Title: Across A Personal Map
Author: matchingbowties
Rating: PG-13 / T
Word Count: ~ 3,000
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine, mentioned Nick/Jeff
Warnings: really really vague mentions of sex, very small deviation from canon.
Spoilers: Season 2 development in terms of Klaine.
Disclaimer: I don't own Glee. The title is taken from Paramore's "Where The Lines Overlap".
Summary: Blaine has always been able to draw – it's just something that comes naturally. One day, though, he meets Kurt Hummel, and this is where our story starts.
A/N: This is a Christmas present for Mila (afingertipstouch on tumblr). I love you, sweetie, I'm sorry this turned out a little bit rubbish! Basically, this sprang from a headcanon of mine that Blaine is a fabulous artist that I've had since I mentioned it in 'maybe, one day' and the idea just wouldn't go away, so. This deviates very slightly from s3 canon at the end, but it's barely noticeable. I hope you enjoy it!
I'm tracing patterns
Across a personal map
And I'm making pictures
Where the lines overlap
"Where The Lines Overlap" – Paramore
Blaine has always been able to draw, and has also never thought much of it – it's just something that comes to him easily; part of him as much as his height or his voice. He has pages upon pages, sketchbooks and notepads and exercise books and spare sheets of paper, all covered in pencil; quick sketches and proper pieces, neatly coloured and shaded. No one except Blaine would be able to tell this just from looking at them, but the pictures tell a story too – his story. At the very front, on sheets he never looks at anymore, there are clumsy, childish depictions of four people ranging from tall to short, labelled in spiky uneven writing: 'Daddy, Mommy, Del, Me'. Further on, though the drawings become recognisable and more detailed, they seem harsh, somehow; violent. More often than not, the pages are simply covered in marks, sharp scratches of pencil against paper – testimony to the times when Blaine would come home to his room, sit there in silence with nothing but the blank white sheets to keep him company, and wonder why he had to be different. If you're close enough to Blaine, if he's opened up to you and you really know his story, which isn't very likely, you'll know about the Sadie Hawkins dance. That's down in his sketchbooks too – in a way. After the sheets of harsh lines and sharp angles, angry drawings of mundane things, there's a gap of four pages, just left forever empty; then, in the slightly messy writing Blaine has never been able to control, there's just one word in the centre of the page, though it's been carefully underlined several times: 'DALTON'.
The drawings mellow, from there; soft outlines of the Academy's extraordinary architecture, coloured illustrations of classrooms and the common room and his dorm room (shared with the boy named Jeff who had smiled widely and hugged him tight the very first time they met), pictures of classmates and friends all in the same boxy blazer that Blaine has become accustomed to sketching out, by now. Blaine joins the Warblers and there's a full page, beautifully coloured drawing of a canary to show it; gets drunk for the first time at one of their crazy parties and draws a red plastic cup after his hangover's worn off.
One day, Blaine's running down the staircase on his way to the senior commons; he's late for their not-entirely-impromptu performance of Teenage Dream because he was helping Madame LaCroix with some textbooks, and he can practically feel Thad's death glare already. He's stopped, though, by a voice behind him, such a compelling voice – and this, this is where our story really starts.
.
.
Kurt Hummel is actually the most beautiful person he has ever seen; he's not striking in the way that Blaine's half-Italian friend Robert is, but there's something quietly stunning about how lean he is, his pale skin and eyes that are so, so blue. Blaine's fingers itch to reach for pen and paper, to get Kurt's long angles and exquisite features down as he does with everything in his life; instead, he watches as Kurt crumbles, across the table from him, at the mention of the no-bullying policy. He stops himself from taking Kurt's hand, however much he wants to just hold him (and God, he wants to); gives advice he himself was never able to follow, opens himself up to Kurt and tells one of his deepest secrets to this boy who is really a stranger to him.
Kurt looks at him likes he's his saviour, though, and he has no idea what to say.
.
.
Blaine gets back to his room, later, and he doesn't even need Kurt in front of him as he normally does when he's drawing people; he doesn't need a real person to check against when Kurt's face, so very gorgeous even when he was crying, is etched into his memory, branded there, and is all he can really think of right now.
He draws, then; draws the soft lines of Kurt's watering eyes and the round edges of his perfectly shaped nose, the angles of his tie and the almost desperate clutch of his fingers around his coffee cup. He outlines and re-outlines, traces over the strong lines of charcoal with black, until finally he has his coloured pencils, all of them, lined up in their various tins on his bedspread. Colouring people has never been the easiest thing to do; people are all blending and tone where inanimate objects tend to be just a few, very close, colours. Kurt, though – colouring Kurt is one of the hardest things he's ever done. For his hair alone he takes seventeen shades of brown, and he has to use the white to lighten Kurt's skin tone more times than he can count; but finally, he's done everything except Kurt's eyes.
He starts with the lightest gray he has, adds layers of blue upon blue, greens, light browns, more gray. It takes him an hour, getting just the right amount of each colour, perfecting the swirls and curves and mixture, and when he's done he still doesn't feel like it's quite right, like he's really captured the depth, the pure emotion behind Kurt's eyes.
