Hello, readers, if in fact there are any of you left – I'm so sorry for the long delay! Things have been crazy lately (holiday season, need I say more?), but I've not abandoned this, so here's a new chapter. I don't think it's a particularly good new chapter, but here it is. Heh. Anyway, though it's three days early for Christmas and a day late for Solstice and I don't know how far off for Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, let's consider it a gift for the holidays. Have a good one, everyone, no matter what you celebrate!

Oh, P.S., I was trying to figure out where exactly this fits in Gleek 'verse – before it had been just generic AU, but since Finn broke up with Quinn in Sectionals, the fic needed some kind of timeline, given that in the fic Finn is still with Quinn. So I made a semi-random choice, and now it officially goes AU from "Ballad" on.

To the fic...

BEATING

Chapter 10

"Hey," Kurt said. His brain seemed to have shifted into slow motion.

"Okay if I..." Finn gestured into the room, then began to move forward, then rocked back on his heels and started playing with the zipper on his jacket. It would have been funny under other circumstances.

"Come in," Kurt replied, gesturing at the seat that Puck had vacated. Finn sat gingerly.

"So..."

"Yes," Kurt said. He wasn't really sure what that meant, but it was better than endless fidgety silence. Sort of.

"So – uh, what was Puck doing here, anyway?" Finn asked, jerking his head toward the doorway.

"Oh – that." Kurt paused, considering. "I guess he was deciding whether he's going to be a man."

"What?"

"Forget it." Another pause. Kurt let his eyes stray along Finn's jaw, clenched in fear. Fear of what? What does he think is going to happen here? "Is that why you're here?" he asked suddenly.

"What? I... what?" Finn stood, started pacing. "Sorry. I... look, I'm sorry. I just..."

"Understandable." Kurt pulled his lips into a tight half-smile for a second, then let it go. "Why are you here, Finn?"

"I'm here because... I wanted..." Finn stopped, ran a hand through his hair. "Shit. I'm sorry. I just – you know?" He waved a hand helplessly, as though Kurt might know.

"No. I don't. Sorry." Once again, the thin half-smile. "If it would help, though, maybe I could guess?" Finn eyed him warily. Kurt went on. "One, you decided it might be nice to pop in at the hospital for a friendly visit – comfort the afflicted and all that? So you dropped by. For the first time. In two months."

"Yeah – I –"

"Two," Kurt continued, "you came by to apologize for not visiting for two months – okay, great, let's hold that for later," he said, waving Finn off. "Three would be that you came to explain why you never visited, and frankly I'm more interested in that than in apologies."

Finn plopped back into the chair, still running his hands through his hair, which was beginning to stick up in spiky tufts. "I know. You're right. I just..." Kurt stared at him, unblinking. He was running high on adrenaline, noticing every detail of Finn's appearance, every waver and crack in Finn's voice hitting his ears sharp and crisp; somehow, though, he found himself observing the scene calmly and clearly. He'd been anticipating this meeting for so long, envisioning different scenarios, hope and fear intermingling. Now, finally, he was going to find out what was what. If Finn would ever say anything.

"Please," Kurt said quietly, and Finn looked up. And for the first time since he'd come into the room, what he was seeing was Kurt. Not the face that had been plastered on protest posters and the front pages of newspapers for months, becoming more impersonal as it gained iconic status; not the face of a victim, weak and small against the white hospital sheets. Not the face of the tragic hero in the overheated soap opera that Finn imagined his life to be, a figure who would point at Finn to proclaim a "J'accuse!" in woeful tones. It was Kurt. Just Kurt.

Not that Kurt had ever been simple. But somehow, Finn had always been able to talk to him. It was no different now.

"Look, what you said about being a man –"

"Yes?"

"That's what I want to do. I want to man up."

Kurt stared at him, poker-faced. "I'm sorry. What does that mean? To you, that is."

"It means... oh, man. Look, I'm really sorry I never visited. Like, alone. I mean, I did, but I didn't know how to... you were asleep, so I..."

"The CD," Kurt said, and a vein twitched in his neck. "I got it."

"Yeah. But after that... I chickened out. I didn't know how to deal with – everything, and... and I was scared."

