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Title: The Greatest Star
Pair: Klaine
Spoilers: “Goodbye” season finale
Word Count: 2344
Summary: Years out of high school, Kurt reflects on the experiences who made him who he is.
AN: A lot of people have done really good reaction fics. This is more of a resistance fic. And a **ck you fic. (Darn censors.)
“Oh, no! I didn’t even get in! No, I was devastated!” Kurt exclaimed, holding his hands up dramatically, his expression one of shock and scandal. He laughed.
The audience laughed with him.
“Oh noooo!” Delanna laughed as he mimed tears. She leaned on her elbow and looked briefly at her producer to make sure she was on time. “How did you find out?”
“I just... Well, my brother and my friend-- her name was Rachel-- went into the choir room, and we opened up our letters one by one, and...” Kurt shook his head. “I was just crushed. Blaine-- then my boyfriend-- took me home and he rubbed my back and made me cocoa and let me cry. And cry and cry and cry. I don’t think I’ve ever let myself cry that hard, actually, after my mother died. I was always... you know, I do cry, but I always held back so much, back then. Felt like I had to be strong for everyone.”
“It must have been so disappointing. So frustrating.”
“It was a punch in the face. I’d done really well on my audition.” Kurt held up a hand, shrugging as if to say, Oh well. “I just couldn’t make sense of it. It was like my world had ended.”
He straightened up on the set’s black leather sofa and smoothed a hand over his tie. “Really, it had just been a rough year, and it topped off three other really rough years, and I just felt at the time that it was a sign, that the world was never really going to see me as worth anything. High school was awful for me. I think we talked about that when I was here before. Before I got into show choir, I didn’t have any friends. You know, or self-esteem. I was drowning. Lost.”
“Aw. Well, I have all your albums, with and without your husband. So I’m glad you found that. What would I listen to in the car?”
The audience laughs.
“Were you a big star in the choir?” she pressed.
“Pfft. Please.” Kurt held up a hand. “Even when I found my place in choir, I was never the one who got the big solo. Not me!” Kurt leaned over as though to confide in the host. “Or even the small solo, though my senior year at Nationals I did get to share a line in our final number with my boyfriend.”
“Oh God! That’s terrible!”
“Yeah. I was always the Susan Lucci of show choir.” Kurt quirked his mouth to the side and narrowed his eyes. “I got a few bit roles, but nothing big, and anything I tried out or ran for was pretty much a forfeit. Except, you know.” His expression went flat. “Prom Queen.”
More laughter from the audience.
Kurt nodded cheerfully. “I was a great big loser in high school.”
“No! Oh, come on. You’re a two time Grammy winner! Didn’t you just win a Tony?
“Oh. Yes!” Kurt reached over and waved the small black and gold statue. As he rubbed his face against it, the crowd cracked up. He finally sat down and crossed his legs again, petting the Tony like a cat.
“But you weren’t a superstar back in the day.”
“Not at all. I was pretty much the bottom of the high school food chain. Even other Glee club members were less socially repellent. Now people try to friend me on Facebook and...” He spread his hands and made a face at the audience. “I’m like, okay. When you were throwing me in the dumpster every day? Not good times for me. Even some of the teachers gave me a hard time.” He touched his chin, seeming to think for a moment. “I think the coaches all had a pact. Or it was in the job description.”
He motioned writing in script with his hands. “Must be willing to call the gay kid ‘laaaady.’ A few weeks before our Nationals competition the cheerleading coach wasted an entire week trying to force me into a dress and calling me a he/she.”
“How can they let teachers do that?”
“Pretty much all of the coaches called me that. I was told I was ‘too much of a lady’ to play Tony in Westside Story, and don’t get me started on the football coach. The one I was kicker for.”
“You played football?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, for a few games. I left due to harassment and...” Kurt shrugged his head to the side and looked at the audience apologetically. “Actually, I find the game kind of boring. I joined the cheerleading squad after that, though.”
“You were a cheerleader and a football player?”
“Well, not at the same time, of course.”
“No, no.”
“I was on the cheerleading squad to be a wow factor for their competitions. I think that was my only ‘moment’ in high school, really.” He leaned onto the arm of the sofa. “Of real recognition, I mean.”
