Limits
Summary: Taken from a prompt on the Glee Angst Meme. Burt Hummel's dead, Kurt Hummel's doing his best to stay under the radar of Child Services, and the bullying is quickly bringing him to the end of his steadily shortening rope. The tiny, unused razor in the jewelry box seems to agree with that assessment. So it is really any wonder that when he catches sight of a blue police box left open just a crack that he would run inside?
Disclaimer: Nope. No, no, no.
AN: As always, thank you so much for all the reviews and alerts. I'm constantly being surprised at how much this feedback this story is receiving. Oh, and I keep getting asked this, this is Ninth Doctor. Just want to make that absolutely, totally clear since apparently it hasn't been. XD Also, this chapter features Jack. I'm going to make it clear right now, I've never seen Torchwood so I am absolutely not comfortable with his character outside of what we see in the Whoniverse. Therefore, no pairings. Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not going to risk writing something badly for the sake of writing it.
"When are we and why exactly am I dressed like this? I'm all for vintage and this suit is amazing, but…" Kurt trailed off and glanced down at himself, garbed in a bright red, open tailored suit and a pair of genuine Beatle boots. Next to him, Rose did a quick spin on her pumps, marveling at the fit of her bright yellow shift, swinging her matching bag out in front of her. Dressed as normal (how did he even get away with that?), the Doctor smiled smugly at the both of them.
"February 9th, 1964. New York, New York."
Rose cocked her head, but Kurt's jaw dropped.
"…no," he breathed, "No way."
"What, what are we here for?" Rose asked, glancing between the two of them.
Kurt didn't think it was possible, but the Doctor got even smugger, turning and beginning to walk in the opposite direction, whistling a familiar, jaunty tune. Kurt bolted after him.
"Doctor, oh my god, are you serious? Really? Oh my god, how are we going to get in? There's no way they'll just let us waltz right in—" Kurt broke off when the Doctor flipped a white card out of his coat and twirled it between his fingers.
"Psychic paper, people will see whatever gets the job done."
"Handy. Where can I get one?"
"Oi!" Rose hollered, "Girl in heels back here! Slow down before I take the shoes off, catch up, and then clobber you both with them!"
"Rose, come on! Come on!"
It was almost worth getting the weird looks from people on the street to see Kurt practically bouncing, looking a strange mixture of lost and gobsmacked and mixed with genuine excitement. There was something so familiar about this date and it was starting to drive her nuts because it had to be big to set him off like that, but she couldn't think of it.
"February 9th, 1964, New York, New York," the Doctor repeated when Rose had caught up, "The American live debut of The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, performed in front of an audience of over seven-hundred and watched by over forty percent of the United States. We're going to do better than watch it on the telly."
This time it was Rose's turn to drop her jaw and she glanced to Kurt, who looked maybe about two seconds from literally dragging them the rest of the way to the station. A little smile tilted at her lips and she offered an arm to each of her companions. The Doctor slipped his arm through hers without hesitation but Kurt paused a moment before eventually looping his through as well.
She beamed at him.
"Well, what are we waiting for? We've got a concert to get to!"
Kurt was floating and this time it was the happy floating because holy damn, how many people got to do this? He'd seen the videos on Youtube, certainly, but nothing had compared to being there and soaking up the atmosphere, to seeing them right there from the special seats that the Doctor had procured with his psychic paper. He and Rose had shrieked and flailed with the best of them while the Doctor had merely stood on his other side, laughing his head off at them both.
Kurt bounced through "All My Loving" and swayed appropriately through "Till There Was You"; pumped his fist in the air and sang along to "She Loves You" and "I Saw Her Standing there".
"Oh yeah, I'll tell you something I think you'll understand,"
He'd completely frozen and gone stone-still.
For the first minute, Kurt could only stand there and blink back tears because this song was so precious and he was standing right there, watching The Beatles play for the first time in America and in a few years, his father would be alive. So young, younger than him, forever unaware that on the other side of the country and three years before, he had a son who was watching history being made and who was thinking of him.
Lima was a small town.
Maybe Burt Hummel and Elizabeth Stewardson would live close to one another, maybe they'd play together. Maybe they'd pretend to get married, if girls didn't have cooties yet.
They wouldn't know what the future would hold: that they actually would get married, that they would live in Lima for the rest of their lives, that they would have a gay son who owned too many shoes who would watch them both pass away and who would become a time traveler all before he could legally buy pornography.
They wouldn't know, not until later, what was so special about this performance. They definitely wouldn't know that years and years from now, they'd both be singing this song to Kurt. Maybe they'd watch old re-runs and wonder what it would have been like to be there; maybe the camera would pan over the three of them for a second and Burt Hummel wouldn't have any idea that he'd just seen into the future.
