A/N: Well, we have finally reached the end! Honestly I thought there might still be another chapter, but here we go: The last installment of the series :D I hope you like it and thanks again for all the comments and everything! It really does mean a lot to me ^-^
Disclaimer: I own nothing except for my minor OC just to help roll the storyline on a bit. The title comes from the song At Your Door by Alexi Murdoch, and Glee and its characters belong to FOX and Ryan Murphy.
Warnings: Angst and swearing, but not too much.
They weave parallels in the sand, between now and then. Glimpses of past and present that blend together in a myriad of utter beauty. And in them, they find shades of memories repressed and thought forgotten.
"You know, I was a rep for the LGBT club at uni." Kurt says slowly, finally, deliberately.
Blaine watches him, remaining wistfully silent.
"There is that point when someone needs your help to accept the world or themselves. And it's your duty to tell them it'll get better and that even if some people will always hate you, you cannot let that get you down. So I did. I did it perfectly too. Told them all about how the most important thing was not to care what others thought about you. I literally sat there for two hours, lying through my teeth. Because honestly, I couldn't help but think that the most important thing that helped me accept myself was having someone to share it with."
For a moment, it's as if a small slither of the past slips through a rip in time and Blaine catches himself in the act of reaching out to take Kurt's hand. He wants, just once more if that's all he can hope for, to take the younger boy's hands in his own. He wants, again, to feel the security of having a fixed point in the universe that won't ever change,
"You saved my life." Blaine murmurs eventually, his eyelids flickering slightly under the weight and the relief at the admittance. "Literally. The day you came to Dalton. I mean, not in the over clichéd skipping of a heartbeat, love at first sight, drowning in those beautiful eyes, the colour of which I'm still trying to debate – that only came later…" he adds quickly, clarifies while he can, while the little alcohol he downed back at the bar is still rushing through his bloodstream like an imperceptible poison, infecting him with possibly too foolish bravery.
"I had never seen someone so shocked at something as simple as a handshake." Kurt takes into his sight the ocean and he blinks away a tear like it's nothing, feels a heaviness in the pit of his stomach because he doesn't want Blaine to notice the bead of glass that rolls into the dry sand. "It took forever to get you out of your little, porcelain shell, but I've never regretted trying."
Again, like so often lately, Blaine feels his throat constrict in an almost morbidly elating way. He isn't ready to let tears flow freely yet. He blinks away the tears, he holds his breath for moments uncounted and lets the feeling wash over him and dissolve in the distraction of water droplets falling languidly besides his skin, onto it, creeping underneath it. Because it's the only way he feels able to talk anymore, Blaine closes his eyes and conjures himself somewhere else, makes his mental body reappear in his old dorm room in Dalton. The only place of complete peace he has always known. "Nothing ever hurt so much as not understanding why it had to end…" his voice catches on the last syllable painfully, the word in conjunction with Kurt that he omitted from his vocabulary ten years ago, to eradicate any potential cracks in an otherwise perfect veneer over a broken heart.
It's there again. A sharp pain pulsating through Kurt as he realises he bit his lip too hard, a harsh breath ignored for the purpose of being brought into nonexistence. Pain, pain, pain, and stabs of courage ignored, pushed away, leaving him at the last second before he tries to speak with them.
Water is falling more heavily on them now. Darkness forms on their shirts in circles ever expanding. Kurt's face stares at the sky. The rain takes the tears with it, clears Kurt's mind of absolutely everything so that he barely feels a feather light touch. When he does, and instinct kicks in, Blaine is ready. The soprano jerks away from the touch and bolts up. Practice has made his predispositions when it comes to Blaine flare up at the lightest of suggestions. He has to run, again, has to get away from pain, from promises only to be broken, from everything.
Moments like this are when Blaine realises how much he hates that Kurt is the better athlete. Blaine can keep the boy in sight as the rain falls harder and harder, but he has no hopes of catching up and when several young men stop him, step in front of him, tell him not to harass the poor boy he's running after, it only serves to separate the distance. It could never sever it. This is the one time when Blaine will not let Kurt get away with this. Before, the younger boy had needed space. Right now, Blaine needs the closeness. And Kurt, as much as he hates to admit it, needs it too.
"Kurt! Stop running away from me!"
They stop at opposite ends of the street in the rain and wow Blaine can't help but think, this is a black and white movie cliché too overdone, except that there's no kissing, no passionate embrace within the thundering torrents of rain. Their skin prickles with the cascading water droplets, they taste the moist air on their tongues. Cars screech by left and right, caught up in their chase for shelter and a cat skitters by in its panic to avoid her fur soaking. And all the while there is a hard conclusion to their facts.
It will always end like this. Poles in the rain, north and south. Paths will cross and divide again, only to interfold with each other at accidental intervals, as their lives unfold. Their unwritten story is one of unresolved meetings and the inevitable that will come to pass like the promised constant of yearly autumn. In the end, their fates and centripetal.
