Title: As A God
Summary: 18 years ago, Burt Hummel's girlfriend disappeared. He spent months desperately searching, but eventually he had to accept Kathy was gone. He eventually finds happiness in Carole, Finn, and even Finn's best friend. But then he gets a call. A call from NYPD, telling him a 17 year old admitted to hospital for a drug overdose and carrying a picture of Burt and Kathy. Burt's son? There's only one way to find out.
Warnings: Right, this is a long one. Violence, substance abuse, sexual violence, prostitution (including underage), swearing, 'phobic slander, angsty goodness, self harm, suicidal thoughts (possibly acts)…yeah, this will be quite dark at times, at least, the themes will be.
Hey there guys! (And gals!) I'm so sorry I kind of abandoned this for a short while. Thank you so much for all your kind reviews, and a special mention to my darling Kyle for supplying the previous chapter. I hope you all liked it! This is kind of a bittersweet chapter really, and an ever so slight filler. Please let me know your thoughts!
Now, my plan is for the next chapter to see the Hummel-Hudson home preparing for the Hummels' homecoming, and then Kurt's actual arrival in Lima. However, if enough people actually want me to, I will write you Kurt and Burt's travel back to Ohio, too.
Love, SallyStorm xx
Over and out.
(chapter seven)
To you, your father should be as a god;
One that compos'd your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted, and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1.1.50-4)
Wednesday the twelfth of October.
Exactly eighteen years prior, Burt Hummel had spent the day with his father.
They had played soccer, eaten sandwiches packed lovingly for them by Burt's mother, and Burt had been grateful. For almost ten hours, lost in the middle of a large field with only his father and a soccer ball for company, Burt had distracted himself from police reports and missing person signs and the never ending loop of Kathy Kathy Kathy that circled a constant around his head.
And now it was Wednesday the twelfth of October, and Burt Hummel realised that he really, really missed his father, who had died some seven years previously.
"All ready?" a sudden voice from beside Burt asked, and he flinched in his seat in Kurt's empty hospital room.
Sergeant Justin McDonnell had returned, too invested in the case to stay away until Kurt would-be-Hummel was safely out and away.
Burt grimaced, shuffling over a little as the younger man sat by his side.
"Hate waiting for stuff," Burt muttered into his clenched fists.
He hadn't been waiting long, but he'd never been famed for his patience.
"Where's the kid?" Justin asked coolly, a frown wrinkling his brow.
"Talking to his friend," Burt pointed in the vague direction of the door. "The girl?" He couldn't really remember, too focused on his own near future to recall the finer details.
"Sadie White?" Justin hummed, looking surprised.
"Waited long enough," Burt shrugged. "He's been asking to see her every day since he was brought here, apparently. Told him he could take as long as he wanted."
"That was good of you," the sergeant commented, and Burt raised his eyebrows, as if to ask what else he was supposed to have done. Deny the boy the chance to say goodbye to his only friend?
They fell to silence, respectfully averting their gazes.
Burt found himself memorising the room, though he was sure it would come back to haunt him when the memory of sickly pristine walls and the nauseating scent of hospital sterility overpowered his dreams in weeks to come. He took in the bed, recalled the blank expression with which Kurt had first regarded him upon arrival in New York. He recalled the racking sobs and uncontrollable tears.
He couldn't deny he was looking forward to leaving the claustrophobia of the hospital. He felt like he was drowning more and more with ever breath he took. Drowning in sullen, hospital memories that would not be wiped until they had turned their backs on New York City.
But there was something so comforting about it, too. The hospital had become almost a sanctuary.
It was safe. It was neutral.
"Your flight leaves at five o'clock," Justin reminded him abruptly, effectively ending his sombre reverie.
"Yeah," Burt mumbled, attempting a smile, but it twisted painfully on his face. "Thanks for that, by the way," he added as an afterthought.
"It shouldn't be crowded," the officer reassured him, "You'll have a decent amount of privacy. Should make it easier for you both."
Burt's throat was too choked to reply, so he nodded and tried to add a little sincerity to his attempt of a smile.
