Cut the Cord
Chapter 12

Kurt doesn’t follow him and at first he is oddly annoyed bythis. He feels like a child sent to his room, knowing full well that hisparents are downstairs talking about his behaviour. You should’ve just stayed, a voice in his head whispers, you should’ve stayed and explained calmly andmaturely that you were no longer an asset to the team—that it would’ve hurttheir chances further had you remained involved.

But then, that wasn’t really why he left, was it? He wasn’tanywhere near that selfless. Yes, he’d stopped contributing to groupdiscussions, and he could no longer hit the notes needed to harmonise withMarley, or do the choreography fast enough. But that wasn’t why he left. He’dquit Glee Club purely because he was weak; he couldn’t stand the constantstares and whispers of his teammates, couldn’t stand the way he was alwaysfighting back tears by the end of a meeting for no real reason, the way no onewanted to be his duet partner anymore, the pointed pauses and nudges wheneverKurt’s name happened to come up.

He’d skipped one afternoon and no one had missed him so thenhe stopped going completely.

Some of them had still tried to talk to him occasionally,but their awkward, half-sympathetic, half-frustrated looks made him feel sotired. It was better to avoid them and turn himself invisible; no looks, noquestions, no Blaine.

As he sits down on the tarmac in the parking lot, his eyesfilling with half-formed tears, he decides he is glad he left the coffee shopafter all. It’s funny, a few weeks ago he was complaining about how people’ssympathy looked so false and now he’s upset because it’s too genuine; becausethey’re not actually concerned forhim. They’re concerned about his vitality, about his body, but they’re notconcerned about him.

He stares down at the cracks in the ground, tiny littlefissures that disappear under the wheel of the car next to him. The cliché iswanting to fall between the cracks, but Blaine doesn’t want to fall anymore;he’d much rather just dissolve right here and float downwards forever and ever.He wishes that instead of being a whole balloon, he could be the particles thatconstitute it — then he wouldn’t need air to keep him afloat. Then there’d beno such thing as rising and falling, only being. Blaine would like to just be.

The thing is, people never could let him be. They always hadto question him, querying every little detail: You have a brother? You like show choir? You’re gay? You cheated? Whyare you so upset? And somewherealong the line Blaine got sick of answering.

It’s like everyone wants something from Blaine constantlyand he’s just so tired of pretending he can keep giving it to them, that hissupply of bubbly enthusiasm is unlimited. Because it isn’t. And whereas beforehe used to come home from school and recharge himself back up again during theevenings, the charger no longer works. No matter how withdrawn from others hebecomes, no matter how many excuses he makes to avoid social situations andcurl up in bed, no matter how much he keeps his head down, his batteries neverseem to charge themselves up again. Yet he cannot for the life of him work outwhy; he doesn’t know which part of the process is broken. Is the charger itselfbroken and, if so, which part of it? Or is it a faulty connection in the wires?Or could it be Blaine’s brain that’s come apart?

Maybe, thinks a small voice in his head, maybe he doesn’trun on rechargeable batteries. Maybe he’s one big disposable battery thatstopped providing electricity a long time ago.

He hears footsteps and watches Kurt’s boots come towardshim—alone thankfully—the perfect heel to toe motion of his walk hypnotising.He’s not sure whether he’s zoning out or zoning in. Kurt sits down a carefuldistance away from him and crosses his legs; for some reason, the movementdoesn’t seem as graceful as usual. He follows the trail of one of the littlecracks with his eyes until it disappears underneath Kurt’s thigh. It’s notuntil he’s been staring at the material of the designer jeans for several longseconds that he realises it’s probably inappropriate to stare now. Kurt’s toopolite to say anything about it though. Kurt’s probably too polite, period.

“Ants are weird creatures, aren’t they?” The question popsinto his head and out of his mouth as he watches one scurry along the edge ofthe sidewalk.

“How come?” Kurt doesn’t miss a beat before he answers,apparently not thrown by Blaine’s strange question.

“Because they’re tiny and get stepped on all the time, butthey can actually carry things twenty-times their own body weight—like, they’rereally strong.”

“Like you.” Kurt says after a moment.

“No.” Blaine shakes his head. “No, not like me.”

“Like what, then?”

“Like…” He looks around at the parking lot, the rows of carsand empty spaces, the white lines marking out all the boundaries. “Like whitelines in a parking lot.”

“Blaine Anderson, you are by far the weirdest thinker on theplanet!” Kurt laughs, eyes reflecting the fall sun.

“Sorry.” Blaine apologises even though he thinks it was acompliment.

“That’s okay.” Kurt replies, and suddenly it feels liketheir whole exchange has a hidden weight to it, one Blaine failed to grasp.

“So…” Kurt continues. “…Sam?”

“Mm.” Blaine hums noncommittally, scared he’ll misinterpretthe meaning again.

“You quit Glee?”

“Yep.” He picks up a tiny stone—more of a piece of grit—androlls it along the ground next to him.

“Because the others stopped supporting you?”

“Not really.” He likes the feel of the friction on his thumbas his stone bumps along.

“Because it wasn’t the same anymore?”

“Yep.”

“And you stopped sitting with them at lunch?”

“They didn’t want me.” The stone gets stuck in a groove fora second, but Blaine dislodges it and carries on.

“Your parents weren’t at home?”

“Business as usual.” He’s rolled it as far as his arm canstretch; now it’s just sat there under his thumb. Kurt sighs.

“I should have picked up your calls—I’m sorry.”

Blaine flicks the stone away from him and shrugs. “It’s ok.I’m not your responsibility, Kurt.”

“No, but you always say my name really nicely.”

The statement throws Blaine off so much that he has to lookup into Kurt’s face. “What has that got to do with anything?”

“You just—you’ve always said my name really nicely and Icouldn’t be bothered to pick up.”

“…Okay?” Blaine says slowly, hoping Kurt will actuallyexplain. He doesn’t. Instead, he stands up and brushes off his designer jeans.Blaine wonders whether the ant is still clinging to his thigh; Blaine doesn’tblame him if he is.

“Come on, you, let’s go home.” Kurt’s voice is a strangemixture of affectionate and sad which makes Blaine’s chest reflect thosefeelings and he thinks about how a few hours before, it had all seemed so simple.

But then Kurt takes Blaine’s hand and leads him back to thecar and the fire reignites up his arm. Teachme how to pull the blanket off, he thinks, like you did. I want tobreathe again, but I don’t know how. Teach me how to say my name like I sayyours.