Prev: Bike Chanderson Now: Kurt/Mike
Never mind happy Valentine's Day...happy birthday, m'love?
14 Reasons I Love You
1. I feel like a city mouse who became like a country mouse and met you, this beautiful vibrant country mouse...then went back to the city. All these wonders; like an automated haircut place, ten dollars a haircut, you put the money in a machine like a vending machine...the sounds of Chinese music playing, booming out two minutes away from a techno beat...the tassels dangling from the lanterns I know you'll try to touch, except you'll be too short so I'll lift you up until you can. All these wonders I want to show you, I want you to be there with me...across an ocean away...
Every story has a happy ending, if you stop at just the right point.
Of course, if you go on long enough, everything ends in tears.
Death takes us all.
But still: the time to dance with death or the little death has not yet come.
Of course, if you would like to dance the little death with me, I can always accommodate.
Kurt watched him from his vantage point, cursing himself all the while.
A car passed by outside, its headlights bright against the night-time. Engines roared as a plane flew overhead.
This...these feelings...they shouldn't be coming again. Despite what Mercedes had said, Kurt didn't believe that he was capable of having yet another heartbreak forced upon him. The next time that happened, if it happened at all, he would just...roll up into a little ball and rock in a corner.
The taller, skinny boy tilted the porcelain teapot over, and coppery liquid flowed out of it to splash, steaming, into his teacup.
"Tea?" he asked, looking up. His apron read 'Mike Chang', and then two symbols underneath it, which were probably his name in Mandarin.
Kurt dove behind his menu, a little too late.
"Haha," Mike said, approaching him with a serving tray. "Nice try. What's your name?"
With surprise, Kurt noticed that Mike seemed young; early twenties, at most, like him. "Kurt Hummel," he said.
"Oh," Mike said, then set the serving tray down and stuck out his hand. "I noticed that you were looking." He grinned. "Guess I'm just that attractive, huh."
Kurt buried himself behind the menu, heat flushing to his face.
The menu was forced aside, and Mike's face was abruptly very close to his. "What's the matter?"
Kurt pushed himself backward to get away from Mike. "N-nothing," he said. "Nothing."
"Ohh..." Mike said, looking away and up. "I get it. You're shy!" He untied the apron at the back and snapped it onto the wall with a flick of his wrist. The apron soared across the room and landed neatly on the hook. Kurt watched it in astonishment, then had to refocus on Mike as Mike grabbed his hand and entwined their fingers.
Mike's hand was so warm. And coarse.
"Let's go for a walk, okay? We'll get to know each other a little better, and then you won't be so shy!"
"B-B-But," Kurt stuttered, too shocked to be melancholic or resistant, "What about your restaurant?"
Mike sniffed, and turned the 'Open' sign to 'Closed' as they went out.
As Mike determinedly towed Kurt along, he waved hi to other people, who simply watched them with knowing looks. Kurt bowed his head, and tried to remember himself being stronger, but could not focus. The warmth of Mike's hand clasped in his overrode all other sensations - including the horrors that always lurked in the back of his mind.
That peace was enough that Kurt let himself be dragged along, and didn't try to escape, not once. Even though Mike was dragging him and Kurt had no say - or no real clue - where they were going, his hand...his presence...they were no cage.
"I'm Mike Chang," Mike said, as he pulled Kurt into a park littered with lamp-posts, with red Chinese lanterns swinging on every branch of the trees. Big ones, little ones, plastic and paper contraptions, traditional and modern, foldable and unfoldable.
Candles lit up some of the lanterns; their paper material ranged from translucent to opaque, so they formed various shades ranging from red to pink.
It looked like a Valentine's Day celebration, only Chinesier.
Kurt stifled a s nort.
"Mid-autumn Lantern Festival," Mike murmured, right next to Kurt's ear. Kurt stiffened. "Would you like to see the lights with me?"
"Y-yes," Kurt said, and smiled. Mike held Kurt's hand.
"Oh, and you're cute."
Kurt felt heat rush to his face again.