It had only come to his attention the day before that in addition to the many stressors surrounding Kurt's departure from New York, Kurt would never have before been in an aircraft.
Burt remembered being seventeen years old. How he'd been so excited, had bounced around in the car on the way to the airport, only to feel sick before the plane had even fully taken off. He'd spent their two week holiday in a Spanish resort alternating between enjoying himself and dreading the return journey.
He could only hope Kurt would be a better flyer than him.
"Hey, Burt?" Justin tapped the older man on the elbow to grab his attention.
"Yeah?" Burt coughed.
"I think there's one thing you need to do before you go…"
glee
They hadn't said a word as Kurt entered the room, trembling with fear and anticipation. He had simply rushed to the bed, albeit limping, but rushing nonetheless, straight into the girl's arms.
Sadie had been expecting him. She'd opened her arms to clutch the boy tightly to her chest, pulling him close as he inhaled her scent. She'd kissed his hair and squeezed him desperately and even as he whimpered under her fierce grip she refused to let go.
"Porcelain, Porcelain, Porcelain," she'd whispered into his hair as her tears dampened his scalp. They'd cried through the exhaustion and the pain and the grief. And her heart had broken for the boy in her arms over and over again as he'd wept into her chest.
He's gone. He's gone. He's gone.
And she had replied with helpless agony.
I know. I'm sorry. I know. I'm sorry.
And she was. She truly was sorry.
Sadie White had always been a survivor. And Sadie White had always been a mother hen.
At fourteen years old she had taken little Porcelain under her wing before any of the others could snatch him up and turn him into the unearthly altered almost-people like the other older boys and girls. She couldn't let the humanity abandon those bright glasz eyes.
Because Sadie White, Spike's little Snow, knew a lot of people, even at fourteen years of age. And she knew that most fell into two categories.
Snow wouldn't let Porcelain fall into either.
Porcelain would not fall into a pit of despair; forget he was a human being of flesh and blood and worth. Neither would Porcelain learn to love his life; forget he was more than a flexible doll in tight clothes.
Sadie had never given up on Porcelain, and as she held him close, whispered consolations into his ear from their burrowed hold in her hospital bed, she realised it had been worth it. That even as the boy cried until his body had nothing left to give, cried as if he would never stop, with a shattered heart and soul ripping him in two, it had been worth the effort.
Porcelain wasn't Porcelain. Not really. She could still see Kurt hidden behind his mask.
"I can't go, Snow," Kurt pined into the young woman's hospital gown. "I can't leave you."
"Yes you can," she retorted. "You can and you will. You hear me? Don't you dare talk about staying here."
But Kurt only shook his head harder, pushed deeper into her sternum. "No, no, no, please no," he cried.
"Look at me," she commanded, reaching over to clasp his face in her hands, gripping harder as he flinched and struggled in terror. "No, look at me," she said sternly. He was terrified, wriggling an squirming, and more tears leaked from his eyes, but she held firm. "You have to get out of here. For yourself. For me. And for your mom. And for Blaine."
A particularly loud sob choked in Kurt's throat, but the woman shook her own head, scowling.
"No, you don't cry," and Kurt struggled to catch his breath. "You look at me and you nod. Ok? Nod."
Kurt nodded automatically, his cheeks and his upper lip and his forehead soaked as his eyes glistened.
"You are going to leave New York and you are going to live a beautifully long life."
She stated it with the same self-assured tone as a dictionary definition. It was a fact. Not a hope, or a dream, or even an assumption. It was a fact that this boy would live out a potential ten times greater than the one he had had two weeks ago.
"What about you?"
It was closer to a whisper, and Sadie's grim expression melted into a tender not-quite-smile.
"Well, I don't know," she replied honestly. "But I'll survive, ok? You know I'll survive."
She winked with a bravado that she was fairly certain the teenager could see through, but kept up the appearance anyway. She had a reputation to keep, after all.
"What if I need to talk to you?" Kurt asked timidly.
Sadie sighed, her breath washing over his face. His hair, matted with perspiration, rippled slightly.
