Title: Reflection
Pairing: Klaine
Word Count: 1557
Rating: PG-13(small amounts of swearing and mentions of sex)
Spoilers: up to AVGC, AU after/through that
Summary: I called Kurt, Madeline. My own courageous little 'orphan'…who would stand up to a tiger and say 'pooh-pooh'…and come out unscathed.
Author's note: This is kinda bittersweet. It's also my first attempt at 1st person, I thought that the theme I was going for would be enhanced by it, but I think I might've failed in that respect...so...and I'm pretty sure I made Blaine an unreliable narrator on accident. Oh well.
This always seems to surprise everyone, but I'm not a nerd. I was, once upon a time. I watched Digimon and Power Rangers with the rest of the children my age, but the fascination with weird things never went farther than that. The closest I can come to being labeled a nerd is when I start showing my colors as a drama-geek, except…no…I never really got into musicals-except for when I wanted something more to put on a college transcript.
I like singing though. So if liking to sing suddenly counts as 'nerd'…
I also like to have what I call 'fashion-awareness'. I'm gay, so it seems to fit the bill, and I don't recall any famous gay nerds outside of Neil Patrick Harris…but does he even count? I mean…sure…Dr. Horrible…but does he pick up a comic book? Well…I don't know him, so I don't know…maybe…but I don't think so.
I'm a nerd for gay icons, like the NPH, that one Katy Perry song, Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Errol Flynn, name it and I know it. I tend to know a lot of things nowadays-and still too little to be any help.
Kurt needed my help. He told me the problem and I gave him advice. It didn't help though. Not at the time. It's almost a running joke now. Hey, remember that time I told you to have courage and then the other guy threatened to kill you? Good times my friend, good times.
We joke a lot, Kurt and I. Now. It used to be awkward, but only when things were bad, when he wasn't with me, when he was stuck.
I used to smile with him, pretend to know what he was talking about when he spoke of musicals I had never been in, of Broadway. I remember having to get advice from Wes, David is useless, about where I should take Kurt, where and what would've made Kurt happy. I was so desperate.
Kurt was desperate. He came to me sobbing, and I remember sending Wes and David away. I remember being composed. It was the uniform.
That stupid uniform. That stupid uniform has almost undone me-so many times now I can't even count. Undone me to the point of sobbing, of being like Kurt. I've gotten past it. I had too. I'm better for it.
Now I know control, and the uniform helps. I wouldn't survive without it. Kurt can survive.
He wasn't able to before, I showed him how. I let him know how I survived. I molded him. He didn't change though. I didn't change-just progressed.
Kurt told me I was like a hero. Like Batman. I would wear the cape and force the cowl, but without it I was just a man, just human. I'm not like Batman though. Batman was Batman, there is no such thing as Bruce Wayne.
I'm Robin…Nightwing. I wear the mask, I go with the flow, do what I believe in. I am not the mask though. I am not what Batman told me to be. I only look like it, I think.
I could be wrong. I don't always get my superhero analogies correctly. Kurt gets so mad at me…and his nose wrinkles up and his eyes flare. His hair moves just the tiniest bit to the left.
He looked exactly like that when we got together too. He was mad about something, anything. I can't even recall now.
…and I had to have him.
I didn't…don't…want to own him. I just…want to be with him. All of the time.
Kurt agrees with that. I know he does. He said so himself. Many times.
Sometimes it's during sex.
Sometimes in the hallway.
Sometimes when he has to go home for the weekend.
It's in his kiss, after all.
Kurt's kisses are many things, and none of them are bad. I wish I could kiss like that, and Kurt helps me. We practice, not constantly, but just enough to leave my toes tingling and my fingertips aching for touch.
He accepts me. It took me awhile to explain that I didn't like musicals. We went through a rough patch the following week. Kurt eventually decided he just had to educate me. He would find a musical I could adore.
It didn't work, but it was so cute, to see him try so hard, to focus his entire being on something other than my mouth.
I think Kurt grew a lot that week. Sometimes he looks at me now, when we're alone, and I think he knows.
Knows that I love him, accept him, know him in any form he may present himself. He knows that it doesn't matter, and I know now, that he has come to accept me too. It took a week for our first hurdle to pass, but it did.
Hurdles were never easy for us. We had…have them every month or so. Our first hurdle was when we weren't even together yet. I had taken him out for lunch after an…incident…and he revealed to me that he was a nerd. He had alternate identities for everyone.
I, apparently, was secretly in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I, of course, had no clue what he was talking about, but Kurt had that look again. That angry look, except he wasn't angry, and he wasn't sobbing so his cheeks weren't flushed with pain. He was genuinely excited and embarrassed.
I called Kurt, Madeline. My own courageous little 'orphan'…who would stand up to a tiger and say 'pooh-pooh'…and come out unscathed.
Kurt is always so brave, so unique, so completely Kurt. I could tell he was confused at first, when he first joined Dalton. We broke any preconceived notions that he might've had, we were drones. He hadn't learned how to play the game yet. That was when he had really proven himself. He was so much better than I was. It took an entire year for me. He only took two months. He's so much braver than I was, am. He stood up, and tried to change us, make us fit his mold. It didn't work, obviously, but that's only because he understands now. We are always his mold. We just don't always…show it.
Our Glee Club is structured. There are more rules and regulations for that one club alone than any three of Dalton's other clubs combined. Wes thinks that it is because of the David Dalton; the one who got the musical department rolling, as a school doesn't just hire a founding editor of The Rolling Stone magazine for nothing.
We Warblers show our defiance in different ways. Every rule is carefully adhered to, and every song pushes the limits of what is currently a social norm. No musical numbers for us. We're doing pop songs and rock ballads. We try to keep our David Bowie usage down to a minimum.
Kurt doesn't always like that. Kurt is a Bowie fan. I never would have taken him for one, but apparently fashion icons are just too good to resist. Kurt wears red shoes every time he knows the Warblers are going to practice their dancing.
I was never very good at dancing. Maybe that's why I don't like musicals. Sometimes though, I pretend to be worse than I really am. Kurt's angry face can be too good to resist sometimes. It leads to the best sex ever-well, at the time. Each time I have sex with Kurt it seems to get better. David told me that that is a normal thing in a relationship, the sex getting better I mean. It means that we're learning each other's bodies.
I'd like to agree, as now I know that every time I press my nose just above Kurt's belly-button it drives him wild, drives me wild too, for that matter. Huh.
Before we had sex for the first time-near the end of the school year- Kurt insisted that we both get tested. He wanted to be sure that neither of us were HIV positive. To be honest, it was really good of Kurt to have thought that far ahead. At the time I had thought that he was implying that I had slept around. I eventually left that notion behind me. Health class told me later that it could be passed through any exchange of any type of body fluid.
I thought Kurt was looking for a reason to not have sex. It was a hurdle we passed together though, and I had never been more proud of Kurt when he stood up to me. I wasn't expecting it. He broke my own prejudice, if inadvertently done, towards him. I knew he was strong, I knew, but I didn't know that I wasn't stronger.
"For my will is as strong as yours," Kurt told me. He quoted something, "and you have no power over me." I'm still proud, getting tested was never relevant to me, and in all theory it shouldn't have been to him. The society we live in now hasn't focused on the HIV strands in years.
Over the summer I found out his mother had died of pneumonia, after contracting AIDs.
I had never felt more like a douche bag than then. Stupid fucking hormones, pun completely intended.
Sometimes I have no idea how Kurt puts up with me.