Notes: Yes, yes, I'm aware that the librarian in Harry Potter is called Madam Pince (if you caught that) but the 'r' is intentional.
chapter xi
Kurt couldn't concentrate at all during his lessons on Monday, and he had to avoid the library until leisure time because otherwise he wouldn't have been able to drag himself away. He rushed through his homework – after all, what did one crappy assignment matter? Everything else he'd turned in was fine, and as long as he stayed at Dalton he'd never get a speech at his graduation ceremony anyway – and then ran off to the library before it closed at five.
"Hi," he greeted the librarian. Ms Prince, according to the tag on her desk. Oh, Blaine probably loved that. "I'm looking for some, uh, books on astral planes? Or, anything that supernaturally causes people to go into comas. It's for an extra credit project," he said and then winced. First rule of lying: don't give up lots of information.
"Anything more specific?"
Kurt shrugged. "Sorry."
Ms Prince pursed her lips. "I can't think of any specific books but—" She scrawled down some numbers on a bit of memo paper. "Here are some sections which you'll find useful. It's the Dewey Decimal System. Follow the shelves in a spiral to follow the numbers so: 130 – paranormal phenomena and occult, 290 – non-Christian religions," she listed as she pointed in the right directions. "Just remember the library's closing in an hour and you can only take out up to ten books at a time. And if you find any reference books but they aren't in the library, I can request them from other schools."
"Yes. Thank you." Kurt gave the old woman his most sincere smile and then headed off to the occult section. He didn't have much time today and he wanted to scope out how many books which could be useful so, for now, he had resigned himself to making a list of all the potentially useful in-school books. If he had enough time, he would take out some of the more relevant-sounding ones.
Unsurprisingly – and yet, still disappointingly – there was only a small number of books Kurt could put on his list across both sections, even if he was stretching his definition of 'relevant-sounding'. Still, he took seven books from the 'paranormal phenomena and occult' section and three on general mythology, and then skimmed a barely relevant fourth mythology book while he had time before the library closed.
It took him a little under two weeks to get through all the books. There were a few almost hits – demons which murdered, for example. But nothing was ever quite right. If Kurt hadn't seen pictures of Blaine in a few of his friends' phones and rooms, he would had started to believe he'd made the whole thing up in his head again. At this point, he had to accept that his life was a paranormal romance or a Gothic novel, because the only other option was that he'd had a complete psychotic break and was hallucinating all those pictures of and conversations about Blaine. He was pretty sure he'd seen a few films and TV programmes with that plot. And there was Just Like Heaven, but Kurt didn't want to risk losing Blaine for real because he saw a possible solution on TV.
Luckily, over the past week, Ms Prince had been borrowing extra reference books at Kurt's request, so he wasn't completely out of reading material. And it was even interesting material, but Kurt quickly got frustrated with just how useless it was, and how useless he himself was.
One day, he got a text from Lauren saying 'so I hear you're interested in the occult now. Welcome to the dark side', and he wasn't sure what how to react.
Half an hour later, he had a list of recommended reading almost thirty items long.
Wes banged his gavel against the desk to signal the moving on of the agenda. (It was a running joke in the Warblers that Wes had an unhealthy relationship with his gavel due to the sheer amount he used it within the space of one meeting. Kurt had counted a few times. The average was twenty.)
"Next to discuss is our next public performance. It's in Kenton, which is a bit farther away than our usual performances."
"Why is it so far away?" someone at the back of the room asked.
Wes huffed. "Well, if you'd let me finish, you would've found out."
Most of the boys laughed quietly to themselves. Jeff had his hand clapped over his mouth.
"As some of you know, a Warbler, who would have been a senior this year, was over the summer involved in a car accident and is now in a coma." Kurt sat up and gave Wes his full attention, barely noticing that the atmosphere of the rest of the room was suddenly a lot more sombre. "He lives in Kenton. The council has decided that, with Christmas approaching, we should visit Warbler Blaine to give him some old fashioned Christmas cheer."
Kurt smiled. He hoped Blaine would be able to hear them, or at least he would be able to feel the cheer.
"The main segment of our visit, however, will be to the paediatric ward at large. We've talked to Headmistress Farhi and she has agreed that because this performance is so far away, and because it could potentially be distressing to some of you, this isn't compulsory. If you choose, you can also take part in only the general performance and sit with our supervisor while some of us go and see Blaine. All in favour?" Kurt's hand shot up, as did a large number of other people's. "All opposed?" No hands went up. "Motion carried. We'll have an extra meeting tomorrow for those of you who want to attend to get permission slips and go over the rules of this excursion. Please give your name to Thad if you'll be here tomorrow so we can print off the right number of slips and get an idea of parts."
Wes banged the gavel against the desk.
"Now, everyone get in formation for Moves Like Jagger . . ."
