big life; small space

LfT

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:38:13 GMT

LfT

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:34:35 GMT

Oldest to newest:

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/02/02/glee-building-masculinity/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/02/05/glee-superheroes-and-all-the-other-ghosts/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/02/14/glee-tune-in-to-fy-glee-podcast-episode-2-women-of-glee/ (this has already happened, but you can listen to the recorded version)

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/02/22/mash-2013-journalistic-artifacts-transformative-works-and-the-assemblage-of-persona/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/03/08/glee-deconstructing-moulin-rouge/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/03/10/doctor-who-in-time-and-space-essays-on-themes-characters-history-and-fandom-1963-2012/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/03/10/kinkstarter-ii-the-7-deadly-virtues/

LfT

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:30:24 GMT

Oldest to newest:

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/01/08/glee-tune-in-to-fandomspotting-episode-15-better-than-regionals/ -- I did a podcast, you can find the recording at the links

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/01/08/anna-karenina-theatre-as-faerieland/ -- never before have I wanted fanfiction due to a film's staging

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/01/27/gallifrey-one-schedule/ -- Gallifrey one!!!!

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/01/30/hugo-awards-link-me-to-your-stuff-again/ -- I need a reading list for noms, please promo stuff

LfT and housekeeping

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:36:16 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/12/15/the-hobbit-and-back-again/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2013/01/01/les-miserables-yup-we-can-hear-the-people-sing/

At this point I am working on putting all my fic on to A03. I've managed this for Glee, some of my HP stuff and some of my Torchwood stuff. The big epic with Kali and some of the serious back catalog stuff remains to be done.

New fic will be posted to A03, not here. Although I will continue to link new parts of the Boston/DC arc from here since so many people started reading it here.

Random blathering in blinky crap is on my Tumblr at lettersfromtitan.tumblr.com. More cogent, less blinky stuff will continue to be on LfT, which I will also continue to link to from here. But if you want to keep up in anything resembling real time, you should follow those things.

I'm still reading my flist and commenting a bit and faintly participating in some communities, but this is just me acknowledging what's been going on anyway.

LfT

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 18:46:32 GMT

I went to Toronto in support of a Whovian anthology I'm in and now I'm back, so you mostly don't care (but I like to some stuff in it):

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/11/17/programming-notes/

Then I wrote some more crap about Glee:

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/11/27/glee-queerness-danger-and-desire/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/12/03/glee-eroticism-and-instruction/

[Glee fic] Thanksgiving, Kurt/Blaine, R

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 23:08:02 GMT

Title: Thanksgiving
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine
Word Count: ~3,200
Summary: Halfway home. Elephants on tables may be closer than they appear.
The series so far:
Boston: Following Home | These Thousand Names for Gratitude | All the Honesty of Politics | Circles as the Dark Winds Down | The Distance Between Ohio and Boston | All the Pretty Little Horses | Languages You Don't Even Know | Fauna and Flora | Where Water Doesn't Speak | Under Glass We Are Expected to Blossom | You Were Someone Else Before We Came Here
D.C.: Strategies and Tactics | The Many Shades of Sugar | When Sea Levels Rise | The History of Sand | Tales of Minor Gods | A Little Bit Ruined | The Numbers Held by Ghosts | Weights and Measures | Anamnesis | Hello, I Must Be Going | And I Have Heard You Speaking | More Honored Than the Other Animals | Melissa, Mellonia, or Deborah | On the Throwing of Stones | What the Spiders Wove

Blaine scrubs a hand over his face as he fidgets with the unwieldy tag attached to the key of the rental car he’s just picked up at the Omaha airport. It’s strange, he thinks, the things he’s gotten particular about in Kurt’s absence. Rental cars have definitely become one of them. They always smell weird, and the tags on the keys are seriously annoying.

*

When he gets there, the latest of Kurt’s hotel rooms is different than he expects, and not just because it’s unreasonably nice for a Best Western. Kurt’s unpacked and hung all his clothes, which he doesn’t always do on the shorter stops anymore.

There’s also a framed picture of them together on the nightstand, and another on the desk of Burt and Carole and all the New Directions kids from a party the summer before the start of their senior year.

As Blaine picks up the group shot to peer at it more closely, he’s shocked by how young they all look. Kurt has a roundness to his face Blaine’s nearly forgotten, and he finds himself surprised to realize he might even miss it. But the complexities of that are quickly squashed when he lays eyes on himself, overeager and in an excessively tight polo that yeah, would totally work for him now, but was actually pretty dumb when he was sixteen.

*

He shows up outside the theater with flowers, even if it’s the sort of thing he’s not exactly supposed to do anymore because Kurt needs space. But it’s the first time he’s seen Kurt since the upgrade and the moment needs to be marked. Besides, there’s something magical about watching people actually want his autograph as opposed to making do with the random chorus guy before the real stars come out.

Kurt will, Blaine knows, roll his eyes when he explains this later.

“It’s a tour, Blaine,” he’ll snap. “There are no stars here.”

Not yet, Blaine thinks. Not yet, and it’s slightly vicious.

*

They don’t, actually, get a chance to have the autograph conversation. Kurt far too fascinated by Blaine’s beard.

“You said scruffy; you didn’t say this,” Kurt says, flapping his hands at his fiancé not caring that they’re having this ridiculous conversation in the cold and kind of in front of an audience.

Blaine shrugs. “I can shave it if you hate it.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Kurt hisses, touching his cheek again, and Blaine gets it then, that this might just be one of his good choices as opposed to one of his self-indulgent ones.

“Okay,” he says good-naturedly.

Kurt narrows his eyes. “You’re humoring me.”

“I’m enjoying you. How was tonight?”

Kurt exhales and pauses, like it’s something he’s forgotten about entirely, even as the sweat from it is still cooling on his body. “Good. Really good.”

“Good. Want to get dinner?”

“I’d like that very much,” Kurt says, linking his arm with Blaine’s.

*

“So,” Blaine says. “Thanksgiving.”

“Yes.”

“It’s tomorrow.”

“Also yes.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“Do you have a plan?” Kurt echoes back at him before giving a pointed look to the fries in the milkshake thing he’s doing again. So gross.

“I could have a plan, but I didn’t want to intrude on tour traditions and you incredibly superstitious actor types,” he teases.

“Ah,” Kurt says, thrown for a moment by Blaine not considering himself in that category even if that’s nothing new. “I was maybe hoping you’d intrude?”

Blaine frowns. “That doesn’t sound like flirtation. What are you trying to avoid?”

“Orphan’s dinner.”

“You should go,” Blaine says cheerfully.

“I asked if you could come,” Kurt says.

“I shouldn’t come.”

“They said you could.”

“Is anyone else’s boyfriend coming?”

“Fiancé.”

“Well?”

“No.”

“So….?”

“So you’re here so we can spend Thanksgiving together and –”

“And we will spend Thanksgiving together. But I’m not adverse to amusing myself for a couple of hours while you put in an appearance with your colleagues that aren’t as lucky as us.”

“Blaine – “

“Look, it’s your call, I’m just saying, it’ll make you seem like a really, really good guy.”

*

They table the conversation when they head back to the hotel, but nothing takes its place. The silence isn’t comfortable, and Blaine doesn’t understand why until they’re back in Kurt’s room and he’s dragging his fingers up through Blaine’s beard as they kiss.

“You’re so funny about this,” Blaine says.

“Did you really expect me not to have an opinion?”

“I expected you to be pissed, actually,” he says, breathless and mouth still practically on Kurt’s.

“No,” Kurt breathes, rubbing his face against his. “I don’t think I am.”

*

“I can’t tell if you’re being predatory or submissive,” Kurt gasps out as Blaine rubs his face all over him. Even the soles of his dance-abused feet are not exempt as Blaine slides to the floor and follows the bristles of his cheek with the drag of his lips and the slip of his tongue.

“Ugh. God. Why is that slimy and hot?” Kurt asks as Blaine sucks on a toe.

Blaine laughs, they haven’t been in this place in a long time.

*

“So you really don’t mind, about the dinner?” Kurt asks after they’re done and Blaine is walking his fingers across every mark he’s caused that seems likely to linger.

Blaine shakes his head against Kurt’s hip.

Kurt eyes him suspiciously as if he’s just realized how strangely they’re currently sharing the bed. “What are you doing down there?”

“What do you want me to be doing?”

