All the Other Ghosts (Boyxboy Superhero AU Fanfic (Klaine))

Interlude: Christmas to Come

Finn wakes up and the world is oppressively quiet, the way it is very early in the morning, or after snow. It takes him a while to want to move. The blankets are warm and the room is dark, and being back in Lima makes him feel younger, safer, smaller inside. He's not in New York and he doesn't have to be a grown-up. He's at home, and it's Christmas morning, and he can be as young as he actually feels if he wants to be.

It's Christmas morning; suddenly he does feel like a kid, sits up and puts a hand to his head because whoa upright too quickly, his blood has way too far to travel to reach his brain. Christmas morning and he pulls a hoodie on over his pyjamas, cracks the door open - colder in the hallway beyond his sleep-stuffy bedroom - and shuffles downstairs. He can smell coffee and the fairy lights are already lit up the banister but he can't hear voices or the TV, who's up in all this silence -?

Kurt, sitting in the lounge with his feet tucked up on the sofa underneath his robe, coffee cup cradled in his hands, drowsily watching the Christmas tree glow. Finn blinks at him as Kurt looks over, because they might've lived together a few years now but it will never stop being strange, seeing Kurt in a t-shirt with its neck crooked from sleeping, bedhead and unguarded eyes, Kurt just woken and uncomposed. "There's coffee in the kitchen," he says, and Finn gradually makes the sentence make sense - really sleepy still - and mumbles, "Cool, thanks, man." and shuffles on again.

The kitchen floor's cold and finding a mug and measuring sugar out wakes him up a little more, especially when he spills and glances guiltily over his shoulder and scuffs it quickly to grit on the floor before Kurt can find out. He heads back into the lounge and Kurt is yawning, has lifted a hand to half-hide it, then settles a shoulder back into the cushions and just watches the tree again with sleepy low eyes. Finn sits along from him, looks at the presents underneath, says, "Do you think they'd mind if we just opened one?"

"They'll still be there when they wake up," Kurt says, rubbing his eye. "Merry Christmas, by the way."

"Oh yeah, you too dude. Have a good one."

He lifts his mug, and Kurt looks at it for a moment before he understands, lifts his own for the clink. Finn grins, drinks coffee, begins to wake up some more. Kurt's huddled down in his robe, hanging open over that black t-shirt and sweatpants, wrists propped off his bent knees as he cups his mug. He says, "Finn."

Finn says over the mug's rim as he drinks, "Mmn?"

"You know this thing I'm doing."

Finn swallows too-hot coffee.

This thing Kurt is doing. This thing they're all collectively not talking about when Finn knows it's all his dad can think about, silence heavier than snow hanging over this house. This illegal thing Kurt's doing, this thing Finn should totally arrest him for doing (he can actually like arrest people now which would be so much cooler if his brother wasn't on the list of people to arrest, it kind of kills the buzz), this thing Kurt's doing that could get him locked up, hurt, he knows - he knows - killed . . .

He says, very guardedly, "Yeah?"

Kurt shuffles his feet a little on the edge of the sofa cushions, toes briefly curling inside his socks. "It's not currently as efficient as it could be."

All Finn can really think is that being 'efficient' is exactly the sort of thing Kurt would worry about. ". . . no?"

Kurt looks at the tree, and he draws his breath in, and then he faces Finn. "Right now I can only help out with some isolated incidents I'm lucky to be there for. If I had access to - statistics, police operations, if I knew where the crime hotspots were -"

Finn would butt in with if you're suggesting what I think you're suggesting then no way in all of hell Kurt but he doesn't know if Kurt is suggesting that and Kurt is just faster than Finn, Finn never has been able to cut Kurt off in time . . .

"- I would be able to help a lot more people. I don't want you to potentially get into trouble but I would appreciate your 'inside knowledge', I . . . I need to know where I'm needed. I need to know what I should be focusing on and what I need to do. I know you're only just starting out and I don't want to damage your career Finn but - do you understand that we could help each other here? If you could let me know when you're going to be involved in a big - drugs bust or hostage situation, anything I can help with, I can make you safer as well -"

That's the part where Finn cuts him off, because this is actually, all of this, this entire thing, it is utterly insane.