For the first time in his life, Kurt understood the meaning of small town nostalgia.
About halfway through the song, the sides of his lips tipped upwards and Kurt reached out with both of his hands, lacing his fingers with the Doctor's, lacing his fingers with Rose's.
He squeezed and didn't make eye contact, but his smile widened just a little bit when he received twin squeezes back.
Kurt's footsteps echoed through the main room of the TARDIS and he sat down on the floor next to the open floor shaft that was currently emitting clanging noises that sounded disturbingly like a wrench hitting metal.
"Back again?" The Doctor's voice filtered upwards like it always did because try as he might, Kurt still couldn't sleep through the night two months later.
Kurt smiled weakly in response, one hand coming up to rub circles into his temple. The Doctor leveled him with an impressively dry look in return.
"Yeah. Uh…bad dreams."
Kurt wasn't sure if it was an improvement or not that he'd traded in his insomnia for straight-up nightmares, but it was probably best not to think too hard about it.
"Can I ask you something?"
"You already did, but go."
Kurt shifted a little, biting at his lip.
"Are there a lot of you running around? I mean—Time Lords, I mean."
The instant the words were out of his mouth, Kurt realized that he'd just walked right in on That Bad Subject. The entire atmosphere changed, going from amiable and companionable to split-second tense and Kurt raised his hands, backpedaling.
"Sorry, nevermind. Forget I said anything—"
"They're gone," the Doctor said shortly, voice stiff and stone-cold and Kurt knew that kind of tone because he used it when he couldn't afford to be sad. "Every last one of them but me gone, perished in the Time War. Rose already knows so you might as well hear it from me instead of someone else; I was the one who did it. I decimated them all to end it. I destroyed our enemies, but I destroyed my own planet to do it."
Kurt went cold. There were drums in his ears –no, sorry, that was his heart- and it felt like a brick of ice had settled in his stomach, cold and hard and heavy. The Doctor was just watching him with a resigned, crooked smile that Kurt fucking knew and he wanted to do something, anything to get it off his face because it was so wrong to smile when everything in your eyes screamed that you were in agony.
Why yes, Kurt Hummel knew the meaning of the word 'hypocrisy'.
Kurt had thought that he'd known pain, known sadness, known loathing. He'd lost his family, his control, his rope connecting him to anything stable. The Doctor must have had family too; friends and possible lovers and people he despised that were gone now. The magnitude.
He liked the man, respected him, trusted him, but he'd never had felt such an intense (and ultimately futile) need to protect someone quite like this. The feeling was forceful and burned cold and shook Kurt to his core because not once did the idea that there might have been any other way out occur to him and that wasn't like Kurt at all.
At least it wasn't like old Kurt.
Old Kurt would have been horrified at the very thought of having that kind of option as even being on the table.
New Kurt couldn't help but think differently.
There were literally no words. No words could make it better or fix it because it wasn't something you could smack with a wrench or stick a bandage on and Kurt couldn't even fix himself, much less ever think highly enough of himself to presume that he could make something like that even remotely better.
But he couldn't just sit there like some useless statue, because that damned smile was still there and Kurt seethed with the unfairness and anger and sympathy.
Pale and trembling, the boy crept forward to hover over the hole in the floor and reached out to just barely brush the Doctor's shoulder with his hand, settling it steadily.
He couldn't offer platitudes, wouldn't and couldn't and didn't want to offer platitudes because even though he didn't know details and frankly didn't want details, Kurt liked to think that the best of the Doctor was the person who'd hollered at him and thrown open his father's door and stalked him down the street in the middle of winter and taken them to a Beatles concert because he knew that Kurt would appreciate it.
If that was the best of the Doctor, than it was more than worth it for the worst.
And if it wasn't the best?
Kurt had every intention of hanging around long enough to see it.
Blue eyes locked and Kurt held his gaze even though it was dark and heavy and he was actually a little bit scared because he had no business barking up that tree.
Finally, the Doctor nodded and Kurt took back his hand, twisting them together in his lap.
The silence was oppressive and grave and Kurt bit his lip because there were no words. Until,
"Hand me that—"
The nonsensical wrench with the curvy bit on the end was in the Doctor's hand before he could finish the request.
There was no logical reason for Kurt to like Jackie Tyler so much.
The woman was loud, overbearing, pushy, and had the same godawful roots that plagued her daughter, but Kurt just couldn't help but like her. Oh, he tried. Futilely but he did try, if only out of habit but then she'd looked down, caught sight of his Doc Martens, and asked where in God's name he'd managed to get a pair in nuclear green and where could she find some, and Kurt was gone.
