A/N: Thanks for the reviews and alerts! Wasn't sure how Glee horror would be received, so I'm glad it went over well here and at LJ. :)
Chapter Two
'The nation is still reeling from the freak accident earlier this week at the Sysco County Zoo here in Ohio.' The reporter was saying on the plasma screen in the living room, bought bigger and tackier than necessary because Finn and Burt voted and their love of sports canceled out Kurt and Carole's call for taste. Both men were on the couch now in suits as they waited for their significant others to finish getting ready for the memorial. Kurt was leaning in the doorway out of notice, looking at the local newsfeed. The story about what happened was running on CNN too, which meant the country and the world were watching for details like it was the most interesting preview for a movie they had seen in years. But none of them would ever know what it actually felt like. None of them would ever get it.
'Unpredictable malfunctions in the multi-million dollar aquarium exhibit's pump, used to regulate the pressure in the water of the habitat, combined with a break in the motor of the crank used to lower feeding cages into the tanks, to ultimately lead to the implosion of two of the aquarium's terminals. The infrastructure was built into the closed-in bridge walkway leading to the aquarium and its destruction ultimately led to the bridge's own structural failures. Impalements and sharks washed into the terminals during feeding time caused the death of twenty-one people; including one zoo worker, five students and a teacher there for a senior class trip. Now that notifications have been made, a list of survivors has been released including seventeen year old, Kurt Hummel.'
Kurt blanched as his yearbook picture from the year before popped up on screen in a large square with a white border.
'Several eyewitnesses, including fellow student, Jacob Ben Israel, have alleged that Hummel made outlandish, adamant warnings before the incident claiming to have seen the accident in a vision. He attempted to warn others, but unfortunately for so many people that day, the warning went unheeded.' The reporter arched an eyebrow and turned to his co-anchor as the camera angle widened to include her. 'Psychic vision. What do you make of that?'
She pat her palms down on the top of the desk, masking her real reaction with the typical interested but un-opinionated anchor expression. 'Creepy.'
Kurt looked down at himself, mind detaching from the situation in a helpful foggy way and focusing on his outfit. Grey tailored slacks, a black knit sweater and ascot. He couldn't wear that. The grey was all wrong and his shoes didn't go with them at all. His mind began running over all of his dozens of options again, sticking to a category of thought that he could easily comprehend and fuss over unemotionally. As he was turning to go back upstairs, Finn glanced over his shoulder and spied him in the doorway.
Kurt hurriedly made his way back to his room in the new house the Hudson-Hummels had moved into. Months had gone by, and he was still finding little things that he needed to adjust to at the new house with two new people. He almost tripped on one of Finn's sneakers sitting haphazardly midway up the stairs. Finn's messiness. That was one thing that he definitely wasn't accustomed to. His father wasn't Mr. Clean either, but he was always good about not discarding things on the floor wherever he stood. Finn brought lazy and nonchalant to a new level. A level Kurt didn't particularly like. They rarely fought but when they did it usually started along the lines of, "Finn, why did you leave so-and-so lying in the middle of the table/floor/stairs, etc."
Wasn't exactly fair. What other teenager had to deal with the ins-and-outs of living with their boyfriend? People finding out that their parents were married always put knots in his stomach as well. No matter how much they stressed that they started dating before their parents were married, that their parents only met because they were dating and Finn's mom wanted to meet Kurt's dad to show support. PFLAG was a wonderful organization. It taught tolerance and educated those around newly out teens, but Carole had insisted Burt join the Lima chapter with her. One thing led to another, and now Kurt had the wonderfully awkward misfortune of being the legal stepbrother of his longtime boyfriend. The fact that he and Finn were together longer than Carole and Burt even knew each other's names didn't seem to erase the look of shock-and-awe and ooh-taboo off some people's faces. Kurt had learned to deal with it.
What he wasn't sure how to deal with was the looks he had been getting lately. Ever since the day at the zoo, the same day Jacob uploaded all his footage to his hugely followed Youtube channel, being out in public meant getting strange, ominous, slightly fearful looks from anyone who knew about his pre-incident freak-out. After allowing Carole to drag him out for a third attempt to get his mind off things and cheer him up (that time, a trip to the ice cream parlor, bless her heart) he had warded her off and stayed in. This would be his first time out in three days, and though part of him would rather crawl under the covers and dissolve into his high thread count bed sheets, he knew he couldn't miss the memorial service for the McKinley students. He owed it to them to be there.
He entered his bedroom across the hall from Finn's, and went to his closet, using every bit of his energy to concentrate solely on clothes. Designers, cuts, tops, bottoms, shoes, accessories-he needed to look perfect. He needed to dress as though Tim Gunn would be there to give him feedback. As though his fashion sensibilities today would pass by Heidi Klum and be the deciding factor in whether or not he was Project Runway material.