*

On what is barely Thanksgiving afternoon, Kurt kisses Blaine goodbye one, twice, three times, outside the restaurant just down the street from the hotel. It’s not a lot more than a diner, but it’s open and willing to have them. The cranberry also sauce isn’t out of a tin, so there’s not a lot to complain about, even if Kurt has always secretly loved the unnatural horror of the canned and gelatinous variety, and not just because it reminds him of his mother.

When he walks in, their table for twenty-something half filled and in the back, cheers. Kurt actually turns to look behind him to see who the enthusiasm is for before he figures it out.

“I thought your boyfriend was here,” someone says as he sits down.

Kurt shrugs and decides the only option here is to channel his dad. “He really wanted to see Omaha. Now how’s the stuffing?”

*

Blaine actually drives to Lincoln. It’s only an hour, but it’s something to do, and when is he ever going to be in Nebraska again? He ignores the traitorous voice in his head that’s ready to answer that question with a long list of things he either doesn’t want or has promised Kurt he never will.

Without anything resembling a plan, he winds up sitting at the entrance gate of a winery on the edge of the city, because if you’ve seen one Midwestern downtown you’ve seen them all, and it’s not like he finds that sort of thing less depressing when it’s all closed down for the holidays.

It doesn’t occur to him that maybe he shouldn’t be idling his car in the driveway of what’s also someone’s home randomly singing along with shitty pop on the radio until a guy in a puffy vest knocks on his window. Blaine has a brief hysterical moment where he fumbles frantically to turn off the music and wonders if the beard makes him look less gay.

The Kurt that lives in his head totally sneers at him for that, but Blaine has no time for it, because this guy is asking Blaine, in a pretty judgmental way, if he can help him, and Blaine’s just stammering something incoherent about not being lost, broken down or criminal.

The guy seems amused, if still annoyed. In the process of forming complete sentences, since Blaine apparently can’t, he somehow surmises that Blaine’s late for Thanksgiving and without a hostess gift. The winery’s closed today; Phil – they’re on a first name basis now – makes that perfectly clear, but somehow, because it makes more sense than anything else, Blaine winds up with a case of their “Gypsy Red” in his backseat.

He hates himself a little, but he’s sure Kurt’s tour can find something to do with it.

*

“You drove to Lincoln… and bought a case of wine,” Kurt repeats dumbly staring in the backseat of the rental.

“It really seemed the lesser of several evils,” he says. Although now that he’s back, watching Kurt shiver in a thin Henley and an adorable pair of mittens as he just stares, he admits it is pretty weird.

“Do you think it’s any good?”

“Do you think your esteemed colleagues care? I’m not shipping it back.”

“Take one home with you,” Kurt says, still looking at the case. “We’ll drink it on the honeymoon or something.”

*

“Did you miss it?” Kurt asks when they’re in bed later, curled together for warmth and ignoring a Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta marathon.

“What,” Blaine hums sleepily, although he’s not really tired just content.

“Thanksgiving,” Kurt says, a little irritably.

Blaine shrugs. “Not really.”

“I did.”

“Oh,” he says startled and starts to sit up, but Kurt pulls him back down. “We could have gone if you wanted to.”

“I did not need two dinners,” he says swatting at him a little. “And that’s not what I meant anyway.”

“What did you mean?”

“Home. My dad and all his disapproval,” he smiles. “Cooking.”

“Yeah,” Blaine says softly. “That was nice.”

Kurt pets his fingers through his hair. He knows, even with the rapprochement, it’s unlikely Blaine finds it difficult to be away from his parents this time of year. But their constructed family of friends is another matter; Blaine must know it is unlikely he’ll ever get to spend Thanksgiving with them in quite the way of last year’s strange and terrible and very funny Christmas.

“You gonna call in all your holiday greetings tomorrow while I’m at the theater?”

Blaine nods against him, and the prickle of the whiskers on his cheek make goosebumps flare all along Kurt’s left side. He laughs and blows a little puff of air across the ridges of them.

“I can’t keep it, you know,” he says.

“What?”

“The beard.”

He makes an interrogative noise. Because it’s interesting, but not that interesting. Blaine, however, clearly has some narrative about it that Kurt knows he needs to be at least marginally attentive to.

“It’s considered untrustworthy.”

“What are you even babbling about?” Kurt asks.

“How many politicians have you ever seen with beards?” Blaine asks.

Kurt rolls his eyes. “About as many as I’ve seen who are also in grad school. Also, dead ones and that random governor.”

*

In the morning it’s clear that Kurt has a routine, and that he’s done letting Blaine interfere with it. He wakes, without an alarm as the sun comes in through the windows around 11. He stretches before he showers, and Blaine watches him clandestinely through slit eyes, trying not to wince when he hears joint after joint crack and pop as if Kurt were a doll coming to life through a grind of porcelain and thread.

After his shower, Kurt kisses him awake, mouth minty and hair dripping water into the bed.

“Are you coming to the show today?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” he says in a voice that clearly disapproves of Blaine not finding his duties quite as obvious as Kurt thinks he should.

*

They spend the day wandering around hand-in-hand half-heartedly looking at Black Friday sales. If anyone looks at them twice, Kurt doesn’t notice it, and it’s nice being with Blaine, even if he’s bored by both the crowds and the sales.

“Just think, next year, we’ll be doing this in New York,” Blaine murmurs pressing into his side.

Kurt grins. Sometimes it feels like they’ll never get there. “Just think,” he echoes back, “in two weeks, we’ll be doing this at home.”

Blaine squeezes his hand at mention of the thing they’ve been resolutely not talking about.

*

The Orpheum is a deco palace that feels enough like old Hollywood that Blaine is reminded of all the strange conversations about boys and romance and self-hatred he and Kurt had while the tour was in Los Angeles.

Settled into the crimson velour and surrounded by all that gold, Blaine wishes he’d shaved. He’s known since high school how eerily spaces like this suit him -- it’s his lips, his jawline, the way he sometimes slicks his hair, just that hint of young Elvis, and his perhaps excessive fondness for slim suits – and he’s a bit regretful not to be playing to it now.

But when the lights go down and a chill runs through his body like the press of the world when the plane takes off, Blaine’s fine. He’s fine and invisible and playing the only parts he’s ever really known, those of awed spectator and little boy and Kurt’s, Kurt’s, always Kurt’s. And maybe he’s not getting as far in therapy as he should if it’s like that, but he’s happy here, twisting a Playbill in his hands in the velvet dark.

*

Kurt gets him backstage, and Blaine’s kissing him open-mouthed and wet, hands tight on his biceps, before he can even get out of his costume or ask what he thought.

“Oh god, I’m sorry, do you need a moment?” Blaine finally asks pulling back, and Kurt shakes his head at him in wonder.

“Now that I’m him, all the time,” he says softly, “he’s so much easier to put away.”

Blaine smiles, but feels bad for Simon.

*

“Thank you for this,” Kurt says that night, holding hands as they lay fully clothed and horizontal across the bed, knees bent over the side.

Blaine just squeezes his hand.

“I’ve been incredibly scared about coming home.”

“Me too,” Blaine says, even though what he means is that he’s incredibly scared about Kurt coming home.

“And now I feel like it’s going to be okay, at least with us.”

“It was always going to be okay with us,” Blaine says.

“Yes. But I didn’t know how. It’s not really home to me anymore,” Kurt says.

Blaine hums and feels sad.

“It can’t be. I’ll… you’ll be gone and packed up for New York before I even get back. And I just have to trust you to get us there.” He pauses. “I loved that stupid apartment, Blaine. I don’t want to give it up. And yet I already have.”

“Do you want to stay in the hotel?” he asks, meaning when Kurt’s tour arrives in D.C.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t want to feel like I’m coming home to do laundry and switch out clothes.”

“You totally are,” Blaine huffs.

“Well, yeah.”

“Look,” Blaine says turning onto his side and trying to get Kurt to focus on him as opposed to whatever dissatisfying futures he’s imagining. “Come home, sleep in our bed, say goodbye to it properly. Cook, for Christmas. Get utterly, utterly wrecked with me and our friends and our old life for New Year’s. Write me little notes about how to pack when it’s time to move. And, assuming I find a job and can get us there as fast as you think I can, lets strategize this whole temporary housing thing.”

Kurt nods at him vigorously. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Blaine says. “Just, try to remember you don’t have to be, yeah?”

Kurt nods again. “I never thought this would be so hard,” he says.

“Well, you were always a little bit naïve,” Blaine says, but wonders if he’s gone too far even as it leaves his mouth.

Kurt smiles softly, attention still on the ceiling. “I always will be.”