There was simply no hope after that; she'd cemented herself right alongside Rose and the Doctor on Kurt's short list of 'People I Think Are Kind Of Really Awesome'. She apparently thought the same of him but had also made it her duty to mother him into madness every time they dropped in, something that he and Rose exchanged long-suffering eye rolls over once he realized that he was stuck with it.
Have you eaten yet, Kurt? How the blazes do you even know when to sleep in that blasted thing? Rose, is that a bruise on your arm?
Essentially, they'd bonded. It started from a mutual love of shoes, but then Jackie had popped on the television and suddenly it was two hours later and they'd really just spent that entire time watching back-to-back episodes of A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila and Rose was staring at them in horror as if she'd somehow created a monster.
Kurt didn't see what the big deal was.
While Kurt got along fabulously well with Jackie (better than the Doctor did, anyway), he and Mickey did not enjoy each other's company.
At all.
Kurt had by no means forgotten about homophobia, but after visiting enough places inhabited by people who'd like to shoot you down for the shape of your ears or because you weren't green and covered in fur, opinions about his sexuality weren't exactly at the forefront of his mind to worry about. He'd been starkly reminded of it the first time he met the guy and he got The Look.
It wasn't the Really Bad Look that always made him want to posture and speak with knives instead of words, but enough of a one that it ruffled his feathers and Kurt may or may not have taken more potshots at him than he otherwise would have. Those potshots didn't help their relationship in the slightest. It had actually been the first time that he and Rose had really clashed because Mickey drove her nuts and she wasn't particularly fond of his comments herself but he was still her boyfriend, which was just one more thing to add to the list because Kurt refused to accept that he was even remotely good enough for her.
What kind of boyfriend just sat around and waited for his girl when he could have gone with her? What kind of boyfriend just waited around even when he never knew when she'd be back?
It was obvious that Rose had chosen the Doctor (even if it wasn't in an overtly romantic manner, but Kurt thought that whoever thought that it wasn't had to be blind) over and over again, every time she left.
And if Kurt happened to notice that the Doctor went a funny combination of agitated and reluctantly pleased about his opinion on the matter, who was he to say anything about it?
A few days after they ended up picking up one Captain Jack Harkness right before the man's ship exploded (Kurt didn't even want to think about that little trip because he'd never be able to see a gas mask without shivering ever again), Kurt had come to the conclusion that that was how he wanted to go about approaching his sexuality.
Clearly, it wasn't such a big deal in the 51st century but Kurt couldn't help but marvel at how easy he made it, tossing off the flirty winks, shoulder shoves, and come-ons to all of them indiscriminately.
Rose brushed them off and they made the Doctor laugh, but Kurt had been thrown to the point of speechlessness when the man walked by and gave him a good-natured squeeze on the rear without as much as a by-your-leave. He'd just stood there, open-mouthed and wide-eyed and holy hell he'd just been hit on.
Nonchalantly and without expectation, but for the first time in his short life, Kurt had been legitimately hit on.
By a guy. Not just a guy, but a really, really attractive guy.
It was official; he might actually be able to die happy.
"Oi, he's too young for you!" The Doctor called out and Kurt flushed red because yeah, totally not the only person in the TARDIS right now and now the Doctor was laughing at him. Jack flapped a hand at him.
"Hey now, you don't know that."
"I know that you've got more lasciviousness in your pinky finger than his brain can deal with." The Doctor smirked and Jack snorted with laughter.
"Who, little me? I'm an innocent daisy, really."
"Innocent, my arse."
Jack batted his lashes.
"And isn't it just my good luck that everyone in this thing, including myself, possesses a spectacular one of those?"
He tossed off one more, just-as-saucy-as-the-first wink to Kurt who went even redder and half-tripped out of the TARDIS, stuttering something about grocery shopping.
He completely missed the entirely too amused,
"What did I tell you? You scrambled his brains and now he doesn't even remember that humans aren't around yet." That followed him out.
It was entirely worth the how-was-the-snerk-shopping's two hours later when Kurt returned with his pockets bulging with the weirdest and most delicious fruits to be able to say,
"Just fine, thanks. Did you know that the monkeys will throw these down if you toss them some Bugles? I can shop anywhere. Fear me."
AN: And there we have it! The mental image of Kurt and Jackie just sitting around and watching trashy television is one that I will enjoy for the rest of my days. Please leave a review if you enjoyed this but if you want to try and knock me into space with a killdozer, I'm more than willing to engage in combat. Thank you for reading!