Kurt Hummel: The Musical

I wrote this on a whim, in response to puckurt's Diva-Off challenge (Favorite songs). It's a bit... different from what I'm used to writing, but I think it was alright. Also? I might've botched up one or more musical terms; I Wiki-ed pretty much everything.

Warning for alluded drug use.

Enjoy!

He closes his eyes.

If he looks down, he won't be able to find his feet-they're (hopefully) somewhere in the sea of eighth notes rushing around him like cockroaches stuck in a looping allegro. He can feel the sharp, smarting bites of their curled teeth digging into his unseen flesh, each nip a smaller part of a bigger whole.

Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity.

Above him-it's the above that really freaks him out. Where a myriad angel choir should be, where the golden sunshine should shine as cooing doves enter stage right, there is nothing. An empty sort of nothingness that startles his heart into a tinkling melody of blood-beats that echoes in the acoustics of his chest.

Above us, only sky.

There is just too much of everything around him. It's all sights and smells of a past life, nostalgia sharper than his wit. His eyes are like water balloons punctured, dripping a steady flow of water-or is that pee?-into the ether. So instead of looking, taking in the jumbled mess he's become, instead of bearing the crucifix of sorrows with his thorn-bedazzled tiara, he closes his eyes.

Oh god, I think I'm falling…

He can't remember the last time he's felt like this before. Not this confusing, dizzying frequency spectrum of his up-and-down emotions, but just… feeling in general. Nothing's hindering him, no adamant rest notes in his heart. It's a chaotic, dizzying blur of little high, little low, and maybe if he'd open his eyes instead of taking the coward's way out and closing his eyes as his emotions act as a voice-over (in the deep, cold baritone of James Earl Jones), he'd find himself in a staring contest with the composer.

He wonders who he'd see, waving their baton like a magic wand to pluck at his heart-strings in a never-ending arpeggio, a harp without a volition to call its own, trapped in the skeletal frame of his chest. Would it be his father, his mother? Oh god, if his mother could see him now…

I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all.

No, maybe irony would pull another little twist in the plot, the surprise clash of cymbals erupting after a semibreve when he opens his eyes to the Ice Princess himself, in all his polished, Armani-McQueen-Jacobs overcompensating glory. All hail the Noh mask painted with delicate, staccato precision on the well-polished planes of his face. Hiding, never erasing.

What you got to hide?

What indeed, Kurt thinks with no small crescendo of irony-laced heartache. What he's kept from everyone, including himself, is surrounding him and eating him from the lovely violin bow of his quiet lips to the soles of his soul. What he's got to hide is enough to fill this indefinite void he refuses to turn around and face.

Turn around bright eyes…

God, why did he take it? Why did he shirk the responsible young man/only son his father believed in, the one his father loved, for this painful reminiscing he could have-should have-avoided? He clenched his teeth, his entire body comprised of taut guitar strings.

Why did I do it?

Wasn't that the million-dollar question in this charade. He was on the hot-seat, pinned to his royal throne with his well-placed designer armor cut down the middle, symmetrically flayed open to display himself to the world. The love, the grief, the selfishness and need, it was all out in the air. Everything tried cramming onto one bar, dangling off and clinging to be a part of the do-re-mi of his thought processes.

To be a part of something.

That was what glee club was, for him. In being a part of glee club, he was a part of something. It was why he tried out for the football team, why he tried out for the Cheerios. (And stuck with it even when Coach called him out on his pear-hips.)

When teasing led to more resonating jest, when it moved to an attacca of outright, stinging peer pressure, he scowled into the unfamiliar faces of his tormentors, seeing low self-worth and fear-seeing all he never was-with a soft, wailing cello playing the soundtrack.

He picked it up, he'd taken it-whatever it was-to be a part of something.

He found it kind of funny, he found it kind of sad. His life's goal (other than becoming a shining star, man-candy dangling on his arm as a background instrumental to his good old American tale of overcoming and success) had gotten him into this mess. Kurt doesn't remember what happened afterward, only muffled shouts and scraps of angry dialogue between an irritating, unsettling oboe and a smooth baritone. Drum-beats that struck in their own, uncharted time. Applause before the curtains went down.

You ask for me to enter, but then you make me crawl…

Goddammit, Kurt thought with the bitter taste of disappointment clinging to his cottony tongue. He didn't feel like playing Savior for his outcasted self. He's always been perfectly fine with hiding himself from himself. He wants to go back to the indifference.

Just when he can't take it anymore, when he's held his breath for all of his Grand Pause, a little voice tickles at the back of his head. A callused hand brushes away his tears, fixes the blurring ink of the composition until the overall mood of this song had been ultimately changed into something more hopeful, something with an empowering theme to lift his hopes higher than that crippled high F.

Don't stop believin', Hold on to that feeling…

He swallows down his almost instinctive, wordless da-da-da-da vocals like acidic bile, the unpalatable, tangy fear of being stuck in the background for the rest of his life. He tries holding on-God, how he tries.

Fingertips press gentle, swirling C minors and D majors into his forehead, a soft baritone voice-echoing and saccharine in its familiarity-urges him to come back, reassuring and asking him to stay strong.

You know I'm here for you, I'm here for you.

He mewls out the final wailing note of his torment, and when his eyes finally open up, twin pearls of glasz shining all on their own, he's both surprised and reassured to find himself safe and sound, curled up in a quilt as that baritone hugs him from behind like a protective treble clef, keeping him grounded and helping him find his own semblance and order.

As the last of his confusing nightmare of a musical fades with an inspiring I'm forever yours, faithfully, the closing-door Sincerely of a letter, Kurt sniffs and lets those familiar arms hold the wooden frame of his body closer still. He feels like he's an empty vessel, both waiting for the echoes of life to rush back to his lifeless skeleton and savoring the rest, the lilting silence.

He's turned around and curled like a well-worn piece of sheet music, and then he finds himself looking up into the kind, hazel lilt of Puck's gaze. Everything is silent, but Kurt doesn't bother holding his breath for the tempos that will never come.

"You did great this time." He strokes his rough palm down Kurt's side, as if brushing away dust from an unused instrument. Kurt feels worn out, but his soul is glowing with the fires of a dulcet Alleluia chorus.

He burrows into the other boy's chest, warm and full of life beneath his questing fingers, and inhales. Even as he knows he'll be revisiting his demons sooner rather than much, much later, even if he finds himself glued in front of a mirror with no escape route in sight, Kurt also knows Puck will be there for him to lean on, to act as his crutch when he stumbles.

He has to-needs to do this, no matter how much he wishes he didn't, and Puck's presence is a small (but still desired) comfort.

Through the faint smell of herbs, past the jarring Axe doing a tango with something smoky and dark, beyond all of these whirlwind sensations, Kurt can hear the constant drumbeats of lifeblood twirling to and fro-his favorite lullaby, their song.