“I bet the people back home are kicking themselves now!”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t really care as much as I thought I would. I’m just saying, not everyone shines in high school. I was a weird kid in a small town. Even our choir director preached diversity on the daily, but that never reached me, of course.” He pinched his lips together. “I feel kind of sorry for the guy, honestly. What did he have to work with? Did he miss that day in sensitivity training, oh no. Wait. We didn’t have any! He had these normal football players on his team, and then he had me. Genderqueer fashionisto extraordinaire.”
Delana chuckled. “But this was, what, the early 2000s? There was some representation in the media by then, right? I’m trying to remember back that far.”
“Well, yeah, but you have to take into consideration. This guy did disco at his Nationals competition. He was an eighties baby, y’know? He had at most Jack McFarlane in the 90s, and maybe Angel. The whole AIDS Crisis. He had no way of understanding me, and it showed.”
“I feel so bad! I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”
“He was a good teacher for the other guys, most of the time, even if he totally missed all the homophobia flying around. He was the least of my problems. I mostly got in trouble with him for my smart mouth. High school was just rough. They didn’t have the federal laws in place against bullying in schools--” He looked at the audience and made a frustrated motion with his hands. “--and people were actually arguing that kids should be allowed to beat the crap out of kids they think are gay, if you believe it.”
Delana shook her head and made a disgusted noise.
“It was crazy. Outbreaks of teen suicides, preachers telling people they could abuse their kids, or people calling for the extermination of gay people-”
“I do remember, but it’s so unsettling to look back on.”
“Well, at the time, as a kid growing up with that, it’s like...” Kurt touched his lips. “I remember people talking about not getting kids involved in the culture war. But I was in that war. You know? I was down there in the trenches, me and my friends. I was getting death threats! I was being physically, emotionally...” He paused a moment. “And, you know, sometimes sexually, harassed. And... it really seemed like no one cared. Maybe my friends, a little, but they didn’t really see a good part of it, and the teachers just did nothing. The courts did practically nothing, even for the big cases of the time.”
“How did you deal with that?”
“Oh. Oh, I got through it. I wouldn’t recommend my way to anyone; I just sort of bungled through and survived somehow. And I’m friends with some of my former bullies, now. It’s kind of crazy that I still text one of the guys who sexually assaulted me, but it’s just... They’re kids in those schools. They don’t know how to fully express themselves, and they don’t know the range of things they can do and what they can be. That wasn’t on TV when I was a kid. You’d get some gay guys making over straights, and you had some femmy guys as the gay best friend/handbag of your obnoxious leading lady. Mostly gay men were there to be laughed at and lesbians and bisexual women were there to give dudes boners.”
“There was no Kurt Hummel type.”
Kurt waved his hand modestly.
“You really mean a lot to a lot of people. My son Joshua, he’s just... Well, he really identifies with you. And he thinks your husband is dreamy.”
Kurt said out of the side of his mouth, “Well, he is kinda dreamy.”
The audience laughed.
“You’re an inspiration to so many kids. You were an inspiration to me, and I wasn’t bullied nearly as hard in school as you were.”
“I don’t really think of myself like that, but...” Kurt drew in a breath and a little smile touched his lips. “Now that I’m thinking back at high school? In my last days there, I realized that I had started that school as the only gay kid. I wasn’t out, not that it mattered to all the people calling me a fag, and when I came out, I was the only one. You know? And as I finished out my senior year, I realized that there was a community forming there. There were boys and girls coming out and saying, you know what? I’m okay.”
Kurt looked straight at the screen. “You. Are. Okay. You are. And everyone else? Any holdovers from previous generations who haven’t hopped aboard the clue train of history? **ck em!”
The audience roared in laughter, and Delana looked to her producer. The man was laughing, so it would probably be all right.
Kurt brought his shoulders up in a big shrug. “That’s what I took from high school.”
“Okay.” Delana fought her smile and looked through her cards.
“Warm memories, my step family, my darling husband, and **ck ‘em.”
The audience laughed again. Thank goodness for their five second delay.
“You knew this interview was getting too serious,” he told her.
“I should have been prepared.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Alright, alright. Well, we have a clip of your new movie.”
“Yes!” Kurt clapped his hands together and bounced his legs a little.
“Do you want to set it up?”
“Ooo. Yeah, um.” Kurt’s smile grew easy and he motioned with his hands as he explained. “This is sort of um, well, I wrote the screenplay for this, you know.”
“Yes.”
“It’ll be in theaters come fall, and it’s called Wings of Wax.”
“And this is based on your life?”
