I wasn't expecting to write this much but shit happened.
Warnings: non-con, incest (it's limited to one paragraph, don't freak out)
Chapter Three: A Little Push
His dad wasn't home for several days. Kurt wasn't accustomed to such long absences. No worries, maybe it was a test to see how he would cope if his father had to leave him in an emergency. Kurt started the first day of the Absence by cleaning up the two bedrooms. His father's was a pile of rotting food and dirty laundry that took 3 – 4 hours to clean. He couldn't put the clothes in the washing machine as Andy had forgotten to pay the electricity bill again. He gathered them in a basket and placed them in the laundry room to hand-wash later.
He vacuumed the living room, mopped the kitchen and changed the table cloth on the dining room table which was soiled with all manners of liquids and dried foods. He cleaned the entire two-bedroom apartment and even changed the carpets and rugs so the colors complimented the mauve walls and the cream sofas. He was thoroughly pleased with his refurbishment and hoped that when his father came home, he would be too.
He was already envisioning the pat on his head, a full plate of food and the honor of sitting on the right hand side of his father as he watched one of his Eagles game, although Kurt would more be admiring Andy from the side view and gloating at the other men than actually watching the game.
He dragged the two garbage bags to the backdoor, washed his hands then decided to take a ten-minute rest before taking them out. While sprawled on the couch – a luxury he wasn't allowed to have when his father was home – a knock on the door came. Kurt dragged his body off the couch and looked through the peephole. It was the landlord.
He opened the door. "Good morning," he greeted.
"Your rent is due," the landlord huffed. He was two-hundred and fifty pounds of fat and muscle on a 5"11 frame with thick sideburns leading down to a sparsely-covered chin. The grizzly hair on his head matched the hair that covered his arms. He was always smoking a cigarette and he had a missing front tooth and dark lips. Kurt forgot his real name but the other renters called him Grizzly.
"My dad isn't home right now-"
"Don't give me any excuses, boy!" he shouted. Kurt cringed. When Grizzly got angry he was both a sight to behold and to fear. He literally resembled a grizzly bear on its hind legs when he got so deep into the argument that he raised his arms and bared his teeth and spit flew from his mouth as he roared. Kurt took a cautious step back, not wanting to be too near to those large arms that could break him in two as easily as breaking a twig.
Kurt apologized. "I promise as soon as my dad gets home he'll pay. He won't be gone for long-"
Grizzly growled, his shrewd eyes narrowing suspiciously at Kurt. He peered inside the apartment then looked back down at him. "Pay the rent or you leave," he hissed. Then he turned his broad shoulders and headed down the flight of stairs where his apartment was on the first floor. Kurt closed the door and took in a large gulp of air. He was gone. For now.
Kurt wondered what he would do if his father didn't come back by the next day. Andy was unemployed at the moment but luckily the unemployment check which was a meager one thousand dollars was just enough to pay the monthly rent with two hundred dollars to spare. One hundred dollars from the spare money was used to make groceries (Kurt did the groceries by himself while his father waited in the parking lot) and the other hundred… Well Kurt didn't know where that went but he assumed his father was putting it to good use, for example, saving up for a better apartment in a cleaner and safer neighborhood.
Andy wasn't always jobless, however. Three and a half years ago Andy had owned a thrift store called 'Andy's Thrifts'. It wasn't the best of businesses but the income was enough to help pay the mortgage and bills although the bulk of the money came from his mother's pay check from working as a nurse. Kurt was going to middle school at that time and had never been happier. Then on September 6th a freak accident occurred where the thrift store was burnt to the ground. His mother, Marina, had a free shift at the hospital and since the clerk at the store had quit – she complained too much of late paydays – she had stepped in to work temporarily while they found a new one. The cause of the fire was unknown. Marina's body had been so charred that they couldn't put her in the coffin. Kurt had worn his one black suit to the funeral and didn't even cry. Andy was a mess and Kurt had to be the one to comfort him. The day after Kurt had broken down when all the events were finally processed but Andy wasn't there. He was out in a bar drinking away his worries and drowning his regrets so Kurt had to comfort himself by singing to keep the scary, lonely thoughts away. It was only then that he had discovered he had a voice like his mother's that had never truly broken.
In one day Andy had lost everything - his wife, his business and everything he had worked for. It had left Andy so distraught and broken that Kurt feared for the months that his father had buried himself in empty beer bottles and cigarette packs that he would never resurface. He was terrified that his father would remain shattered for the rest of his life, leaving Kurt with a million and one responsibilities he didn't understand or know about. He was afraid that Andy would leave him alone and helpless and in effect, without any parents at all. Kurt had cried every night since then until one day he had awoken to see a clean living room with no alcohol in sight. Andy had gone out and gotten himself a job at a gas station not far from where they lived. It was a start, slow-going but a beginning nonetheless.
