A Life I'll Never Have – Part II
Kurt couldn't read. Well, he could, and he was, but he couldn't. He couldn't process the words, couldn't appreciate them, couldn't use them as a way to forget about all the problems currently on his mind because those were far too heavy. They were making his head hurt.
He shut the book and slumped back against the rumbling machine.
In a fit of frustration with the story, himself, everything, he stuffed the book violently back into his bag, and the canister of pills came tumbling back out onto the floor.
Seeing that little orange container made his stomach sick. Seeing those little white tablets inside made him feel as though he could feel the two he had just taken still rolling around inside him, not helping, just making everything worse. Just drawing his attention back to the fact that he was a defective human being who needed medication in order to do to what the rest of the world had absolutely no problem doing, a pathetic little boy who couldn't even live his life because his body was so… messed up…
As if he was suddenly transported back into his own body after having drifted away, Kurt was suddenly hyperaware of how panic-stricken his body had become. His elbows were on his knees and his hands were tangled into his hair, gripping it so hard he could feel individual roots pulling up painfully on the skin of his scalp. He was breathing hard and deep and too quick to be doing himself any good, and his eyes were so full of tears ready to fall at any instant that he could barely even make out the pattern on the linoleum floor beneath his shoes…
I can't… I can't, I can't, I can't… someone… someone, please… I can't, I can't do this… just… help me…
"I said, are you okay?"
Kurt started, and suddenly realized that there was a hand on his shoulder, and a man kneeling by his side. It was the young, dark-haired man from just across the way.
Instinctively Kurt backed away a little, and the young man held up his hands in innocence.
"I'm sorry," he said, "I… I didn't mean to scare you."
Kurt brought his hands out of his hair and glanced up and down the aisle. The girl lying on her back had propped herself up and pulled one headphone away from her ear, and she was watching Kurt, concerned. The man who knew the cashier was peering back into the aisle, looking equally as concerned.
"You… you were… hyperventilating," said the dark-haired boy, still kneeling (at a safe distance) by Kurt.
Kurt, still breathing heavily, looked up into the boy's dark eyes.
He tried to speak, but he found it so hard to form proper words before a boy who wasn't real. Or at least, hadn't been real a few minutes ago. A few minutes ago, this boy might as well have been a figment of Kurt's imagination; the boy with the perfect life, the boy Kurt would spend the rest of the night wishing he could be. There are people you know, and then, there are people you watch from a distance, and wonder about. The two don't coincide. Or, at least, they hadn't, until then.
"Are you… going to be okay?"
Kurt's gaze hadn't left the boy's, not once.
"Um… yes. Yes. I'll be fine," he sniffled. "I'm fine. I was just…"
Kurt's gaze dropped to the floor and he caught sight of the orange canister, the one he hated with every ounce of feeling he had inside of himself. He smacked it away.
"Whoa, whoa…" it rolled over to the boy's knee, and he picked it up. "It's okay," he said. "You're fine… everything's fine…"
"No," Kurt murmured, shaking his head, "no, no… it's… it's not…"
"Hey…" cautiously, as if approaching a wounded animal, the boy reached forward and once again placed a hand on Kurt's shoulder, "Just… just breathe, okay?"
Without meeting the boy's eyes, Kurt obeyed. He sat for a few moments and caught his breath, and out of the corner of his eye he caught the girl and the man who knew the cashier going back to their business, Probably thoroughly assured that the other guy can take care of the crazy one… he thought, bitterly, as his breathing evened out.
"Are these yours?" the boy asked, after a while.
Kurt glanced toward the canister of small white tablets and gave a quiet, dry, bitter laugh and a nod of the head. "Yeah," he muttered, taking it from the boy's hands, then fiddling with it in his lap while he wiped his eyes dry on the back of his hand.
Through his peripheral vision, Kurt saw the boy nod in the direction of their onlookers, who then appeared to go back to what they were doing. Ideally they wouldn't have noticed at all, but Kurt was at least grateful he no longer had an audience.
Kurt kept his head down, and he continued to effortlessly twist the child safety lock to no avail.