“Oh, no.” Kurt scrunched his nose. “Well, maybe a little, but it’s not a biography or anything. It’s mostly dark comedy. In this clip I think we have me, as a teacher, and he’s breaking up a fight between the main characters.”
“Okay! Let’s see the clip, and when we come back, more from Kurt Hummel!” Delana clapped as the audience watched the clip, and the show went to commercial. She took off her mic for a moment. “It’s so good to have you again.”
“It’s good to be back. Glad to know I’m not a flash in the pan.” Kurt stood as he spotted Blaine coming on the stage. “Oh! Hang on!”
“Oh! Is that Pippa?” Delana stood.
“Yes!” Blaine, wearing a crisp pair of jeans and rich blue dress shirt, held the purple-clad baby close and came over to Kurt. “She misses daddy.”
“Aw.” Kurt scooped her up and rocked her while she whined. “She’s cranky. Why you cranky, sweetie?”
“Do you mind staying?” Delana leaned over, smiling at Blaine.
“Oh. Oh, well, I don’t really have anything...”
“Just hold the baby, it’ll be adorable. People love seeing you two together in interviews.”
“He’s working on a new album.” Kurt patted Blaine’s shoulder. “You should ask him about that.”
“Great!” Delana grinned.
Blaine turned to Kurt and touched his hair. “Do you think I look okay?”
“Handsome as ever.” Kurt kissed him, to the oooing of some audience members.
They sat down together to finish the interview, baby daughter snuggled in Blaine’s arms, and Kurt’s arm around Blaine’s shoulders. He petted Blaine’s knee and breathed deep. He wasn’t sure he’d ever really get used to being in the spotlight like this, having people appreciating his work and his performances. Having people he didn’t even know cheering him on, and wishing for his happiness! But he couldn’t put a price on the image of his husband, and himself, and their child, together on camera, putting it out there for the next generation.
The struggle, having to work ten times as hard to only get a fraction as far, it had made him so strong, and it forced him to be better than everyone else. Still, he hoped that some things were easier for kids nowadays. He hoped that having a “Kurt Hummel” type, not to mention a Blaine Anderson type, on television and in the movies made life that much more livable for the kids watching, hoping just to see a little hope.
Pair: Klaine
Spoilers: “Goodbye” season finale
Word Count: 2344
Summary: Years out of high school, Kurt reflects on the experiences who made him who he is.
AN: A lot of people have done really good reaction fics. This is more of a resistance fic. And a **ck you fic. (Darn censors.)
“Oh, no! I didn’t even get in! No, I was devastated!” Kurt exclaimed, holding his hands up dramatically, his expression one of shock and scandal. He laughed.
The audience laughed with him.
“Oh noooo!” Delanna laughed as he mimed tears. She leaned on her elbow and looked briefly at her producer to make sure she was on time. “How did you find out?”
“I just... Well, my brother and my friend-- her name was Rachel-- went into the choir room, and we opened up our letters one by one, and...” Kurt shook his head. “I was just crushed. Blaine-- then my boyfriend-- took me home and he rubbed my back and made me cocoa and let me cry. And cry and cry and cry. I don’t think I’ve ever let myself cry that hard, actually, after my mother died. I was always... you know, I do cry, but I always held back so much, back then. Felt like I had to be strong for everyone.”
“It must have been so disappointing. So frustrating.”
“It was a punch in the face. I’d done really well on my audition.” Kurt held up a hand, shrugging as if to say, Oh well. “I just couldn’t make sense of it. It was like my world had ended.”
He straightened up on the set’s black leather sofa and smoothed a hand over his tie. “Really, it had just been a rough year, and it topped off three other really rough years, and I just felt at the time that it was a sign, that the world was never really going to see me as worth anything. High school was awful for me. I think we talked about that when I was here before. Before I got into show choir, I didn’t have any friends. You know, or self-esteem. I was drowning. Lost.”
“Aw. Well, I have all your albums, with and without your husband. So I’m glad you found that. What would I listen to in the car?”
The audience laughs.
“Were you a big star in the choir?” she pressed.
“Pfft. Please.” Kurt held up a hand. “Even when I found my place in choir, I was never the one who got the big solo. Not me!” Kurt leaned over as though to confide in the host. “Or even the small solo, though my senior year at Nationals I did get to share a line in our final number with my boyfriend.”
“Oh God! That’s terrible!”
