Okay, it's 11 o'clock at night, I have a biology exam tomorrow, and I think I have a sleeping disorder. This is the product. Special shout out to my best friend Susie and to Brittany for their help on this chapter. I still don't really have a clear idea on where I'm going, and I might change this a bit tomorrow, but until then, get your tissues ready, enjoy and please REVIEW? :D
~~~OOO~~~
Katie was asleep. She had cried herself to sleep. She wouldn't stop. It seemed to continue for hours. A never-ending Niagara Falls of four year old salty leaks. If ever there was a heartbreaking moment in Kurt's life, this was it. It's funny how one earth-shattering action can lead to a domino effect. Like one thing happens and then poof! The whole world has tumbled down and there's no one there to put everything back together, because the person who was playing with the pieces in the first piece got so tired of nothing happening that they just gave up.
Giving up.
God that felt like a good option right now, it really truly did. It would be so easy to resort to his old ways. To take the blade out of his razor. To raid the medicine cabinet. Living in his own house, he had so many options. He could jump off his roof if he wanted to. And had he been ten years younger and daughter-less, he probably would have.
But it seemed that It wasn't meant to be. Because at that moment a pre-set collection of photographed lights brought him back to the earth-shattering reality they called his life. There was a pretty, if anything-generic, canvas of the Eiffel Tower in the spare room, across from which he was now slumped. It was funny how a common black and white symbol could bring back so many memories, and promises, and hopes and dreams. And secret whispers under the sheets of his parent's house. And that first day that they had met. Or the second day. The first time of the second meeting.
But most of all. Most importantly. It was the mark of loss, and despair. And the dying of a eight-going-on-nine year old boy who couldn't bear school without his best friend and his hugs and his Eskimo kisses. And maybe that's why it was so important to him right now. For at the same time, the canvased portrayal of iron, a whole ocean away, meant hope for Kurt. And for Katie.
And right next to the canvas was a pretty black frame of the two eight year old boys, in their cowboys and Indians dress ups. They were grasping desperate un-calloused and unscarred hands for the last time.
~~~OOO~~~
The summers were spent much like afternoons as they grew older, except when they dressed up Blaine went for the cowboy look instead of the princess. And he started watching football with his own dad and Burt sometimes instead of cooking with him and Anne. But that was okay, it really was. Because they were still best friends. And even when Blaine made new friends down at the park and would hang out with them some days instead of Kurt, that was okay, because they'd still watch Disney movies and eat popcorn when he was done, and do things only eight year old best friends do.
And they still Eskimo kissed. It was just their thing. They never really did it in public, so no one ever really questioned them. And they were still too young to understand a lot of things, so they didn't really care. And they seemed to be immune to the feint cries of 'fag' they heard the one time they warmed their noses against each other in the park's sandbox one day, and they didn't think about it.
Because it seemed like a grown-up trouble, and they were far too young and having far too much fun to be worried about silly grown up things.
~~~OOO~~~
"Kate?" Dakota Anderson called out. She knew the boys were still at the park, her husband and Burt had been on Klaine patrol that day. Yes, Klaine patrol. Those boys were a handful sometimes, they needed serious supervising, but that wasn't the point.
"Dakota? I'm in here." The other mother, her own best friend's voice penetrated from the kitchen. It carried with the smell of freshly baked cookies. Mm.
"Hey," she stepped around the bench island to give the floury woman a one armed hug, "are you never not baking?"
"Have you met your son?" The two women laughed. Blaine was the big eater of the pair.
It was funny the way they spoke about the boys sometimes. As if they were both the other's son. Making them weirdly interconnected at some level, but really just made them feel easy, and at home.
"That's a true fact. Actually, that's sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. Sort of. Kind of…" She trailed off. There was something in her eyes that Kate wasn't used to.
"Sure, what's up?"
"Michael got a promotion."
"That's fantastic! Congratulations!" she went to hug her friend again, but stopped when she saw something else in her eye. "What's wrong?"
"The promotion comes with a transfer…"
A silence held over until she continued.
"We're moving to France. Paris to be exact. In a week."
Kate couldn't move. She was open mouthed in shock. And emotion. Her best friend. Her sister, the other mother to her son. She couldn't. But support was clearly what the woman needed. So with some ounce of fake ship and strength, she offered her congratulations.
"Can I tell you a terrible thing?" Dakota asked through her hiccups of tears.
"Sure you can."
"I don't want to go."
"That's perfectly understandable. Your whole life's here."
"No, that's not even the reason. It's…"
But somehow Kate knew what she was about to say.
"Does Blaine know?"
"No, Mike only found out last night. We were going to tell him today. I just don't know how to. Or what he's going to say. What if he doesn't understand? I heard him sleep talking last night. I don't know how often he does it. But he was hugging his pillow, and saying I love you. I love you. Over and over again. And I wondered who he loved. And then he said Kurt. And I think my heart broke. I mean. He's eight years old. It's a bit early in life for me to rip his heart out of his chest isn't it?" Her eyes were glassed over by the emotion. A combination of upheaval, and distress, and somehow hormones or something crazy like that thirty-something's weren't supposed to worry about.
"He'll understand." She hugged the other woman. A proper one this time. And she let the stray cries dampen the tea-towel over her shoulder.
Because at the same time, she was thinking of Kurt. And the pain that would appear in his eyes when she had to tell him that there would be no more dress ups, or tea parties, or sleepovers, or bake-offs, or those blessed Eskimo kisses he cherished.
Dakota was far too right. Eight was an awfully young age to rip a heart out of a chest like it's nothing but a piece of paper, so flimsy, so delicate, so precious, so easy to destroy.
And behind the wall, caught in the moment between running in for a cookie, he had heard everything the two mother's had just swapped. Those words that may have sounded like an eight year old would not comprehend, but he had. Dakota was right. Blaine was too young for his heart to be ripped into a gazillion pieces. And so was Kurt's.
They could be ripped apart, together. But it just wouldn't work if there was an ocean between them. Kurt was young, and maybe he didn't understand everything. But he knew how horrible everything would be if he didn't have his best friend by his side every day, and his Eskimo kisses and his hugs every night. And the interwoven hands and the shared clothes and the snuggling in the single beds of their rooms as they watch The Little Mermaid and Mulan.
You couldn't do crazy best friend things like that when your best friend lived in another continent. And Kurt tried to get his legs to move, to move into the kitchen to grab some cookies and for his mother to see his tear-rimmed eyes, or to go back to Blaine, and cuddle him until he left for the night, and they did their extra-special best friend Eskimo kisses.
Because he only had five more chances left.
What if he never saw him again.
His mummy was right. He was too young. Far, far too young to feel this confused and heartbroken.
~~~OOO~~~
Stepping out of the guest room with the photo and the canvas, Kurt flipped the light. And he locked the windows and the doors as he moved back to his sleeping pile of four-year old preciousness on the leather couch. He couldn't bear to move her, he didn't have the strength.
Once upon a time he had thought eight an awfully young age to have everything destroyed, and for a child's heart to be ripped and twisted and crushed and ignored. If his eyes had been dry before, even though they weren't, that last time he looked at his daughter, still showing evidence of tears, right before he slept, brought on a cascading torrent of tears. He held her tight. Wishing for the world to be better to her, then it had been for him.