too hard on yourself, I've heard you speak Spanish in Schuester's class, you're more fluent than many of the others, probably thanks to your more superior education. McKinley scrapes the bottom of the barrel for educational values.'

Sam thinks maybe that means Kurt's cottoned onto what he's doing, but as they continue walking, he thinks maybe he hasn't. He also forgets to tell Kurt what he needs help regarding. Kurt looks at him sidelong.

'Usually if you want help in Spanish, the idea is you bring up what you want help in.'

'The Spanish part of the Spanish.' Sam says. 'All of it.'

'Well,' Kurt drawls, 'I'm not sure we can cover all of it on the way to my next class. Since I'm here now, and you haven't told me anything about it.'

Sam flushes and shrugs.

'Maybe another time?'

Kurt gives him a look, a look that says a combination of 'what just happened / you're certifiable / uh...' At least, that's what Sam thinks it looks like. Finally, Kurt settles on raising his brows at him, before side-stepping into his maths class without another word.

Sam wonders if he can get away with it again. And he wonders if there's a way to bring up Kurt's fear without Kurt just shrugging it off. But more than that, he feels helpless that there's not much more that he can do about it. Helplessness doesn't sit well with him, but then, he thinks, it probably doesn't sit well with anyone. He decides to ask Quinn what she thinks about it, because she's way smarter than him, and he likes the sound of her voice.

Quinn

Quinn had noticed, because she's perceptive and follows the dynamics of school power even if she's not as actively or manipulatively invested in being at the pinnacle of that dynamic anymore. She had definitely noticed. She didn't do anything about it because she didn't know what to do. It wasn't a good excuse but hey, life was hard.

But Sam came to her, talked to her about it, revealing more of the compassion she was surprised could exist in any adolescent boy. Revealing that, despite his other immaturities and his latent geekiness, he was closer to being a man than anyone she'd ever met in the same age bracket.

Usually her answers seem to satisfy him, but this time, when she says; 'he's a big boy and he can look after himself, you know,' he doesn't seem satisfied at all.

So that conversation doesn't end as well as they'd both hoped, and she watches more closely. She watches the way Kurt picks at his meals half-heartedly, the way he goes through the motions on automatic pilot, she notices that he carries more books to each of his classes than he needs to, to avoid going to his locker as often. She notices the way he fears Karofsky in the way that he concertedly tries not to look at him, in the way he avoids him. And worse, she notices the way Karofsky looks at Kurt and it creeps her out.

She starts to watch Karofsky now, something she's never really done before because he's always occupied the same echelons of popularity and he's never really changed much in her eyes, and he's not interesting to her either as a person, or as a strategic pawn on the McKinley popularity chessboard.

She notices the way Karofsky sometimes follows Kurt out of class, fixed and focused with a level of intent that she knows would freak her out if she were a target of it. And then she starts to become aware of a kind of conditioning of terror occurring right under her nose, under everyone's noses. She realises none of them have really seen it, because it's so insidious and constant. Karofsky follows Kurt around, not always, but enough to be menacing. She sees him smash the lockers next to Kurt's head when there's not as many people in the corridors. She watches the way he uses his physical presence to get up in Kurt's space. Now that she's started watching more intently, she can't stop noticing. It makes her feel sick. There's something wrong, something more going on that she's missing. If she was friends with Kurt, and not just his acquaintance through Glee and the Cheerios, she might ask him. But she's not friends with him. And she's not friends with Karofsky.

A couple of afternoons later, she approaches Sam on the way out of school.

'You're right,' she says, hating that she's about to say what comes to mind next, 'I don't know what's happening with Karofsky and Kurt, but it's bad. I don't know what to do.'

'I've been kind of walking him to his classes. Sort of. When he lets me.'

'It's not a solution.'

'I know.' Sam says, deflated.

'It's not a solution when the system is the problem.' She says, frustrated and finding another emotion inside of herself that she hasn't felt for a long, long time; hopelessness.

'You mean the school?'

'It's not even our business.' She adds, but she's mostly trying to convince herself. She doesn't believe it, and neither does Sam. He just shakes his head at her, in that way that he knows what she means.

'It really does suck.' He says. 'There's got to be something. Maybe we could talk to the other Glee kids about it.'

'Maybe...' Quinn says, and Sam takes her hand.

'I know.' Sam says, in sudden sympathy, like he can suddenly see all her vulnerabilities laid bare; something that she found disconcerting the first time and now was strangely comforting. Quinn is struck by the irony of him offering her sympathy about Kurt's situation, but not offering it to Kurt. She's struck by the irony of wanting to help Sam with his pain and turmoil about it, but neither of them actually being there by Kurt's side, helping him.

She turns her face into Sam's tentatively offered hug and tries not to think about it. Just for a few minutes. A few minutes of not thinking about how difficult the situation is, especially now that she's noticed. She knows it's a luxury Kurt doesn't have.