#happy klainniversary!

[wowbright]

Fic: Wisdom to Listen

Klaine Advent 2022: give

Words: ~ 1,100 words

Rating: Teen and Up

Summary: Blaine can't sleep. His body is telling him something.

I’m back with more vignettes from my Mormon!Klaine universe for Klaine Advent 2022! This vignette takes after Recognition and simultaneously with the first part of Losing My Sleep (it’s sort of a mirror fic).

My Mormon!Klaine Masterpost. (Klaine Advent bits in bold; Klaine Valentine in italics and bold.)

_________

Blaine couldn’t sleep. He’d tried prayer. He’d tried counting backwards from a thousand in German. He’d conjured detailed images of an idea he had for an alternative animal shelter, where cats lounged in an enormous, sunlight-filled pavilion outfitted with a forest of enormous cat trees reaching the vaulted ceiling. Some of the cats watched birds and butterflies outside floor-to-floor windows, while others lazed atop tall towers in napping bliss. He imaged the scene down to the color pattern and length of each cat’s coat, and the little patches in the cat tree coverings that had been clawed bare.

Finally, in a variation of counting sheep, he imagined the cats jumping through a hula hoop, one by one.

But none of it worked.

Part of the problem was that Blaine was vaguely horny, which was making him tense. He'd thought of releasing the valve in the shower after they got home earlier that evening, but it didn't seem urgent. Despite what Elder Hummel seemed to think, Blaine didn't go at it every opportunity he had. Blaine believed in moderation in all things, and he'd already provided release for himself twice since Sunday.

The problem, he thought, was not so much that he was horny, but that he was lonely. That should be impossible. He’d spent all day—all week, all month—with his best friend, and now that same best friend was sleeping in the same room with him.

But Blaine had an ache inside him that even Elder Hummel’s presence could not fill. It had started somewhere in the middle of singing Circle of Our Love and grown through their evening meetings with investigators and the bus trip home— when, instead of asking Blaine to sit with him, Elder Hummel had suggested they get in more contacting time by sitting next to strangers.

The only relief had been just before bed, when Blaine hugged Elder Hummel good night. In that moment, with Elder Hummel's arms wrapped tight around him, Blaine felt sheltered from every bad and frightening thing, and he was no longer lonely.

Back in middle school, the answer to this feeling had been easy. He'd go over to Sam's house or Sam would come over to his, and they would sit in Sam’s bed or his own and watch movies and read comics and talk and talk until they wore themselves out. They’d fall asleep next to each other, and even when they weren't touching, Blaine could feel Sam's warmth near him, and he knew he wasn't alone.

The sound of shifting blankets caught Blaine’s attention. Elder Hummel stood from his bed and walked over to the dresser.

“Can’t sleep?” Blaine flicked the nightstand light on.

Elder Hummel blinked. “Not really. Thought I’d get out my MP3 player and listen to my sleep songlist.”

“I can’t sleep either. I've tried prayer and counting backwards in German and imagining the perfect animal shelter and counting cats—”

“Cats?”

“Yeah," said Blaine. “Like counting sheep, but with cats.”

“Of course. I should have known,” Elder Hummel said with an amused smile as he settled back onto his bed. “Is something bothering you?”

Blaine didn't know the answer to that question. He felt lonely, but was that a feeling of botherment? And the only reason he felt lonely was because he had felt the opposite of lonely while singing Circle of Our Love with Elder Hummel on the streets of downtown Ingolstadt. He had felt connected to Kurt in a way that surpassed the moment or the physical trappings of their lives. He still felt it, partially. But something was missing. It was the easy intimacy he used to share with Sam during sleepovers—being in each other's space without invading each other’s space, because somehow the world around them seem to grow bigger when they were alone together.

“I don’t know if I’m bothered,” Blaine said. “We were busy today, so I should be exhausted. But maybe I got too amped up instead.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Elder Hummel said.

Blaine shook his head, his gaze absently fixed on the MP3 player in Elder Hummel’s hands. Blaine remembered when he had been the object in Elder Hummel’s hands, when Elder Hummel had held his head and spoken on behalf of the Lord: I bless you with the wisdom to listen to your own body. “Does that MP3 player have a speaker?”

Elder Hummel looked down at the gadget in his hands, as if he'd forgotten it was there. “No, just headphones. Why? You want to listen?”

“I thought it might help. But if there’s no speaker—”

“We could share the headphones,” Elder Hummel had said.

The last time they had done that had been less than a week into their transfer together, sitting together on Blaine’s bed just before Kurt came out to him. The memory warmed Blaine's heart. I bless you with the wisdom to listen to your own body. “We can’t really do that without sharing a bed,” Blaine said, testing the waters.

Elder Hummel frowned. “I'm not sure that's a good idea. It’s against the rules to sleep in the same bed at night. Too much crowding.”

If those were Elder Hummel’s only objections— Blaine clapped his hands together. “I know!”  He jumped out of his bed and tugged on the frame until it made a loud creak and scraped across the floor.

“What are you doing!?” Elder Hummel said in a loud whisper. “You could wake the downstairs neighbors.”

“No, they moved out last week. Remember?”

“Fine. But you could gouge the floor. And I still don’t know why you’re moving furniture in the middle of the night.”

“Oh.” Maybe Blaine had been rash. Maybe they weren't on the same page. “I thought …” and Blaine had to pause for a second there, because had he really thought? Or had he just done? On the other hand, what was wrong with just doing sometimes? The scriptures said I will go and do when the Spirit prompts, not I will think about it for twenty years first and then maybe do. “If I move my bed next to yours, we can share the headphones.”

“Oh,” Elder Hummel said, his face momentarily expressionless as he processed this new piece of information. But then he broke out into a smile not unlike the one he'd worn as they’d sung Circle of Our Love together. “That works.”

[i-still-dont-like-your-face]

PSA for my followers:

today, i cannot be held accountable for

reblogging something more than once

spamming without tagging

excessive fangirling