*

Kurt barely sleeps before their travel day from Omaha to the District, packing his hotel room up and then sitting in the darkened lobby staring out the windows all through the black morning. No one’s as excited as he is, no one really can be, but some of them come close. Lovers and husbands will be coming down from New York; and hitting the mid-Atlantic, there’s the intimation that reviews might really mean something. Christmas is coming and New Year’s, and the city’s fireworks will be on PBS.

Lucy comes in drunk, and Stefan wanders past him for the ice cream vending machine, both of them oblivious to Kurt in the shadows, as he debates hosting a party for everyone and inviting all of this, after everything, into his home. He wonders what Jay would tell him to do, thinks about and refrains from calling him as he waits for the dawn that comes way too late in December’s grey places.

His flight’s at nine and he’ll leave for the airport as early as he can.

*

“Do you make people take off their wedding rings?”

Even as Kurt says it, he’s not sure why he’s being belligerent. He’s been through enough airports these last months that he’s usually not only efficient, but well able to achieve some sort of trance-like peace with the indignity of the whole thing, but the hippy dippy stoner contingent of the tour was singing Ani DiFranco’s “The Arrivals Gate” badly and loudly in the shuttle over, and now he’s just pissed off and filled with nostalgia for a world he doesn’t even remember.

“Pardon?” the TSA officer says.

“Do you let people get scanned with their wedding rings on?” Kurt repeats, working hard and failing to sound less bitchy.

“Yeah?”

“Right, so same thing, and I am not taking it off.”

That totally earns him a scan – what does a bee look like, Kurt wonders, naked and down to its bones, white hot on grey -- and a bonus pat down, which Kurt grits his teeth against and finds more unsettling than he anticipated. He’s just not used to being touched off-stage by anyone who isn’t Blaine or Brittany, Henry or even Wes, and Alex, so far away. He feels not unclean, but as if a vow has been violated.

He remembers when Blaine offered to let no one touch him, even on accident over things so small as an exchange of bills over coffee. Kurt wonders how Blaine would have fared had he taken him up on that. How would all his politics and affability survived not being able to shake hands?

The security search lingers with Kurt through the flight and their descent into Regan National. It makes him relieved that Blaine is not there at gate or at baggage claim and that he can check in to the hotel room he intends not to use so that he can shower the matter away.

*

He changes his clothes, drifting into beige and winter white, before slinging one of his bags up onto his shoulder. Blaine will worry if he doesn’t appear lugging something, but Kurt also doesn’t want to burden him unduly in surprising him at school.

As he steps out of the hotel, the brilliant sunlight of this place he never wanted to live makes Kurt grin. For as much wariness as he has about returning to the home left behind, he’s weirdly eager for the rest of it.

In an hour and change he’ll knock inappropriately on the window of Blaine’s class, earning a quiet and beatific smile from this man he has tried desperately, and failed, not to drag around the country with him. He smiles when he thinks of how Kate will probably squeal, more for Blaine’s sake than his own arrival.

But Kurt also pictures later at the bar. There’ll be a lingering hug from Henry, and Seanna’s hands tight on his hips as she spins him close, and George, lips wet with scotch, kissing across his cheek, like that’s somehow appropriate. Maybe he’ll bring some of the cast after the show one night and everyone will hail him as a hero. And a stranger.

But it will keep Kurt safe and hold him down and remind him, in a way that Blaine is often afraid to, of how brilliant he has always been when can’t breathe.

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 03:33:48 GMT

Yuletide Letter Placeholder

LfT

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:13:24 GMT

Oldest to newest:

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/10/05/glee-welcome-to-the-land-of-the-dead/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/10/11/glee-passing-and-the-ongoing-disappearance-of-blaine-anderson/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/10/17/glee-the-costume-department-weighs-in/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/10/21/pitch-perfect-fannish-fixations-as-film-structure/

LfT

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 03:51:40 GMT

Oldest to newest:

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/09/28/glee-learning-to-listen-in-a-city-of-giants/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/10/02/glee-what-if-dalton-has-always-been-in-darkness/

LfT

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:25:18 GMT

Oldest to newest:

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/09/16/glee-one-sweater-vest-five-tons-of-conjecture/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/09/20/glee-scrutiny-control-and-consequence/

LfT

Sat, 15 Sep 2012 14:16:09 GMT

I'm behind. Oldest to newest:

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/08/04/glee-connecting-the-dots-on-the-warblers-fall/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/08/13/true-blood-this-use-of-teenage-dream-feels-oddly-familiar/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/08/30/the-new-normal-who-are-these-adorable-characters-and-why-wont-they-stop-crying/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/09/13/glee-setting-up-the-board/

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/09/14/glee-the-retreat-into-neverland/

[Glee fic] What the Spiders Wove, Kurt/Blaine, PG-13

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 03:44:18 GMT

Title: What the Spiders Wove
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine
Word Count: ~3,000
Summary: Sometimes what people want only becomes clear when it seems like it's not going to happen. San Francisco. Los Angeles. Phoenix.
The series so far:
Boston: Following Home | These Thousand Names for Gratitude | All the Honesty of Politics | Circles as the Dark Winds Down | The Distance Between Ohio and Boston | All the Pretty Little Horses | Languages You Don't Even Know | Fauna and Flora | Where Water Doesn't Speak | Under Glass We Are Expected to Blossom | You Were Someone Else Before We Came Here
D.C.: Strategies and Tactics | The Many Shades of Sugar | When Sea Levels Rise | The History of Sand | Tales of Minor Gods | A Little Bit Ruined | The Numbers Held by Ghosts | Weights and Measures | Anamnesis | Hello, I Must Be Going | And I Have Heard You Speaking | More Honored Than the Other Animals | Melissa, Mellonia, or Deborah | On the Throwing of Stones

Whatever happens in Los Angeles, Jay doesn’t tell Kurt about it. He makes it back on time for Tuesday’s show and he seems neither disappointed nor elated. Other than the data vacuum -- which he finds innately sinister, like silence in the woods of a horror movie or the halls of a high school – Kurt is relieved.

They stay out of each other’s way for the rest of the San Francisco run, Kurt dodging him with a minimum of awkwardness, until Brittany takes him to a fundraiser for a Burning Man encampment on the show’s last full week in town.

He doesn’t understand the appeal, not of the people making out under the large metal spiders shooting flames in the absolute middle of nowhere – this is, he’s sure, somehow exactly what his father was afraid of when he left Ohio – and not of the event in the desert itself. It actually makes him nervous, to think of his skin that dry in a world that bright.

Jay makes him nervous now too. Because Kurt realizes that, aside from some legitimately useful advice on tour living and some deeply unavoidable camaraderie, the only thing the man has consistently provided him with has been instructions on how not to offend him. And Kurt has, most certainly, offended him now.

He doesn’t know the price of that; he also doesn’t know how to stop. Because instead of ignoring him when he sees him through the metal spider flames of the party as Brittany prattles on beside him about how they should totally build fire-breathing lobsters and a memorial Lord Tubbington toaster next year, Kurt raises his glass to him. And smirks.

*

“I just don’t think you should do anything, Blaine. You can’t fix this, because it’s not a problem. It’s just Kurt,” Tina says, well beyond frustration.

“I don’t –“

“You don’t like that, because in your world Kurt is perfect and you’re broken, but Blaine? Kurt is weird. Kurt has always been weird. And needs you more for having you. I just… the problem isn’t Jay, the solution isn’t you. Kurt, on tour, was always going to be a disaster, and I’m not really sure how either of you missed that.”

“I think we were worrying about me flipping out,” he mumbles.

“And?”

“Me cheating on him,” he adds, still mumbling.

“And?”

“Me freaking out some more.”

“Right,” Tina says. “So. You two are idiots, although I’ve very glad that you haven’t cheated…. You haven’t, right?”

“No! Jesus.”

“Well there was that thing….”

“Who the hell told you about that?”

“Everyone.”

“Fucking Santana.”

“Mercedes, actually.”

“Does anyone from New Directions ever call anyone for reasons other than gossip or despair?”

“No. Duh.”

“Fuck.”

“Look, maybe you should call one of Kurt’s friends? I mean, not that I’m not, but … it’s been a long time since we were close like you want for this conversation, and I’ve got nothing. But frankly, unless he wants to me to call him Rachel for the rest of eternity, what he needs to do is get over his shit and stick this out.”

“Right,” Blaine sighs. “Fuck.”

*

“How’s LA?” Blaine asks, around a spoonful of banana pudding ice cream.

“What are you eating?” Kurt asks.

“Ice cream.”

“Tell me that’s not dinner.”

“It’s almost midnight here. Not dinner. How’s LA?”

