Fic: Hail to Whatever You Found in the Sunlight That Surrounds You 5/12
Title: Hail to Whatever You Found in the Sunlight That Surrounds You
Author:water_nix
Artist: tortugax
Word Count: 30 400
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Blaine/Kurt, Cooper, Mr. & Mrs. Anderson, Burt/Carole, minor OCs
Warnings: homophobia, mention of gaybashing and bullying, underage drinking
Summary: On the third of August in Blaine Anderson's ninth year, something momentous happens: he sees a boy crying on the beach and decides to do something about it. What he gets in return is a best friend, a confidant, an ally to help him through the ups and downs. They spend one month together every summer. One perfect month until they are old enough to escape together. Eleven Augusts and the letters in between.
Thirteen - August 2007: The Summer When There is a Girl
Amy Mullins is from Jackson, New Jersey and is staying with her aunt and uncle in their rented beach house for three weeks. Blaine and Kurt learn this about her within the first five minutes. Within the first twenty-four hours, they learn that all of the other boys their age are all dying for Amy's attention and will act like complete idiots to get it. Even if that means Amy herself tells them off and threatens to push them into the ocean. That only eggs them on.
“I swear, you two are the only decent boys in this whole place,” she tells Blaine and Kurt, taking a lick of her ice cream cone. “I wish they would all leave us alone.” Blaine wishes that Amy would leave him and Kurt alone, but of course he doesn't say that. He just nods and smiles and tries to laugh along with Kurt. Even though she has become a hijacker of Kurt's attention and therefore Blaine's entire summer.
It's not that he doesn't like Amy, because he does. She's friendly and smart and she likes musicals and sea creatures and she doesn't roll around in filth all day and smell like sour sea water. The other boys call her hot and tell each other to check out her boobs. Kurt tells them they are being disrespectful when they ask if he has ever seen her bathing suit top slip when they've been out for a swim. They all laugh and roll their eyes and Kurt's cousin Daniel says as if he would even notice, his lip curled.
Kurt is still red faced and avoiding Blaine's eyes when they make their way to the cave. Amy has been mercifully absent all day and Kurt and Blaine have an unspoken agreement to never take her to their cave, to their secret spot.
They are quiet for several minutes, Kurt sitting on a low rock shelf and tossing stones out of the cave door and into the surf while Blaine leans against the wall and watches him. He keeps playing the boys' words about Amy over and over in his head. They all seemed to be in agreement about her, but Blaine just doesn't see her in any special way. Mostly she sort of gets on his nerves, and that makes him feel guilty because she hasn't done anything. He supposes she's pretty, with her long, dark hair and her big, brown eyes. Her skin is what people refer to as “sun-kissed” and she has a nice figure and long, long legs. She's taller than both he and Kurt and most of the other boys their age. But Blaine doesn't find her attractive. He just doesn't.
“Kurt?” he asks quietly. The rhythmic plunk plunk of Kurt's rock-throwing pauses. He's listening. Blaine swallows the nervous lump in his throat. “Do you think Amy is pretty?”
Kurt is silent for so long that Blaine stops studying his own hands and looks over at him. Kurt is staring at his feet. He shrugs his shoulders as Blaine watches. “I guess so,” he replies. His voice is sad. “She has pretty hair.”
“Yeah,” Blaine agrees. She does have pretty hair. Blaine kind of hates that about her, he decides.
It's about a week later when Kurt is away for the day with his relatives and Blaine is forced to spend his time with only Amy. They're lying on towels and reading when she closes her book and rolls over onto her front. “Blaine?”
He gives her a questioning look from over the top of his paperback.
“Does Kurt like me?” she asks.
Blaine feels a strange tightening in the bottom of his throat and for one hysterical moment he thinks that he's forgotten how to breathe. Of all of the boys here at the beach, she's decided to leech on to Kurt? Blaine feels indignant. Kurt is his. Right? She can't go stealing his best friend away just because she has some stupid crush on him.