"You're leaving New York behind, Porcelain. You're leaving this life behind. Which means-"
"No!" Kurt choked, holding her tighter and begging. But she pushed him away harshly, her own heart breaking again and again as the cold rejection pushed his shoulders into a slump and ripped another sob from his chest.
"Which means," she repeated, "You are leaving me behind, too."
The realisation of her own words shocked her.
Twenty-one and pushing away her only friend in the world, a seventeen year old boy with so much potential, so much life an love to give, it burst from him like scattered sunshine behind the cracks of his dusty blank mask. She could feel the weight of her own world weighing her down.
She knew this boy would make it.
But she also knew she could not be there to witness it. However he felt he needed her now, she knew her presence would eventually serve as nothing but a reminder of the life he should never have led.
"I am so proud of you," she said softly.
Her hands were vice grips on his shoulders, keeping him at half an arm's length away from her to stop him clinging to her again. It was getting harder and harder to refrain from embracing him once more, but her willpower won.
Kurt would not hug her again.
He cried shakily, tried to smile and ultimately failed. He squeezed her knee and she squeezed his shoulder.
"Go be somebody," she ordered, seeing before her not a seventeen year old youth in a hospital gown, but instead an eleven year old boy with tight clothes and wide eyes.
"I don't know how," he admitted, his entire frame shaking with fear.
The young woman didn't have the heart to push him. So she nudged him gently instead, avoiding his attempt at one last hug for fear of never letting him go if he did, and shrugged.
"Go find out," she suggested, eyes flicking to the door.
He walked away with stiff shoulders and tremors in his fingers, his feet shuffling slowly to the door where he stopped. The boy turned to look back at her, looking younger than he had done in a long, long time.
"Love you, Snow," he said quietly.
And as he turned away, one foot out of the doorway, Sadie White replied with a sob in her throat.
"Love you, Porcelain."
glee
"What are we doing here?" Kurt demanded.
It was the loudest Burt had ever heard him speak, and he decided it was going to take some time to get used to the pale, feminine twang in his son's voice. The boy was staring at him with wide panicked eyes, one hand resting protectively on his stitched stomach while the other balled into a fist in his lap.
They were sitting in the back of a simple black car, driven by Justin, who had offered to be their escort.
Burt had been unsure at first when the sergeant had suggested bringing Kurt here, but had ultimately thought it couldn't help to try for some catharsis before dragging the teen halfway across the country.
Now, however, with Kurt's horror before him, he was starting to regret his decision.
Thankfully, Justin intervened, leaving Burt time to recollect himself from the boy's glare.
"You don't have to go in, kid," he said kindly, shifting in the driver's seat to look around to the back seat. "It's entirely up to you."
Kurt's eyes shifted from Burt to the police officer, and then out of the window once more to rest of a stubby block of run down apartments, police tape cutting off the doorway on the ground floor. He bit his quivering lower lip, blinking rapidly.
When almost a minute passed an the boy didn't move again, the two older men flashed a glance at one another, nodding surreptitiously.
"Kurt," Burt said quietly, prodding with his gentle tone, "You don't have to go in. But after today…after today, I don't think you'll get another chance."
He felt cruel, the hint of an ultimatum in his words. But it was the blunt truth, and he knew the boy already afraid of moving to Ohio. There was no need to add another regret onto the mountain of shit that had made up this boy's life so far.
Kurt hummed in the back of his throat, so quietly it was no more than the subtle buzz of a fly. He nodded jerkily, forcing himself to act before he could lose his nerve, and with shaking hands he opened the door and stepped out of the car.
The two men followed him onto the empty street, and Justin indicated with a vague wave of his hand the taped off front door, smashed open and unfixed by police brute force.
Burt tried not to imagine what it must have been like growing up in the dark, dank building as they entered. The ugly graffiti on the walls, the stench of old wood and brick, damp and dusty. He rejected the mental images of a four year old Kurt running up and down the corridor; pushed away the thought of a young Katherine Gibson raising her son here.
Was she a loving mother?
