fic: pinpoint of a human mind // glee, klaine, pg
Pinpoint of a Human Mind
PG // Kurt/Blaine
1500 words
Title taken from the spoken word “For My Daughter” by Sarah Kay. Warning for a rambly writing style and a really bad poem because
I am not a poet
this is a fact and I know it.
I can pretend all the time--
in fact I may rhyme
on occasion! But really,
I’m not.
There’s a slim journal that is perpetually propped up against Blaine’s desk, richly colored leather-bound covers etched faintly with a language in a script so antiquated, it’s hardly legible. The language, too, is old and ancient. Latin, Blaine tells Kurt, or maybe romanized Sanskrit, or maybe something neither of them could ever guess at accurately. It was a gift from his brother, something given to him back when he was younger and had some desperate need to express himself because there was no other way to do so.
He didn’t use it for that, Blaine recalls, because there was something so incredibly unappealingly teenager-y about journaling that he simply could not have lived with himself had he sat down and written about his feelings every evening, like clockwork. Like doing homework in the evenings, like eating dinner at a regular time, like tuning into an episode of The Simpsons at six PM exactly every weekday; routines, Blaine confesses, were things he tried so very hard to break out of when he was younger.
Here’s to his lack of youth, Kurt crows, because Blaine is still a teenager and still very much young and at the prime age for misunderstanding the words “express yourself” as something cliche and painfully youth-inducing and it makes Blaine laugh and turn up the music coming from the speakers of his laptop, the sounds only interrupted by the clack of keys as he types an essay on intent versus true good in Madame Bovary, a book Kurt tired of quickly and remains tired of.
And the journal remains untouched on Blaine’s desk, elegant-looking and utterly useless as they banter over calculus problems and the oblivious life of the poor schmuck married to the horrible Emma Bovary and hipster music that Blaine refuses to admit he really likes (it helps him focus, he defends, and Kurt shakes his head but knows that if Blaine could sing along to his background music, he’d get nothing done).
Later, Kurt scans his eyes over Blaine’s desk and his gaze lands on some pictures that he’s seen dozens of times before but is always transfixed by, so Blaine tells him the story about the pool picture again because it’s his favorite embarrassing moment of his brother, and meanwhile the journal sits and sits and waits to be picked up, unimportantly beautiful and completely at home in the rustic coloring of Blaine’s bedroom that Kurt loves so much.
And really, the journal is of no use to Kurt even though it has to have some sort of place in Blaine’s heart for him to have kept it there and it does, undeniably and completely because, after Kurt has left for the night in a cloud of musky kisses, Blaine reaches for the journal with flushed lips and a throat that seems to be squeezing his windpipe shut and uncaps a ballpoint pen and he writes the first words that come to mind, a vague structure forming on the page in a messier scrawl than he usually writes with, a strong hand and deep, dark strokes of ink on textured paper.
It’s embarrassing, it really kind of is. There’s a kind of drama that Kurt would appreciate about what he does, writing poetry about music and the food of love and love and food and joy and feelings, stupidly strong feelings about all of the world and the things in it, but there’s also something so shameful about the cliche when he denied self-expression through writing as one of his hobbies as a fourteen year old. Technically it’s three years later now and he’s no longer stuck in a deeply emotional rut where he wallows in self-pity and sadness about being a misunderstood youth unlike any other in the world like every other teenage in the world but still.
Still. He slams the journal shut and traces fingers over the etched words and silently thanks Cooper for the journal like he does every time he writes in it so sporadically, outside of his routine and out of desperation and sealed away in his room for nobody’s eyes but his.
There are times when he wishes a little bit that someone else would open the journal and read each page, flicking through them with fingers licked to grip page after page, quick scans and slow, thorough absorption of each word at random, dependent on how bad his handwriting is dependent on how quickly it was that he wrote each poem, how badly he had to get the words out on paper so that he could feel the blow of them just a little bit less pressing against his heart and squeezing his tongue against the roof of his mouth until the last letter or fullstop or question mark was dotted or crossed. An intrusion of privacy, some would call it, but maybe it would be less an intrusion than him allowing them to understand exactly how it is that he feels at certain moments, after a kiss, a meal, a movie, during a scene in a book that makes him want to break down and cry or a joke in a television show that has him rolling in stitches. He wants people to know, to feel, to be confused and then understand because he’s tired of being a misunderstood teenager like the rest of the world sometimes.
And that’s it: he’s tired of being a teenager and tired of always having a schedule to stick to and just tired because he’s up late writing a paper on a book about a selfish woman or calculating the area under a curve, so writing is his respite and his moment of freedom aside from the ones he finds with Kurt between songs and in his arms and strongly smelling of cologne on warm skin (never fabric; Blaine forgets that sometimes and splashes it on over his undershirt or dabs it under the cuffs of his shirt).
