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Title: A Week in the Rain
Author: xCloseMyEyesAndLeapx (Ari)
Rating: T
Pairing: Some Klaine, but mostly Blaine-centered
Timeline: Sometime in late season two or early season three.
Notes/warnings: Slightly AU; slash; mentions of abuse, violence, and attempted suicide; slight language, and plenty of what I think is called "Blangst" in the Glee fandom. Nothing is really graphic, though.
The lyrics at the beginning are from "First Day of My Life" by Bright Eyes.
xCMELx
This is the first day of my life,
I'm glad I didn't die before I met you.
But now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you,
And I'd probably be happy.
- First Day of My Life, by Bright Eyes
The rain was good. Strange. Cold and silver and cleansing, and once it's gone, everything will look better. Like tears. Like the ones that blurred his vision and ran down his face and diluted the blood on his lip. Blood that painted his chin and smeared over his cheek when he wiped at it.
It was always the rain, for some reason. How he didn't hate it by then, he didn't know. It was comforting, in the most morbid sense. A bittersweet lullaby of false hope and promises that never come true.
i. playing hooky
Spring was fickle that year. It came with rain and mud and new grass, and then hid beneath light flurries - just memories of winter. That one particular day, it was a cold rain that prevailed, slicking pavements and gathering in puddles on broken asphalt only to leap out of the way of unforgiving tires and impatient sneaker-clad feet.
A basketball crusted with filth dirtied the hands of three boys, passing it back and forth. One boy made one last shot, missing off the rim and groaning before joining his friends on the sidewalk.
"Let's just do it," he said, flipping the hood of his jacket up and posing like an actor in a bad action movie.
"What, skip?" asked one of the others, a boy with scruffy orange hair and a face of freckles the same color.
"Sure. Why not?" commented the third, grinning widely. "We'll only get in a ton of trouble if anyone finds out, but nobody cares enough to anyway," he laughed.
"Exactly," scoffed the first.
Miles. Jay. Blaine. That was how it had been for years. The three of them, slight misfits, best friends, and there was nothing that could change that. Or, at least, that's what Blaine told himself.
That day was the last best day of Blaine's life for the next three years. Just the three of them, laughing loud enough for someone to notice but never being quite raucous enough for anyone to find it in themselves to care. Everyone had better things to do than interrogate three youths over why they weren't in school on such a day. Everyone always had better things to do in Westerville, Ohio.
They ran, feet pounding down a secluded-but-not bike path just outside of downtown. They jumped fences, tumbling to the other side, each pretending that the others were less graceful when in reality, it was impossible to tell from the heap they formed at the bottom. They skidded down the bank of the river, twigs and leaves and mud staining the knees of their jeans, scratching the palms of their hands as they grasped at tree limbs. The stench of dirty water didn't bother them as they threw stones and chattered and tossed an old tennis ball from Jay's pocket back and forth.
All day long in the pouring rain is all Blaine had, because the next day the rumor was out and Miles and Jay couldn't even look at him when he muttered dejectedly that maybe it's true standing by their lockers after the last bell rang.
ii. coming out
His parents weren't bad people. Just...the kind of people who maybe never should've been parents. Cooper was running wild now, but Blaine was thegoodone. The one who could be trusted enough for them to leave him alone most of the time.
So he would tell them. It wasn't like they would care. (Or maybe they would, and that would be even worse, but he didn't think about that.)
(Maybe he should've, but he didn't.)
Blurting it out over dinner wasn't the best idea. Looking his father in the eye wasn't the best idea. Pleading with his mother not to cry wasn't the best idea.
"No - Dad - please - It'snotmyfaultplease!"
Stealing bandages from the bathroom that night, after it was over?
No. Not the best idea.
And it was raining out, meeting his hand on the other side of his window, crying his fear and pain and anger and confusion.
Okay. Okay. It'll be okay. Theycanstilllovememaybe.
iii. sadie hawkins
"You don't have to let them do that to you."
He was the first person who had spoken to Blaine with any sort of kindness in a year.
"What?"
"You don't have to let them beat you down. You can stand up for yourself. Make a statement."
"How?" Blaine asked, cursing himself for his inability to get out anything but monosyllables. He cleared his throat, picking himself up from where he'd been shoved into a locker. (Again. Againagainagain.)
"Why do you care, anyway?"
The older boy laughed. "You're not the only one they call 'fag', you know. Go to the dance with me this weekend. We'll show 'em up."
Blaine smiled. "I'm Blaine Anderson."
"Eric," replied the boy.
They went. It rained that evening. Their blood ran into rain on the pavement and any light left in the world faded to a speck in Blaine's vision as any light left in Blaine faded till he could only see the flashing red of an ambulance.
iv. brotherly love
His father thought he deserved it. His mother, perhaps, thought nothing of it at all. (Is that worse? Blaine thought maybe it was.)