He'd always thought she would have been. As a young man, with the typically casual thought of in the far, far future, when we're married with three kids, it had seemed inevitable that Kathy would be a wonderful mother.
But the Kathy he had known would never have left the way she did, and the thought of doubting everything he knew and loved about the woman who would have been his wife was too painful to consider.
Charming Kathy. Lively Kathy. Warm Kathy. Flighty Kathy.
Had she held Kurt close and cuddled him? Had she soothed his nightmares with songs and kisses?
And in the brief quarter of a second in which he allowed himself to think about the deep pit down which his Kathy had fallen, Burt wondered who had looked after Kurt when the boy's mother was out at work.
He couldn't allow himself to imagine her leaving him alone, and he didn't dare ask.
Not yet, at least.
So he followed in creaking silence with Sergeant McDonnell by his side as the boy shuffled his way with wary familiarity up the flights of stairs - one, two, three…- until finally they stopped outside a rust coloured door.
The numbering had long since disappeared, and this door was one of a minority that had managed to avoid the bright spray paint in various shades of red and green and blue. But with a glance at the place where a number, or at least a nameplate, should have been, Burt noticed a word carved deep into the wood, too obvious to be covered up.
Queers.
He wondered if it was too optimistic of him to hope it was an affectionate insult used by at least a close, necessary alliance made between occupants of the broken building, just a nickname and not what it looked like. A threat.
Kurt didn't pay attention to his surroundings until he was fully inside the apartment, where he stopped short, leaving barely enough room for the two men to squeeze in behind him.
Devoid of most basic furniture as it was, the apartment was still cramped.
The large space acted as a kitchen and living room combined, a yellowed fridge in the corner beside a sink with a tap that seemed highly unlikely to be fully functioning. The burst sofa faced a wall that under any normal circumstances would probably have held a television.
Burt didn't inspect the floor too closely. He didn't look down to see what crunched beneath his feet. He simply sidled to the wall a little, where he could examine his son's face without being too easily noticed.
Kurt's emotions, for possibly the first time, ran wild and unchecked across his face.
His eyes glistened and his pale skin lost what little colour could be seen beneath hard purple and yellow bruises. Burt didn't fail to notice they way the boy avoided a large space in the corner of the near the sofa. A space large enough for three people to comfortably socialise, exchanging words and drugs before poison and police and death could tear them apart forever.
The teenager's shaking worsened as he walked towards the closed door on the far side of the room, the open one revealing a badly tiled bathroom that Burt wasn't so sure could actually fit all the basic human necessities for decent hygiene.
Kurt opened the stiff door with a firm push of steely resolve and walked boldly inside.
Justin and Burt stood looking in from the doorway. The ratty mattress on the old bed frame; a battered guitar case in the corner, piles of ripped paper and stubbed pencils beside it; a chest of open drawers that revealed all manner of clothes.
Burt's heart leapt to his throat, choking him.
Hanging out of one of the drawers was an old jumper, once dark blue but now almost colourless with wear and tear.
A brief memory of Kathy wearing his larger sized jumpers flashed in his mind, and he felt his entire frame stiffen. Justin turned to look at him questioningly, but Burt didn't look back.
It had finally hit him. Some remote corner of Burt Hummel's consciousness had finally become aware of the past twelve days.
This wasn't just a series of fairytale events in a storybook.
Katherine Gibson was dead.
Katherine Gibson was dead, and Burt Hummel was a father.
Not a stepfather, not a practically-adopted father. But a biological father.
A biological father to the boy now kneeling in front of a shabby guitar case, reaching out to it with worshipping fingers that trembled as if it was the Holy Grail itself.
This boy was to be in his care. This boy's life was in his hands.
And as the responsibility hit him with tidal force, those worshipping, trembling, bruised fingers finally grasped the sacred guitar case, and Burt could see from the profile angle with which he was watching his son that the guitar inside, perhaps even the case, too, was the most precious thing in the world to this boy.
This guitar was all that was left of the one thing Kurt was going to have to leave behind.