"Are you crazy? You want me to tell you where the most dangerous places are so you can go stick your neck out in them? You want me to actually ask you to come along to stand between me an' the bad guys and it's my job, Kurt -"

"It might help if you think of this as being my job?"

"You're wearing a mask and tights! I - actually cannot believe you're doing this, do you - I can't - get - do you know what it'll do to Burt if you get arrested for -"

"It's a bodysuit," Kurt murmurs, and drops his eyes from Finn's again, looking gloomily at the rug. "Not tights. And getting arrested is kind of the least of my worries, you know handcuffs aren't a problem for me."

"You are gonna get killed." Finn spits at him. "That's the problem, okay, that is the problem, okay, Burt is gonna have to bury you an' don't you care -?"

"I have no intention of dying. I have things to do."

"Jesus you need to-"

"If you're not going to help me then fine," Kurt says. "It was only a suggestion. I can always ghost into a station and find out what I need for myself. I just . . ."

"Just what?"

Kurt's eyes slip away from the rug to the tree again, even further away from Finn. "It just gets lonely, sometimes, on my own."

Finn stares at him, and Kurt looks at his coffee, closes his eyes, takes a sip.

What the fuck do you do when your stepbrother becomes a superhero?

Finn doesn't know how to tell him what it's been like, ever since he found out, ever since he asked Kurt about these rumours about a hero who can do what Finn knows Kurt can do and Kurt looked shifty and embarrassed and mulish. It's like getting left behind. It's like watching Kurt a mile ahead and Finn can see from this distance that he's sailing into danger but all Kurt cares about is catching the wind. It's like being so slow all the way behind him, because Finn can't do the things Kurt can do and Finn can't help him and Kurt can't just keep his head down and pretend like he's normal -

Normal. Kurt stays still, zen-like with thought and coffee, eyes closed and folded small on the sofa on Christmas morning. Kurt's never been 'normal' and Finn knows it. He remembers high school and the guilt gluts his throat; he remembers Kurt eating alone in the corner of the lunch hall and the guys sitting with Finn laughing and shoving each other and aiming spoons of ketchup at him, he remembers hearing a bang in the corridor and looking up but it was only ever Kurt getting locker-checked again, he remembers -

He remembers that Kurt never went to his own prom.

Just, fuck, that one. Senior prom, Finn knew Kurt by then, their iciness towards each other had had to melt to make their parents happy, at least while they were in the house they hung out sometimes and Kurt would help him with his homework and Finn learned that Kurt was smart and funny in a sharp dry way and - and a good guy. Didn't just tell Finn to suck it after all Finn had done to him and let other people do to him, he helped him with his homework and didn't bring it up. Didn't bring it up in front of his dad, that, that would have wrecked everything and they both knew it, if Kurt ever said the once to his dad what Finn had done and in his silence allowed to be done. Kurt couldn't make himself happy so he kept his mouth shut and let everyone else be happy instead. And Finn accepted that gratefully, until prom night, until he stood in front of his mirror in his tux before he headed out to pick up his date and he couldn't do the damn bow tie.

He hadn't even thought about going to ask Kurt. Kurt knew this kind of stuff, it was just natural to go ask Kurt, so he knocked on his door and the hum of the sewing machine stopped, and Kurt looked over from his desk, looked at Finn in his tux, and his face so carefully blanked. Finn said, "Dude, can you - how do you tie these things?"

Kurt had visibly inhaled, exhaled through his nose, which Finn had taken for a sigh of restrained frustration. In retrospect, he thinks Kurt just couldn't move until he'd made himself get one breath in.

Then he stood up in his artfully scuffed-up jeans and the t-shirt with the moustaches on, and he fixed Finn's tux for him, and it was only as he said a little shakily, "I'd almost advise clip-ons given your level of incompetence except that I would die before I'd ever advise clip-ons." that Finn had realised what a massive, massive fuck up he'd made.