Time passed, as it will, and Kurt found himself walking over to Mike's restaurant whenever he could, when the nightmares got too much. No matter how late, Mike was inside, serving tea to some late-night patron, and would always look up with a smile whenever he got near. The shifts from coffee to tea would occasionally break Kurt's brain, just as the shift from childhood memory to Mike's teasing flirtation would occasionally cause him to freeze up.
Still...
"Hey, Kurt, do you want to go and watch a movie with me, sometime?"
"What are we watching?"
"Kung Fu Panda 2."
"Er..."
"What?"
"Isn't that...stereotypical? Je ne sais pas, but...aren't you supposed to look at that sort of thing with disfavor because it's not real?"
"C'mon, Kurt, do you think it's offensive if you buy a beret to wear? That's the same thing."
"...I guess..."
Such interesting arguments. Interesting? Random. Mike was one of a kind.
Halcyon days.
Autumn turned to winter, and back into spring. Another Valentine's Day passed, another of his birthdays. Mike went aboveboard for that, and Kurt realised that after five years of never dating (after Jesse, really), somewhere in the middle of repeated park trips, talking late at night, and lots and lots of tea, he'd actually gotten himself a boyfriend.
He hadn't even tried to be cute.
"Mike?"
"Yes, Kurt?"
"...Will you be my boyfriend?"
"Sure. What took you so long?"
...Considering Mike's reaction, perhaps he should have realised earlier.
"One moment. Have to make a new regular."
"Huh?" Kurt asked, and then Mike dragged someone else out the door, a girl with her eyes wide.
Kurt laughed under his breath, and took a sip of his tea. Mm. A little too sweet, that mixture.
He remembered a time when watching Blaine haul off his latest partner (to a public place, let alone a romantic hotspot like that park) was a source of the most unearthly pain, a twinge in his heart that tingled all over his body, even in his teeth, an aching and a gnawing and a pain like beating his head repeatedly against a glass panel. So much jalousie, seeing Blaine with every boy. Watching Mike with the girls and boys that he dragged out of the door, strangely enough, gave him nothing more than humor.
Kurt tried to imagine Noah dragging someone out the door like that, and snorted into his tea.
Mike returned a moment later, the girl trailing behind him.
"Park?" Kurt asked, resting his head on his chin.
"Yeah," Mike said, and chuckled quietly. "Maybe I should take you along next time. There was this squirrel-"
"-It was a dangerous squirrel, Mike," the girl said, already at ease with the both of them despite having just stepped into Mike's restaurant. "Very fast, reckless...he went straight for your nuts..."
Kurt sniggered into his tea, and Mike gave him a mock-glare.
"I'm sure Kurt and the squirrel would share a very close similarity," Mike said, his nose pointed straight up in the air.
"Absurdite!" Kurt said. "I've never gone for your nuts."
The girl giggled, then clapped her hand over her mouth.
"But you want to, wink wink nudge nudge," Mike said, then made suggestive gestures.
Kurt clapped his own hand over his eyes. "Save me," he groaned.
"Gladly," Mike said, stepped forward, and picked Kurt up.
"I didn't say you could pick me up," Kurt said, his mouth twisting into a pout, his hand still over his eyes.
"I'm pretty good at picking up boys, though," Mike said. "Can you resist this body?" Supporting Kurt by putting a knee on Kurt's former chair and making Kurt rest on that knee, he brought a hand up to grasp Kurt's and place it on his stomach.
Toned muscles. On Mike's stomach.
Kurt might have moaned. Maybe.
He might also have leaned in to savor the smell of Mike's mingled chocolate and jasmine tea. Maybe.
The girl's giggling behind them intensified, but Kurt was much too pre-occupied to notice her.
Mm. Chocolate and jasmine.
"What are you doing with that chocolate-oh! Mm. Mm."
Crunch.
"...Delicious, isn't it?"
"How did you manage to get the popcorn inside?"
"My genius, of course."
"Wait till I show this to Mercedes."