“Yeah. I was always the Susan Lucci of show choir.” Kurt quirked his mouth to the side and narrowed his eyes. “I got a few bit roles, but nothing big, and anything I tried out or ran for was pretty much a forfeit. Except, you know.” His expression went flat. “Prom Queen.”
More laughter from the audience.
Kurt nodded cheerfully. “I was a great big loser in high school.”
“No! Oh, come on. You’re a two time Grammy winner! Didn’t you just win a Tony?
“Oh. Yes!” Kurt reached over and waved the small black and gold statue. As he rubbed his face against it, the crowd cracked up. He finally sat down and crossed his legs again, petting the Tony like a cat.
“But you weren’t a superstar back in the day.”
“Not at all. I was pretty much the bottom of the high school food chain. Even other Glee club members were less socially repellent. Now people try to friend me on Facebook and...” He spread his hands and made a face at the audience. “I’m like, okay. When you were throwing me in the dumpster every day? Not good times for me. Even some of the teachers gave me a hard time.” He touched his chin, seeming to think for a moment. “I think the coaches all had a pact. Or it was in the job description.”
He motioned writing in script with his hands. “Must be willing to call the gay kid ‘laaaady.’ A few weeks before our Nationals competition the cheerleading coach wasted an entire week trying to force me into a dress and calling me a he/she.”
“How can they let teachers do that?”
“Pretty much all of the coaches called me that. I was told I was ‘too much of a lady’ to play Tony in Westside Story, and don’t get me started on the football coach. The one I was kicker for.”
“You played football?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, for a few games. I left due to harassment and...” Kurt shrugged his head to the side and looked at the audience apologetically. “Actually, I find the game kind of boring. I joined the cheerleading squad after that, though.”
“You were a cheerleader and a football player?”
“Well, not at the same time, of course.”
“No, no.”
“I was on the cheerleading squad to be a wow factor for their competitions. I think that was my only ‘moment’ in high school, really.” He leaned onto the arm of the sofa. “Of real recognition, I mean.”
“I bet the people back home are kicking themselves now!”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t really care as much as I thought I would. I’m just saying, not everyone shines in high school. I was a weird kid in a small town. Even our choir director preached diversity on the daily, but that never reached me, of course.” He pinched his lips together. “I feel kind of sorry for the guy, honestly. What did he have to work with? Did he miss that day in sensitivity training, oh no. Wait. We didn’t have any! He had these normal football players on his team, and then he had me. Genderqueer fashionisto extraordinaire.”
Delana chuckled. “But this was, what, the early 2000s? There was some representation in the media by then, right? I’m trying to remember back that far.”
“Well, yeah, but you have to take into consideration. This guy did disco at his Nationals competition. He was an eighties baby, y’know? He had at most Jack McFarlane in the 90s, and maybe Angel. The whole AIDS Crisis. He had no way of understanding me, and it showed.”
“I feel so bad! I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”
“He was a good teacher for the other guys, most of the time, even if he totally missed all the homophobia flying around. He was the least of my problems. I mostly got in trouble with him for my smart mouth. High school was just rough. They didn’t have the federal laws in place against bullying in schools--” He looked at the audience and made a frustrated motion with his hands. “--and people were actually arguing that kids should be allowed to beat the crap out of kids they think are gay, if you believe it.”
Delana shook her head and made a disgusted noise.
“It was crazy. Outbreaks of teen suicides, preachers telling people they could abuse their kids, or people calling for the extermination of gay people-”
“I do remember, but it’s so unsettling to look back on.”
“Well, at the time, as a kid growing up with that, it’s like...” Kurt touched his lips. “I remember people talking about not getting kids involved in the culture war. But I was in that war. You know? I was down there in the trenches, me and my friends. I was getting death threats! I was being physically, emotionally...” He paused a moment. “And, you know, sometimes sexually, harassed. And... it really seemed like no one cared. Maybe my friends, a little, but they didn’t really see a good part of it, and the teachers just did nothing. The courts did practically nothing, even for the big cases of the time.”
“How did you deal with that?”
“Oh. Oh, I got through it. I wouldn’t recommend my way to anyone; I just sort of bungled through and survived somehow. And I’m friends with some of my former bullies, now. It’s kind of crazy that I still text one of the guys who sexually assaulted me, but it’s just... They’re kids in those schools. They don’t know how to fully express themselves, and they don’t know the range of things they can do and what they can be. That wasn’t on TV when I was a kid. You’d get some gay guys making over straights, and you had some femmy guys as the gay best friend/handbag of your obnoxious leading lady. Mostly gay men were there to be laughed at and lesbians and bisexual women were there to give dudes boners.”
