Title: Keeping the Balance
Author: sun_and_rain
Rating: PG-13
Warning: deals with issues of consent, homophobia, and memory loss
Summary: They met up once a week, to gather stories and fragments of memories like puzzle pieces. No one recognized the name when Kurt first spoke it–a name he'd found buried somewhere in his dreams–but he couldn't shake the feeling that it was important: "Blaine". Whatever had been taken from them had something to do with Blaine.


A/N: And we're back to Kurt! Enjoy! Any constructive criticism is more than welcome! Please review if you like the chapter, dears!


Chapter Three: A Grand Memory For Forgetting


"I know you."

The boy searched him with careful, hopeful eyes. "Yes," he said softly.

Kurt smiled and reached, locking their fingers together. The boy stared down at their intertwined hands, a look passing over his face Kurt couldn't describe as anything but childlike bewilderment—almost as if he had never held hands with someone in his life. His lips echoed Kurt's smile. "What do you know?" he asked.

"I know your name," Kurt said. The boy's head snapped up. "I remembered it when I woke up this morning."

The smile grew on his face, and Kurt hesitated to remove it.

"I… don't remember it now," he finally admitted, shame coloring his voice. "I forgot it by the time I found a pen. But I had it, briefly, I had it. It starts with a B."

B swallowed and glanced once more down at their entangled hands.

"What—else do you know?" he said haltingly.

"Your eyes are hazel," Kurt offered, wincing a little. It sounded pathetic when he said it like that, but it had seemed like such an achievement when he was conscious. "I remember that when I'm awake."

B only smiled sadly, in a resigned, bleak way. He tugged away his hand and, in the same move, tugged panic from Kurt's chest.

"Don't give up on me," he blurted, a sudden fear gripping him at the look in B's eyes. "Please, I'll remember—don't give up on me!"

B shook his head, the smile still small and heartbreaking on his lips.

"Never," he said simply.

But his eyes stayed sad as he began to tell Kurt—again—for who knew how many times—what he couldn't remember. There was something so tired and remote about his expression. He looked like he had lived for ages.

Kurt's fingers tingled with missing warmth.


He wanted to scream.

Frustration built up inside of him at the appearance of every empty space he found in his brain, damming up his arteries like poison. He felt like he was slipping backwards. Previously, he would wake up and remember a feature or a tone of voice and keep it for the rest of the day. But recently, he'd get brief flashes of the whole of his memories, three precious minutes of knowing everything he'd lost and then forgetting it all—and it was all of it that he'd forget, losing precious pieces of knowledge he had clung to for days, had known as facts for much longer than three minutes, all in a flash of white. He felt like he had been dropped in the middle of a desert without a map. There was an oasis somewhere, he knew; but no matter how hard he searched, it slipped through his grasping fingers tauntingly. And whenever he began to convince himself it was all a fantasy, the image of it appeared to him in his dreams—and he'd wake, remembering almost nothing of the night before but having ignited a yearning so powerful it still left him breathless to think of it. His head had begun to ache, quietly, as if in response to the clogging frustration pressing upon him, and Kurt knew it was only a matter of time before he broke down and kicked over a chair.

He had had a name. He had known it, it had been there, on the edge of his lips, ready on the tip of his pen for seconds until he drew the beginning line and suddenly he'd blanked and, surprise, had also lost the color of his eyes.

Green.

No, he knew it wasn't green, because he had thought it was green before and he had been wrong—and he remembered being wrong, remembered thinking how could I have ever thought his eyes were green, but for the life of him he couldn't remember the color of his eyes.

God but he wanted to scream!

He stalked into the choir room, hoping against hope that every time he closed his eyelids he'd suddenly see them, round and expressive and—

Had they been blue?

He blinked and noticed Mercedes, who was looking at him in concern.

"Why did you miss school yesterday?" she asked as he sat down next to her in the choir room. "Are you okay?"

"I told you, I'm sick," he said perhaps a little snappishly, looking around the choir room for—what, he didn't know. His gaze landed on the piano and a smile involuntarily twitched his lips. Maybe they were brown. "Did I miss anything crazy in glee club?"

"Just a lecture about attendance and everyone talking about Rachel."

"Why? Did something happen?" Kurt asked immediately. He hadn't been keeping tabs on Rachel the way he'd planned to, too focused on wracking his brain for clues to riddles he could only half-remember.

"She let Quinn into her house yesterday, and no one knows what they talked about. Quinn won't tell anybody." Mercedes continued, not bothering to keep her voice down, and Kurt glanced over at Quinn to find her glaring at them. He raised his chin defiantly as he matched her gaze.

"So you all gave her the third degree?" he asked. Quinn finally looked away, rolling her eyes.

"No dice, Hummel, she won't talk," Puck intruded on their conversation, something almost territorial in his voice. "You won't get anything out of her."

"I wasn't planning to interrogate," Kurt snapped. Mercedes frowned, but anything she might have been about to say was interrupted as Mr. Schue entered the room, carrying stacks of music.

