You see everything
You see every part
You see all my light
and you love my dark
You dig everything
of which I’m ashamed
There’s not anything
to which you can’t relate and you’re still here.

Everything by Alanis Morissette

So remember that time I told you that I was obsessed with Alanis Morissette’s So-Called Chaos album when I was 13? I wasn’t lying. I have no idea why I listened to it as much as I did, but I loved all the songs on it.

I would listen to Everything over and over again and think “Someday, someone is going to feel like this about me.” And I never believed it, but I wanted to, ya know? I could never imagine who this person was. It was never a girl in my head, just sort of a faceless entity. But I was particularly terrified of girls my own age, (I’m still kind of terrified of girls in general. And boys, come to think of it.) so it never even occurred that I was gay.

Anyway, I really feel like this about you. I believe that you love my everything and that thought makes me awfully happy. I don’t think I ever really expected anyone to accept me the way you do, unfailingly, unflinchingly. I wanted to believe that eventually someone would take the time to get to know me and like me, but I never expected anyone like you.

I love your everything, too. You of the perfect hair and the beautiful voice and impeccable fashion sense. You with your ineffability, patience, snark, and humor and your undeniable capacity for love.

I’m going to the pathetic and weepy place again.

I also hope you appreciate how I turned every use of the word “woman” in the lyrics into “fella” instead. I thought it was clever.

~~~~~

Someone is banging on Kurt’s door.

Kurt looks at his phone.

Someone is banging on Kurt’s door at 4:28 in the morning

There better be fire.

He rolls out of bed and rubs his hands over his eyes and swings the door open, squinting into the hallway light to see Julia standing there.

“Julia. This better not be like the time you woke me up for that Dawson’s Creek marathon.”

“He cheated on me Kurt!” she cries.

That gets his attention and he suddenly feels fully awake. “Derek?”

“Derek. Yes. And it turns out he’s been cheating on me pretty much since I left!”

“What!” Kurt’s incredulous. Julia has told him so much about Derek and what a perfect boyfriend he is and how great they not only get along, but also balance each other.

“He’s been cheating on me pretty much since I got here!”

“This is a lot to take in in the middle of the night Julia. Are you sure?” Kurt moves out of the way then, to let Julia into his apartment.

She flops down on the end of his bed, knowing even during her duress that Kurt hates when people sit on his sheets in street clothes. Kurt sits at the other end of the bed, pulling his blankets up around him. He’s cold and tired, but he knows he has to be awake for Julia, at least for a little while.

“I was just on the phone with him and he was like ‘Oh, I have something you really need to know.’” Julia makes her voice deep and adds a tone of mocking to it.

“And that’s how he told you?”

“Yeah. And! The worst part? It’s my best friend. He cheated on me with my best friend.”

“Well that’s just cliche,” Kurt says drolly.

Kurt tries to shake the image of Blaine cheating on him with Rachel out of his head. Blaine cheating on him with anyone makes his chest ache. Blaine could cheat on him with- Kurt tries to stop this thought before it manifests itself, but he’s not quite awake enough to have full control over his brain- Justin. Faceless Justin who Kurt is so jealous of these days he sees red just thinking of him.

“It is cliche! It’s like he couldn’t even be bothered to be creative. Cheating on your girlfriend with her best friend.” Julia makes a noise of disgust.

“I’m sorry, Jules. This sucks.”

“And he didn’t waste any time! He says they’ve been together since the week after I left!”

“Whoa. This wasn’t a one time thing? They weren’t like drunk or lonely or bonding over missing you and oops?”

“Nope.”

“They’re actually together, together?”

“Yep.”

“Whoa. That really, really sucks. Not that a one time thing wouldn’t suck. But this is a lot harder to accept and it makes it seem a lot more... premeditated,” Kurt says.

Her eyes fill with tears. “It does. Oh God!” She wails. “Do you think it was premeditated? They were just counting the days until I left.”

Kurt desperately wants to take that sentence back immediately. Instead he slides down the bed closer to her and puts his arms around her while she cries into his shoulder for a few minutes.

When she seems cried out for now, she wipes at her eyes and sighs.

“I think it would have happened whether I was here or not. I might have been deluding myself about Derek all this time.”

“What do you mean?” Kurt tries to stifle his yawn, but he fails.

“How about we save it for morning?” Julia asks kindly, blinking away the remains of her tears.

“It is morning,” Kurt points out.

“How about we save it for when the sun is up, then?” Julia amends.

“Ok,” and this time Kurt doesn’t suppress his yawn.

“I’ll be back in several hours.”

“Do you want me to wake you up when I get up?” Kurt asks.

“Yes. That’s if I ever go to sleep. I’m going to go organize my drawers and use up some of my angry energy.”

“Good luck with that,” Kurt says.

He hears Julia click the door closed and he rolls back over and falls asleep quickly.