“There was no Kurt Hummel type.”
Kurt waved his hand modestly.
“You really mean a lot to a lot of people. My son Joshua, he’s just... Well, he really identifies with you. And he thinks your husband is dreamy.”
Kurt said out of the side of his mouth, “Well, he is kinda dreamy.”
The audience laughed.
“You’re an inspiration to so many kids. You were an inspiration to me, and I wasn’t bullied nearly as hard in school as you were.”
“I don’t really think of myself like that, but...” Kurt drew in a breath and a little smile touched his lips. “Now that I’m thinking back at high school? In my last days there, I realized that I had started that school as the only gay kid. I wasn’t out, not that it mattered to all the people calling me a fag, and when I came out, I was the only one. You know? And as I finished out my senior year, I realized that there was a community forming there. There were boys and girls coming out and saying, you know what? I’m okay.”
Kurt looked straight at the screen. “You. Are. Okay. You are. And everyone else? Any holdovers from previous generations who haven’t hopped aboard the clue train of history? **ck em!”
The audience roared in laughter, and Delana looked to her producer. The man was laughing, so it would probably be all right.
Kurt brought his shoulders up in a big shrug. “That’s what I took from high school.”
“Okay.” Delana fought her smile and looked through her cards.
“Warm memories, my step family, my darling husband, and **ck ‘em.”
The audience laughed again. Thank goodness for their five second delay.
“You knew this interview was getting too serious,” he told her.
“I should have been prepared.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Alright, alright. Well, we have a clip of your new movie.”
“Yes!” Kurt clapped his hands together and bounced his legs a little.
“Do you want to set it up?”
“Ooo. Yeah, um.” Kurt’s smile grew easy and he motioned with his hands as he explained. “This is sort of um, well, I wrote the screenplay for this, you know.”
“Yes.”
“It’ll be in theaters come fall, and it’s called Wings of Wax.”
“And this is based on your life?”
“Oh, no.” Kurt scrunched his nose. “Well, maybe a little, but it’s not a biography or anything. It’s mostly dark comedy. In this clip I think we have me, as a teacher, and he’s breaking up a fight between the main characters.”
“Okay! Let’s see the clip, and when we come back, more from Kurt Hummel!” Delana clapped as the audience watched the clip, and the show went to commercial. She took off her mic for a moment. “It’s so good to have you again.”
“It’s good to be back. Glad to know I’m not a flash in the pan.” Kurt stood as he spotted Blaine coming on the stage. “Oh! Hang on!”
“Oh! Is that Pippa?” Delana stood.
“Yes!” Blaine, wearing a crisp pair of jeans and rich blue dress shirt, held the purple-clad baby close and came over to Kurt. “She misses daddy.”
“Aw.” Kurt scooped her up and rocked her while she whined. “She’s cranky. Why you cranky, sweetie?”
“Do you mind staying?” Delana leaned over, smiling at Blaine.
“Oh. Oh, well, I don’t really have anything...”
“Just hold the baby, it’ll be adorable. People love seeing you two together in interviews.”
“He’s working on a new album.” Kurt patted Blaine’s shoulder. “You should ask him about that.”
“Great!” Delana grinned.
Blaine turned to Kurt and touched his hair. “Do you think I look okay?”
“Handsome as ever.” Kurt kissed him, to the oooing of some audience members.
They sat down together to finish the interview, baby daughter snuggled in Blaine’s arms, and Kurt’s arm around Blaine’s shoulders. He petted Blaine’s knee and breathed deep. He wasn’t sure he’d ever really get used to being in the spotlight like this, having people appreciating his work and his performances. Having people he didn’t even know cheering him on, and wishing for his happiness! But he couldn’t put a price on the image of his husband, and himself, and their child, together on camera, putting it out there for the next generation.
The struggle, having to work ten times as hard to only get a fraction as far, it had made him so strong, and it forced him to be better than everyone else. Still, he hoped that some things were easier for kids nowadays. He hoped that having a “Kurt Hummel” type, not to mention a Blaine Anderson type, on television and in the movies made life that much more livable for the kids watching, hoping just to see a little hope.