Maybe it's fine to go to prom with all your friends and a cheerleader on your arm while your stepbrother stays at home because if he went he'd have to go alone and he'd probably only get shit for daring to turn up anyway. Maybe you can both be okay with that. But there is no way in all of hell that it's fine to walk into his room in your tuxedo and rub his face in it.

His face had got too hot, his hands had gone all strange, he'd felt sick with the shame in that moment, of what he couldn't be to Kurt. Kurt had read the stiffening of his body and stepped back, quickly, arms folding around himself, looking up at him with his face doing that blanking thing again but something like panic in his eyes. "All done," he'd said, too rushed, and Finn had swallowed, and thought -

Fuck it. Invite him. He must have the right clothes, he's got all the clothes in the world. He can come with you, no-one'll mess with him if he's with you. Senior prom, man, shouldn't Kurt get something from high school he'd actually want to remember - ?

And then the whisper from behind had come, the cold whisper low behind his ear: do you know what they'll do to you?

His friends, his date, everyone in the school: what exactly did Finn think would happen if he brought the school's resident queer to senior prom with him? He would be - it would be social lynching. It would be - he thought of their faces and his stomach shrank in on itself - it would be -

He would have nothing. It would take everything away from him. It would leave him with nothing.

And that vile little voice whispered to him, He's not losing anything. He doesn't have anything to lose. He doesn't know what it would be like, if they turned on you he's not the one who'd pay for it . . .

And he knew that it was cowardice, prickling under the skin of his face, flushed and floundering on his shame. He knew that it was cowardice, finding a smile with a heavy jaw, saying, "Thanks, man." and hurrying out of the room. He knew that was it cowardice, hearing Kurt stand still for some time, before his footsteps squeaked a floorboard, and the sewing machine started up again.

He knew that it was cowardice, and he'd felt quiet and out of place all prom, knowing Kurt was in his room keeping himself busy on his own. Knowing Kurt would never remember anything of high school as something he'd actually enjoyed. Knowing that Kurt, in all his quickness and wits and contained, adult clarity, knowing that he knew so exactly and adult-precisely that it was cowardice too.

And now Kurt sits there in his robe on Christmas morning, huddled up small and cradling his coffee, Kurt the superhero still on his own and maybe it'll never get out of Finn's throat any other way, it's like the guilt's got barbs, it's stuck in there like an arrow . . .

"Sure," he says, and has to clear his throat a little because it comes up rough from his straining throat. "Sure. If it - if it means you're not on your own the whole time, I mean, if it makes you any safer, you know Burt . . ."

Kurt looks across at him, sort of wondering-confused, then his mouth - twitches, this little small smile, the tiniest little smile, like he genuinely had not expected to have anything to smile about. He says, right to Finn's face, "Thank you." like he's got anything in the world to thank Finn for.

Ignore the shame, because you've got good at ignoring the shame, and maybe, for the first time, you can start actually doing something to make up for it. ". . . I'm not saying I like it."

"No-one likes it," Kurt says mildly, like this isn't a problem to him. Probably it's not, no-one's liked anything about Kurt for most of his life, he's got a lot of practise at sailing on by not giving a fuck.

"And - don't tell Burt. He'll -"

"I know. I won't. I promise."

"- Kurt."

He's looking at the tree again, much happier huddled over his coffee now. "Hm?"

". . . look after yourself. Okay?"

Kurt looks back at him, then just closes his eyes, shakes his head smiling away. "You too, Officer Hudson."

Finn swallows coffee, slowly, thoughtfully. Christmas morning, coffee and quiet, presents under the tree and for the first time it's like there's a thorn out of his throat, he can actually talk to Kurt again now, only, he's a guy, and he doesn't know what the hell to say.

So in the end, after mulling over his shame and the million apologies he could make, after turning over and over in his mind the bloody barb he's finally spat out of his own throat, what he says is, ". . . you sure we'd couldn't open like, one of them? What about the ones we got each other?"

"The presents aren't going anywhere, Finn." Kurt says, and sips his coffee, and flicks his eyes at the ceiling suddenly all alight with evil. "We could 'accidentally' put the TV on a little too loud to help them up . . ."