Blaine realizes that he hasn't spoken when the fog clears and he can see her watching him with an odd look on her face. “Because I thought we were all friends, but he's been really quiet lately and when I asked him to get ice cream he said he didn't feel like it. And Kurt always wants ice cream, you know that.”
Blaine wants to tell her that of course he knows that, since Kurt is his best friend. Not hers. Not her anything. But guilt strikes him again, for the millionth time that summer. What if Kurt likes her? He swallows the lump in his throat. “Of course he likes you,” he says quietly. “He said you have good taste in musicals.” Amy gives him a blinding smile, her perfect, white teeth shining in the sun. “And he said that you have pretty hair,” he adds, his voice even lower. He feels physically sick when she winds her hair around her finger and lets it go - a perfect ringlet bouncing against her clavicle.
Blaine spends the last week of Amy's stay watching her interactions with Kurt and trying to decipher the feelings that every shared look and laugh between them have bubbling up inside him. He feels wretched and angry and mostly wants to run away and hide from whatever he's feeling, and also from the pair of them. But he never once does, because he tells himself that if he leaves, she wins. He catches many odd looks from Kurt and pretends not to notice, even though they had perfected nonverbal communication summers before.
He is glad when she goes home. Jubilant. He smiles as she drives away and feels a familiar stab of guilt in his guts. But Kurt is smiling too, and that makes everything so much better.
The night after Kurt leaves for Ohio and Blaine is sniffing silently into his pillow, he replays over and over in his head his conversation with Cooper from the summer before.
“The sooner you face the fact that Dad is an asshole and will never love you unless you do everything that he wants and be everything that he wants, the better, Squirt. Because I've seen how much it hurts you when he's cold, but someday, Blaine, someday you're going to do something or be something that he really doesn't like and it's going to get a lot worse than cold shoulders and mean looks. And there will be something, little brother. There will be something.”
Blaine is pretty sure he knows what that something is and it terrifies him.
~*~
The In-Between - Year Five: Assorted letters, something scary and the hospital.
I told them. It was bad. Mom cried and my father won't talk to me. I called Cooper and he said he was cool with it. Those were his exact words - “I'm cool with it.” Always helpful Cooper. Still, better than the alternative I suppose.
Thank you.
Blaine
~*~
Kurt,
I'm writing this from the hospital. You said courageous, my parents said stupid and risky - apparently they're smarter than I give them credit for. These guys jumped us while we were waiting for a ride. I have a broken rib, a broken leg and a concussion. Possibly some light internal bleeding. Mom found a new school for me to go to, a private school. They have a zero tolerance bullying policy that is strictly enforced. My father scoffed when she told me. I know he thinks I deserved it. I hate him. I never thought I would ever say this in my life - Cooper was right. Everything feels so wrong.
I'm loopy with drugs but I wanted to tell you. They wouldn't let me call from the hospital phone. I wish you were here. I miss you.
Love,
Blaine
~*~
Dearest Blaine,
I want to say thank you, first of all. You make me feel brave, even though you don't see yourself that way. You are. Going somewhere safe is not running away, Blaine. Please don't think of it as such.
Because of you and your friendship, I feel more at ease being myself. I told my dad. And also Mercedes. Just the two of them for now, but it's a start. I feel good about it. My dad said that he'd known for years, then asked me if I was sure. I told him yes, of course. I have been sure for a long time. Mercedes just tried to coax me to tell other people. Not yet. But someday.
I'm so sorry for what has happened to you, Blaine. I wish there was something I could do to make everything better. Your new school sounds good. I wish I could be there with you. I know this is a terrible thing to say, seeing as you've just been through a trauma - but I'm so grateful not to be alone. Thank you for that. No matter what people say to me or do to me, I am always thinking of you and your face in my mind straightens my spine and puts spikes in my words. I fling them about dangerously just for you. Especially now.
Someday we will go away and live free from those people who would hurt and judge us based on something we cannot change. And we will be happy then. You and I and the world at our feet.