~~~~~

Kurt and Julia spend the vast majority of the next day dissecting Derek’s actions, and then badmouthing him and the former best friend, in various locales. It’s a gorgeous Wednesday afternoon in Paris, so there’s a lot of outside badmouthing involved. They end their day at bar, so Julia can drown her sorrows.

When Kurt can tell that Julia has vented enough and discussed Derek’s heinous actions thoroughly and Julia has gone through an array of emotion regarding her best friend (or “that bitch” as she’s taken to calling her exclusively) he brings up what she started to say earlier.

“What did you mean, very early this morning, when you said you think you were deluding yourself about him the whole time?”

Julia sighs and stares into the bottom of her beer glass.

“I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t deluding myself, maybe I was just saying that because I want to believe I couldn’t have stopped this from happening. But I’ve changed my mind since this morning. I think if I was there, I could have stopped it.”

“Julia,” Kurt turns on his barstool and puts a comforting hand on her arm. “Would you really want to be with someone who would cheat on you with your best friend?”

“But he might not have cheated on me if I was there!”

“Don’t make this about where you were or weren’t. Why would you want to stop this? If Derek doesn’t respect you enough to keep his hands to himself for a week after you left to study abroad, why would you want to be with him?”

“I don’t know. My self worth is in the shitter.”

“It’s flagrant douchebaggery. You want nothing to do with it. I promise you.”

Julia nods, as she gestures to the bartender for another beer.

“You’re so lucky you have Blaine,” she says after a while.

Kurt looks at her seriously, to gauge her current mental state. “Are you done talking about Derek? Before I start in on a small rant about Blaine?”

Julia turns to Kurt and smiles. “I’m prepared to forget all about Derek I think. And I could use to hear someone else’s misery, even if it’s just a small rant.” She pauses and tilts her head. “But I’m surprised. I thought things were great with you guys.”

“They are, to a point. You sure you want to hear about this? It might just seem whiny to someone who broke up with their boyfriend less than 24 hours ago.”

“Bring it on, Kurt.”

“Ok. So, Blaine is wonderful. He’s endearing and thoughtful and perfect, 98% of the time. The other 2% he’s completely and utterly oblivious to my feelings and it’s always in the worst possible ways.”

“I’m going to need some further details.”

“Well, Blaine is shy. Ridiculously, painfully, almost debilitatingly, shy.”

Julia nods. “Because of his speech.”

“Yes. I think it’s just part of his personality, too. I think even if Blaine didn’t stutter, he’d be bashful and reserved.”

“But how does all this lead to the 2% of the time when he’s utterly oblivious?”

“Blaine’s so shy, he’s never really had friends. Like he only started really talking to people in college. But recently he’s been making friends. He’s close with his roommate and even his roommate’s girlfriend. He’s friends with all of my friends now and he’s starting to make new, unrelated friends on his own. There’s a girl in one of his classes and then there’s this guy, Justin.”

“This all still sounds suspiciously not bad, and possibly verging on whiny soon, Kurt.”

Kurt sighs. “He met Justin when Justin hit on him one night and now they’ve become friends and now every time I hear about Justin I find myself in a blinding, seething jealous rage.”

“Oh! Now I get it. Did you tell him you're jealous?”