“Absolutely no idea. I think I’ve hit my social quota for a long while.”

“Brittany,” Blaine supplies helpfully.

“Not just Brittany,” he says, but neither of them name names.

“Any word on that?”

“No.”

“Do you still want it not to happen?”

“Yes? No? I don’t know. I mean, if it were gonna happen, I assume it would have by now, not that I really know how these things work. I just… I just want to do what I came here to do and get home to you as soon as I can.”

“You went there to make your career. And in twelve weeks, you’re home, working and home for a little while, so let’s just focus on that.”

“Can you come to Omaha? For Thanksgiving?”

“I bet that was a question you never thought you’d ask, and yes, I will have Thanksgiving with you in Omaha even if it’s turkey sandwiches from an all-night gas station.”

“Thank you. I’m never doing this again, you know.”

“I know,” Blaine says solemnly. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. It just seems polite.”

*

“You did the right thing, you know,” the girl says as Kurt gets in the elevator.

“Huh?” he asks without looking up. He’s deep in a text war with Henry about the latest HBO series they’re both obsessed with.

“Breaking up with Jay.”

That makes Kurt look up. It’s Misty, the second female lead that he doesn’t have a single interaction with on stage either as Simon or as his generic ensemble vampire. They’ve never talked much. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“We weren’t dating.”

“You were doing something.”

“Um. No. I’m engaged. Blaine? Short? Curls? Awkward JFK Jr. thing?”

She shrugs. “Look, I know he’s been giving you the we all have to be social every night speech, but seriously, didn’t you ever wonder where everyone who doesn’t hang out in Jay’s room spends their evenings?”

Kurt’s jaw drops a little more.

Misty pats his cheek. “See, sweetie? He gave you good advice, but you’ve clearly been failing on the execution.”

Kurt’s phone buzzes in his hand again as the elevator stops and dings, the doors opening to let Misty out.

He looks down at his phone and starts frantically thumbing out a new message. I think I’ve been hanging out with a bad crowd.

*

Of all the topics Blaine expects to focus on with his therapist, Kurt can’t quit the tour isn’t one of them, but it’s there, and it’s inescapable, and it’s not even about Kurt’s well-being. It’s about Blaine’s.

“Look. Don’t get me wrong. I miss him, and I am bad at this. Like he’ll catch me eating ice cream when I’m on the phone with him and I’ll totally assure him that it’s later here and that it’s totally not dinner, but it’s totally dinner. Like, even if I’m living like a sixteen-year-old with a lack of proper supervision and too many Papa John’s coupons, I actually don’t feel like we’re playing house for a change and that feels kinda good.”

“What do you mean by playing house?”

“That I like sloppy clothes and not shaving for a week sometimes?” Blaine says, his hand scrubbing across his jaw, and it’s clearly been more than a week. He takes a deep breath. “We moved in together, with absolutely no clue and a remarkable lack of advance planning at eighteen because everything was crazy and it was the only thing my father could give me and the only thing I could give Kurt. And we’ve been going through all the right motions ever since – study abroad, graduation, Christmas. I mean, the kitchen got painted buttercup yellow, and I proposed. I can’t remember when I wasn’t an adult. Sometimes I just wish we’d lived in the dorms and had friends and –“

“Don’t you have friends now?”

“Yes. Adult, couple-ly friends that don’t really make up for the too tiny chunk of time we spent in Boston getting high and having people crash on our floor every weekend and making terrible choices and feeling like we had family like a nest of… what’s an animal that lives in groups?”

“You said nests. Birds?”

“No. Something fuzzy. Like bears? Rats? I don’t know. Something. Collective animals. Anyway, I’m failing analogies today. My point is, we don’t even know any of those people anymore.”

“Most people don’t. You’re mourning a fantasy, more than a real thing. Typical college experiences aren’t necessarily easy – and often have a much weaker support system than what you and Kurt had and have.”

Blaine sighs. “Right. I still need him not to come home early. I need to know we can do this. And I need to know that the only person I have to blame for not having whatever it is I think being on my own for the first time experiences should be is myself. Also, ice cream is awesome dinner. Just, you know, as an aside.”

*

Kurt copes by making lists for himself of small talk to offer all the people he’s spent the last several months effectively ignoring thanks to Jay’s exhortations to be social. While he is certain he must seem fake and insincere, a compliment here, an inquiry there, an exchange of complaints about the coffee in the lobby, all seem to land well and without offense.

People are, he knows, however, in their own world. Jay hadn’t been lying about auditions and agents and a little bit of madness setting in, in LA.

*

“Would I like it?” Blaine asks a week in.

Kurt smiles. “I wish I could say no. In another world, you’re a runaway here, flirting your way on and off the pier.”

Blaine bites his lip.

“Say it,” Kurt says, “Because I can hear you thinking it.”

“That just sounds like an awesome sex fantasy set up.”

“Well,” Kurt notes, trying to be sanguine, “it’s a lot less depressing than the alternative.”

Blaine chuckles. “Hey, can we do serious business for a moment?”

“What? Did I get another collections notice on the library book you lost?”

“Yeah, actually, but…. No. I just… are you going to be able to stick this thing out?”

Kurt takes a deep breath. “I’m working on it. It’s getting a little better. Although Jay still hasn’t said two words to me since it happened, and I’m frankly terrified of what it’s going to look like when that changes. Why?”

“Because I need you not to come home early.”

Kurt is silent.

“And now I think I need you to say something,” Blaine adds.

“What do you want me to say?”

“That you don’t hate me for that.”

“I don’t… I don’t hate you for that. I could never hate you for anything.”

“And if you need to come home, I’d welcome you with open arms and I miss you so much, but I think I’m doing everything I didn’t do in Shanghai and –“

“Not Thomas, I hope,” Kurt says dryly.

Blaine starts laughing and can’t stop. “No, not Thomas. Not anyone. I’m just, eating badly and staying up all night and drinking too much with Kate and Henry and maybe finally getting it through my head that the fact that I’ve been an adult since I was like fourteen isn’t actually the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“The house is a mess, isn’t it,” Kurt says.

“Kind of?”

“And you’re scruffy.”

“Totally scruffy.”

“If you’ve worn sweatpants in public, don’t tell me.”

“I love you,” Blaine says.

“I love you too,” Kurt replies, serious, and hoping it translates beyond the call and response nature of the exchange. “I think we should start planning the wedding.”

*

Three people get off the tour before they leave Los Angeles. None of them are Jay, who he secretly, and probably unfairly, expects to opine nastily on their chances at failing in their new endeavors and winding up in porn before the end of the year.

They arrive in Phoenix Halloween week, and Kurt wishes they could somehow be somewhere cooler for it, but at least, he hopes, it will guarantee a sell-out crowd, even at matinees.

He needs something to make up for drawing the short straw on the backstage tours. Kurt is sure he’s the last person who should be telling anyone – much less fourteen-year-olds with perfect noses, second place trophies in regional dance team competitions, and the doe eyes of prey – that their perfectly ordinary dreams absolutely can come true.

I was always strange, he finds he wants to say to them. I was always dead. And my boyfriend has eyes like you; he’s decided to go into politics instead.

*

Jay is ferocious in Phoenix from the very first rehearsal, and Kurt has no idea why, but the performance is angry, powerful, and the space between his Simon and Kurt’s own is the smallest he’s seen.

It makes Kurt proud.

It makes Kurt jealous.

*

“And I thought LA did nothing for me,” Kurt intones to Blaine on the phone.

“How are the new people?” Blaine asks.

“Professionals.”

“Aren’t you all?”

“No,” Kurt says, then softens. “Not all in the same way, I guess. It’s weird here.”

“How?”

Kurt shrugs. “I think it’s me. I miss you.”

“Is that new and weird?” Blaine teases.

“Maybe. This girl hugged me today. After the tour, after we posed for photos with them.”

“She was grateful.”

“Yeah.”

“What was she like?” Blaine asks, clear that whatever story Kurt has to tell, he needs help forming it into words.

“Sad,” Kurt says. “Just sad. She thought I was beautiful.”

“You are.”

“It wasn’t desire,” Kurt says, and it takes Blaine a moment to work it out.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t call her she?” he asks, not certain of his guess.

“Maybe,” Kurt says, non-committal. “She asked if I’d always been a boy.”

“What did you say?”

“That sometimes I wasn’t sure.”

“You’re so good,” Blaine says.

“What would you have said?”

“Only by accident.”

*

The first words Kurt says to Jay in the wake of their sex party blow up is to hiss at him to get off his damn cell phone during the Entr’acte on the Tuesday after Halloween. Jay just holds up a hand and then turns away, pressing a finger tight into his free ear.