He wasn't sure what he expected to happen. Part of him wanted the boy with the perfect life to walk away so that he could continue to envy him from afar. There was another part of him, though, that – whether or not he would admit it to himself – wanted him, so badly… to just…
"Do you want to talk about it?"
The look on the pale boy's face made Blaine's stomach twist painfully. He looked so miserable and hopeless, but at the same time he looked so stunned at what Blaine had just asked him. Blaine's stomach gave another painful lurch for the boy when the thought occurred to him that Maybe that isn't something people say to him often.
"Only if you… want to," he added, lamely.
"You don't even know me."
Blaine froze. Not so much at the boy's words, but at the look in his eyes when he turned to face him. The momentary look of surprise had faded as quickly as it had appeared, and his gaze had became harsh, sharp, icy blue, and almost judgmental.
And this was exactly what Blaine had been afraid of. The sense of urgency he felt coming over to the boy had muddled the feeling slightly, but Blaine was still aware of it; the feeling that he was crossing some boundary that ought not to be crossed. When you create a life and a story for a stranger in your head – which is exactly what Blaine had been doing for the pale boy reading the fairytales – you eventually become so convinced of its truth that actually speaking to or meeting that person will set something off-balance in the universe. Blaine could almost feel this happening, as the boy glared at him skeptically with those cold blue eyes.
"I know I don't," Blaine said, quickly, "but… I'd like to help. Or at least try, if… if you want me to…"
Seeing the boy with the perfect life morph from completely peaceful to completely panic-stricken all in a matter of seconds is what made Blaine do it, made Blaine offer his help. Seeing the boy's face crumble as it did sent something through Blaine's body, like an electric shock physically reprimanding him for being so naïve, making so many unfair assumptions. He felt guilty, and in a strange way, he felt obligated to make amends.
The boy hesitated, but after looking Blaine up and down and one last long, unyielding look into his eyes, his expression softened. Then, quietly, he asked, "What's your name?"
Blaine knew the very second he opened his mouth to answer that the boundary was about to be crossed.
"Blaine," he said. "My name is Blaine."
For the first time since Blaine had set eyes on him, the boy smiled. Small, but still a smile.
"Kurt."
Blaine took that as his cue to sit a little more comfortably on the floor by Kurt's side.
Kurt took a long, deep sigh, then said quietly, "I'm depressed."
Blaine laughed a little. "I know what you mean."
"No," Kurt said, shaking his head and turning to look Blaine in the eye again, his face serious, "I'm… depressed. Clinically… clinically depressed."
Blaine wanted to slap himself in the head, he had been so stupid, acting like he knew, like he understood. Instantly, he felt awful about what he had said.
"Kurt, I'm so-"
"Don't," Kurt interrupted, shaking his head. He offered Blaine a sad kind of smile. "Don't apologize," he said. "I've never been the 'You have no idea what I'm going through so don't act like you do' type. That's always seemed kind of… naïve to me. I mean, I presume a lot, about… other people, people I don't even know," he said, and Blaine nodded, knowing exactly what he meant, "But it seems wrong to act like other people's problems aren't… you know… problems, just as well."
Blaine nodded again. He gestured toward the pills in Kurt's hands, and asked, gently, "They helping?"
Kurt huffed out a humorless laugh. "Not really."
"When did it… when did it all start?"
"When my mom died," he said with a sniffle. "I was eight. Everything's kind of just gone… downhill, since then. And I…" there was something in Kurt's eyes and in the now steady stream of words that comforted Blaine, told him that Kurt had decided to throw away inhibitions and just let everything out… "I kept thinking, 'This time I've hit bottom,' 'It can't get worse than this,' 'I have to go up from here,' but it just… life always found a way to get worse, and, and keeps finding ways to get worse. A different diagnosis, a new medication, additional medication, a new side effect, panic attacks, and I… God…" He ran a hand over his exasperated expression, massaging his eyelids, pinching his forehead… "I would literally give anything to just… be a kid again. Before… before all of this happened, before… my mom died."
Kurt's eyes were on his lap again, and Blaine could only stare at him – the pale boy reading the fairy tales – in pain, sympathy, and disbelief. He felt as though he'd been kicked in the head or slapped across the face, somehow awakened from his own little universe in which everything revolved around him and his problems; pulled out of his own self-obsessed mind and hit with the reality that I'm not the center of the fucking universe.
