It's Hard To Be The One Who Stays [Kurtbastian]

Support (May 2012)

A/N: I messed up the chapters a little, so, hey! You get bonus fic today :D 

Kurt locks himself in his room because he—he just can't go back to Dalton. Not yet, maybe not ever. Every morning, he waits until his dad stops calling his name outside his door and leaves for work, scrounges downstairs for the bathroom and instant snacks, and then crawls back into bed.

Morbidly, Kurt scrolls with swollen eyes through page after page of Google results on not-Found Pairs on his laptop. His phone he leaves mashed beneath pillows, because the incessant buzzing of missed calls and unread texts are from everyone but the one that really matters.

He reads about people who have two names, three. He reads about the Unnamed. He reads about Found pairs whose names change or fade, and suddenly they're no longer Found. He reads about the Widowed Found. He reads about people with mismatched Names.

He reads a story about a guy who found his Name while in a serious relationship with someone else. It lovingly details the grief of the rejected girl. There's an addendum five years later, where the journalist reports the Found Pair has been "restored to each other" and were newly married. The "natural happy ending," the journalist concludes.

The story makes him want to throw his phone across the room.

The journalist never even bothered calling the ex after, the four years with her a mere obstacle to the grand romance, a necessary step towards true love.

Kurt thinks if anyone tries to console him by saying something similar about Sebastian, he'd punch their face in.

Kurt wakes up to pounding on his door, which he at first confuses with the pounding in his head. He raises himself up just enough from his crumbled bed to yell at the locked door "Leave me alone!"

"Kurt, you have to eat something. Come out!" his dad says. Kurt can hear the desperation, and he thinks in other circumstances he'd want to strangle the person who's making his dad sound that way.

"I'm not hungry," he croaks out. His face feels swollen, his throat dry. He looks at his watch, studiously ignoring his ring finger. 8:00 PM.

"I've heated up food," his dad begs. "Kurt, please."

His heart wrenches at the tone. Hadn't he caused enough damage?

"I—okay," Kurt says. He shuffles slowly off the bed. Slippers. Five steps to the door. Twist the knob.

He opens the door to the sight of his dad, unshaven and rumpled and ten years older.

"Kurt," his dad says, and he's so relieved.

Kurt nods, blindly heading to the kitchen, where he sits down to the single place setting and begins to shove food in his mouth, eyes cast downward. His dad's signature lasagna tastes like cardboard.

"Here, water," he hears, and then he sees his dad place a glass down to his right in his periphery vision.

His dad sits down heavily opposite him.

Kurt continues shoveling food down, like he's on one of those gross food competitions on the Food Network.

"Kurt, I know it's upsetting, but you can't—"

He throws the fork down. It clangs onto the plate, off-tune.

"Can't you wait a little bit longer to tell me how relieved and happy you are?" Kurt demands.

His dad stares at him.

"Don't look at me that way!" Kurt screeches hysterically, tears beginning to blur his vision again. He swipes at his swollen eyes. "I know you don't like him! And guess what, you were right, okay? I was stupid and dumb, and I got hurt. Except he got hurt too, and—" He thinks back to the sound of Sebastian's careless stride into his house, the silence as his dad tells him Kurt's not leaving his room, that quiet heartbreaking "okay."

The tears are a lost cause. Kurt lets them fall freely instead, one after the other. He pushes away the plate and buries his head in his hands.

"It was my birthday," he cries, inanely.

Warm arms go around him and shield him away. He buries his head into his dad's familiar scent, the way the smell of oil still seems to linger even though he hasn't been a mechanic in a long time.

"I've never wanted you to be anything but happy," his dad says gruffly.

"You lied," Kurt sobs, the feeling of unfairness overwhelming him again. "You told me you're supposed to just know. And you were wrong."

His dad pulls Kurt's head away gently, until he's staring at Kurt's undoubtedly red face. He wipes away Kurt's stray tears.

"You're sure then, that it's Sebastian."

"I—I was," Kurt hiccups. He looks down at his finger. His eyes fill with tears again, as he stares at the looping bs and ns, remembering seeing each loop form with horror and willing them to twist at the last second into a different name, familiar and beloved.

Blaine Anderson stares back at him, unchanging.

And he's suddenly so angry, at this fucking foreign name taking over his body. He scratches and pulls at his finger, ignoring his dad's cry and pushing away his restraining hands. He wants to tear off the layers of skin, rip off the finger itself. Anything to get his life and his hopes back. His hands are blurring again in a haze of tears.

"Kurt, stop!" his dad yells, finally grabbing both his hands so tightly he can't move an inch. Kurt tries to throw him off, but his dad pins his torso with a shoulder, and he's immobile, the rage bottled with nowhere to go

"Kurt, listen to me," his dad says, his voice steel, and Kurt flashes to hundreds of days of being forced to put down the sewing kit, to help around the shop, to get out of bed and eat and go to school, after his mom passed away. "Are you listening?" he demands.

His struggling peters out. His limbs fall down to his sides, defeated.

His dad sighs, and moves off him. They stay there, like a diorama for family drama.

"I don't know what to do, Dad," he admits finally, quietly, through a haze of tears.

His dad places both hands on his shoulder and tilts his face up. His face is sad, and kind.

"When I met your mom, I knew," he begins. Kurt smiles, bitterly, but his dad shakes his head. "But when I met Carole, I knew too. Even though her name isn't on my ring finger."

His dad kneels then, so that Kurt is forced to look into his eyes.

"Some people think widows can't love the people they're with after as much as they loved their first husband or wife," his dad says. "And maybe, for some, a second marriage really is nothing but a less lonely way to wait for death. But that's not what it is for me, or for Carole. I wear both their rings, because both of them have the same claim on me. Do you believe me?"

Kurt, after a moment, nods. He used to feel angry, betrayed, indignant for the sake of his mother's memory. But ultimately, he's never doubted his dad loves Carole too.

"Your mom lit up my life, but we used to argue like you wouldn't believe, too, " his dad says, letting out a teary laugh. "But we toughed it out through the hard parts until we were able to cycle back to the incredible joy, because giving up was never an option. That certainty and commitment—I think it's what keeps Found couples going. I felt it with your mom, and I feel it with Carole. If you're—sure, a hundred percent sure, that you feel the same way about Sebastian, then I know you have just as good a chance as any Found pair."

He looks carefully at Kurt, who's weeping again.

"I... I do, Dad," he says. "I look at my hand, and I just feel so angry. It's not right."

His dad presses a kiss to his forehead.