It wasn't as hard as Burt had thought it would be, imagining Kurt in mourning over another boy.
He considered himself an accepting man, but he impressed even himself with his adjustment.
But one thought nagged him, staining his positivity.
Was it because it was simply a memory? Homosexual, regarding Kurt, was simply an idea in his head. Would it be different if Burt was to see the boy showing an actual interest in another male?
Burt shuddered, not in repulsion of the thought, but at another wave of reality.
He had absolutely no idea to what extent his small-town-Ohio-bred homophobia lay. And he would be damned if he put Kurt at risk of being hurt when he found out.
Justin, unaware of Burt's personal revelations and self-doubts, had finally taken a step inside the bedroom. He put a gentle hand on the nearest post of the bed frame, eyes on the crouched teenager.
"Anything left here can be taken. If you want, Kurt," he said without further comment.
Kurt bristled at being addressed by his name, but with his back still slightly to the officer he nodded openly, clutching the shaped case to his bruised stomach, as if unaware of the pain it was causing to press it so hard against his stitches.
He seemed to come to after a few more seconds, hesitantly standing up and turning around to face the two men.
The boy's eyes were red but dry, and Burt sent him a shaky smile that caused him to duck his head, almost shyly.
"I should probably be getting you to the airport," Justin interrupted, looking apologetic for ruining the moment that Burt would had dearly loved to call a bonding moment, but was it? Was it really?
He had no idea how to get close to the boy, and it was frustrating to think that an occurrence as limited as eye contact was considered 'bonding'.
"Everything's in the car?" Burt checked gruffly while Kurt shifted awkwardly on the spot.
"All set," Justin confirmed with a sharp nod. "The guitar case has already been checked out-" Kurt flinched at the mention, and stroked the metal latch lovingly. "-so it'll be safe to go on the plane. You got your passports?"
Burt patted his coat pocket, which held his wallet, keys and two passports. The first was his own, and the second was a police documentation that would have to double as a passport for the journey, leaving Burt to get one for his son in his own time. Kurt hadn't seen it yet, and Burt was wary to let him. At the top it read in clear bold Kurt Hummel, as all legal registration of Kurt as a US citizen now read.
The older man wasn't too sure how the boy would react to seeing it written so clearly for the world to see. Kurt Hummel, Burt's name attached so abruptly onto the end of his own.
"Right then…Kurt?"
Like a deer caught in headlights, Kurt's eyes flitted wide from one man to the other, cautiously watching their exchange. This was it. He was about to say goodbye to New York City.
"It's time to go, bud," Burt said in his most welcoming tone. Time to go home, he wanted to say, but he lacked the courage. Or perhaps it really would have been too much to say that quite yet.
Kurt didn't say a word. He simply nodded, his unfailing grip tightening on the guitar case, and followed the two men out of the room. He stopped at the chest of drawers to reach over and slip something out of it. Burt caught sight of the blue jumper that had initially paused his beating heart, now in his son's hands, and something warm flooded his stomach at the thought of Kurt finding some comfort from an old piece of his clothing, no doubt given to him by his mother.
It was as if he had always been there to provide some form of homely shelter for Kurt, even before he knew of his existence.
"Want to wear it, kid? Or should I put it in the case for you?" Justin asked briskly once they had left the stifling confines of the abandoned building.
For a brief moment Burt thought Kurt was going to slip it on over his cheaply supplied jeans and jumper, which had been picked up for him by the nurse who had spent the most time caring for him over the past two weeks, but then he handed it to the sergeant. Justin reached over to accept it, knowing not to get too close, and handled it with a pleasantly surprising degree of delicacy as he opened the boot of the car and folded it into Burt's case.
Burt turned to the boy beside him, and their gazes caught again.
This time, though a blush stained the unblemished patches of Kurt's cheeks, the stare lasted. Burt shrugged, almost as if to say, well then? and Kurt, to his surprise, nodded.
And as they returned to the back of the car, staring out of their respective windows with the radio barely playing in the background, the airport drawing ever closer, Burt allowed himself to hope that maybe, just maybe, he could actually do this.