He flips the page over, and he just can't stop drawing, that night; he draws everything and anything that comes to mind, filling his most recent sketchbook with coffee cups, oceans, meaningless whirls and spirals coloured pale cream, rosy pink, green and gray and blue, and every single pointless drawing reminds him of Kurt, speaks of fragile strength and an almost scarily stunning expression. As he closes his book, ready to sleep after hours and hours of drawing when he should have been working on homework, he realises that he has seven new pages full of sketches, where he would normally have at most, two.
Then, of course, he goes to Kurt's school, to help him talk to his bully, and it fails so badly and Blaine is reminded of all his fears, can't stop the way his fingers shake as he's pushed up against the cold metal railing because please, not again; Kurt admits he'd never been kissed (when it counted, he says, and Blaine can't help but wonder what that means) and sounds so very, very broken at this, at the fact that his first kiss was stolen. Blaine can't really associate with this (because he has those memories, tucked away at the very back of his mind, of nervously nervously leaning in towards Charlie and neither of them had any idea what they were doing but it was okay because they were best friends and they didn't have to be scared around each other), but Kurt just looks so breath-taking in side profile that he can't even think for a second, and he doesn't know what to do so he rubs Kurt's arm through his (cerulean, Blaine's become very good at identifying colours over the years) coat, and offers to take him out for lunch. He's probably the worst – mentor? gay, advice-giving friend? he really has no idea what he is to Kurt – in the history of ever, but he doesn't know how he's expected to be useful when Kurt is standing across from him, simply gorgeous even in the ugly grey-tinged light of a cloudy Ohio morning, really.
When he gets back to his room, he fills – actually fills – his sketchbook, tens, hundreds of drawings of Kurt's long lines and perfect posture, Blaine trying to capture the way his breath puffed out in the crisp November air, the way he bit his lip to stop tears, and in his opinion, failing miserably. He feels despair, as he looks at the sharp cerulean and dark gray of Kurt's outfit on the page in front of him, feels like ripping out all the sheets of unsuccessful attempts at capturing something indescribable; feels like he'll never quite be able to get a drawing of Kurt perfect.
.
.
Kurt transfers (and he doesn't think he'll ever be able to forget that phone call, the way Kurt's voice shook as he told Blaine about sacrificed honeymoons, death threats and cold fear, the way Blaine felt like screaming the entire conversation because he thought he'd gotten over this but all he can hear is I'm gonna fucking kill you, faggot and the crunch of a baseball bat), joins the Warblers and is rooming opposite him with Jeff's boyfriend Nick. Suddenly, Kurt is everywhere, in everything he does, and he can't breathe because every minute Kurt is there, and he says something, moves his arm in some small way (and he looks so much better in the uniform than Blaine ever will) and Blaine needs so desperately to get it down on paper. He goes through three notebooks in two weeks, turns in two assignments late because he hasn't had time for homework with all the drawing he's been doing; even Jeff had pulled his headphones out once as his pencils flew across the paper of their own accord, sketching out Kurt's best bitch expression, and asked him what the hell had gotten into him recently.
He never does end up telling Kurt about his drawing, though.
.
.
It's one afternoon, as they study together in his room (Jeff has disappeared, probably to make out with Nick in some dark corner of the halls), that Kurt finally finds out. He's doodling, really, just a semi-realistic representation of Kurt's concentrated face, tongue poking out and eyes narrowed the tiniest bit, in his sketchbook where it's half hidden behind his fat Spanish textbook. Kurt's next to him, studying for French (and he really doesn't need to, he's practically fluent already), and looks completely into his work, unlike Blaine. That is, until he leans over, right into Blaine's personal space (and he smells just like he always does, a scent unique just to him), and Blaine freezes when he realises what he's looking at.
"That's me," Kurt says, slowly, and it's so hard to read his voice; it's not any particular emotion at all, he's just... stating a fact. Kurt flips the page back, then, flicks through all of them and Blaine tenses up, because these are almost all of Kurt, mixed in with a couple of architecture sketches and one drawing of Pavarotti, maybe; he wonders if maybe it's worse this way, if he should have just told Kurt about his drawings.
"They're – they're all of me." Kurt says, and Blaine chances a quick glance at him but his eyes are glued to the page, a full-blown, coloured and shaded drawing of Kurt singing (Don't Cry For Me Argentina, and that was the best and worst thing all mixed into one, really). Silence stretches between them, and God, Blaine can barely breathe because it's more than a little creepy that he has pages and pages of drawings of a boy who's supposed to be just a friend.
"You're very talented," Kurt says, finally, and then he pauses and lets out a breath and Blaine still doesn't know what to do. "I – why didn't you tell me?"
"I don't know." Blaine says, and it's the complete truth because he doesn't know – he just never told Kurt at the beginning, when they first met, when he first started drawing Kurt, and once he'd left it too long, it would have been a bit weird to say 'Hey, just so you know, I've been drawing you for months ever since I first met you, I have four notebooks full of sketches, if you want to see'.