Someday, Kurt will find the journal and he will finally ask why Blaine hasn’t written in it. Then he will open the front cover and be greeted with scribbles and doodles because that’s the page Blaine always turns to first, always absentmindedly when he just needs to stop his routine and has nothing driving him to write. And then, with surprise, he will turn the page and bring the journal close to his face and read the small, cramped handwriting, because Blaine used to use all the words he could think of until the page was just a rambling mess left unattended under his hand, and then he will be the one licking his fingers and thumbing through all the pages until he reaches the blank pages, still so many of them left but maybe there will be far fewer by the time he actually does open the journal.
And when Kurt finishes he will close the journal in thought, then in horror, and he will say that he’s very sorry for reading something private but there was something strangely entrancing that made him want to keep reading until he ran out of things to read because... Just because.
When there are no more words that Kurt can say, Blaine will laugh and tell him that it’s fine; the journal was never private in the first place because he wouldn’t really deign to call it a journal anyway, even though that’s really what it is because journals contain things like feelings and thoughts and I’m so mad that Harry kissed Sally and last night was beautiful, and calling it a notebook is not quite right because that’s what you write your psychology notes in, pure analysis and no emotion. But journal implies some sort of keep-out sign splashed across the front cover and Blaine could never do that to Kurt. And he will tell him so until he knows it fully well, that he’s welcome into anything of Blaine’s--books, drawers, notebooks, kitchen cabinets, heart--whenever he feels the desire.
Kurt will stammer and nod, cheeks flushed red because he’s still unsure about the whole privacy thing and Blaine will laugh and take him by the hand and let him lean over the chair to kiss him senseless and that will maybe proceed into other things, but maybe it will stop there so Blaine will pull out a pen because his chest is bursting with so many words but only a few that matter and he will write and Kurt will read,
Momentary silence
one step six breaths
and your eyes an explosion
No uniform no stops
pure simplicity and bare thoughts
wrapped in mine
Mangled candles broken glass
reflections of your ankles and palms
pressed clasped shaking
Upon skin upon skin upon silk
what to be left but salt and dust
dust and you
One this no that
cold floors and all fragrance
and I, kept.
PG // Kurt/Blaine
1500 words
Title taken from the spoken word “For My Daughter” by Sarah Kay. Warning for a rambly writing style and a really bad poem because
I am not a poet
this is a fact and I know it.
I can pretend all the time--
in fact I may rhyme
on occasion! But really,
I’m not.
There’s a slim journal that is perpetually propped up against Blaine’s desk, richly colored leather-bound covers etched faintly with a language in a script so antiquated, it’s hardly legible. The language, too, is old and ancient. Latin, Blaine tells Kurt, or maybe romanized Sanskrit, or maybe something neither of them could ever guess at accurately. It was a gift from his brother, something given to him back when he was younger and had some desperate need to express himself because there was no other way to do so.
He didn’t use it for that, Blaine recalls, because there was something so incredibly unappealingly teenager-y about journaling that he simply could not have lived with himself had he sat down and written about his feelings every evening, like clockwork. Like doing homework in the evenings, like eating dinner at a regular time, like tuning into an episode of The Simpsons at six PM exactly every weekday; routines, Blaine confesses, were things he tried so very hard to break out of when he was younger.
Here’s to his lack of youth, Kurt crows, because Blaine is still a teenager and still very much young and at the prime age for misunderstanding the words “express yourself” as something cliche and painfully youth-inducing and it makes Blaine laugh and turn up the music coming from the speakers of his laptop, the sounds only interrupted by the clack of keys as he types an essay on intent versus true good in Madame Bovary, a book Kurt tired of quickly and remains tired of.
And the journal remains untouched on Blaine’s desk, elegant-looking and utterly useless as they banter over calculus problems and the oblivious life of the poor schmuck married to the horrible Emma Bovary and hipster music that Blaine refuses to admit he really likes (it helps him focus, he defends, and Kurt shakes his head but knows that if Blaine could sing along to his background music, he’d get nothing done).
Later, Kurt scans his eyes over Blaine’s desk and his gaze lands on some pictures that he’s seen dozens of times before but is always transfixed by, so Blaine tells him the story about the pool picture again because it’s his favorite embarrassing moment of his brother, and meanwhile the journal sits and sits and waits to be picked up, unimportantly beautiful and completely at home in the rustic coloring of Blaine’s bedroom that Kurt loves so much.