Cooper, though...Cooper was there, for the first time in Blaine's life, exactly when he needed him.
He was there, when Blaine woke up. He was there, when the physical therapy became too much and all Blaine wanted to do was curl up and cry and give up, but Cooper wouldn't let him because that's what they want, Blaine! Cooper was there when Blaine was so tired and so spent and so damn sick of it all that he asked if it would've mattered if he had died that night. Cooper was there to hold him and cry with him and to pry the razor out of his stiff fingers and bandage his wrist and beg him not to ever, ever try anything like that ever again.
And Cooper was there to make him laugh for the first time in since that other rainy day with the people who had told him they were his friends and then told him that he was a faggot.
Cooper was there to watch Disney movies with and to sing with and to dance on furniture with while they Duran Duran-ed themselves into exhaustion and blissful, breathless giggles on the living room floor. He was there to bake Blaine cookies and steal the last one, there to tease Blaine with taunts of the good kind until he thought that being gay maybe isn't so bad if your big brother doesn't care.
Blaine didn't think that Cooper would stay, but he did, quitting his job in L.A. and telling "those Free Credit Rating Today idiots" to fuck themselves and find someone else for their stupid commercials when they tried to get him to come back. He stayed, he pulled strings, he got Blaine enrolled into Dalton Academy. Blaine was hesitant, scared of the newness and the people and the supposed zero tolerance bullying policy, but Cooper was still there, hugging him and telling him he'd see him that afternoon. Telling him that there was a club called the Warblers. Telling him to sing. Pleading with him never to hide again.
v. warbler blaine
Blaine liked Dalton. Everything about it was just big. Big, classy, and, inexplicably, discrete. It was his haven, his silent oasis, for weeks. Until that one day that Wes Montgomery decided to pay attention to the quiet new kid who maybe wasn't so quiet when he started singing and really got into it, because that was when he found Blaine in one of the common rooms pounding out a song on the piano with such passion that Wes, for once in his life, couldn't bring himself to care about the technical mistakes the younger boy made with his voice. Wes liked the rawness of it. The intensity and the soul and the pain and the joy and the embodiment of humanity that was Blaine's voice when he didn't care to perfect it.
It took weeks. Wes spoke to David, David worked at Blaine's walls, Cooper pushed the prospect, and finally, Blaine broke.
That was how he found himself perched on a stool in the senior common room of Dalton with a dozen or so other boys watching him intently, critically, as he shifted his guitar in his arms and closed his eyes and let the music swallow him.
That was how he found himself standing in the Dalton parking lot with Wes and David, laughing too loudly and shaking their heads like dogs to rid their hair of fat raindrops that exploded like fireworks over their heads, their dapper prep boy exteriors effectively washed away by the downpour.
That downpour and the words, "It'll be fun!" gained Blaine two friends, two peers, two more brothers. Gained him the feeling that he deserved to be called Warbler Blaine.
vi. finding courage
The windows of Blaine's car were painted with the rain's playful fingers, a five year old gleefully streaking a canvas with vibrancy. Blaine had parked in the driveway of his house, but chose to sit outside instead of going in.
His car was a peaceful place when he was in it alone. Quiet, secluded. It was his box of comfort, a chunk cut out of the world just for him. The keys remained in the ignition to allow two necessities: heat and music. Blaine's iPod was plugged into the speakers, drifting lazily through an Ed Sheeran playlist, and Blaine hummed along absently. Without his permission, Blaine's thoughts stuck on the angel on the staircase and refused to let go.
He had planned to ask Kurt out. He had gathered every last ounce of bravery and put up a shield of defense against anything that could go wrong in the form of what Cooper called his "Dalton mask" and taken Kurt's hand. He had practically serenaded him. He had nearly worked up the guts to ask him on a coffee date when the story of Kurt's bully had come out.
Blaine mentally kicked himself. No matter how perfectcharmingjustfine he had convinced everyone that he was, he was still broken, still covering bruises with his mother's makeup, still crying in Cooper's arms in the protective cover of his night-darkened room, still pretending that his father's attempts to make him straight or beat the fag out of him couldn't touch him. How could he have convinced himself that he was ready for a relationship? And then Kurt had told him about Karofsky, and Blaine knew that it wasn't meant to be. (For the moment at least. Blaine could wait. He was patient.)
Blaine could help, maybe, and he could be the best friend Kurt had ever had. But he could not yet make a move towards anything more. There were too many walls to break through first. The longing for companionship, however, made it impossible for him to stay away from Kurt completely, made it impossible for him not to hold on to some desperate hope for something far in the future.
The word courage was one that Cooper uttered to Blaine every day.
"Courage, Blaine. No one can take that from you. Keep your head up, little brother."