Kurt couldn't focus for the rest of the rehearsal, and more than once he was reprimanded by all three members of the council for not keeping time or pitch.
At the end of the hour, he was one of the first to sign up. Thad gave him a strange look, so Kurt just gave him the same excuse he'd given to Nick back at Sectionals – he'd known Blaine as a child.
"Did you have a cute little kid crush on him?" Thad asked, grinning.
"I wouldn't call it 'little' . . ." Kurt muttered.
"Don't worry – everyone has a crush on Blaine at one point or other. The guy's just so oblivious." Thad shook his head. "Can you imagine how much everyone's gonna spoil him when he wakes up?"
On the one hand, Kurt could fend them off and fuss over Blaine enough to make a mother hen jealous. On the other hand, Kurt could just sit back and capitalise on Blaine's admirers. Well, if they would delude themselves . . .
"I'm definitely keeping my fingers crossed for a Christmas miracle," Kurt said.
"What if Blaine had a crush on you when you were kids too?" Nick said with a dreamy look in his eye. "Wouldn't that just be the cutest? And you're true loves and just being in your presence makes him wake up?"
"Maybe I'll kiss him just to make sure." Kurt's stomach swooped at the thought. He hoped he wasn't blushing too obviously.
Kurt entered his dorm to find Jeff and Lukas lying in almost identical spread eagle positions on their beds, and he raised his eyebrows.
"Aren't you being a little melodramatic?" he asked. "And this is coming from me."
"Finals are God's way of punishing us for Adam and Eve's sins," Lukas mumbled into his bed cover.
"As if high school weren't bad enough," Jeff agreed. He stretched out, moaning obscenely when his joints popped loud enough for Kurt to hear them across the room.
Kurt rolled his eyes. "I hope you realise that if you studied as much as you played laser tag then you wouldn't need to complain so much now."
"First of all, it's not laser tag, it's laser war, and secondly, if it's good enough for Barney Stinson then it's good enough for me."
"Give it up, Jeff, you're never gonna be even half the ladies' man he is," Lukas said.
"I don't need to be half. I only need to be, like, a quarter. Or maybe a third. But no lower than a fifth 'cause what am I, a monk?" Jeff retorted. "And anyway, I can make up the numbers with guys. Do you know what the LA gay bar scene is like?"
"You are disgusting," Kurt informed him. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a study group to go to."
"Is that how you do it?" Jeff asked, sitting up with exaggerated effort. At Kurt's carefully crafted judging expression, the blond-haired boy added, "Read a different book basically every day. Or I guess I should call them tomes."
"Tomes is a good word for them," Lukas piped up while Kurt tried desperately not to blush and told himself that no, he didn't actually need an excuse for why he read so many 'tomes'.
"Yes. It's called time management. Maybe you should try it sometime," he replied archly.
Jeff sighed, flopping down onto his bed again. "I miss when you read Teen Vogue and Elle – I think my IQ cries whenever I see that pile under your bed."
Despite his best efforts, there was most certainly a flush creeping up Kurt's cheeks.
"That's not my problem. Good luck cramming for your English final tomorrow."
As Jeff swore and scrambled for his books, bag and shoes, and Lukas followed grudgingly and at a slower pace, Kurt gathered his French notes, textbooks and pencil case. There wasn't much use in bringing the final item, since Kurt had used up most of his highlighter and pen ink making research and study notes, but he figured he could at least keep up the pretence.
Tomorrow was the last day of finals. It had been surprising how many students actually took their studying seriously – even Jeff, who was one of the more . . . laid-back students, worked harder than even the most academic troglodyte at McKinley. Most of the finals were over, of course; that Sunday was the visit to the hospital (and Blaine, and Kurt's heart jumped every time he remembered), and then there was one more week of school before winter break.
He was no closer to finding a way back to Blaine, or to bring Blaine out of his (most likely supernaturally induced) coma. The closest thing to a working theory he had was from Harry Potter – Voldemort's creepy baby thing was a creature which existed in Harry's head, creating a link between them; could the castle and the Lake exist only in Blaine's head and Kurt, somehow connected, was only able to visit, for lack of a better term, while Blaine's body wasn't trying to die? But that just brought Kurt back to square one, where he didn't know how to bring Blaine back to consciousness, never mind able to survive without life support.
It probably said something that Kurt's best shot at an answer was from a young adult book series, but Kurt wasn't going to examine that too closely. Those occult books had to be good for something more than just a distraction otherwise Kurt would go mad.
Kurt managed not to think about it throughout both his study sessions, or even when he was skimming two more chapters of the latest book Lauren had recommended to him. He managed not to think about how, in less than seventy-two hours, he would be seeing Blaine in real life – or, well, Blaine's body, at least, but between basically last-minute tutoring French and trying to wrap his head around Physics, Kurt was far too tired for a theological and philosophical debate with himself about the existence of souls.