Chapter 2:

I'm all sewn up

A montage

I'm all sewn up

The end of his run as Hedwig was hectic, emotional and exacting. He missed being her already, missed the exuberance of the stage and the tangible connection to the audience. He had also desperately avoided the urge to message or call Kurt, dodging the feeling of having missed something that was once vital to him, like the air that he needed to breathe, but was now expendable.

There was no shaking it off now and as he sat in his apartment in his pajamas and a cup of tea clenched tightly between his palms and pulled out all the old pictures of a life that had gone by even as he desperately tried to forget it. Photographs strewn around him, he sat in the middle and surveyed the moments that had made him and broken him all at once. Kurt, Sam, Mercedes, Tina, Rachel, Burt, Carole, Finn, the Warblers, the New Directions – they had all shaped his life irreversibly.

Inside Im hollowed out
Outsides a paper shroud
And all the rests illusion

His phone beeped and he jumped, disturbed from the reverie that he had allowed himself to indulge in. He peered at the bright screen, an undefinable feeling tingling at his fingertips and tugging at his chest when he saw the message.

‘Hi Blaine. This is Kurt, in case you'd lost my number. I just wanted to say that you were incomparable as Hedwig. I could really feel everything that she was trying to convey – and that's something really special to communicate, Blaine. Congratulations on a great run. –KH'

And that's how he signs off, Blaine noticed. He's an icon now, identified only by two letters – KH.

He thought about his response for more than half an hour before he settled for just a ‘Thanks. That's kind of you. –B'

“Why are you doing this to me? What is it about you that can reach out to me and make every word seem more than special? Why is it that you're the only one with the power to make me feel so… disjointed?” was what his actual answer was, whispered into the spaces of his surrounding, bouncing off the walls with absolutely no response.

He felt the phone buzz in his hands again.

‘I was wondering if you would like to get coffee sometime? If you're still in the city and free for an evening. –KH'

Blaine stared at the screen till his vision became blurred.

‘Okay. Let me know if you're free on Monday. –B'

With that done, Blaine put his phone down and lay down on the bed, burrowing under the covers and wishing that he didn't ever have to come out.

Monday evening found Blaine walking down to the coffee place around the corner, a little place that was welcoming and reasonably private. Kurt was waiting for him outside. He looked fabulous as ever, his tight jeans hugging his long legs like a second skin and his shirt hanging off wider shoulders than Blaine remembered. Blaine looked down at himself, conscious of the fact that he wasn't really dressed in the latest fashion, though his body was fit enough because of the rigorous training as Hedwig.

“Hi,” he said softly, taking in the subtle differences to Kurt's beloved face – the deepened laughter lines at the edge of his eyes, the worry lines between his brows. Kurt seemed to take a minute to give him the same look, documenting the subtleties of time before dropping his eyes. “Hi,” he responded. “How are you doing?”

“Good,” Blaine shrugged, nodding toward the café. They walked in and sat at a small table at the back of the room. “What about you?”

“Good, too,” Kurt responded, his fingers twined together, thumbs rapping at the wood on the table with a slight rhythm. “It's good to see you. You look good.” He focused for a few silent seconds on a small stain on the table's smooth surface before looking up again. “I… saw your performance. Hedwig. You were exceptional on that stage. Guess the siren call of Broadway finally pulled you in, huh?”

Blaine twitched a little, leaning back in his chair and nodding. “Yeah, it was a good offer. I kinda… fell off the grid for a while. Got a couple of smaller roles a little over a year and a half ago. It's been an upward trend since then.” He shifted a little, not sure how to act. He was acutely aware of everything around him and his own self and he tried not to fidget. “You've taken the world by storm as you've always wanted to do. Broadway, Hollywood. I've watched a couple of your movies, I really enjoyed them. And of course – KH.”

Kurt nodded, a delicate bow of his head that left Blaine with a sharp pang in his chest as his eyelashes swept the tops of his cheeks. “Yeah – I figured that I didn't need to sacrifice one to do the other. I was lucky enough to be offered the best of both worlds.”

“Why are you here?” Blaine blurted out suddenly, cheeks coloring when he realized that he was being abrupt. But really, he didn't know what was happening and he felt like jumping out of his skin with every move and every word they exchanged. Kurt would forgive him for the interruption, surely – Blaine was, after all, the boy who had caught his hand and sang Teenage Dream to him when they had barely known each other.

Kurt didn't seem to anticipate that question, eyes shooting up to meet his. He sighed a little, leaning forward. He seemed nervous and resigned at the same time, a strange combination that made Blaine more uncomfortable than he had been.

“Well, I just wanted to see you, I guess. It's been too long… when I saw you doing Hedwig, I just… I guess I wanted to catch up with you.” He seemed like he was evaluating the weight of each of his words, speaking a bit slower. “I… I missed you.”

A random pattern with a needle and thread
The overlapping way diseases are spread
Through a tornado body
With a hand grenade head
And the legs are two lovers entwined

Blaine stared at him for a couple of seconds and then stood up, slinging his bag over his shoulder. He felt like he had been waiting for so long, waiting for Kurt to remember him and miss him, for Kurt to even be conscious of his absence. Now, it all seemed a bit anticlimactic. Blaine couldn't – wouldn't – feel anything about this. He had built up his life, brick by brick, and he wasn't going to let one moment of nostalgia from Kurt wreck him. Because for Kurt, that's all it was – he had seen the show and remembered Blaine, had thought that it was a good idea to catch up with an old friend.

For Blaine, it was heartache. And he wasn't ready for this.

“I… I've got to go,” he told Kurt, willing his voice not to shake. “I've got this… audition thingie and… yeah. I'm sorry.”

And then he was gone, wondering how many steps he could take in the right direction before turning back and gazing upon everything he'd lost and never gained back.

The automatists undoing
The whole world starts unscrewing
As time collapses and space warps
You see decay and ruin
I tell you "No, no no no"
You make such an exquisite corpse"