"I thought breaking up would mean closure. I didn't want a long-distance relationship because I was afraid, but breaking up just made it worse. I spent days on-end wondering 'Who's he with? Did he find someone? How long did it take him to find someone new?'
Because you left, Blaine! You went to the other side of the goddamn country and you left me behind in Lima, freaking Ohio, while you went off partying and god knows what in California! You-"
"Here." A folded sheet catches Kurt's peripheral vision. Just hangs there, in the air, held up by nimble fingers that, minutes before, had been scrambling through the contents of the brown leather bag. And when Kurt moves to take the sheet, angry curiosity painted over his face, he feels the calloused fingertips that tell him Blaine hasn't given up the guitar. The touch brings up memories so vividly, he jumps slightly. They had always been feeble, repressed more and more easily over the years, but now, Kurt can't help but remember those calloused fingers and the way they used to trace over his cheeks when Blaine kissed him softly, the way they could make him shudder violently when they caressed his chest and-
He shakes off the feeling, his breath coming in short, hollow bursts and his vision is still too blurred to make out the exact words he finds on the paper when he opens it.
"What is this?"
"My acceptance letter, from Columbia."
Kurt falters. His fingers curl around the paper to avoid letting it fall into the puddle that slowly forms from a bed of rain drops that may as well count as tears at the rate they flow from their reddening eyes. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"You didn't give me a reason why you were walking away from us. I thought that maybe I'd – that maybe you'd stopped loving me or-"
His lips stop shifting with the attempt to form words, move suddenly with a different purpose, instigated by the sudden rush of adrenaline, by Kurt's head snapping towards him and warmth flooding Blaine's body as strong hands frame his face and lips meet his in an almost urgent need to prove something. With it, it sets fibres into an intricate motion. Tiny, rusty mechanics begin to move again as he gives into the feeling, lets his tongue swipe over the soft, slightly chapped lips to moisten them, to bring their mouths closer and let them move together more easily. His hands find that familiar dip of Blaine's throat, trace it with tender fingers. In his mind he chants a mantra, familiar to him like the soft hum of static radio he hears every day on his way to work. A helix of if only forever's that resounds like long forgotten and unexpectedly remembered words to an old song.
They are hunting for a memory, a vestige of what can decide their fate; make the choice for them. Blaine's lip trembles against Kurt's neck, where it leaves wet, desperate marks and fits perfectly into the cress he found so many years back. Without his subconscious tearing him away from the moment, he is not going to stop. Because right now, all he feels is that he belongs, that this is where he's meant to be, even if the 'this' is tangled towels on a bed made of grains intermixed with the strengthening wind, a lull of soft gasps and the fusing of names and the unmistakeable smell of the sea. Beneath it all, what he will remember of this moment is the hum of a steady heartbeat, fluttering away into the mid-morning sunlight, the tickle of light-brown hair against his chest, matted down with perspiration and the soft, lazy trails Kurt's fingers leave as they stroke over his hands, his arms, up over his back and when Blaine feels the younger boy's embrace lighten dangerously quickly, he draws him close and whispers to him.
"Stop running"
There's kisses in the rain and tears mingling with the dewy raindrops, rolling down lips in little droplets, moistening the kisses. There's an explosion of thunder up above as the sky splits in two for a crackle of a second, light blasting through the scene. There's the stillness of the moment, the way they simply look at each other, green against brown, a mesh of grass and mud complimenting each other beautifully. A palette of colours swims through their vision and when they breathe, it's a shiver, not from the cold but from the raw, intense feeling that lays itself out before them in flesh and blood.
They will work this out. Somehow, they will. They will find the way back to the place where they could speak unreserved about everything. They will find again the closeness they once shared, the intimacy and safety they found in each other's presence.
There's the feel of soft fingertips grazing his jawline, emanating a perfume of almonds, because it's all Kurt knows to do at this moment and the sound of Blaine sighing contentedly, because it's all he wants from it. When they whisper I love you's and never leave me's, it's only the wind that hears, the softness of their voices carried away on a stream of air, so that they only see lips moving almost intelligibly, but it's enough.
Maybe, it was always meant to be like this. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, right? They know they would never have lasted in High School. Tribulations and regret that would ultimately have torn them apart have passed now. They have achieved all goals but one. They have all the time they need now. And all the promise of a happy future they could want.
Later, they watch movies again, lost in a haze of brown and grey hues, discoloured by their age.
And the next time they find themselves at the beach, they walk hand in hand, arms swinging back and forth in perfect interloped synchrony. When the night becomes a drowsy haze, they sit, lean against each other in the warm, chiselled sand. This time, their lines trace together in a new pattern. A pattern that shows them only possibilities, never the past. For the first time, their future is a promised 'together'.
fin.