Kurt throws up his hands, which is, he knows, what he should have done regarding this whole mess from the very beginning. Even so, he breathes a sigh of relief as Jay disconnects the call and then crouches down to skid the phone out of the way and in to a corner.

“Thank you,” Kurt mouths at him.

Jay snorts. “You don’t even know,” he says, low and tight under his breath.

An ache wells up in Kurt then, because he’s missed this man, or, at least, the idea of his friendship. Before he can say anything – not that he knows what it would be – they each plunge onto the stage, as they do every day, every night, into the dark.

*

After their bows, Jay grabs Kurt’s arm and pulls him into the same dark corner he’d banished his phone to earlier.

Kurt rolls his eyes, even as his heart speeds up and the drama is, unfortunately, expected.

“Do we have to do this in costume?” he asks, defensive, tired, and well detached now from his earlier moment of longing. He’s sweaty, and the touch of anyone who isn’t Blaine is particularly unbearable for it; it feels too intimate.

“I have to be on a plane tomorrow, so yes.”

“What?!”

“Los Angeles,” Jay says, enunciating each syllable like Kurt is stupid.

“Oh my god, congratulations,” Kurt says, and surprising them both, launches himself at him, hugging him hard.

Jay kisses his hair, and whispers, “Don’t be scared.”

It’s absolutely, and powerfully, erotic. Kurt feels guilt. It tingles, novel, on the barest edge of his fingertips.

*

“There are moments,” Kurt says on the phone that night with Alex – it is 10am in Rome – “when I know I’ll only feel alone if I try to explain it to another person.”

“Then why are you talking to me?”

“Because you may as well be on Mars.”

“Blaine’s alone too. You should call him.”

“Not yet,” he says, curling onto his side, his face barely in the frame of the Skype call. “Not today.”

“Are you pretending to hold me?” she asks, looking at the curve of his body and the stripe of skin between his battered black jeans wrinkled t-shirt.

Kurt makes a non-committal noise. “You were always so warm,” he says.

“So were you.”

*

“How have you been?” his therapist asks. It’s a working question, disguised as a social nicety. For an activity about learning how to be more clear on your own needs with yourself and others, Blaine remains fascinated by how much of the process is tacit and unnamed, a symptom at least of his own disease.

“Well, we’re back to the first problem,” Blaine says brightly.

“Which is?”

“Kurt’s on tour, and I feel desiccated without human contact.”

“So no risk of him coming home early?”

“I suppose there’s always a risk. But, no. Not now. The guy he was understudying for quit the tour. He got a sitcom in LA.”

“So the role is Kurt’s?”

“Full time,” Blaine says, cheerfully.

“You must be proud of him.”

“No. Not really. I never expected anything else.”

“When will you see him?”

“Thanksgiving.”

“Soon.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if it will really be us though. I don’t know if it really gets to be us until this thing is over.”

“Do parts linger with him, when he’s performing?”

Blaine pauses to think about it. Oddly, it’s not something he and Kurt have ever really discussed. “No. Not particularly. Although this one has. It’s pretty haunting, no pun intended. Ugh. But I guess, we’re both performing this absence, right? So that’s hard. I guess I just have to let this be a thing that we’re doing.”

“Are you worried about whether he comes back to you?” his therapist asks.

Blaine shakes his head. “No. Not at all. It’s way more like a horror movie. I worry about what he’ll bring back with him. You know,” he pauses to laugh, “other than another suitcase filled with new clothes.”

[Glee fic] The Voice of Avalon (Kurt/Blaine, PG-13) - World War Z crossover

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 12:24:48 GMT

Title: The Voice of Avalon
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG-13
Summary: An AU set in the world of Max Brooks's World War Z, where it turns out the voice of the Victory at Avalon was Kurt Hummel.
Warnings: Recollection of character deaths, zombies, homophobia, and implied dubiously consensual reproduction.
Notes: 2,000 words of “I need to type this out so it will go away.” Also available on Tumblr.

[I meet Kurt Hummel at his home, a simple suburban that looks, remarkably, pre-war, until he shows me the alterations: metal shutters and bullet proof glass. “I only have them so I don’t look stupid, and because it would make my dad happy. They don’t mean anything. Blaine and I know that.”

Like many of the people I’ve interviewed both for my first volume and for this one, Kurt Hummel can be said to be one of the unknown heroes of World War Z. He laughs at that, although his eyes, which, like all the rest of him, are strangely and perhaps appropriately fae, spark at the praise. After all, Kurt Hummel is the voice of the Victory at Avalon.]

Blaine and I met in high school, and he saved my life. This was before the War, before anybody had ever heard of African Rabies. I was bullied a lot, kids used to throw me into dumpsters. Things were… out of control, I guess, and I met Blaine; it was this whole complicated thing where I was spying on his school’s glee club for my school’s glee club – people still know what those are, right?

At any rate, things happened, and we fell in love. Dated for a year and a half, and then, after failing to get into the college I wanted to go to —

NYADA.

Yes. In New York. I suppose I don’t need to say anything more about that.

No.

I was lucky. I was so angry, of course, then. I still am, in some ways. It’s better, I guess, than being angry about everything else.

Anyway, I went out to California, I thought maybe I’d go to LA eventually, see if I could have a career out there, even though my heart had always been set on Broadway. Blaine’s brother was in LA, and… well in hindsight he was a terrible actor and not a great brother to Blaine, but he was so handsome, so handsome. It was inhuman, and he was getting work.

But you didn’t go right to LA.

No. Not quite. Although Claremont was close. I felt like I needed an education. It’s not like I had gotten much of one back in Lima. And among my many curses was that I was smart.

What are your other curses?

My capacity for love. Survival. And my voice.

So how did you come to be the voice of Avalon? Everyone assumed, for a long time, it was a girl.

You say that like I’ve never heard it before. That I wasn’t mistaken for my dead mother when I answered the phone before the War. Like I don’t know how startled people are when someone who sounds like me, turns out to be someone who was at the Five.

There —

No. Let’s clear a few things up. I am gay. A queer, queer boy of the type that can’t hide it. And you know, things were getting better, when the War came. I thought Blaine and I would be legally married by thirty; when New York fell through, that’s the other reason I headed out to LA. Legally married by thirty.

And in the War, the only thing anyone cared about was if you weren’t one of them. And if you could fight. Who you loved, who you fucked — nobody cared about that.

But they do now.

They do and they don’t. No one has a problem with us. I never feel like Blaine and I are in danger, but the marriage thing isn’t happening any time soon. Not with the need to encourage procreation. It makes sense… for values of sense … that people who can have babies by accident get extra privileges now. So….

It is what it is.

What did you do during the siege? And why was Blaine there? Isn’t he a year younger than you?

Yeah. He was still in high school, but we’d been having problems… the distance really, and he used the excuse of his brother to come out to visit me, so we could sort our shit out, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what happened. Complete, total, screaming meltdown breakup, tears, et cetera, interspersed with watching the news. I mean, shit was way beyond African Rabies at that point. The dead were real, and coming, and there was this definite first wave escape going on.

But look, my dad was a mechanic, owned a garage. I knew all about what was going to go wrong with all those escape plans. Breakdowns, gas shortages, flats, clogged roads and a whole bunch of people who think they’re more manly than me that didn’t know jumpers from a clothesline. I wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was my ex-boyfriend. When people started talking about hunkering down, I was all in, and despite everything that was going on with us, I spoke for Blaine. I always had, and somehow that didn’t change.

Was that difficult? Being cooped up in there with him for all those months?

It’s probably what kept me alive. Whenever I couldn’t think about the Z’s anymore, I could just be really, really pissed off at Blaine.

You still loved him.

Still do. But yeah. And Blaine… Blaine reacts to stress with a need for physical affection. I was… unamused. And jealous, and yeah.

His favorite band, when we were in high school was Roxy Music. It didn’t make any sense. They hadn’t even been popular in our lifetimes, and they weren’t even cool retro. Honestly, I think Blaine just had a thing for Bryan Ferry circa 1979 or whatever. I don’t know. I remember this one conversation we had that somehow went from Bryan Ferry to masturbation…

I’m sorry, that’s too much information, but it’s nice, to have attention again. I wanted to be a star once, and I know the War was supposed to have taught us the … the wrongness… of such desires, but the war didn’t kill me. And it didn’t kill who I was before it happened, even if I’ve put it aside.

Bryan Ferry.

