Well, hi! Rin here with yet another Klaine fic. This one's rather angsty, because I wrote it as a sort of soothing/calming exercise for when I was in a rather emotional state. It's short and a little insane. Oh, and the song's Nick Lachey's I Can't Hate You Anymore. Leave me concrit, as usual :D
(I don't own Glee. Or much of anything, for that matter.)
I Can't Hate You Anymore: A Klaine fanfic
An empty room can be so deafening, the silence makes you want to scream;
It drives you crazy.
I turn around and around and around, and it seems that I don't stop spinning at all, but before I know it, I'm splayed on the couch staring up at the ceiling. My thoughts make no sense and I can't make head or tail of myself.
How did I get here, in this fetal position again?
In another blink of an eye, everything around me is dark; the sun's set and I'm facing the underside of the coffee table. There's something etched underneath here, but I can't see it through the thick shadows. It's an eternity until I summon the strength to reach out, to run my fingers weakly along the light carvings on the underside of the wood.
It hits me so suddenly, I almost gasp at the impact of it. Oh, I remember this little design, scratched into the table with a penknife. It was the first day we moved into the house; this table was the final touch to our living room...
"Ugh, moving is such a pain, Kurt. Last time we're doing this, you understand?"
"Well, I'm hoping very much to stay here, Blaine. If someone's going to move out, it's going to be our kids. Which, by the way, we're adopting from France."
You rolled your eyes and bent down over the coffee table with your back to me. When you stood up, you showed me with a sweep of your arm what you'd scratched into the wood – our initials and the date today. Then, you gave me a quick kiss, the first of many we've shared since, in this home of ours.
I chased away the shadows of your name, and burned the picture in the frame,
But it couldn't save me.
From my mouth comes a low, feral moan one usually associates with sick or dying animals. Before I can start sobbing again, I leap up from the floor and run to the fireplace. On the mantel stand countless framed pictures of us, of our life together. I rip at each of them, my frenzied arms not knowing target or direction, their only aim to destroy, destroy, destroy.
Glass shatters as the pictures fly all over the living room, their frames bursting in a rainbow of gilt, silver, bronze and various metallic shades of black. I've always taken pride in how color-coordinated our home is, but what does it matter now that 'our' has become only 'me'?
When there is nothing left for my hands to sweep through on the mantelpiece, I turn around and wildly begin to attack the rest of the memories in the room. The delicate china vase we'd bought on our honeymoon, I throw at the opposite wall. It breaks with the tinkling of a hundred wind chimes. I overturn the stupid coffee table and everything on it – your reading glasses you'd left behind, an unfinished book, a pretty little centerpiece from Thailand – falls to the ground. With a shard of glass from the picture frames, I hack at the ridiculous design.
After a while, I'm satisfied that the mess of scrapes and cuts on the table means nothing anymore. I can't see the words you'd lovingly put there so long ago, when our entire future looked promising and we'd just swore each other our lives.
Where's that pledge now? What happened to our promise? Why have you forgotten what we used to mean to one another? Have you given up on this? On us? On everything? Well, then what's the point of me going on?
How could we quit something we never even tried?
Well, you still can't tell me why.
Yes, that's the problem; you always thought you could handle anything and everything. I asked you over and over and over again – begged you to tell me what was wrong. But, no, you'd be the strong one, the one who could survive through a million pains, the one who could carry the weight of the world on his back.
Look where you've gotten us now – broken and stranded in the middle of an ocean so vast, there's almost no hope of finding the shore again.
Is it truly my fault for not seeing the signs? For not being able to feel the emotional distancing? Is it me who did wrong, when I was so wrapped up in the things I needed to do that I couldn't see you needed help and attention too?
What've I become? What sort of terrible, self-centered monster am I now?
And where do we go from here?
We built it up to watch it fall, like it meant nothing at all;
I gave and gave the best of me, but couldn't give you what you need.
It is totally dark when I find it in me to stop wreaking havoc on the house. By this time, I am crumpled in a heap on the kitchen floor, right by the oven where we used to spend lazy Sunday afternoons baking together. Everywhere throughout the house are signs of my fury and inner turmoil – wrecked furniture, smashed glassware, torn fabric and plenty of stamped-on memorabilia scattered on the floor.
I've managed to lock away the cascade of fond memories my mind insists on pulling out every time I hurl or ruin something. I've also managed to descend upon every little nook and cranny in the house, I think. The bathrooms, our bedroom, the food pantry, the shoe cupboards; yes, I think I've gotten to it all.
I take a moment, as I curl up on the cold floor, to think if destroying all of this will come back to haunt me sometime in the future. Yes, I decide. Of course it will. Everything about you will haunt me for as long as I keep breathing.
I have no doubts in my mind that you won't be coming back. You said you wouldn't ever. I distinctly recall screaming at you never to, either. Well, that's settled, then. So, you definitely won't come back anymore. Ever.
The tears that spring to my eyes go unnoticed; I've dealt with them for such a long time now that I don't even realize when they come and go. At least now I know that it was really in me to love you and be with you. Now I know that without you, my life truly means nothing at all. Now I know what it means to be empty.
But it's too late. I'm too late.
You don't realize what you'll miss until you miss it. You don't realize the things you can lose and can't live without until you lose them and die inside.
You walked away, you stole my life;
Just to find what you're looking for.
I'm so tired, so exhausted. With everything I've done, it's taken all my energy away. Can I just go to sleep? Right here, on the cold, hard kitchen floor. It's so inviting; it's tempting me to just close my eyes and drift away. Maybe, when I awaken, things will be different. Maybe, when I wake up, everything will be the way it's supposed to be, the way I believe Fate meant it to be – you, me, together.
My eyes are only open in tiny slits when the lights suddenly come on. I can tell they're on, because I now have a direct view of my hands – two foreign appendages covered in deep cuts. The blood flowing from the wounds pool on the floor around me and I can see that even my arms are badly hurt. I don't feel the pain, though. Those arms don't feel as if they belong to me.
Distantly, I wonder where and how I cut them, and why didn't I notice the horrendous trail of blood on the floor before. But I don't really care, because it doesn't really matter. I just want to go to sleep. I'm so very tired.
Just before I go under, I hear a loud gasp and a cry of alarm.
"Kurt!" it says.
The voice is so familiar, so sweet that I hang on to consciousness for just a little while longer. A pair of leather shoes hurries into my line of vision, followed by the rest of the person's body as he kneels down beside me. The last thing I remember is smiling into the face of the person I love and care for the most on this whole damned earth, then the soft, comforting blackness embraces me.
But no matter how I try, I can't hate you anymore.