The job wasn't enough though. It was never enough and Kurt worried that Andy had taken that revelation to a whole new level of hell bent destruction and debauched self-loathing. Kurt analyzed the alcoholic phase as part one to the self-destruction series. He presumed that part two would be even worse. The pay at the gas station couldn't cover the electricity bills or the mortgage so they eventually lost the house. Kurt had offered to get a job at the supermarket once but before the sentence was even out of his mouth Andy had shot it down. He had to prove himself, Kurt thought, but to whom he didn't know. He couldn't understand why Andy was trying so desperately to show that he could take care of himself without Marina around when there was no one as far as Kurt knew to witness it.
The constant need for approval was driving them apart as apparently Kurt's wasn't enough for Andy. There was another force pushing his dad constantly over the edge. It made Kurt paranoid of when his father was going to fall over and although he hadn't realized, the force had begun pushing him too. It had driven him to the point where he forced Andy to come to the startling insight that they weren't going to make it if Andy did everything by himself. He needed someone by his side and now that Marina was gone, Kurt was the only one who could take that place.
It led Kurt to agree to offer up his body as the ultimate sacrifice. Marina had always made sacrifices – she worked extra shifts, she held herself back from indulging in simple things such as clothes and makeup and declined going out with her friends or even having a social life. Now it was Kurt's turn.
It was sort of ironic, or funny, whichever one, that the day before Marina died she had told Kurt that if she left, it was his job to take over and be a better man than his father. Kurt had taken the advice with honor that she had so much faith in him to entrust such important duties to him even though he was only twelve. That was another scenario that he overanalyzed: that maybe his mother had known what was going to happen the next day and was preparing for it. He had scrapped the idea in the beginning because one thought led to the other and the topic of suicide came up. It hadn't made sense to him back then and it still didn't now. Perhaps there was a secret side to his mother that he had never seen and she had never shown. She could have been silently suffering, bottling up all her negative emotions inside her until one day it spilled and she chose the only way out. Thoughts like those made Kurt cry though so he tried to never tread in that area.
The cleaning up after the fire was the worst. Everything was lost. Debts piled up. The cause of the fire was still unknown. Kurt had told himself that the reason his father had fallen into such despair was because he wasn't being a good enough son and his mother's shoes were too large for him to fill at the moment. He tried his best though and although he craved some attention and encouragement from Andy that Marina had previously given him, he understood that the two were opposites and came to accept that Andy could never be his mother too. There had to be a balance of push and pull and as Andy fell and fell, Kurt was always there to pull him up.
The job at the gas station lasted three months before Andy got fired for sexually harassing a customer. He had come home in the middle of the morning after he lost it stinking of beer and piss. Kurt was the one who had to drag the disoriented man to the bathroom to clean him up and then put him in bed. He had to run to the 7-Eleven a block over to pick up painkillers and in the morning he made fried eggs and sausages and forced his hung-over dad to eat all of it and take the pills. Andy had slept the rest of the morning and way into the afternoon before waking up to a lunch of spaghetti and meatballs. Kurt was interested in cooking so Marina had taught him the basics. From then on all he had to do was follow the recipes in the cookbook and use the ingredients they had. Eventually the staple became rice, some sort of legumes and chicken because they didn't have enough money to buy all the fancy ingredients. Chicken soon became an amenity.
It was on his lowest of low days when Andy was just lying on the couch and staring up at the ceiling that things changed. Kurt had gone to prod him from his daydreaming to come eat when Andy had grabbed his arm. He could never forget how cold and emotionless Andy's eyes had looked that day. Someone had told him something, Kurt knew because his dad didn't do things like that without some outside motivation. He was twelve, close to thirteen when it happened. Andy led him to his bedroom and took off all of Kurt's clothes. He sat on the bed and commanded Kurt to stay right where he was. His father's eyes raked his body. For a while they stayed in that position, whatever things running through Andy's head obviously putting him in a dilemma. He had two choices but there was a tug of war in his mind as to which one to take. Kurt had stood there, shivering slightly, and innocent to what would happen next.
Then Andy stood and began taking off his clothes. Kurt had tried to run because he had sneaked a peek at enough Lifetime movies – Marina was obsessed with the channel – to know where these things led. He wasn't fast enough to get to the door or strong enough to break his father's hold. Andy pinned him to the bed, chest down and held his hands with one hand in a vice grip. Kurt had flailed and kicked and screamed but Andy was too strong and overpowering. A drawer was opened and a rag stuffed in his mouth to shut him up. The bottle of the baby oil he used to moisturize his skin on the nightstand was opened but Kurt couldn't see what it was being used for. Then there was that pressure on his ass and the blinding pain and more screaming and crying and oh God he wouldn't stop and Kurt had to just lie there high and dry until it was over. Andy let go of his hands, got off the bed and picked up his clothes. He left Kurt with blood smeared on his thighs and baby oil soaking into the sheets. He felt the sticky release of his father on his back.