Right. You’re here to know why I was singing “Avalon,” not what my love life was like when I was sixteen. Like I said, Blaine loved Bryan Ferry, and the end was coming. Win or lose — and I thought we might lose, gloriously and remembered forever – the end was coming. We were either going to win and Blaine and I were going to be able to get the hell away from each other or we were going to die.

And I didn’t want either of those things. I still loved him. And, in a way, I loved our siege. I was good, as good as anyone else, and sometimes better. The things that had made me strange, made be valued, kept me alive at the Five.

I helped us cook well, with crappy supplies; I helped us stay entertained; I was handy because of my dad, and god, I once survived a fucking Z because I always had this thing, where I wore layers because I didn’t like people to touch me — even in high school, before the war. It was all the abuse and god, the closest I ever came, one of those things got a mouthful of my fucking blazer.

Anyway, the end was coming, and I wanted Blaine to know. I wanted him to know without us screaming at each other, that it was him, that it had always been him, that no matter what happened, I was glad that the little life I had had, had been about him.

So I wasn’t on a shift, should’ve been sleeping, and I was friends with the girl on that shift at the station, and I’d been hanging out with her, singing along in the studio with the songs she was playing, just to have something to do, and I asked if she had any Roxy Music. Because I wanted to sing along I guess. For me. But as she was about to put it on, I stopped her. Actually grabbed her hand; I didn’t do things like that… I didn’t like touching people. I still don’t, and, well, I stopped her. And into this silence, this hissing silence and she’s just staring at me for fucking up her broadcast, I start singing “Avalon” because it’s, for whatever reason, the only one I can remember right then.

Did Blaine hear it?

Everybody heard it.

Did it win him back?

You’d have to ask him, but he’s here, isn’t he?

***

[In many ways Blaine Anderson still looks like the boy he must have been at the Five. High energy, with a mop of curly hair that, to be fair, is thinning at the crown, and a bright smile. He seems eager to please, which while easy to reconcile with his partner’s recollection of their experience of the siege, seems nearly impossible to reconcile with the rest of the war.

He insists on being interviewed separately from Kurt, saying too much of what happened is still too hard for them to speak about side by side.]

I don’t really know why you’re interviewing me. Kurt’s a pretty important footnote, but… I’m… well, I’m Kurt’s footnote.

He seems pretty smitten.

I’m pretty lucky. It’s nice. Being able to say that about something other than still breathing.

Do you want me to talk about the siege?

Is that what you want to talk about?

No. I don’t want to talk about Kurt either. I don’t want the world to have him. I know how much he’s always hated his voice being misunderstood, but every time someone says “she” about Avalon, I’m so glad. He deserved – deserves – to be famous for his talent, not for a weird right place right time salvo in an on-again off-again feud-love affair with his ex-boyfriend that’s become some weird, militaristic anthem of human survival. I mean, have you actually listened to that song? It has the word bossanova in it, for Chrissakes.

I want to talk about my daughter.

What was that decision like for you?

Pretty much the opposite of what I used to think about. I thought we were going to grow up and get married. Adopt a baby, or get one of our friends to be a surrogate for us.

They’re all dead. The ones I fantasized about for that. Rachel was in New York, where Kurt wanted to be. And. Well, you know. All your friends from twenty years ago are probably dead too.

Your daughter.

Right. So, things are different now. There’s all this concern about population growth and genetic variance and everyone has to pitch in right? And people like Kurt and I, I guess, I guess I just wanted to be sure there couldn’t be any reason to complain. I just. I just want us to be safe.

Why wouldn’t you be? Other than the obvious?

You mean the Z’s?

Yes.

A year and a half before I met Kurt three guys beat the shit out of me and a friend for going to a high school dance together. I didn’t really feel like having some real live humans beat the shit out of us for not contributing to the renewal of our species.

Tell us about your daughter.

That’s her picture. Over there. She died. When she was four. Pneumonia. Drug production and distribution was still really fucked up then. She didn’t seem that sick. And then she was.

I found out a week later. Because she wasn’t mine, not really, not like we’d always dreamed.

Do you ever think about having another?

You say that like it’s an option. My lack of choices are just a little more obvious than other people’s.

You also say it like I’d get to raise them and buy them toys and take them fishing and teach them to ride their bikes to school.

I have three other children. Alive. Doing well. In this crazy broken world that doesn’t know from pop starts or glee clubs or dreams of New York.

Who has good dreams about New York anymore?

LfT

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:26:24 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/07/06/the-land-of-stories-when-the-fourth-wall-is-a-doorway/

LfT

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 16:41:07 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/07/01/the-hunger-games-deathmatch-american-idol-vs-upfronts/

I love The Hunger Games movie about 1,000x more than the books, because it has cool DNA from other films in it and makes things I already thought were creepy about the entertainment industry seem even creepier.

Yay.

LfT

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:32:15 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/06/27/brave-threatdown-bears/

(FYI, I keep going back and forth about whether I'm even going to continue to post these links here, and often I've been forgetting to do so if you want to keep up with the blog, I suggest subscribing to it. Thanks).

[Glee fic] On the Throwing of Stones, Kurt/Blaine, R

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:38:55 GMT

Title: On the Throwing of Stones
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine
Word Count: ~3,100
Summary: In which California is a disaster.
Warnings: Animal character death; judgmental stuff around the sexual choices of others.
Other notes: Sorry I was gone so long! I was on the road, and then there was my show, and life's just been busy and complex. Future updates should be much swifter (ideally every other week).
The series so far:
Boston: Following Home | These Thousand Names for Gratitude | All the Honesty of Politics | Circles as the Dark Winds Down | The Distance Between Ohio and Boston | All the Pretty Little Horses | Languages You Don't Even Know | Fauna and Flora | Where Water Doesn't Speak | Under Glass We Are Expected to Blossom | You Were Someone Else Before We Came Here
D.C.: Strategies and Tactics | The Many Shades of Sugar | When Sea Levels Rise | The History of Sand | Tales of Minor Gods | A Little Bit Ruined | The Numbers Held by Ghosts | Weights and Measures | Anamnesis | Hello, I Must Be Going | And I Have Heard You Speaking | More Honored Than the Other Animals | Melissa, Mellonia, or Deborah

Blaine breaks up with his therapist after she suggests that proposing to Kurt is merely an attempt at a temporary fix to his insecurities.

Because as fucked up as he is – and with Kurt away, Blaine has a pretty vivid sense of just how fucked up he is – marrying Kurt has never been about fixing anything.

Also? So not temporary.

*

They find a new rhythm with each other and the distance after the proposal, even if Kurt feels impelled to constantly rewrite the matter in his head.

Because while it was a proposal, now it’s an engagement, and it is, he thinks, very important to be precise. He does an excited little shimmy every time he thinks on it, even if no one is there to see.

Blaine is clearly, obviously, pleased too, although Kurt knows he doesn’t shimmy. His joy is there instead in the lack of sad and mostly silent late night phone calls, and in an influx of sweet, funny, dirty text messages, as if Blaine trusts Kurt with desire now, as if every want isn’t the perfect end of the world.

Kurt thinks it feels like when they first started dating, before Blaine’s parents had sent them into giddy and miserable exile.

*

The benefits of an impending marriage are myriad and odd.

From the moment Rachel calls to congratulate him, Blaine and she form a weird friendship around the engagement.

“You’re supposed to offer best wishes,” he tells her. “Never congratulations; congratulations implies you think I’m lucky to have found someone who would actually want me.”

“But aren’t you?” she asks, and giggles, high and nervous and so, so young. Then, “Isn’t anyone?”

He smiles.

“I can hear you,” she says.

“What?”

“Smiling.”

He is so proud, and, weirdly, she is the only one who understands.

*

Perhaps even more weirdly, Santana calls Kurt to torment him about Blaine’s bachelor party.

“Oh my god, I’m on the road, and we haven’t even set a date yet, what is wrong with you?” he hollers into the phone.

And although he is laughing, he is not insincere in his rage.

Did you ask Santana to be your best man? he texts Blaine as soon as he’s rid of her.

No, Blaine texts back, frowning at the screen; that’s going to be a series of really awkward conversations.

Because he would like Wes to stand up for him; because he would like Wes to give him away.

He imagines his parents will mind the fact of it far more than they will mind that it’s not them. Besides, they already gave him away at barely eighteen.

*

Maybe it’s the way he treats Santana, but after her, Kurt doesn’t get nearly as many celebratory calls as he thinks he should. But he does, slowly and carefully, receive a series of lovely emails, full of gentle and quiet respect. Even Puck possesses a strange eloquence in text.