He sifted through his seasonally organized walk-in closet, a specially sized add-on that Burt had custom built for him, because he had a tough year with Karofsky and because his clothes were crowding the hallway on wheeled dressing rods. Everything fit now, and when it didn't he cycled it out to Good Will. Fashion moved. It didn't sit in the back of a closet.
He went through his darks as he reconsidered his grey bottoms. All black might be more appropriate. He lost five friends and a counselor that he was familiar with. All black was probably pretty fucking fitting.
"Hey."
Kurt didn't turn at the sound of Finn's voice. He was too busy rooting through his black pants and grabbing an assortment to carry with him to the bed. He laid them out and his eyes went over and over each of them. He grabbed a pair of black skinny jeans and tossed them over his shoulder onto the floor. He wasn't wearing denim to a memorial service. He still had other options. But maybe the pants weren't the problem. Maybe it was the ascot. This was a tie-event. He should be in a tie. He reached around his neck and began untying the perfectly arranged black silk at his throat. He turned deftly for the closet and murmured incoherently under his breath as he stopped untying to look down at his sweater. It was the sweater, he decided. The sweater was wrong. Finn and Burt were both in button-downs and blazers. What was he doing? He needed to wear a suit. Obviously. He had to take everything off. Everything was wrong. It was the whole thing.
His hands shook as he reached for the bottom hem of his sweater and abandoned it with one hand to return to the ascot. He had to take it off. He needed to change. They had to leave soon. Why had he dressed so stupidly? His hands were reaching around numbly trying to take everything off at once rendering his fingers useless and unable to remove anything.
Before he could get his brain to command both hands to focus on one area at a time, there was a weight at his back and Finn's arms were around him. His chest pressed into his back and he held him so tightly both of his arms were clamped at his sides and Kurt was forced to stand still. Finn's cheek was against his hair and as he pulled him even tighter, Kurt felt his chest rumble against him and heard a soft cry from the lips at his ear. Tears were an endless commodity, because once again they prickled at Kurt's eyes and he fell apart with Finn. Held so tightly he could barely breathe, he felt Finn's sobs vibrate through his clothes and they broke together. For a few minutes, that was all either of them needed.
Several ragged breaths later, Finn stepped back and Kurt turned around. He reached up and began thumbing away the tears on his face as he gasped a couple of times and regulated his breathing. Finn reached down and did the same for him. When they were pale but tear-free, Kurt retied his ascot and made his way downstairs.
The football field seemed like such a random, stupid, misfit of a place for the memorial. It was the stomping ground of the bully force that slushied Tina and Artie bi-or-tri-weekly. Sam and Mike were targeted less frequently but weren't safe from the occasional splatter of sticky slushie facials. Ms. Pillsbury was the dork of the faculty. It just felt wrong to be honoring their memory in a place that symbolized decidedly unfriendly moments for them.
Kurt settled in the third row of white wooden folding chairs. They were ten to a row, split in half to create an aisle, and went back in seven lines. There were more people than there were seats, a surprising sight considering the memorialized group's lackluster amount of Facebook friends. The story of their death was exponentially more popular than they were. McKinley students had shown up in droves. People were having to stand around in the back, sitting in the grass, or pulling out their own fold-up chairs. Kurt was glad that Mercedes had the forethought to save chairs for him, Finn, and their parents behind her and Quinn. He and Finn sat in between their parents with Puck on Carole's other side. Her hand was around her son's best friend's fingers, but Puck sat perfectly still staring ahead.
At the front, large framed pictures of their friends were set up on easels on a short stage, wrapped with pleated black trimming. The frames with Tina, Mike, and Artie's pictures were set up on the left of the podium in the center of the stage, with Lauren, Ms. Pillsbury, and Sam's on the right. Kurt was having a hard time looking up there, because every time he caught a glimpse of his friends' faces another brick dropped in the pit of his stomach and weighed him down.
Mr. Figgins was behind the podium giving condolences on behalf of the school before introducing Mr. Schuester who was sitting in a black folding chair on stage beside Rachel. There was an empty chair on her other side. Kurt couldn't think of who it could be for or wonder at why Rachel was up there, because he caught sight of Tina's mother sobbing and had to concentrate on breathing. He dropped his head to Burt's shoulder and noticed Finn already slumped against his mom out of the corner of his eye. It made large Finn seem very small and made Kurt feel much younger.