All my love,
Your best friend, Kurt xxx ooo
~*~*~
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Author:water_nix
Artist: tortugax
Word Count: 30 400
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Blaine/Kurt, Cooper, Mr. & Mrs. Anderson, Burt/Carole, minor OCs
Warnings: homophobia, mention of gaybashing and bullying, underage drinking
Summary: On the third of August in Blaine Anderson's ninth year, something momentous happens: he sees a boy crying on the beach and decides to do something about it. What he gets in return is a best friend, a confidant, an ally to help him through the ups and downs. They spend one month together every summer. One perfect month until they are old enough to escape together. Eleven Augusts and the letters in between.
Thirteen - August 2007: The Summer When There is a Girl
Amy Mullins is from Jackson, New Jersey and is staying with her aunt and uncle in their rented beach house for three weeks. Blaine and Kurt learn this about her within the first five minutes. Within the first twenty-four hours, they learn that all of the other boys their age are all dying for Amy's attention and will act like complete idiots to get it. Even if that means Amy herself tells them off and threatens to push them into the ocean. That only eggs them on.
“I swear, you two are the only decent boys in this whole place,” she tells Blaine and Kurt, taking a lick of her ice cream cone. “I wish they would all leave us alone.” Blaine wishes that Amy would leave him and Kurt alone, but of course he doesn't say that. He just nods and smiles and tries to laugh along with Kurt. Even though she has become a hijacker of Kurt's attention and therefore Blaine's entire summer.
It's not that he doesn't like Amy, because he does. She's friendly and smart and she likes musicals and sea creatures and she doesn't roll around in filth all day and smell like sour sea water. The other boys call her hot and tell each other to check out her boobs. Kurt tells them they are being disrespectful when they ask if he has ever seen her bathing suit top slip when they've been out for a swim. They all laugh and roll their eyes and Kurt's cousin Daniel says as if he would even notice, his lip curled.
Kurt is still red faced and avoiding Blaine's eyes when they make their way to the cave. Amy has been mercifully absent all day and Kurt and Blaine have an unspoken agreement to never take her to their cave, to their secret spot.
They are quiet for several minutes, Kurt sitting on a low rock shelf and tossing stones out of the cave door and into the surf while Blaine leans against the wall and watches him. He keeps playing the boys' words about Amy over and over in his head. They all seemed to be in agreement about her, but Blaine just doesn't see her in any special way. Mostly she sort of gets on his nerves, and that makes him feel guilty because she hasn't done anything. He supposes she's pretty, with her long, dark hair and her big, brown eyes. Her skin is what people refer to as “sun-kissed” and she has a nice figure and long, long legs. She's taller than both he and Kurt and most of the other boys their age. But Blaine doesn't find her attractive. He just doesn't.
“Kurt?” he asks quietly. The rhythmic plunk plunk of Kurt's rock-throwing pauses. He's listening. Blaine swallows the nervous lump in his throat. “Do you think Amy is pretty?”
Kurt is silent for so long that Blaine stops studying his own hands and looks over at him. Kurt is staring at his feet. He shrugs his shoulders as Blaine watches. “I guess so,” he replies. His voice is sad. “She has pretty hair.”
“Yeah,” Blaine agrees. She does have pretty hair. Blaine kind of hates that about her, he decides.
It's about a week later when Kurt is away for the day with his relatives and Blaine is forced to spend his time with only Amy. They're lying on towels and reading when she closes her book and rolls over onto her front. “Blaine?”
He gives her a questioning look from over the top of his paperback.
“Does Kurt like me?” she asks.
Blaine feels a strange tightening in the bottom of his throat and for one hysterical moment he thinks that he's forgotten how to breathe. Of all of the boys here at the beach, she's decided to leech on to Kurt? Blaine feels indignant. Kurt is his. Right? She can't go stealing his best friend away just because she has some stupid crush on him.
