Freezing (fic) - aka episode reaction to 4.04

[wowbright]

I'm unable to say much new in meta right now, so I wrote fic instead during my bouts of insomnia last night.

(I've started keeping a notebook by my bed, and now do not get so frustrated with insomnia as I used to.)

Behind the cut because of spoilers.

Blaine POV, and I don't change anything that happened.

----
Freezing

Maybe it will make him forget. Not forget Kurt – he doesn't want to forget Kurt, not ever, not Kurt who rose like the sun on that dark day in November two years ago and who Blaine, like a flower, has been growing toward ever since.

Blaine just wants to forget how small he is. How insignificant. Kurt makes him forget that – or at least he used to, back when he was around and present and answered Blaine's phone calls and smiled at him and didn't keep himself hidden from Blaine behind a cloud.

Drinking makes Blaine forget, sometimes. But he doesn't think of this, here in the choir room. He doesn't think of this when a different answer presents itself on his phone.

This – this can be like drinking. Someone can hold him, and he can feel special and wanted and like there's a place for him in this too large and lonely universe.

Even if, really, there's not.

-----

He's in his car, in the driveway of Eli's house.

He looks at his phone.

He'll call Kurt. If Kurt answers, Blaine will stay in the car, back up, and drive home.

If Kurt doesn't, he'll go in.

Blaine goes to his favorites. Kurt is at the top, smiling at him. But the smile in the picture happened weeks ago. Would Kurt smile for him now? Blaine's thumb hovers over it, over Kurt's tiny pixilated teeth that Blaine can see more clearly than the screen will ever show.

In the end, Blaine doesn't touch Kurt's smile. There is no phone call. He powers down his phone, tosses it into the glove compartment, and walks up the driveway to Eli's front door.

----

It doesn't matter, so much, exactly what Blaine does inside that house. What matters is that he goes there, and things start, and he stays.

What matters is that he closes his eyes and pretends to feel okay, even though everything feels off and wrong and it's so dark here without Kurt. It's so, so dark.

He closes his eyes and he tries to remember Kurt, remember being with Kurt, even though the body and the lips and the hands are wrong, and nothing feels warm enough. In his core, Blaine feels cold, like those caverns in Antarctica that the sun has never reached.

He wishes he could close his ears, too, because the breath against his has the wrong timbre, the sighs have the wrong pitch, and none of the words he hears are things that Kurt would ever, ever say.

Whenever the bile rises in his stomach and singes his throat like frost burn in January – that's when Blaine wishes, and pretends, the hardest.

Comments

[pushplaytobegin.livejournal.com]

I love this. I especially like the bargaining he does in Eli's driveway. It's got the same flavor as an alcoholic's bargaining — if my spouse gets home on time, I won't drink; if the check clears the bank, I won't drink — but then no matter what happens, there's an out, or an excuse. I'm unspoiled for future episodes, and I'm absolutely fascinated by this development, and I love the bits of Blaine's world and reasoning you imagine here.

[wowbright.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comment and love! I wasn't thinking explicitly about alcoholism when I wrote that scene, but it is my headcanon that alcoholism is a part of Blaine's life (um, I guess hint at that rather strongly in the first section of the fic) and that a lot of the ways he deals with the world have been shaped by dealing with (or trying to deal with) an alcoholic in his life. There's a fic I've been working on for quite a while exploring this, although I don't know if I'll get done with it this hiatus - I have, like, 6 fic projects I'm working on right now.

This particular scene grew out of seeing Blaine trying to justify his behavior to Kurt after the fact, and the way he justified it to himself before the fact in the song he sang with Finn (sorry, I don't know what it's called). It was so painful to see him do it (especially because "been there, done that"), and also so real.

Anyway, a long way to say thank you for pointing this out to me! A lot of my meta comes out through fic without my even noticing :)

[lesley-green.livejournal.com]

I just watched the ep and came here to read this first! Oh, these comments are absolutely perfect. I couldn't even watch the Teenage Dream segment. I seriously sat hunched with my hands folded in my lap staring at the corner of the keyboard while my cheeks got hotter and hotter until it was over, I was shaking so hard. And I... it's so hard to watch self destructive behavior and lying to yourself and I feel like I've owed fandom a piece on Blaine/alcohol/denial for a long time because collectively they've taught me so many things, but... terrified. (The song is Barely Breathing by Duncan Sheik, who also wrote the music for Spring Awakening. He knows a thing or two about sex and angst.)

[wowbright.livejournal.com]

Aw, I feel a little bad that you came here first, because it wasn't much of a fic - more like an angsty fingerpainting, or a Rorschach blot, maybe. I had a very similar reaction to Teenage Dream.

Hmmm ... maybe you and I should challenge each other to finish our Blaine/alcohol pieces at the same time. Because I started the notes for this one a year ago. Well, almost a year ago.