Spring turned to summer, to fall, to winter. Having known Mike for more than two years now, having been officially dating for about six months, Kurt could feel justified in criticising Mike. His fashion sense, anyway.
"Is that cashmere? Are you seriuously wearing cashmere?"
"What's wrong with cashmere?"
"It's so..." Kurt pursed his lips. "Not you. It makes me itchy."
"You're allergic to cashmere?"
"No...yes. Yes I am. I am very allergic to cashmere."
"Well, I don't want to take it off."
"I do."
"Hey! ...Heh heh heh. Mission accomplished."
"What?"
"Kurt, I never knew you'd rip my clothes off in public...in broad daylight...where anyone could see..."
Kurt flushed red. "Shut up, Mike."
"I have concluded that..."
"Oui?"
Mike shivered. "...Hearing you speak French is the sexiest thing on Earth."
"Hearing you speak Mandarin isn't that far behind."
"Oh?"
"Je t'aime," Kurt whispered.
"Wo yao na ni, diu ni dao wo chuang shang..."
"I've heard 'I love you' in Mandarin before, Mike, and that wasn't it..." Kurt said, narrowing his eyes at the other man.
"If it makes you happy, I didn't get to the 'hot monkey sex' part," Mike offered.
Kurt glared at him.
"You know, Mike, it's been almost a year now and I still don't know who you hang out with. I mean, every night I come by, no matter how late, you're in the shop."
"Wo...I mean, I..."
"You didn't give up friends to be with me, did you?" Kurt asked, alarmed.
"Oh yes!" Mike said, pressing his hands to his chest and swivelling around, a leg lifted. "My love! Wo de ai ren! I gave up all of my shi-jie connections, all my worldly connections, to be with you, my love!"
"Burst into flames and die," Kurt said without looking up.
"Kaboom," Mike said, his hands and arms emulating a blossom of flickering flames.
Kurt gave that grandiose proclamation and gesture exactly what it deserved.
When Kurt had recovered from the extremely hearty face-slap he'd given himself, he turned back to Mike. "No, seriously."
"What about your friends?" Mike asked.
"I've introduced you to Mercedes, haven't I? And, I mean, you know some of my background..."
Mike looked away. "Okay..." he said. "I don't have any other friends, apart from the regulars, who have their own lives. One of my best friends was my girlfriend, a long time ago. After her ex-boyfriend, my ex-best friend, died in a car crash, she withdrew from me and I...I've never been able to recover from that. Not until now," he looked up, staring at Kurt. "Not until you."
"You play the guitar?"
"I try to play the guitar. I picked it up from the Internet. Also...my ex-best friend...he...used to play the guitar, too."
"Je ne sais pas...pass me the guitar?"
Planes, overhead.
Tea, and steamed buns.
White buns, hot out of the pan. Kurt picked at it with his chopsticks, as Mike sat and watched him.
"I...Kurt."
"Yes, Mike?"
"My grandfather. He's...sick. I have to go back to China."
"You have to what?"
Chopsticks, clattering to the floor. Chair, scraped back over tile.
"It's family, Kurt!" Mike rose to his feet. Palms, slammed on table. "You can't deny me my family!"
"No, I..." Kurt tried to protest. "I know."
"I'm sorry, Kurt, I understand," Mike said. "I just...I'm not your first boyfriend, okay? There's no danger. No war. I'll come back quickly. The time'll be up before you know it."
"No, you don't...take all the time you need," Kurt said, swallowing. "Je...Je ne veux pas vous retenir. Don't stay here. Go back." Kurt placed a hand on Mike's chest, and trailed down.
"One memory?"
"To add to the rest, you mean?"
"Kurt..."
"Mike...!"
Chairs, turned over. 'Open' sign flipped over. Regulars, rebuffed. Regulars, horrified. Female short blonde regulars, oddly turned on.
Mike sat in the corner of his grandfather's bedroom, holding an open palm to the light pouring in the window. Splaying his fingers open and closed, open and closed, Mike changed the shafts of light playing between his hands.