"Okay guys, we're trying something new today!" he announced, passing out the sheet music as he talked. Kurt turned to the front and settled back into his chair

"Michael Jackson?" Mike asked, looking through the music. "And the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs…"

"I was talking to Coach Bieste earlier, and we both want to try to tame some of the animosity between you guys and the rest of the football team." Kurt's breath caught as he thought of Karofsky, a phantom paranoia twisting his gut. "I know a lot of you are playing next week, but Shannon and I thought this would be a great opportunity for all of you to bond. Like I said, we're doing something new: you guys will be performing this song with the football team at half-time."

Kurt thought he might have heard a few cheers, but his ears were ringing and he'd suddenly felt like he'd been submerged in ice.

"Mr. Schue, the football team hates us," Tina protested over the celebrating of Finn, Artie, and Mike. "Why would they want to perform with us? They're constantly letting us know they think we're losers."

"That's why, starting tomorrow, we're going to have the football team join us for rehearsal," Schue stated. There were several protests at that. "Maybe if the team opens up a bit and realizes how much fun they can have, they'll treat you all a little nicer afterward," Schue spoke over the angry voices of the glee club, raising his hands in surrender. "I know it might be hard, but try, guys!"

Santana made a comment in the back that Kurt couldn't hear. "I'm going to ignore that," Schue said pointedly. "Artie, can you, Tina, and Santana split up the verses? Everyone else gather around the piano and Brad will go over your parts." The club groaned as the trudged over, and Kurt watched them, unable to move.

"Kurt," Schue said quietly. Kurt jumped and looked up to see Mr. Schue standing next to him. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Kurt stood up, too stunned to do much else.

Mercedes sent him a worried glance before making her way over to the piano.

Schue looked at him carefully.

"I know you were having some trouble with Karofsky earlier this year," he began, leading them to a quiet corner of the room. "To be honest, that's one of the reasons Coach Bieste brought up this whole idea. But if you're not comfortable doing this: tell me now, Kurt, and you'll be excused from participating."

Kurt studied him with wide eyes, all the times Karofsky had slammed him into lockers swimming in front of him. A rising fear slid up his throat as he thought of the kiss in the locker room; the staring in the cafeteria; the unnerving feeling of spiders running up his arms as—

No, wait, that hadn't…

Kurt blinked, and a sweater suddenly came to mind, one with big, wide buttons that—

"Kurt?" Schue prodded.

Kurt blinked rapidly, shaking his head, and tried to remember the question. Right. Karofsky.

But Karofsky hadn't been giving him too much trouble recently. Not really. Kurt had caught him looking at him too many times to count, but every time Kurt caught his eye, Karofsky immediately looked away. Almost like he didn't want Kurt to know he was looking. And he always looked—disappointed. As if he had been expecting to see something else. Or… something.

Kurt felt a burning curiosity swell inside of him as he wondered what, exactly, Karofsky had been expecting to see. (Or who, a hopeful voice whispered at the back of his mind.)

Swallowing, Kurt made a decision.

"No," he said slowly, sounding out every minute change of vowel. "No, I think I'll be okay."

Schue looked at him with a glint of pride in his eyes (Kurt felt a brief flare of resentment as he wondered what Schue's face would have looked like had Kurt said he'd wanted out). "Okay," he said, smiling and handing Kurt the music. "But let me know if you change your mind."

"I will," Kurt assured him. There was no way he'd spend more time with Karofsky than he absolutely had to. And if things started to get threatening again? Kurt would be out the door before Karofsky could come up with a name for his other fist.

"You can go join everyone else, now," Schue placed a hand on Kurt's shoulder, pushing him off toward the group clustered around the piano.

Mike and Puck were fooling around with some of the erasers as Brad tried to plunk out their chords, fighting mock battles with the markers left in the tray of the whiteboard. A grin tugged at him as he moved towards the piano, and—

Suddenly, briefly, his vision blinded white.

Brad wasn't sitting at the piano.

Someone else was there. Someone with dark hair, and a soft expression; with plump lips; with—

Hazel eyes.

Kurt heard the gasp leaving his lips, but he didn't feel himself make it.

Hazel eyes. Then amber, an eternal, endless hallway of amber in one warm, loving gaze. But also hazel. He…

His stomach cartwheeled, eyes widening as he looked at the boy in front of him, sitting on the piano, playing… he knew that song! He was playing…

The image faded and the rest of the glee club took its place, but Kurt suddenly couldn't stand still. He had to get home—he had to sleep, the minute he got home, he—had to write this down!

Kurt scrambled across the room and tore open his messenger bag, searching wildly for a pen. A pen, a pen, he needed to get this down on paper before he lost it again. The eyes, the hair, the—

"Kurt, what are you doing?" Tina called.

"Just struck by an idea!" Kurt lied frantically. "Let me write this down first and I'll be right over!"