“Well, that’s the thing. I wrote a letter about it and I mailed it about two weeks ago. Like a handwritten letter, and it didn’t really include that I felt a blinding, seething, jealous rage, but it said I was jealous. But he never mentioned getting the letter and he continues to mention Justin.”

“That is quite the quandary.”

“The last time I talked to him, I mentioned that I was a tiny bit jealous, so we’ll see if he keeps talking about Justin. But on the other hand I don’t want him running around behind my back with some guy, who he only knows because the guy hit on me, so I’d rather know if he was talking to him. But I never want to hear about him again!”

Julia doesn’t say anything, so Kurt continues.

“And what’s worse, is that I should be happy for him, for making friends,” Kurt says morosely.

“So it’s a blind, seething jealous rage, with a heaping side of guilt.”

“Yes. I’m a horrible person.”

“Maybe a little,” Julia says with a grin.

“I know I could just ask him if he got the letter, but part of me hopes it’s lost forever. I feel like it’s a lot to peg on him.”

Julia nods sympathetically.

“On the other hand, he’s got to realize that talking about becoming friends with a guy he only knows because the guy made a pass at him one night would make me jealous.”

“You would think he does.” Julia can tell that at this point Kurt doesn’t even really need her for this conversation, this mostly about getting these thoughts out of his head.

“But maybe he doesn’t.” Kurt pauses. “The only drama we’ve ever had in our relationship has stemmed from the fact that sometimes Blaine doesn’t take into consideration other people’s emotions and how his actions can affect them. Like, I told you how we met right?”

Julia nods. It’s a good story, not one she was likely to forget.

“I left out the part about how at the end of the summer he stopped talking to me completely. And I later found out it was because he didn’t want me to find out that he stuttered. But he just dropped off the face of the earth. It was hard for me. I guess I just always worry about him dropping off the face of the earth again. I would miss him an awful lot.” Kurt’s chin quivers just a tiny bit.

“You’re allowed to miss him. You’re allowed to be jealous, you’re allowed to be mad. But I’m not sure if any of that is really fair if you don’t tell him and make a point of telling him. You can’t say it in passing and let the topic slide. To me it doesn’t sound like he’s doing any of this stuff on purpose, he just doesn’t see your side of things.”

“I know. I don’t think he’s it doing it on purpose. I can’t imagine why he would be trying to make me jealous. But it also seems like he’s … bragging or something. Which is so not Blaine, so I’m probably just reading these things wrong.”

“He’s probably just happy and he wants to tell you.”

“And it’s flagrant douchebaggery on my part for not being happy for him?”

“Kinda, sorta, a little,” Julia admits, shrinking away from Kurt. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“No. I know you’re right.”

“And if you’re jealous, you need to talk to him. Like actually talk to him, not just mention it in passing. Especially if he’s going on and on about this Justin guy all the time.”

“Um. Well, that’s the other thing. He’s sort of only brought him up twice.”

“Oh, Kurt,” Julia says as she gives him a disappointed look.

“I know!”

“But do you know, Kurt? Do you really?”

Kurt rolls his eyes. He knows Julia’s right. “It’s just so hard to shake a blinding, seething, jealous rage,” he says.

“You don’t seem particularly rage-full,” Julia notes.

“Well, it’s an internal rage. And it only happens when Blaine writes or says the name Justin. I mean, you could talk about Justin all day long and I would be happy for you. Perhaps when we return to New York, we’ll set you up with Justin.”

“Yes. Pursuing a gay man is a great option for me to go with after everything that just happened.”

“I agree.” He pats Julia’s leg. “You know you can come be friends with all my friends when we get home, right?”

“That sounds like a great idea to me.”

“We’re nice people. When we’re not being unnecessarily snarky or utterly oblivious.”

“The silver lining is that my best friend isn’t my roommate. We were so close to living with each other this year, but at the last second it didn’t work out.”

Kurt rubs Julia’s back.

“This sucks.”

“I know,” he says soothingly.

It sucks for so many reasons.