"Qian..." his grandfather rasped. Mike was over to his grandfather in a flash, sinking to his knees. "Wo...ni ah, ni yo le qi zi le ma?"
"Mei yo," Mike said, shaking his head.
"Na ge...zhang nu hai...ta hai hao ba?"
"Ta hai hao," Mike said, nodding so his grandfather could see him clearly. "Dan shi wo...wo bu ai shan ta."
"Hao," his grandfather wheezed, and closed his eyes, his gnarled hand looking for Mike's. Mike gave it, and held his grandfather until his grandfather slept.
Night came, and Mike slipped out the door, his mother busily applying wet cloths to his grandfather's forehead.
I look around me and all I see is sights I want to show you.
"Hey mister, hey mister, gi' us a li'l coin, why won't ya? We'll show y' t' a place where y' can double, no triple y'r money! Gi' us a tip, eh?"
"Je ne parle pas anglais," Kurt refused, smiling gently.
"Oh, it's a Frenchie! Rat, up an' center!"
"Monsieur, monsieur!"
"Oui?" Kurt said, having to stop.
"De nous donner un peu d'argent! Il ya une place ou votre argent sera deux fois plus...non, trois fois plus!"
"Merci, mais non. Va mon argent a la Chine."
"Oh?" Rat said, as Kurt hurried away.
"'E ses 'is m'ney is goin' to China," Rat said.
The first boy raised his eyebrows. "Wait ti'l Garrin hears ab't that! Story'll be 'nuf to buy us bread f'r a coupl' nights!"
"Yeh!" Rat said, walking back to their beggin' spot. "Who's ev'r herd of a Fr'nchie givin' money to a Chineeman?"
"Ush'ly it's the o'thr weh 'round!" the other boy sniggered.
"Cor, those p'ncakes look good, mademoiselle!"
Kurt whirled around. Did that boy Rat follow him around on his errands, and all the way to the cafe?
His thoughts wandered to Mike. How was Mike doing?
Firecrackers.
Mike sighed and covered his ears as they went off, peppering the area with small, loud explosions. As the hustle and bustle surrounded him, Mike saw so many things he'd love to share with Kurt; the designer haircuts available for $10 a pop, the chocolate bars where they made chocolate in front of you, to your specifications - with his love for all things chocolatey, they could put Kurt on the front of a Koko Krunch ad and he wouldn't look terribly out of place.
Mike chuckled, feeling so Western in a large crowd of Chinese.
A boy he'd left, over the ocean, in America...
The little bird Rat had left Rachel chittered happily in one corner of the cafe.
The cage...Kurt sat near the bird, drinking his tea. It wasn't Valentine's, and Kurt wanted to remember Mike, happily pouring tea and talking to him, listening to him. He lifted a hand, and the bird hopped through the cage's open door, landing on his finger.
"Hey, little buddy," Kurt said.
Mike. Letters took so long to arrive, and Internet access in Mike's family home was spotty. And yet for all that Kurt had every faith that Mike would come back to him.
Unlike Noah. Unlike Blaine. Even unlike Brittany.
He had to go back and rewatch that Youtube video...then find the documentary somewhere. The Ignored War, indeed. Kurt thought again of the masses of graves, his best friends when he was young, and thought of Mike's hand, fingers intertwined with his.
Slowly...he was healing.
The bird hopped back in the cage, its yellow breast swelling with air, readying a truly impressive trill. Kurt had heard it once or twice before.
"Today's the same day as yesterday," Kurt hummed under his breath. "...Are you a saint? Everyday's a saint day..."
Mike fought a yawn, watching his cousin get married to man he'd never met. He had to admit, she looked beautiful in a red dress, sweeping up the aisle, her face obscured by the veil.
His breath choked off when he considered Kurt in red, looking up at him demurely, as he waited by the altar.
...Nah.
The porcelain doll of the siamese cat was in the lobby when he left. It swung its paw up and down, up and down. Mike spared it a glance. He could do with some luck. The international mail systems in China were...spotty.