Mr. Schuester was at the podium, and as his voice traveled through the microphone and rose over the field Kurt felt a chill run down his spine as though a million staring eyes were all pointed at him. He looked to the empty bleachers uneasily expecting to see a crowd of silent onlookers. The only people in the stadium were on the field with their attention on the stage. Every hair on his body was on end, but he amounted it to the camera crew from the local news station making him uncomfortable and forced himself to look back at Schue.
"I had the privilege of knowing every one of the people pictured up here." Schuester said, and Kurt noticed Rachel ringing her hands together off to his side with her ankles crossed daintily in her seat. "The kids were in my Glee Club, and Emma Pillsbury was a dear friend of mine."
A special amount of torment squeezed down on Kurt's heart knowing what Schue must be feeling. His feelings for the guidance counselor weren't exactly under lock-and-key. His eyes flicked to Finn subconsciously, and holding his breath was all he could do to keep from falling apart all over again.
"Each of them were such talented, kindhearted people. Accepting where others were not. Resilient when others would push them down. Happy when it wasn't easy to be. This Friday the Glee Club was supposed to compete at Nationals for the second year in a row. Tina was excited about the punk rocker outfits she helped pick out. Artie was glued to his guitar as he memorized and re-memorized each chord to all three songs he was playing as well as singing. Lauren never touched an electric guitar in her life but spent the last three months learning the bridge to 'Love Song', because she wanted to demonstrate her 'stunning natural ability with anything cool'. Mike was going to carry us to a win with the skills of a professional dancer. Well trained, always eager, and exceptionally gifted. Sam was singing the opening duet with Rachel and was so intimidated by his partner's frequently voiced high standards that he quit twice and came back both times not because we didn't have an understudy, but because he wanted to be a part of something bigger than himself. To push himself to be greater."
Schuester paused and swallowed thickly. "Emma Pillsbury had an entire school to look after. Kids came into her office every day for help and advice, and she made sure-every single day-that she handed out a brochure or talked sense into or was just there for every single one of them. Every day. Because the people we lost this week were special. They were committed. They cared. They worked hard. They loved with their whole hearts. And we loved them with ours. This week we lost them to a tragedy that the world will remember them for. But we…we, here, at McKinley will remember them for their smiles. And their dedication. Their hearts. And their life. Today we say goodbye, but not to their memory. These were our friends and our family, and they'll live on in us forever."
He made a gesture toward Rachel, and she stood up and began moving the three chairs closer to the edge of the stage. At the end of their row on the field, Puck stood up and made his way silently to the front. Kurt saw him grab the guitar case leaning against the far left edge of the stage. He got his acoustic out and made his way up the short steps as Schuester went on.
"Today, while we pay our respects, a few of us would like to use something that everyone we lost held dear in their everyday life. Music."
He pulled the microphone loose of its stand and carried it over to the chairs, handing it to Rachel in the middle and sitting in the empty seat while Puck pulled his guitar strap around him. As he began to strum, Kurt instantly recognized it as Lissie's 'Everywhere I Go'. The song always put him in a melancholy mood and now, watching his friends perform it in this context, he felt like every molecule in his body was becoming slippery and light, putting him in a floating foggy state.
Rachel's voice was haunting as Figgins pulled the cover off the four foot memorial statue the school manufactured for the ceremony at the foot of the stage. It was a stone angel with its wings spread and its head bent over its hands, erected on a square platform with the names of the deceased engraved in gold on the black stone.
Rachel was crying in her seat, but her sobs didn't come through in her voice; strong, powerful and moving as ever. Puck was stony faced and blurry eyed as he strummed the guitar next to her, and Schuester sang backup, voice flowing with Rachel's at all the right moments. His cheeks were tear streaked as he sang, and at some point during the performance Rachel had reached over and clasped his hand tightly in hers.
Rachel's voice dropped as she sang, "Tell me why I feel so low." But abruptly rose and swelled with emotion, "Danger will follow me now everywhere I go. Angels will call on me and take me to my home. Well, these tired eyes just want to remain closed. I don't see clearly. Can't feel nothing, no. Can you hear me?"
As though he sang the lyrics himself, the wind brushed coolly against Kurt's ear with a startling hum, a whisper through the wind. He flinched and jerked upright, glancing over his shoulder and eyes catching on Santana and Brittany sitting a couple rows back on the opposite side. The wind rolled over him again, and this time it felt icy cold. Santana looked over and their eyes only met a second before she blinked heavily and faced forward. There was an odd hesitation in him as he made himself turn around as well. He spread his fingers on his lap, feeling the light breeze, but it was back to feeling like the comforting cross between warm and light that came with springtime. The cold was brief and fleeting, but he felt it in his heart long after it disappeared.