Author's Note: The song featured with lyrics below is "How To Tame Lions" by Megan Washington, the namesake song for this fanfiction. Blaine is thinking of "The Special Two" by Missy Higgins.
Chapter Ten
It's been a week since Kurt last saw Blaine.
The scratch on his wrist from falling backwards into the lavender bush, from being pushed, has almost healed. The snow is melting outside his window. The screen on his phone, which is never further than a few inches from his hand, is still broken.
And all Kurt wants to do is explain himself, to halt Blaine in his melodramatic conclusion-jumping and show him the truth, but Blaine hasn't answered a single message, he's ignored each call, he's deleted most of his online presence and is ignoring the rest. And Kurt, having been forcibly removed from Blaine's home, is in no rush to visit in person no matter how much he wants to.
It's all enough to make Kurt wonder if he, himself, is at fault here. He's looked at the "incriminating" message – it was the first thing he did after picking himself up from the bushes and calling a cab – and he can see how Blaine could have read it – the flirty outfit approval, the rose. Hell, if the situation was reversed, he might have assumed things as well.
Kurt can't help thinking that perhaps he should have told Blaine about Dave having a boyfriend, but he always tries not to bring him up in conversation, because he knows how upset it makes Blaine.
Which is a problem, too.
The way Kurt reads the situation is thus: he screwed things up in December when he didn't tell Blaine about Dave's call, he screwed up again when he met Dave before telling Blaine about the situation, he screwed up when he expected his boyfriend to understand while being kept on the outside.
Blaine screwed up too of course, but Kurt's all for the self-loathing this week.
He passes the week in a blur of musical clichés. He's certain that at one point, Marcus is pretty much ready to confiscate his laptop and deprive him of his completely fitting and entirely too intense playlist – songs to cry to, songs to scream to, songs that make him feel a million times better, a million times worse.
He finds himself validating his actions that week by the song lyrics he hears, convincing himself that staying in his room for days is the perfect course of action, that it's not his fault and that it is his fault, that things are fine and that the world has ended. But for all the songs he expresses himself through, all the lyrics he sings until his voice hurts, not one tells him how to fix things.
He spends hours on the phone to Mercedes, telling her everything and begging her to not talk to Blaine in turn. He talks through his plans with her; together they compose an email to Blaine, it bounces. Mercedes suggests the flowers on Thursday and Kurt leaves the apartment for the first time in days to visit the florist down the street. He stands there for ages, trying to choose a message to send with the bunch he picked out, settling eventually on courage. It was their thing, even if it didn't fit the situation. He hoped it would work.
He regretted it as soon as he got home.
Kurt wasn't surprised when he still didn't hear from Blaine after that.
He figured that, at this point, things were over.
He wakes with a start on Saturday, as a few loud electric notes come from the other side of the bedroom and abruptly stop. His eyes snap open to see his Marcus at his own desk, looking perplexedly at his laptop and unplugged headphones.
"Sorry, Kurt. I didn't mean to wake you. I thought these were plugged in."
"I's'okay," Kurt yawns as he sits up, pulling his covers with him as he curls his knees up. "I recognise the song."
Marcus takes this as an invitation, pressing play and turning the volume down a little.
How do you tame a lion? It was a savvy answer, the repartee and argument. You look like a dancer.
Kurt doesn't even notice that he's crying until Marcus brings him a box of tissues and sits on the edge of his bed, pulling him into a brotherly hug.
"Blaine had this album. We listened to it one summer. Every. Single. Day. I got so sick of it." Kurt laughs through his sobs.
I do not know what you want, I do not know what you want, do not know what you feel, do not know if it's…
"Do you want me to turn it off?" Marcus asks concernedly as he lets Kurt go.
"It's okay," he replies, hugging his knees.
So we'll just be happy, happy now. And tomorrow we'll be miserable, right?
"It's not okay. Blaine is a jerk and you're a wreck."
Kurt smiles at Marcus with tear-stained eyes. "I will be okay. Just, not today."
"Yes, today. Get out of bed; we're going for some retail therapy." Marcus raps him on the knees as he stands up from the bed. "I'll go put the coffee on for you. Pop tart?"
You can take the east side and I'll take the west. You know I liked it better before all of the scars on your chest.
"Thanks, but I'd rather not ingest sugared cardboard. I'll be out in a moment."
How do you tame a lion when they are lying low? You'll be my Arthur Miller and I will be your Marilyn Monroe.
The song ends as Marcus carries the laptop from the room and into the kitchen. A more upbeat song, this one from a different album and one that Kurt doesn't know, begins. He closes the bedroom door against the sound while he searches for his clothes and his shower things – he doesn't dare to leave expensive skincare products around housemates who don't value their use or value.
Every little movement hurts. At the beginning of the week it was more an emotional ache, but this is the pain of unused limbs and restless sleep. It's not a sharp pain, more a dull throb. It takes all of his effort to stay upright in the shower as he becomes suddenly aware of how weak he is. But really, if he thinks about it, he hasn't eaten in a week. Milky coffee, soda and pita chips may have kept him going, but they hardly counted as sustenance. As he turns off the water and wraps himself in a towel, he considers maybe accepting that pop tart after all.