Kurt had resumed marking off the days in red pen again. For the years he had known Mike, he'd gone off it slowly. Every day, he had stared at the red pen when he awoke, and left it alone.
When Mike left him, Kurt took the red pen, and one by one, crossed off the days.
He re-established his old routine, pre-Mike. His feet never took him in the direction of Mike's cafe, instead going back to the daily drudgery of work, home, sleep, cafe on Tuesdays and Saturdays. One by one, the regulars of Mike's restaurant came by the cafe, to talk to Kurt about when Mike would return. Kurt couldn't answer them. Mike had never said. He didn't know. But he trusted that Mike would return. The regulars accepted that, after a while.
The package, when it arrived, gave him photographs. Photographs, old and faded, of Mike as a child, running around on dirty streets with antiquated, unfamiliar architecture.
On the back of each photograph, a caption, a comment, in Mike's scrawl.
"8th June: Me, Tina, and Artie."
Kurt stared at the photograph.
Was it...
Pain, and loss, and fate.
He wondered if he could find Brittany again, properly, and maybe introduce her to Mike. But...would it be nice, to re-introduce her to such pain? To remind her of him and her past in their hometown, let alone that her boyfriend had had a...clone...in America...and...
Yeah, no.
But...
He'd laughed, bitterly, when he watched the documentary. In it, the people who'd interviewed Brittany had called her caretaker a 'kindly soul flown in by the Americans who watched over the broken children of the town.' Kindly soul. His ass. He'd been just as broken as the rest of them, made especially so by a filcking American.
Moments later, he retracted that thought and laid in a prayer to Noah, up in heaven.
Still, at least the narrator had mentioned that they had never had proof of this.
He...needed closure, himself.
"Hello? Santana speaking."
Kurt'd gone through almost a solid month of bureaucratic maneuvering, but he was finally here, outside Brittany's house's door. The intercom buzzed with Santana's voice.
"Miss Santana, ah, I'd like to speak to Brittany."
"Well, you can't," Santana said. "She doesn't need to speak to you. Good day."
"Wait! Tell her...tell her that Kurt's come to find her. From her hometown. I took care of her, mademoiselle, madame, please. I only want to see her, just once."
The gate opened, but Kurt could sense the reluctance through the intercom. "What's your name?"
"Kurt. Kurt Hummel."
"Do you know what her boyfriend's name was?"
"R.T. We were in choir together. He sang me the proper lyric to his song. It was English and it made no sense but it sounded good. He wrote a song in Francais to her as well, but he never completed it."
The intercom did not buzz. Santana stood at the front door, her eyes fixed upon him.
Brittany was in a wheelchair at the back of the estate. Santana watched him with narrowed eyes, as he approached her. Brittany had been staring out into the pines for quite some time.
"Brittanie," Kurt said, softly. "Ne vous souvenez de moi?"
Her head came up, slowly.
"J'ai pris soin de vous..." Kurt dropped his eyes. "Je suppose qu'il est ironique de constater que vous etes maintenant dans un fauteuil roulant."
Santana watched this foreign boy who claimed to have taken care of Brittany babble a torrent of unfamiliar words. French-sounding, fair enough...and Brittany had sung French songs, over and over and over, French nursery rhymes, in their bed for near to four years, clutching her. When Santana had found them on the Internet, every one of them had involved war, and death, and love, and the incapability of loving again.
"Desole, Brittanie. La guerre...mon esprit a ete rompu suite."
Brittany remained watching the pines, although her hands clenched at the wheels, occasionally.
"Je vous laisse maintenant. Vous n'aurez pas a me revoir."
He turned, and bowed to Santana, who was still eyeing him suspiciously.
"I'm sorry for wasting your time, madame. It appears that Brittanie no longer remembers me. I remember where the gate is, thank you."
Santana scowled at him. Kurt nodded, fighting back tears, and turned.
"Je suis desole, Brittanie," Kurt said, pausing. "Je vous pas manque quand j'ai pris soin de vous."