He found his ballpoint and immediately knelt down, flipping over his music and placing it onto the chair, scribbling half-hazardly on the blank back. Hazel, he wrote, amber; both eye colors. Beautiful, endless; Dark hair, slicked back. Small, but not very small, played piano—song? He grasped at the edges of his brain, trying to remember where he'd heard the song before when—

Kurt forgot to breathe.

It struck him—falling like an ax into his brain.

A name.


"I know now!" Kurt said immediately, and he must have said it differently this time, because anticipation coated the air the minute the words escaped him. "I know you!"

"What do you know?" the words tumbled out of the boy's mouth.

"I know your name," Kurt said. "I remembered it!" He let it flutter out of his hands reverently:

"Blaine."

Blaine's expression cracked into something almost disbelieving in its hope. He reached for Kurt's hand, squeezing their palms together as he stepped closer. "Yes," he breathed in a great gust of relief. A stunned, amazed smile began to bloom on his face. "Yes, finally, yes!" he laughed, stumbling closer.

"I know more," Kurt kept going, the knowledge bursting through the seams of his skin and the air quivering in his chest as Blaine moved closer.

"What else do you know?" Blaine's voice was light, breathless in a way Kurt didn't ever remember hearing before.

"Your eyes—they change color."

"Yes. What else?"

"You were taken away."

"Yes."

"You went to school with me. You play piano. You were in the choir room."

"Yes!"

"You love me."

"Yes, always, yes!" Blaine was as close as he possibly could be now, radiating warmth. His free hand came to cup Kurt's neck, right under the ear, naked longing baring his eyes. It sparked something in Kurt that was almost like a memory, and his eyes closed at the strange, familiar, intoxicating warmth of Blaine's hand, the intimate closeness of Blaine's face to his own. Kurt's lips parted, unthinking, oversensitive, his tongue tingling.

"I can't stop thinking about you," he whispered like a secret, too much breath in his voice and he heard Blaine take a shaky inhale. He had to open his eyes at that, to drown in honey-colored irises. "I hear your voice everywhere I go, I see you everywhere, I…"

Blaine was glowing with a happiness that stole Kurt's words.

"You take my breath away." It tumbled out of his mouth in a cascade of painted air, before he had the chance to even think about speaking. "I won't let them keep you away from me. I won't."

"We can beat this. I know we can—Kurt—" Blaine's eyes drowned in water, glossy and beautiful and wet. "God, Kurt…" His hand tightened briefly in Kurt's grasp before he tilted his forehead against Kurt's own. "Say my name again."

"Blaine," Kurt murmured. Blaine let out a trembling huff of air.

"Again," he said.

"Blaine."

"Again."

"Blaine. Blaine, Blaine, Blaine," he echoed, because he could, because he knew the letters now and it made Blaine let out a shuddering laugh that Kurt joined in on, fingers clutching at each other as they finally, finally took a step towards ending this whole mess.

Kurt didn't know who moved first; all he knew was that suddenly there were lips against his, and, having begun, he never wanted to stop kissing Blaine. His tongue came out to taste those lips, trace the line of that mouth he had been aching to taste for days. Blaine's lips opened at the slightest suggestion, and a shiver ran down Kurt's spine as they moved together almost automatically, unthinking, like they had done this too many times before. His hand came up to rest at the back of Blaine's neck, their linked hands separating as he moved the other to the small of Blaine's back and Blaine lightly caressed his hip. Kurt whimpered and shifted closer, fisting Blaine's shirt.

Blaine tore his lips away. "Don't forget me," he said feverishly, intense, pressing his mouth into the skin of Kurt's neck as if to engrave the words there. "Please, not again. Don't." His hands gripped him possessively, and something curled, hot and spiked, in the pit of Kurt's stomach.

Kurt's hands tightened their hold on the boy in his arms. "Not again," he repeated. "Never. I'll remember everything. You'll see!"

Blaine tasted his skin like a man dying of thirst, sucking hard at the corner of his jaw, his jugular, the point where his shoulder met his neck. "Say my name again," he said, voice low and roughened over.

"Blaine," Kurt panted, gasping as Blaine suddenly went for a spot behind his ear that left him boneless. "Blaine," he repeated and Blaine nipped at his skin. "Blaine, Blaine, Blaine, Blaine…" Kurt chanted like a prayer as they sunk into each other, all warmth and pressure and soft touches turning fierce and fiery and desperate. He mouthed it into Blaine's chest, traced it up his arms, scratched it into his back. He whispered it around Blaine's teeth until Blaine claimed his lips and swallowed it from him, and Kurt's eyes closed as he fell into the familiar unfamiliar patterns of playing the notes of Blaine's body.

God, this was it, this was what he'd been searching for—this was what had been taken from him! Tears pricked his eyes and Blaine kissed them away as they rolled down his cheeks. He never wanted to wake up again. If he could stay here, in this place, with this—with Blaine

What had happened that had taken this away? How could he have just forgotten, lost all of this—

He whimpered as Blaine nosed against his throat and down his chest, whispering along the words written there, sounding out ever letter. I love you, I love you, I love you…

Kurt couldn't stop himself from crying.

How could he have forgotten this?