It is Tina who explains, writing that she would have called, But I hate summoning you back from wherever it is that you go.

What do you mean? Kurt asks in reply, although he knows. And thank you, he adds, because it is a pleasure to be seen.

*

“What’s up, buttercup?” Blaine says when Kurt calls him.

“You are ridiculous.”

“Well, yes,” he says, and Kurt has to laugh.

“Tina called me today.”

“Oh?” Blaine says, nonchalant, even though the things Kurt says without preamble are usually fairly significant.

“She explained my secret worlds to me.”

Blaine has no idea what he’s supposed to say to that. “How did that go?”

“Better than the call with Santana?”

“I love you both, but that has to be a terrible basis for comparison.”

“My point.”

“So am I there with you?” Blaine asks after a long silence.

“Where?”

“Your secret worlds.”

“Oh, you know,” Kurt says with a theatrical, falsely casual drawl as he waves a hand about even though his boyfriend can’t see it.

“I do,” Blaine acknowledges, and when Kurt says nothing, prods him for more. “So…?”

“Sometimes,” Kurt says. “But you’re doing better than anyone else, and I am trying.”

“I know,” Blaine says, and for the first time in a long time, he really does.

That weekend, he gets on a plane for Florida, – who knew retirees liked vampires – and Kurt asks him to come to the theater before the show.

*

“I wear it pinned inside my costume usually,” he says quietly, when he fastens the bee onto Blaine’s jacket as they stand outside by the stage door. “But you’re here, so I’d rather it was with you,” he says, hooking the fine chain that serves as its safety clasp closed.

“You’re getting better at the people thing before you go on.”

“I’m trying,” Kurt says, brightly; it’s what he’s always saying. He sighs. “But just for you,” he adds, dragging the side of his face along Blaine’s before turning to kiss him on the mouth, silly and sloppy.

“I love you,” Blaine says then, because he really, really does.

Kurt smiles, and brushes their noses together for a moment. “There’s tickets for you at the box office, meet me after?”

“Here or hotel?”

“Oh, here,” he says. Because they’re leaving for the West Coast soon, he needs every second he can get of Blaine right now, even if he doesn’t trust himself to endure it.

Jay has told him that California is going to be terrible.

*

At the hotel that night, piled into Jay’s room, Kurt sits on Blaine’s lap as Blaine reaches around to pin the bee back on him in front of everyone.

No one notices particularly – not Sandra, braiding her hair, nor Nick, making a pot of tea; Carl is busy annoying everyone by flipping channels on the television; and Damian is whining because no one wants to play poker, and he is sick, always, of having to settle for gin.

But Jay gives Kurt a look. The bee is valuable and easier to steal than a ring. He’s already said something to Kurt about flaunting it, twice, and Kurt wonders a little bit if Jay is a gun, waiting to go off in the third act.

But mostly he thinks Jay just doesn’t understand. And it’s not, actually, because Jay’s slept with at least three people on the tour and that Kurt is judging him. Although Kurt is totally judging him, because at least one of those people is way more invested than he should be, and Jay’s still sleeping with him.

But other people’s inconsiderate choices aside, Kurt has realized most people simply don’t understand him and Blaine. The where and when of their lives has been extraordinary, albeit in very small ways: Neither of them tried to kill themselves in high school, and neither of them left the other when forced to play house as children.

At twenty-four, Kurt realizes that they are children now and that these were near things. Sometimes, he wonders if Blaine knows.

*

“I’m not going to be able to see you as much in California,” Kurt says as he unbuttons Blaine’s shirt after they abandon Jay’s room for their own.

Blaine shakes his head. “No. It’s –“

“I know. The flight’s too long and too expensive and –“

“People do it, you know. All the time. Work the time difference,” he says, playing devil’s advocate for a choice he knows they’re not going to make.

“We can’t,” Kurt insists, mouth against his neck.

Blaine sighs and fights the urge to step back. “So this the part we’re completely not prepared for because I keep getting on planes, huh?” he says as Kurt slips the shift from his shoulders.

“Yup.”

“Oh,” Blaine says, sheepish and young. “Sorry.”

Kurt smiles and trails his fingers over Blaine’s chest.

“When I do terrible things,” he says, his voice small and quiet and not really for anyone but himself, “when I say terrible things and go cold and live in my head and smile at the loss… I do those things for a reason. Not because I’m mean or overwhelmed or don’t understand what other people are. This was always going to be hard.”

“And then I opted out of the endurance training.”

Kurt startles at the reply, so affable and easy, so he laughs.

“At least you signed up for therapy,” he says good-naturedly, stepping back, clear on the heat being lost for a moment and pulling out of his own clothes instead.

“I fired her,” Blaine admits, watching him.

“Oh.”

“Not the idea of it, just her. I’ll get a new one.”

“Let me guess, she didn’t like me,” Kurt teases, but he’s not joking, and it feels sharp and brittle in his chest as he shoves his pants down over his ass and onto the floor.

*

When the time comes, Kurt calls Blaine unexpectedly from the airport as he waits to board his flight to San Francisco.

“Did you ever want to be a movie star?” he asks, not even bothering with a greeting.

“I’m a boy in America who doesn’t like himself very much,” Blaine says. “Of course I wanted to be a movie star.”

Kurt laughs, but it sounds watery. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“What if I like it? What if I want those dreams? I swear half the cast is plotting to get off this boat in L.A.….”

“What’s going on? Is there drama?”

“No. But the instant stardom and sextacular casting couch fantasies are getting a little epic.”

“You’re not in L.A. for another month.”

“Yes, well. Actors.”

“Do want to audition? When you’re there….”

“That’s not the point.”

“But if you do….”

“You’re the offer I can’t refuse, you idiot.”

“I’m just saying that if you want to be a movie star,” Blaine says, well aware that the conversation has taken a turn for the ridiculous. “We’ll make it work.”

“I don’t,” Kurt says firmly, even if he sounds a little sad. “Not really.”

“Oh. Well, see? You always were the one with the self-esteem.”

*

When the plane lands he has five voicemail messages, all from Brittany. Lord Tubbington is in the hospital and wants to see him.

When Blaine texts to ask how the flight was all Kurt can do is text back about the cat, shove his luggage at Jay to bring back to the hotel for him, and stalk off on his own to catch a cab.

Because Brittany S. Pierce is not Kurt’s best friend, but, once, she kissed him, and it is a blood debt.

*

At the cat hospital, Brittany is much calmer than Kurt expects. She’s sitting on a footstool, leaning against what’s essentially a bookcase full of stacked rooms for sick cats. The door to Lord Tubbington’s is open, and she’s petting him while singing a song he knows Santana used to sing to her.

It’s that, really, that makes him a little bit sad; he’s never been close to the cat.

“Hi,” he says, leaning against the wall of cats.

“Hi, Kurt.” She doesn’t look up from what she’s doing.

“How is he?”

“His liver’s enlarged. Like the rest of him,” she says.

Kurt tries not to laugh, but does anyway, and he’s glad when she turns her face up to him and smiles.

He asks her to lunch then, because Lord Tubbington needs his rest.

*

Lord Tubbington dies.

Absurdly, Kurt gets the call backstage at the Orpheum from Blaine.

“I know you’re in the middle of a show, but Tubtub just died and I just spent forty-seven minutes on the phone trying to calm Brittany down and she wants to book you as a funeral singer, by the way.”

Kurt blinks. He hardly knows where to start. “Tubtub?”

*

The next morning, he finds himself staring at the shoebox that can’t quite be closed properly around Tubtub’s girth. It is wet now with condensation.

“I thought the services would be after cremation,” Kurt says, kneeling in the damp sand. Death is a natural process, and he is not revolted by it, but he does not think it should be so small or haphazard or defined by damp cardboard and food-storage refrigeration.

“But then he wouldn’t be able to hear you,” Brittany says so much like Kurt’s forgotten something important he is suddenly sure he has.

Distantly, Kurt can’t quite believe that his first view of the Pacific Ocean, his first toe-touch into that cold water is happening at a cat funeral, but his life has been relentlessly peculiar for a long time.

As sad as Brittany is, this is far from the worst thing, and so he takes a deep breath and starts to sing, because the sooner he’s done, the sooner Lord Tubbington’s remains can be tended to by a far more adequate actual professional than Kurt himself.

Kurt suspects that if one day someone asks him to talk about what tour life is really like to prepare young artists for the horror, he will tell the story of this day.

And that’s before Jay invites him to a sex party.