Kurt figured it was right around there when things started getting hazy in his mind and it was hard to distinguish between right and wrong. That was a wrong thing for his father to do, but honestly he didn't have a choice. Kurt had to choose eventually and what he came too was that his father always did things for the betterment of their lives or what else reason would Marina marry him.
Kurt rubbed his eyes. Sometimes he didn't know anymore what to do or what was wrong with him. There was something he was missing but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Lifetime sent people like him to therapists but in reality, there wasn't always some caring neighbor or a distant relative to break in and rescue him. Then again, did Kurt really need rescuing? As far as he was concerned, things were going pretty well except for the unexpected Absence. But that would soon come to pass and life would return to normal. If his life was considered normal, anyways.
His nose crinkled as the odor of garbage came to him so he opened the backdoor to carry the four bags out. He clambered down the metal stairs and around the front of the building where the huge green dumpster was. He wasn't allowed to go outside except to take out the garbage so if his father was watching him as the test was going on, he wouldn't be upset.
As he dragged the second bag outside he noticed that the children were in the park on a Wednesday morning meaning that either it was a holiday or something happened at their school that gave them a day off. He stood there entranced for a couple minutes and saw that they were several years younger than him. A little boy ran, tripped over the edge of the sandpit and grated his knee on the ground. He didn't cry or scream or beat up on the ground like little children were wont to do. Instead he got up on one knee and inspected the damaged knee, spat into his hand and rubbed the saliva over the cut. Then he patted it, got up and kept on running. Kurt's mouth twitched into a smile.
He wanted to get a little bit closer. He used the excuse of dragging the garbage bag out to the bin. There were 10 – 15 children in thin clothes and some boys even had their shirts off to battle the heat of the encroaching summer. By now the firemen should have opened the fire hydrant and allow them to bathe naked or half-naked for a couple hours before their parents would come take them away. Of course, Kurt had felt a deep sense of yearning when he watched them as he sat in his bedroom with the windows wide open to allow the hot air some exit. He would be shirtless because clothes were too much of a hindrance and not wanting to take a second shower on those mornings because Andy would chastise him about wasting water and running up the bill. He couldn't go outside because of the bruises on his body and he didn't want to handle all the questions.
Then one of them stopped playing and turned to directly face Kurt. The little boy's face and hair were dirty with sand and something brown – hopefully chocolate as it hadn't rained in some days to make mud puddles – and when Kurt looked down he saw that was the one with the bruise on his knee. He limped over to the gate and held onto it, staring at him. Kurt didn't like the fact that the kid noticed him because eventually all the others would stop and stare and see what a freak Kurt was. He really didn't want that so he rushed inside and grabbed the two bags at once so he would finish the job quickly and run back inside to shut the door and continue with his cleaning.
By the time he made it to the bin, however, the little boy had run across the empty street and stopped by the apartment's mailbox, just a few feet away from Kurt. He stood shock-still, not knowing how to react to strangers. The strangers he knew directed him in their ministrations but never before had he taken control unless he had to encourage a customer by unbuttoning their pants and even after that they would easily take over. The boy took a step forward and Kurt took one back in the direction of the metal stairs, ready to run if needed. The kid took another one forward, Kurt stepped back and then a grin broke across his chubby face. The little boy laughed and extended a dirty hand. Kurt stared at it.
"My name's Sam. What's yours?"
Kurt swallowed hard before answering. "Kurt." But his voice cracked so he tried it again. "My name's Kurt." It had been a while since someone cared about asking him for his name.
Sam dropped his arm when he realized Kurt wasn't going to take it. "Do you wanna play?"
His eyes widened. "W-what?"
Sam repeated himself. Kurt shook his head.
"I can't," Kurt said.
"Why not?" Sam pressed. He took another step forward. "It's just for a little while."
"I have a lot of things to do. I don't have the time." Kurt turned around and flung the bags into the dumpster. He dusted his hands off and when he turned back, Sam was right up under him. Kurt jumped back.
"I have to go now," he mumbled and quickly spun away to speed-walk back to the stairs.
"Maybe tomorrow?" Sam called out to him. The request made him pause, surprised that the little boy was so persistent to want to play with someone like him.
Kurt faced Sam and offered a little smile. "Maybe tomorrow." Then he clambered up the metal stairs, through the back door and locked it behind him. There was a stupid grin on his face and his heart wouldn't stop beating wildly in his chest. Kurt took a seat in the living room and ran through the conversation in his head.
"Maybe," he told himself. To add to the irregularities of the day, the Voice hadn't rebuffed him. When he looked up he saw that he hadn't gotten anywhere with his refurbishing. He got up, cracked his neck and got to work.
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