"Why, though? Why would you – why would you want to draw me, of all people?" and Kurt sound genuinely confused at this; Blaine has no idea how to explain the details of Kurt, the perfect mixture of sharp lines and soft curves that make him the most wonderful thing to sketch, his grace and elegance and poise and the way he flows so easily from Blaine's mind to his pen to the page. He doesn't know how to tell Kurt about the ways that he's different from all the other, admittedly extremely handsome boys floating around Dalton; the effeminate features that have always separated him but that Blaine thinks create absolutely the most wonderful face he's seen in his life.
"You're – you're inspiring, Kurt," he settles for, even though that's not even beginning to be enough to explain Kurt, but his mouth runs dry and he can't go on.
"I feel like I should be flattered, Blaine, and I am – I just – that's not me, not really,"
"What do you mean?"
"You see me – differently, I guess, from how I see me – but that person, these drawings, they're too perfect, Blaine,"
"But isn't art about perspective?" he says, not snappishly, just – questioningly, feeling oddly defensive of his sketches, suddenly, because perfect is how he sees Kurt; flawless.
"Hmm," Kurt hums, non-committally, and Blaine can tell the conversation is over but he knows Kurt still isn't happy about this, really.
.
.
"For fear of sounding like a ridiculous walking cliché out of Titanic, you can draw me," Kurt says one day, in the middle of March; it's two weeks before Regionals and Blaine looks up from the arrangement of Raise Your Glass that he's been trying to memorise. It takes him a moment to process just exactly what Kurt's said, and he looks at him in confusion; Kurt knows just as well as he does that he's been drawing him for nearing on five months.
"What?"
"I mean – not from memory," Kurt clarifies, eyes wide in the spring sunlight, and Blaine knows he'd want to capture this moment later anyway, so he smiles.
"Like one of my French ladies?" he says, light, teasing, but Kurt flushes pink to the edge of his hairline and Blaine wonders if he's gone too far, after last week's events.
"You know what I mean," Kurt says, and yeah, he does.
Kurt is flawless, really, in the soft light filtering in through the half closed curtains of his dorm room, hair swept back and eyes huge and more green than anything else right now, as Blaine pulls out his favourite pencil and starts drawing.
He's almost finished, so close as he quietly puts down the lightest pink he has and glances back up at Kurt again. Kurt hasn't stopped looking at him, in the hour he's been working, not once. He moves closer, now; shuffling towards Kurt opposite him on the bed, trying to see just exactly where the green shifts to light grey in his eyes today. Kurt stares at him, so so beautiful in this moment, and Blaine tries to ignore the way his breath catches in his throat as he leans ever closer.
"Blaine," Kurt whispers, though, and Blaine can feel his breath ghost across his face, feel the tiny exhale and their lips can't be more than an inch apart and every thought flies out of his head.
He drops his pencil as their lips meet.
.
.
Really, now, everything is completely different; and he loves it. Loves that he can curl up with his arm around Kurt at one of the Warbler movie nights and not have to worry about leading him on, can hold hands with his boyfriend (!) in the halls, can just lean over and casually kiss Kurt in the middle of one of their study sessions; and the five billion Facebook notifications that are basically different wordings of 'finally!' are so worth it.
He still draws Kurt, all the time, but there's something different about the pages and pages of random sketches now. He thinks that maybe, it's because he's not striving to perfect them anymore; they've lost the quiet desperation that he can still sense in his winter sketchpad. It's not that he has reached perfection; his drawings of Kurt are still missing something, aren't quite right.
He thinks that maybe it doesn't matter anymore, because he has the real person and that's better than any number of hopeless pictures.
.
.
In the end, when they've grown up a bit, Blaine goes to LA, majoring in art and with a minor in vocal performance; Kurt to New York to live out his dream with Rachel Berry in tow. They're mature about it, at least in Lima, Ohio, deciding that it's best they do what they want to do, and perhaps this will help them learn to live without each other; once they're actually separated, though, it's so very very hard for them to cope and Blaine's heart seizes up sometimes with the pain of missing Kurt; even drawing can't help.
There are fights, of course, one really bad one where they scream and shout over the phone and don't speak for three weeks, which is a record for them; Blaine drives to New York though in his spring break because he can't stand it anymore and there's a big apology involving flowers and it's very dramatic and Kurt kind of can't believe this boy is real, sometimes. There are good times, too, and by senior year Blaine is entirely experienced in every possibly kind of phone sex and his room-mate Alan is more than a little damaged for life by the things he's accidentally heard; Blaine flies into New York for Kurt's graduation a week after his and cries a bit while Carole holds his arm because this whole growing up thing is scary, really.
Kurt and Blaine, they persevere, through all their differences and similarities, like they always have, and that's what saves them in the end. Blaine keeps all his old sketchpads in a bunch of big cardboard boxes, and sometimes he'll still dig out that old one labelled 'November 2010 – January 2011' and look at the very first drawing of Kurt he ever did; other times he'll grab their daughter Elizabeth's hand and show her that fateful one from March and tell her it's from the very first time he ever kissed Daddy ('Ew, gross, Papa, I don't want to know!'), and Kurt will smile softly from behind them and Blaine will think that this is just exactly where he was always meant to be.
~end~