His jaw clenched, and he opened the door.
"Attendez," Brittany whispered. "Arret!"
Kurt stopped at the door, but did not turn around. Santana looked at her in concern. Brittany was crying, sobbing noiselessly, her shoulders shaking, tears rolling down her cheeks. Her gaze was still firmly fixed on the pines in front of her, though.
"Kurt...si c'est vous, vous saurez..."
"Je sais...quoi?"
"Today's a saint day..."
"And tomorrow's a saint day," Kurt finished, the answering words what R.T. had sung for his girlfriend, that Kurt knew, because he'd helped R.T. with the countermelody.
"Saints are for today,"
"Everyday's a saint day..."
"Are you a saint?"
"...Brittanie, please."
"Kurt...Kurt!" On the tile, metal wheels clattered on it as the wheelchair turned. Kurt closed his eyes.
A weight hit him from behind, Brittanie's familiar tackle-hug but with so much less weight than he recalled, her voice into his shoulder, her arms around him, her warmth, her voice, the same accent as his, from his childhood, the last reminder of his childhood childhood, before Noah and aircraft and war.
Kurt clutched the door handle and sobbed with her, tears rolling down her cheek, rolling down the back of his neck and from his eyes.
Santana watched them, her eyes sad.
When time allowed, Mike slipped into an Internet cafe and checked the American news. He wanted to see what would be affecting Kurt.
'The Caretaker Emerges' is the first story that caught his eye.
Mike read through it in a mounting haze of disbelief. This...this is what Kurt did? Had gone through?
He...wanted to go back to America. He wanted to hold Kurt, to let Kurt know that he knew, he was alright with what Kurt did, wanted to comfort him and sleep with him at nights if he woke up with nightmares. If he had gone through half as much as Kurt did, he knew he would've woken with nightmares, too.
He signed off the computer and left the internet cafe, baking slowly under the humid summer heat.
Back, back to unwelcome news.
The letter, when it arrived, didn't really surprise Kurt. It devastated him, yes, broke his heart yes, but he could've guessed it. Mike had to stay in China for the foreseeable future. His grandfather was teetering on the edge of death, and
He said as much to Mercedes, over their biweekly cup of coffee.
Mercedes looked at him.
"Honestly, Kurt, you'd think you only had a one-night stand with the man."
"What?" Kurt said, sitting up. "How could you say that?"
"Kurt," Mercedes said, closing her eyes and letting out a sigh. "This isn't a war. You can fly to him. China's not going to close their borders to you."
"I...I don't know," Kurt said, staring down at his coffee cup. "I guess I'm...I'm scared that when I get there, Mike won't want me, anymore."
"Have courage, Kurt," Mercedes said, and rose, preparing to leave. Her popcorn pack had been emptied quite some time ago. She patted him on the hand and left.
Bump-thwack, bump-thwack, went her heels on the tiles. Kurt sat, shocked. The looms' steady sound morphed into the throbbing of his own heart.
Kurt stood behind the lines of people queuing up for the boarding gate, and readjusted the sling-bag on his shoulder.
The sounds of jet engines, in front of him.
Kurt took a deep breath, and handed his ticket to the attendant.
Prev: Bike Chanderson Now: Kurt/Mike
Epilogue:
"It's not right to do this, Mike! Your grandfather's dying!"
"All the more important that we do this now. If one of us was a girl, it would be even more symbolic."
"Why?"
"We'd be making babies. Birth...death..."
"I would be on the pill, Mike. ...Don't give me that look. Or that leer. Or even...Mike!"
"I just find it suiting that we should be dancing for the little death. Big death, little death..."
"Le petit mort? Ooh, je l'aime."
"...Have I mentioned that you're terribly sexy speaking in French?"
"Where did you even learn that term, anyway?"
"One-night stand, a while ago when I visited France. Nice French boy, dark haired, greenish-eyed...Kurt? Are you alright? Kurt? Wo de ai ren...gen wo jiang hua! Kurt!"