While Blaine was busy cursing himself for being so selfish, Kurt interrupted his thoughts when he muttered, "And now I'm dumping all my problems on a perfect stranger…"
He made a move – to get up, to express an apology, something of the sort – but Blaine stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
"No, no, I…" he pulled his hand back when Kurt returned to his seat on the floor, eyeing Blaine curiously, "It's fine, Kurt. It's… I'm just… that's awful, Kurt. That's really, really awful."
Kurt leaned back against the rumbling machine again, but turned his head to face Blaine. His icy blue eyes pierced Blaine's, like he was searching for something inside them, until suddenly, his expression changed. Like he had found what he was looking for. It wasn't a happy expression, exactly, but it was soft, cognizant, and appreciative.
"It, um…" he nodded, just slightly, "it sucks."
Blaine laughed before he could stop himself, but then, Kurt began to laugh as well.
"I'll bet," Blaine smiled after a moment of shared laughter, his sympathy for this boy outweighing his pity for himself and his own situation by the passing minutes.
"This is so… weird," Kurt said, shaking his head.
Blaine watched him, curiously. "What do you mean?"
Kurt turned to look at him again, and he looked like there was something he wanted to say very much, but was holding back because it was silly, unusual, something he might be judged for…
Suddenly, Blaine had a frighteningly promising idea of what it could be.
"What do you mean, Kurt?" he pressed on. "What's weird?"
Kurt wrapped his arms around himself, a little shyly, then finally laughed to himself, looked Blaine in the eye, and said, "You weren't… you weren't real to me, a few minutes ago. You were just another… another object of my weekly Laundromat people-watching session… and now… I'm telling you all these things that I never talk about, and… and I was just making up a story for you in my head, like you were some sort of figment of my imagination, and now it's like… God, I can't believe I'm actually saying all of this…" he laughed, embarrassedly, and let his face fall into the palm of his hand.
Blaine could feel a smile of disbelief spreading across his lips, and before Kurt could say another word, Blaine had to tell him, "I was watching you too."
Even though they weren't touching, Blaine could somehow feel Kurt stiffen at his words. At first, it frightened him, almost made him regret saying anything, but then Kurt looked up at him, eyes practically glowing in disbelief.
"Really?" he asked.
Blaine nodded. "Really."
Kurt coughed out a small laugh, then looked confusedly from side to side before asking, incredulously, "Why? What were you… what were you… thinking about?"
Blaine ran his hands through his unruly curls, then looked at Kurt, still a little in shock that yes, he and the pale boy reading the fairytales were actually having this conversation.
"I was thinking that I wanted to be you," he said. "You were… kinda like what you said to me earlier," he explained, "about me being just an, an 'object of your people watching.' But I was… jealous of you. I guess I'm… just that selfish. So selfish that I actually thought I could pick any random person in this place and that their problems would pale in comparison to mine, which is so, so wrong on so many levels…"
"Oh my… stop it. I was doing the exact same thing," Kurt smiled, forgivingly.
"Yeah, but you had good reason," Blaine laughed, in spite of himself. "Better reason than me, that's for sure."
Blaine watched, thoroughly embarrassed of himself, as Kurt smirked a little, then said, "I think… I can be the judge of that."
Blaine raised his eyebrows in question, and Kurt continued, kindly, "You just carried me down off the edge of a nervous breakdown, let me cry it out, then listened while I told you – quite melodramatically, I might add – my entire life story. I think the least I can do is be a venting buddy for you."
Positively grinning ear to ear, Blaine nodded, "It does have a ring of fairness to it, I'll give you that…"
Kurt nodded, returning the smile, and gesturing for Blaine to tell him…
"Anything," Kurt said. "Anything you… anything you need to say. Tell me anything."
Blaine breathed a heavy sigh and let himself slump against the machine, where he sat, shoulder to shoulder with Kurt, and did just that.
And when the clothes were dry, and the fees were paid, and the Laundromat was closed and Kurt and Blaine had parted ways, one thought still connected them, and always would:
They're really not all that different; my life, and the life I'll never have.