"Scared of the kids at school? Scared that someone would hurt you?"

"I guess... yeah... but no. I mean, yeah, obviously, but..." Finn paused, let out a long breath. "Okay. I got to explain this."

"Please do." Kurt arched an eyebrow. "Honestly, I haven't understood a thing you've said in the last ten minutes."

Finn huffed out a short half-laugh. "Right. Okay."

Kurt waited.

"So... look. What we were doing..." A blush was already starting to rise in Finn's cheeks. "We never – you know, talked about it. It was just sort of... you know..."

"Yes." And this time Kurt did know. The moment in Finn's attic, helping him to place his father's tie around his neck, when he'd found his face tipped up to Finn's, the light scent of Finn's aftershave flooding his nostrils. The way Finn's face had inclined towards his in tiny increments, and how he'd frozen inches away, poised on the brink of a leap he'd never be able to take on his own. And the way Kurt had reached up to touch Finn's face, how he'd gently – so gently – pressed Finn's eyelids closed. And that was what Finn had needed, and they had kissed. And from then on, through everything they had done, through weeks of locked-room trysts and bogus "study sessions" after school in Finn's bedroom, Finn's eyes had been closed.

Kurt's eyes, of course, were always open.

"So... I mean, I didn't even know what to call it – well, okay, not like I didn't know the words, but –"

"I know.."

"I just didn't... think of it like that. It was like... oh, I don't know. Like, Quinn and the baby and football and college and all of that stuff, that was just... what I figured my life was. And then you and me... man, I just didn't know how to handle it. And... even though I wanted it..." He shook his head. "I just didn't know how to deal with it, or... I don't know, how to think of it as part of my life."

"Finn, I know all of that." Kurt sighed. "I've always known that."

Finn looked a little surprised. :"I don't think I knew all of that until I started thinking about it all in the last couple weeks."

"I knew that, too," Kurt said, and smiled.

"Yeah... well," Finn said, fidgeting. "When you got... when you got beat up... I totally freaked. And I went totally chickenshit. I'm not gonna lie. Like, here you are, and this thing we had going... whatever we had going.... I don't know, but then you're in a coma and it was all my fault." Finn's voice had gone ragged. "All my fault. And –"

"It wasn't all your fault." Kurt wanted, badly, to reach out and take Finn's hand. He quelled the impulse. "Hate's not your fault, Finn. What those guys did isn't your fault. And I've been gay all my life – I mean, people walking past me in the street can see it. It could have been anyone, anytime. It just happened to be you."

"Yeah, it just happened to be me," Finn said, his voice thick with bitterness. "Only I was the one behind the locker."

"Yeah, you were," Kurt said.

"I... oh, shit, Kurt, I'm so sorry, I'm so fucking sorry –"

"It's all right. Finn. It's okay. I'm okay now. It's all right." And now he was holding Finn's hand, letting Finn's tears splash down on their intertwined knuckles. And now, again, Finn's eyes were closed.

"And I want to stop all this bullshit," Finn cried eventually, voice still choked. "I don't want to be banging around and trying to pretend shit anymore. I don't want to be hiding and I don't want to always be trying not to think about you, I mean, us, I want to be there for you, 'cause I know I fucked it all up the last time, I just... like I didn't even know who I was or what any of it meant... but I should have been here. I should have been here," he repeated, loud and vehement.

"Yes, you should have," Kurt said. Now his eyes were trained on their clasped hands.

"So I want to fix it," Finn said, after a long pause.

Kurt glanced up. "How were you planning on doing that?"

Finn laid his other hand over Kurt's. Oh my God, he looks like he's about to propose, Kurt thought, and a slightly hysterical laugh began to bubble up in his throat. But what Finn was offering was a proposal of sorts:

"I want to be with you now. No more hiding. I can't stay with Quinn anymore – shit, I think she's about to dump me anyway, I've been so spaced these last few weeks – and... when you come back to McKinley, I want to be with you."

Kurt looked at him. He meant it.

"Oh, God," he said. Finn's brow creased a bit; he looked mildly confused. That wasn't the reaction he'd been expecting. The confusion froze on his face as Kurt swallowed hard, once, and explained:

"I can't. I can't be with you."