Blaine realizes that he hasn't spoken when the fog clears and he can see her watching him with an odd look on her face. “Because I thought we were all friends, but he's been really quiet lately and when I asked him to get ice cream he said he didn't feel like it. And Kurt always wants ice cream, you know that.”
Blaine wants to tell her that of course he knows that, since Kurt is his best friend. Not hers. Not her anything. But guilt strikes him again, for the millionth time that summer. What if Kurt likes her? He swallows the lump in his throat. “Of course he likes you,” he says quietly. “He said you have good taste in musicals.” Amy gives him a blinding smile, her perfect, white teeth shining in the sun. “And he said that you have pretty hair,” he adds, his voice even lower. He feels physically sick when she winds her hair around her finger and lets it go - a perfect ringlet bouncing against her clavicle.
Blaine spends the last week of Amy's stay watching her interactions with Kurt and trying to decipher the feelings that every shared look and laugh between them have bubbling up inside him. He feels wretched and angry and mostly wants to run away and hide from whatever he's feeling, and also from the pair of them. But he never once does, because he tells himself that if he leaves, she wins. He catches many odd looks from Kurt and pretends not to notice, even though they had perfected nonverbal communication summers before.
He is glad when she goes home. Jubilant. He smiles as she drives away and feels a familiar stab of guilt in his guts. But Kurt is smiling too, and that makes everything so much better.
The night after Kurt leaves for Ohio and Blaine is sniffing silently into his pillow, he replays over and over in his head his conversation with Cooper from the summer before.
“The sooner you face the fact that Dad is an asshole and will never love you unless you do everything that he wants and be everything that he wants, the better, Squirt. Because I've seen how much it hurts you when he's cold, but someday, Blaine, someday you're going to do something or be something that he really doesn't like and it's going to get a lot worse than cold shoulders and mean looks. And there will be something, little brother. There will be something.”
Blaine is pretty sure he knows what that something is and it terrifies him.
~*~
The In-Between - Year Five: Assorted letters, something scary and the hospital.
I told them. It was bad. Mom cried and my father won't talk to me. I called Cooper and he said he was cool with it. Those were his exact words - “I'm cool with it.” Always helpful Cooper. Still, better than the alternative I suppose.
Thank you.
Blaine
~*~
Kurt,
I'm writing this from the hospital. You said courageous, my parents said stupid and risky - apparently they're smarter than I give them credit for. These guys jumped us while we were waiting for a ride. I have a broken rib, a broken leg and a concussion. Possibly some light internal bleeding. Mom found a new school for me to go to, a private school. They have a zero tolerance bullying policy that is strictly enforced. My father scoffed when she told me. I know he thinks I deserved it. I hate him. I never thought I would ever say this in my life - Cooper was right. Everything feels so wrong.
I'm loopy with drugs but I wanted to tell you. They wouldn't let me call from the hospital phone. I wish you were here. I miss you.
Love,
Blaine
~*~
Dearest Blaine,
I want to say thank you, first of all. You make me feel brave, even though you don't see yourself that way. You are. Going somewhere safe is not running away, Blaine. Please don't think of it as such.
Because of you and your friendship, I feel more at ease being myself. I told my dad. And also Mercedes. Just the two of them for now, but it's a start. I feel good about it. My dad said that he'd known for years, then asked me if I was sure. I told him yes, of course. I have been sure for a long time. Mercedes just tried to coax me to tell other people. Not yet. But someday.
I'm so sorry for what has happened to you, Blaine. I wish there was something I could do to make everything better. Your new school sounds good. I wish I could be there with you. I know this is a terrible thing to say, seeing as you've just been through a trauma - but I'm so grateful not to be alone. Thank you for that. No matter what people say to me or do to me, I am always thinking of you and your face in my mind straightens my spine and puts spikes in my words. I fling them about dangerously just for you. Especially now.
Someday we will go away and live free from those people who would hurt and judge us based on something we cannot change. And we will be happy then. You and I and the world at our feet.
All my love,
Your best friend, Kurt xxx ooo
~*~*~
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