*

Not that Jay tells him it’s a sex party. Which is how he winds up there with two girls and a boy from the chorus who are either in on the joke or just don’t care, as he mutters to no one in particular that he would be furious if he weren’t so weirdly unsurprised.

Jay is an asshole.

Kurt knows he should leave. But he also knows he will endure more abuse from Jay on that score than he can stand if he does. And he’s not sure he shouldn’t be the responsible adult for the people with them. Stefan is barely even of age.

Kurt has also, never, seen so much flesh. Not that there is any shortage of it on tour, but close quarters and the casualness of performers is something else entirely. When dancers are naked, or nearly so, Kurt thinks of their bodies as tools and weapons that live lives quite deliberately chosen for them.

But sex isn’t that control; it’s the opposite, a thing that the body can’t help but do.

That’s what scared him about it at sixteen, when he was sure it would betray him in the same fashion as his voice and his supposedly pear-shaped hips. With Blaine, he has come to know that the betrayal is the point, and that is something he will never say aloud because he knows it would make Blaine sad.

*

“Don’t freak out,” Kurt says in a rush when Blaine answers the phone.

“I hate that preamble.”

“I’m at a sex party.”

“Um… not getting more comfortable, here.”

“It’s Jay’s fault.”

“Definitely not making this better,” Blaine manages, but his gut is tight with it.

“Would I be calling you from a sex party if you had anything to be uncomfortable about?” Kurt hollers into the phone loudly enough that someone near by actually looks up from giving head.

“Sex party with Jay, do I need something more to feel uncomfortable about?”

“Are you jealous?”

“Yes?”

“Oh my god. I don’t even know where he went!”

“So you’re wandering around in a sea of –“

“BLAINE ANDERSON, STOP WHATEVER ORGY HORROR FANTASY MOMENT YOU ARE HAVING RIGHT THERE AND CALM THE FUCK DOWN; I’M STILL PRACTICALLY IN THE VESTIBULE.”

Blaine takes a deep breath. Then two more. “Right. Question. Also, who the fuck says vestibule?” he says.

Kurt ignores that last part. “Yes?”

“If you called me from a sex party because you were freaked out –“

“I am freaked out, and frankly, I needed something to do with my hands so other people would stop making suggestions –“

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah.”

“—then why am I the one being told to calm down?”

“Because I love you, Blaine Anderson, and you are an idiot.”

“We were about to have an awesome fight there, weren’t we?”

“Yup.”

“So you’re really at a sex party?”

“Apparently. I totally interrupted some oral sex by hollering at you.”

“Wow. That’s sort of awesome. So… is it hot?”

“Blaine.”

“Yes?”

“Now you’re not making me more comfortable!”

“I just….”

“Yes?”

“There’s a whole world waiting for us, you know?”

“What? Of sex parties?” Kurt asks, horrified, even as he knows Blaine is probably halfway sincere.

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Okay, I am hanging up, and we are talking later.”

“But what are you going to do with your hands?” Blaine whines.

“What the hell do you think I’m going to do with my hands? Find my wayward dancers who shouldn’t be here either and hail a damn cab!”

*

“Don’t touch me,” Kurt says, skittish when he finds a fully-clothed Jay towards the back of the space. He’s talking to Stefan, whose shirt is unbuttoned. Kurt wants to tell Jay not to touch him either, but it’s not his place.

“Don’t worry, I haven’t done anything yet; Stefan and I were talking. I won’t sully you.”

Kurt gives him a dirty look.

“I’m leaving. I just wanted to let you know. Stefan, you’re welcome to share a cab with me if you’re so inclined, although –“

“I’m not a child,” he says, placidly.

“Right,” Kurt says, snapping his jaw shut holding his hands up. He has no energy for this. “I’m bad at touring, and I don’t like you,” he says, turning back to Jay. “So please stop pretending to be my friend.”

“I’m not pretending just because I don’t care for your youth and naïveté.”

“You’re jealous of my youth, and you wish I were naïve,” Kurt says simply before turning on his heel to go.

“I’m flying to LA tomorrow,” Jay calls after him.

It’s their day off, and it means only one thing. Jay has an audition.

Kurt desperately wants to cry; he hates Jay right now, yet the thought of being abandoned by him is a horror.

When he gets back to the hotel without Stefan or the girls from the chorus, Kurt calls Blaine as he steps into the elevator and speaks without preamble, always without preamble now.

“I am very, very bad at this, and I want to come home.”

LfT

Wed, 23 May 2012 23:20:23 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/05/23/dogboy-justine-tickets-now-on-sale/

LfT

Wed, 23 May 2012 07:15:25 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/05/23/glee-love-is-not-a-victory-march/

[Glee fic] Different For You, Kurt/Blaine, PG

Sun, 20 May 2012 20:41:47 GMT

Title: Different For You
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG
Summary: Kurt and Blaine process Sue's attempts to get Kurt to perform as Porcelina.
Warnings: Contains a moment of (internalized) misogyny from Blaine.
Notes: I posted this on Tumblr last week, and just wanted to get it up here for non-Tumblr readers and personal organizational purposes. I’m not entirely sure what this is. I don’t know if it’s trans!Blaine or genderqueer!Blaine or questioning!Blaine or what, but I'm not sure Blaine knows either.

“Would you, if it was you, I mean?” Kurt asks quietly later that night.

They’re in his bedroom, with the door wide open, ostensibly studying. Kurt’s at his desk, with his back to Blaine who’s sprawled out on the bed. He knows he should look at him while he asks, that’s the point of asking, but he can’t; the question means too many things and may be about too much shame.

“Would I what?” Blaine responds.

Kurt knows he knows what Kurt’s asking. Can hear it in the tone and the silence around him, as he studiously doesn’t look up from the text book he’s not even reading.

“A dress. If they asked you.”

“Maybe,” he says, too casual, not even missing a beat.

Kurt hums. “You’re always such a team player,” he says, and it comes out much crueler than he intends.

“That’s not why,” Blaine says, a little sullen, a little sharp, and full of mumbles.

“No. I suppose not,” and god, Kurt hates all the ways his voice can get tight and haughty.

“Kurt —”

“It doesn’t cost you as much,” he says, which is yet another version of not what he means.

“Why? Because I don’t look like you? Or because it’s not as far to fall?”

Kurt spins around in his chair, and Blaine is definitely looking at him now, startled and challenging, like a doe if it had the courage to start a war.

“Because I would kill to look like you. To be that tall, to have any chance at looking like anything other than what I am? Jesus.” The last word hisses out, as he runs a hand through his hair.

“You want me to be grateful that people think I’m a girl?” Kurt says flatly. “While you’re being weird and jealous and… weird, Blaine?”

“I want you to be grateful that you can shift. Be other things if you want to. I’d be ugly in that dress. Like Puck. It would be a joke. It’d be different for you.”

“Blaine, it’s always a joke.”

Blaine shakes his head and bites his lip, and picks at his cuticles as he mumbles that stupid thing from that stupid scene that Cooper had done when he was here. “This is serious, a man in a dress is dead.”

Kurt tilts his head. Oh. “Do you wish they’d asked you?”

Blaine shakes his head, looks back to his text book. “No. It just feels like they should, like they’re stupid that they don’t.”

“Alpha gay,” Kurt teases, and this time it’s not unkind.

“I’m not though. It’s not… god… Kurt, come on, you know that’s not me, right?”

“I know,” Kurt pouts, sweet and a little coy. “I do keep waiting for you to tell me who you are, though.”

“You know.”

“Sure,” Kurt says, spinning back towards his desk. “But it’s always nice to hear things,” he says lightly, and even means it.

Blaine looks back down at his text book, terrified and sad and oddly a little bit reassured. Because Kurt knows, and Kurt doesn’t care, and yet Blaine still wishes he’d make a bigger deal out of it.

“Unique,” he says then on a deep breath, and neither of them bother to clarify if he means the adjective or the name, the situation or himself.

Kurt hums again, opens his diary and starts writing something down. Blaine stares at his back and wonders how it is this boy always manages to make him real.

LfT

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:46:08 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/05/09/glee-queen-bees-missing-kings-and-the-faerie-court/

LfT

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:42:00 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/05/09/glee-eating-some-hats/

LfT

Sat, 05 May 2012 15:14:10 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/05/05/glee-gender-performativity-and-neediness/

LfT

Fri, 04 May 2012 01:32:01 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/05/03/travel-would-you-want-the-scottish-play-hovering-over-your-bed/

LfT

Thu, 03 May 2012 04:19:27 GMT

http://lettersfromtitan.com/2012/05/03/glee-somewhere-theres-an-a-plot-but-its-not-apparently-here/