The word courage was the one he tapped out in a text message then, sending it to his angel and hoping to receive some in return.
vii. not alone
And now the rain was streaming down Blaine's face, pounding little dents in the earth as the droplets hurled themselves from tumultuous clouds and burst apart on the sidewalk. Now it dug its fingers into his coat, weighing him down as he walked towards a subconscious destination. It tugged his curls free from their gel prison and dragged them down into bloodshot hazel eyes. Gulping in a ragged breath, Blaine scrubbed at his face and fingered his split lip gingerly, trying not to pay too much attention to the black eye that was throbbing to the beat of his heart. When Cooper was away, Daddy would play. It was just how things were. But this time - this would be the last. Blaine had finally decided he'd had enough. There was nothing particularly brutal about this particular episode. The injuries were not terribly bad, the slurs not the worst Blaine had heard. Perhaps it was simply the fact that, for the first time in years, his father had looked him in the eyes. Blaine did not like seeing his eyes in the other man's face. He did not like the physical proof that he shared the blood of the other man. In that split second, Blaine was done.
He had found his courage. He had found his hope, his redemption, found a home, found his heart beating in someone else's chest. He had begun living again, and his father was not going to rob him of that any longer.
Leaving had been the easiest thing Blaine had ever done.
The house he stood in front of now was miles away. Smaller than his, more full, more vibrant, warmer. This house was more home than his own. A shout of his name got his attention, and Blaine lifted his eyes to latch onto Kurt's.
His boyfriend stood in the doorway, calling to him.
"Blaine! What are you doing? Are you okay?" he shouted over the hiss of the rain melting into the pavement.
Blaine mouthed his name, his lips curling around it like a prayer, but he couldn't speak. He didn't need to. Kurt understood, and suddenly, he was jogging down the path, no longer caring for his designer outfit, and folding Blaine into a warm, soft embrace that felt like the very essence of safety. Kurt kissed his dripping curls.
"My dad," Blaine whispered wearily. It was all the explanation needed for the time being.
"It'll be okay," Kurt told him softly, and they fumbled with each other, noses bumping and lips brushing against chins and cheeks before finding each other sweetly. Kurt flinched at the taste of blood. Blaine tried not to cry out in pain at the pressure on his lip. Kurt simply cupped Blaine's jaw and lapped at the cut lip gently until Blaine was sighing happily.
More tears would come later, along with broken explanations and complications and what do we do now-s. For now, this was more than enough.
Neither boy said anything more, but the separated mutually and clasped hands, walking to the house together. The three steps they climbed up felt like three Mt. Everests, but somehow they were inside and Kurt was peeling off his wet coat and Blaine was kicking off his sodden sneakers and Kurt had no idea what he said to his father but Burt didn't protest or even warn them to keep the door open.
In a daze, Blaine collapsed on the edge of Kurt's bed when they finally made it to his room. Kurt rifled through drawers and handed him a pair of William McKinley Cheerios sweatpants and a soft cotton V-neck that might have actually been Blaine's. Blaine changed quickly, and Kurt pulled him to lie down on the bed. Their legs intertwined along with their fingers, noses brushing and unable to help smiling despite the whateveritis that had caused Blaine to walk all those miles in the pouring rain with a bloody lip and a black eye, tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes in a way that suggested that Blaine couldn't have stopped them if he'd tried.
"Tell me what happened," Kurt says finally, and it is not a request. Blaine understands that, and Kurt understands that Blaine does not need him to beg for answers. Still, Blaine halts.
What happened? What happened? Stories bled to the front of Blaine's mind, playing like broken snippets of film. Days in the rain, days of Miles and Jay and Eric and Cooper. Days of his father, his mother, days of just himself. Days of KurtKurtKurt, his angel, his courage, and all of a sudden he just knew that his father's words and blows wouldn't matter anymore, wouldn't exist anymore, because Cooper was coming home and Kurt would never leave and that made life a hell of a lot brighter. Blaine didn't know when he had started talking, but he knew that he was saying what he needed to, and in a way he was glad that he wasn't entirely aware of what he was telling Kurt, because he had re-lived a hundred days, a thousand memories, a million raindrops during the walk from his house to Kurt's. Those stories, those memories, were lying in shatters on the sidewalks outside. The storm was washing them into the gutters, where they belonged, and he would never have to travel that road again if he didn't want to. And if he did, he wouldn't be alone.
Author's Note: Yep. I know. I should have finished TMBTTS before writing this, but it really wouldn't go away. Speaking of TMBTTS, the second and final chapter is nearly done and will be posted...probably sometime this vacation. THREE CHEERS FOR WINTER VACA! This means no more Latin declensions and conjugations for a whole two weeks! Yay me. Okay. I'll end this self-indulgent author's note before it becomes too out of hand. Reviews are fun. ;)