And really, the journal is of no use to Kurt even though it has to have some sort of place in Blaine’s heart for him to have kept it there and it does, undeniably and completely because, after Kurt has left for the night in a cloud of musky kisses, Blaine reaches for the journal with flushed lips and a throat that seems to be squeezing his windpipe shut and uncaps a ballpoint pen and he writes the first words that come to mind, a vague structure forming on the page in a messier scrawl than he usually writes with, a strong hand and deep, dark strokes of ink on textured paper.
It’s embarrassing, it really kind of is. There’s a kind of drama that Kurt would appreciate about what he does, writing poetry about music and the food of love and love and food and joy and feelings, stupidly strong feelings about all of the world and the things in it, but there’s also something so shameful about the cliche when he denied self-expression through writing as one of his hobbies as a fourteen year old. Technically it’s three years later now and he’s no longer stuck in a deeply emotional rut where he wallows in self-pity and sadness about being a misunderstood youth unlike any other in the world like every other teenage in the world but still.
Still. He slams the journal shut and traces fingers over the etched words and silently thanks Cooper for the journal like he does every time he writes in it so sporadically, outside of his routine and out of desperation and sealed away in his room for nobody’s eyes but his.
There are times when he wishes a little bit that someone else would open the journal and read each page, flicking through them with fingers licked to grip page after page, quick scans and slow, thorough absorption of each word at random, dependent on how bad his handwriting is dependent on how quickly it was that he wrote each poem, how badly he had to get the words out on paper so that he could feel the blow of them just a little bit less pressing against his heart and squeezing his tongue against the roof of his mouth until the last letter or fullstop or question mark was dotted or crossed. An intrusion of privacy, some would call it, but maybe it would be less an intrusion than him allowing them to understand exactly how it is that he feels at certain moments, after a kiss, a meal, a movie, during a scene in a book that makes him want to break down and cry or a joke in a television show that has him rolling in stitches. He wants people to know, to feel, to be confused and then understand because he’s tired of being a misunderstood teenager like the rest of the world sometimes.
And that’s it: he’s tired of being a teenager and tired of always having a schedule to stick to and just tired because he’s up late writing a paper on a book about a selfish woman or calculating the area under a curve, so writing is his respite and his moment of freedom aside from the ones he finds with Kurt between songs and in his arms and strongly smelling of cologne on warm skin (never fabric; Blaine forgets that sometimes and splashes it on over his undershirt or dabs it under the cuffs of his shirt).
Someday, Kurt will find the journal and he will finally ask why Blaine hasn’t written in it. Then he will open the front cover and be greeted with scribbles and doodles because that’s the page Blaine always turns to first, always absentmindedly when he just needs to stop his routine and has nothing driving him to write. And then, with surprise, he will turn the page and bring the journal close to his face and read the small, cramped handwriting, because Blaine used to use all the words he could think of until the page was just a rambling mess left unattended under his hand, and then he will be the one licking his fingers and thumbing through all the pages until he reaches the blank pages, still so many of them left but maybe there will be far fewer by the time he actually does open the journal.
And when Kurt finishes he will close the journal in thought, then in horror, and he will say that he’s very sorry for reading something private but there was something strangely entrancing that made him want to keep reading until he ran out of things to read because... Just because.
When there are no more words that Kurt can say, Blaine will laugh and tell him that it’s fine; the journal was never private in the first place because he wouldn’t really deign to call it a journal anyway, even though that’s really what it is because journals contain things like feelings and thoughts and I’m so mad that Harry kissed Sally and last night was beautiful, and calling it a notebook is not quite right because that’s what you write your psychology notes in, pure analysis and no emotion. But journal implies some sort of keep-out sign splashed across the front cover and Blaine could never do that to Kurt. And he will tell him so until he knows it fully well, that he’s welcome into anything of Blaine’s--books, drawers, notebooks, kitchen cabinets, heart--whenever he feels the desire.
Kurt will stammer and nod, cheeks flushed red because he’s still unsure about the whole privacy thing and Blaine will laugh and take him by the hand and let him lean over the chair to kiss him senseless and that will maybe proceed into other things, but maybe it will stop there so Blaine will pull out a pen because his chest is bursting with so many words but only a few that matter and he will write and Kurt will read,
Momentary silence
one step six breaths
and your eyes an explosion
No uniform no stops
pure simplicity and bare thoughts
wrapped in mine
Mangled candles broken glass
reflections of your ankles and palms
pressed clasped shaking
Upon skin upon skin upon silk
what to be left but salt and dust
dust and you
One this no that
cold floors and all fragrance
and I, kept.