In the end, he and Marcus agree to postpone the shopping trip until the afternoon at least. Marcus enlists the help of Deakin, who is also floating about the apartment, and together they set out to make the tastiest brunch known to man on whatever they can locate in the fridge and cupboards.
Kurt sits on one of the stools at the counter and sips at his coffee as the others work on choc-chip pancakes (for Deakin) with fresh fruit (for Marcus) and yoghurt (for Kurt). Toby stumbles in, laden with cameras, as the first pancakes are flipped. The music gets gradually louder and louder, and soon enough the girls from across the hall are knocking at the door and asking for them to quiet down. Toby links up his laptop to the television and shows them his latest footage, asking opinions and advice. Marcus pulls out a few color schemes he's been working on, Kurt critiques his use of aubergine as a feature wall, Deakin burns the pancakes.
It's so very normal, as they all erupt into laughter at the blackened mess, that Kurt almost forgets he's meant to be upset.
There's another knock at the door. The closest, Kurt stands up and opens it, ready to apologise get again to pink-haired Jeanette about the noise.
About a head shorter and a lot less curvy, Blaine Anderson is standing there instead. Unshaven, dressed in old clothes and ratty sneakers, he looks as rough as Kurt feels.
Kurt's grip tightens on the door handle. Blaine curves his shoulders inwards. They stand there, staring at each other in silence – Kurt shocked, Blaine humbled.
"Hey, Hummel! Who is it?" Toby calls out, enough to snap them both from their trance.
"Can I…?" Blaine looks hopeful as he nods towards the interior of the apartment. Kurt shakes his head.
"Not until you tell me why you're here." Kurt's voice is trembling and he's surprised his legs haven't given way.
"I've been an idiot, Kurt, such a fool." Blaine speaks quickly but deliberately, as if he's rehearsed but is worried of forgetting the words. "Nick called me. He told me everything. And I thought I'd come around and serenade you. I wanted to find a song that told you how low I've been this week and how terrible I was to you and how sorry I was and all I could think was Missy Higgins and, fuck, I'm not going to s-"
Kurt holds up a finger and gives an intense look, causing Blaine to pause. He takes a deep breath, he closes his eyes, he opens them again.
He steps forwards and pulls Blaine into an embrace.
"I'm sorry, too," he says softly, genuinely. "I shouldn't have made things with Dave so secretive." He pulls away enough to look into Blaine's eyes, a hand brushing through his curly mane of dark hair. My own lion to tame. "You believe me, don't you, when I say that nothing happened and nothing will ever happen?"
"I do… I do, now. Oh…" Blaine is shaking, fighting back tears, "I thought I'd lost you. I thought I'd ruined everything."
"Shhh. Hush, sweetie." Kurt hugs him tight again, his own eyes watering. "It's not your fault. I'm as much to blame as you are. We screwed up. But it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay."
They stand there, swaying gently in the hallway, until the sound of someone clearing their throat breaks them apart. Kurt's housemates are standing in the doorway, not one of them looking impressed.
"You've got some nerve coming around here, Blaine." Marcus's voice is steady, but Kurt can hear that he's angry.
"It's okay, guys. Really." Kurt is suddenly hyperaware of his arms wrapped low and loose around Blaine's waist, their bodies pressed close, the comfort of the situation, the rightness.
"We're sorting things out," Blaine offers in turn.
Toby looks them up and down and Deakin says "Maybe you should bring it in out of the hallway."
Kurt's not sure if he means the conversation or Blaine.
They start by sitting at either end of Kurt's tiny twin bed. Slowly, in detail, they each tell their own side of the story.
Blaine expresses the jealousy that Dave has been causing him since December, how he's only just worked out what that hot feeling in his chest was whenever he heard the name. He tells Kurt how easy it was to make assumptions, how cut off he felt from that part of Kurt's life, how he respects that Kurt needs his own friends, how childish he's been about the situation, how he tried so hard to be perfect, to match up to the grand romances of the musicals and the movies, and how he feels like he's failed.
Kurt explains everything that's been going on, all of Dave's uncertainties that he's not sure he's even meant to share. He calls Blaine out for pushing him away – literally – and for a controlling streak. He complains about the melodrama, about the insistence on a sort of perfection that's just unrealistic, that causes issues. He doesn't need serenades and dates planned to the minute, as nice as they are, if it's going to make things more difficult.
The conversation is not an easy one for either boy, each feeling much older in that hour than their nineteen years apiece. After the apologies are made and the tears are shed, they lay facing each other on that tiny bed, legs intertwined and hands clasped. They share a gentle kiss.
Things are always going to change, nothing can stop that – Kurt and Blaine know this as well as anyone now – but having someone there, someone who'll stick around through the changes, who loves you in spite of your flaws, because of your flaws, who has flaws of their own that you love in turn, is nothing short of a bonus.
The point is to fight the demons and to tame the lions, to come out smiling at the end of it.