"Don't cry. Don't raise your eye. It's only teenage wasteland." The Who
.***.
1:59 PM
Kurt leaned against the closet he'd locked Eric in. The boy (who might have, eventually, become his boyfriend) pounded his fists against the door.
"Shut up, Eric!" Kurt begged, looking towards the door. "Please…we can get through this."
"Then you hide, too!" Eric said, his voice muffled by the fake wood door. "And unlock the door. It's a dead giveaway."
Kurt hesitated, and Eric said (and this was a testament to the fact that they should be together…Eric already knew him…) "Take it out, Kurt. I won't do anything stupid."
Biting his lip, Kurt removed the drumstick .The shots were getting closer, the screams further away. He hoped that he was making the right choice – if they hid, whoever had the gun would just go past the room, thinking it empty. If they ran, they could be caught in a hail of bullets.
But before Kurt got more than halfway into his own hiding spot – a cabinet adjacent to Eric's – the door banged against the wall and Kurt found himself looking down the barrel of a gun for the first time.
He put his hands up, an automatic reaction born of too much NCIS. He lifted his eyes off the barrel of the gun and looked at the person behind the attack. If he was going to die, he was going to look his attacker in the eye.
"Hello, fag." The insult no longer phased Kurt, but he found himself shaking at the tone. Detached, inhuman. "Where's Eric?"
"What?" Kurt was surprised at the dialogue. He was expecting an insult, a shot, move on. "Eric who?"
The gun cocked, made that tell-tale click sound, the one that came right before the blood and the death. "Eric Hartman. Eric who used to be my best friend."
"I don't…" Kurt swallowed, tried to sound masculine and sure for once in his life. "I don't know who you're talking about. I was just going to practice…I'm in the glee club."
"I know who you are, Hummel." The boy spit out, eyes darting crazily around the room. The gun he was holding shook. "And I know that if I shoot you enough times, you'll probably tell me where he is."
The closet door burst open and Eric tumbled out. "Mitch?" he asked, staring at the person. "Mitch, what are you doing! Put that gun down!"
"What do you know?" The boy who was apparently Mitch shouted. "You disappeared Freshman year! You're embarrassed of us!"
"Us?" Eric asked, and Kurt admired him for the fact that he could look puzzled with a gun held to his head. "What, Brad too?"
"Of course Brad too! He didn't desert me because I was bad for his image!" Mitch trained the gun on Eric, finger wobbling on the trigger.
"I joined the band! It's not my fault they don't shoot up every weekend, or get trashed on their parent's beer. Mitch, I just grew out of you guys." Eric winced when he realized that these were the wrong words to say to someone with a gun.
"Grew out of us!" Mitch yelled, then swung the gun back over to Kurt. "What about him? You grew out of my sister when you became a fag. You going to grow out of him?" Mitch's eyes glinted with riotous rage. "Maybe I should just help you along."
"Mitch, no!"
The next second, it was as if a white-hot poker had pierced through Kurt's upper arm, followed immediately by something akin to a polar bear crashing into his side, sending him tumbling to the ground. Two more shots, and the thing that had run into him went completely, deathly still.
Kurt breathed through his nose, trying to ignore the pain that was like fire in his arm. He pushed against the weight on top of him enough to look back out into the room.
Mitch had been joined by another boy with a gun, and they both had them trained on him, on the thing that was pressing into his hurt arm. Kurt closed his eyes, prayed that if he died he might be able to see his mother again, prayed that it wouldn't hurt too much, that his dad would go on without him…
But the shot never came, at least not towards him.
Kurt peeked through his lashes when he heard a grunt, the cold clash of metal on the hard tile floor. Mitch had been tackled by Finn, who had come out of nowhere. A shot went off once, twice, but that didn't stop Puck from taking the other gun-happy teen down.
Kurt didn't hear the words exchanged. He just knew that the other boy, who still had his gun, suddenly pointed it at Mitch and pulled the trigger, then maneuvered the gun through Puck's grasping hands and turned it slowly.
"No!" That was Finn's scream. Finn's yell, because he was afraid the gun was going the other way, towards Puck's face, ready to blow his best friend away.
But the gun trained on its owner, and the final blast, nine minutes after the first one, announced suicide. It also announced the end of a battle no one knew was going to be fought, the end of people with friends, parents, brothers, lovers. It announced the end to the lives of students, and teachers, of children and adults and innocents.
And innocence.
Okay, recap: Mitch and Brad are dead, Eric and Puck and Kurt and a ton of other people are shot/dying.
And now we have to pick up the pieces.
Review?
