#strains if you want to be a Good Gay that fits into the nuclear system

[kenmakaashi]

i also really wanna say that neither ben or neung did anything wrong. Ben isn’t wrong for protecting himself and his safety. Neung isn’t wrong for being upset and what ben did isn’t shitty, those are two truths that can most certainly coexist. it’ll make them both feel abysmal, but being hurt and hurting someone isn’t the downfall of someone’s character

[lady-divine-writes]

Kurtbastian one-shot - “Final Game” (Rated PG)

After his final hockey game, Kurt gets stopped on the way out of the rink by a boy who came a long way looking for an important interview. (2465 words)

Part 23 of Outside Edge.

Read on AO3.

“Kurt! Kurt Hummel! Can I have a word with you? Please?”

Kurt looks up when he hears his name being called, rather enthusiastically, from the direction of the front door. Straining against exhaustion to drag his enormous gear bag down the carpeted hallway, he sighs. He’s five feet from the corner that leads to the stupid front door himself, with his Navigator parked just a few feet beyond that.

Close. He’s so close.

The last traces of postgame adrenaline quickly circle the drain, threatening to plunge Kurt into oblivion before he has the chance to drive home and take a proper shower. He downright refuses to shower in the locker rooms at the rink for any reason (barring nuclear fallout, of course). He’s seen those suckers backup during the rainy season. The black, goopy sewage that comes bubbling through those pipes is enough to keep him from ever setting foot in those showers.

He’s been told by Coach Beiste that the rink deep cleans the grout and disinfects the tiles every six months, but he’ll never be convinced that any amount of cleaning gets all that garbage out.

Even after wiping down with an entire box of Yuni shower sheets in the relative safety of the coach’s office and switching into a fresh change of clothes, he can feel latent sweat coagulating on his skin. Ugh! Just the thought of the bacteria that must be seeping into his pores makes him want to retch. But grossed out and tired beyond belief, he still manages to find a smile for the young man bounding his way, dressed in head to toe Abercrombie and Fitch, and waving his cell phone over his head like a beacon to ensure Kurt will see him.

“You’re here kind of late,” Kurt points out, gently setting his bag down. “Everyone else is gone.”

The boy slows to a walk, and Kurt can’t help noticing how clean and unwrinkled he appears for having just watched a hockey game – one that was standing room only before it even began. Kurt isn’t one for stereotyping, but in his crisp, clean, button-down shirt and spotless charcoal-grey slacks, he doesn’t strike Kurt as the ‘hockey enthusiast’ type.

He seems more like the ‘watching an Indie band play at the opening of a new fusion restaurant’ type.

“I know,” he says, “but I wanted to catch you before you went out celebrating.”

“Actually, I plan on celebrating at home, alone, with a long, hot shower and a mug of warm milk,” Kurt says, subtly hinting at the fact that he would really like to get going.

The boy catches on quickly, his bright smile slipping at the corners. “Oh. I’m sorry. I understand completely. It’s just … my name’s Colin Quinn, and I was hoping I could interview you for my paper. I came here all the way from Dayton.”

“Wow. That’s far,” Kurt admits, rubbing his sore shoulder.

“Yeah. I---I waited till everyone else left because I … wanted to talk to you alone.”

“Oh?” Kurt raises a cautious eyebrow. This late in the season, it’s not too unusual to see reporters from the local papers and from the high schools in the stands. But they normally descend immediately following the final buzzer, and they mostly want to talk to Sebastian, seeing as he’s team captain. During his short but illustrious tenure as a hockey player, Kurt has had his picture in the paper once or twice before, but he rarely gets approached for an interview, even on the few occasions when the article centers around him. “And which paper is that?”

“It’s kind of a new one,” Colin says, fidgeting nervously with his phone. “It’s my pet project. I run it, I print it, I circulate it. I also take the pictures and write all the articles.”

“That sounds like a lot of wo—aaahhh-rk.” Kurt yawns – a first of many, he knows. Since he‘s stopped moving, he’s losing momentum, minutes away from falling asleep on his feet. He doesn’t want to be rude to this kid. He did drive over an hour to talk to him, after all. But still, Kurt starts thinking of anything he can do to move this interview along.

“It is. It’s mainly aimed at LGBT+ students on my high school campus.” Colin’s voice lowers, probably out of habit, Kurt assumes, seeing as there’s absolutely no one consciously around to overhear them. His eyes drop, and he starts shifting uncomfortably on his feet. “We don’t have much in the way of readership. I think that maybe some of the kids at school don’t want to be associated with my paper? Because they’re scared? But I was hoping, you know, that by featuring people who are part of our community and kind of kick ass, I’ll get more support.”

Kurt starts to wake up after Colin’s explanation. Aside from being flattered, he knows exactly how Colin feels. He had hoped for the longest time that by being a visible out-and-proud gay at McKinley, he might inspire other closeted gay kids to come out. And that having strength in numbers might benefit them all. Together they could change the political landscape of McKinley High. They could start a chapter of PFLAG on campus, have their own LGBT student union. They’d have a support system, one that could stand united against bullies and discrimination.

They would have a voice, one that couldn’t be ignored.

But it backfired. In the end, all it seemed to do was make him more of an outcast, put a bigger bull’s eye on his back.

He can’t turn Colin away now, not when he’s trying to succeed at something Kurt himself failed so royally at.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk to Sebastian instead?” Kurt asks, certain that, under the superlative of “kickass”, his boyfriend fits the bill a bit more accurately. “To be honest, he’s the star hockey player around here. The team wouldn’t be half as good without him. I’m really just a glorified EBUG*.”

“I know why you’d think that, but I’ve been following your career for a while now ...” Colin begins to blush uncontrollably “… and I think you’re where the real story lies.”

“And why is that?” Kurt asks, hiding a devious grin behind another serendipitous yawn. Colin’s face goes drastically pale, and Kurt feels bad about putting the boy on the spot – but only slightly. If he’s going to keep Kurt from getting home on the ASAP and passing out for the next twenty-seven hours, Kurt’s going to put him in the hot seat.

“Oh God,” Colin mutters, an anxious chuckle cutting in, “there’s no good answer to that one.”

“It’s alright. I promise, whatever you say, I won’t take offense.”

“Okay.” Colin takes a deep breath, his eyes once again falling as he assembles his thoughts into an explanation that he hopes will sound better out loud than it does in his head. “Well … yeah, so … um … when you read about LGBT people in the media, a lot of times they focus on those actors, athletes, and activists who are … passing …” Colin lets the word linger, eyes rising slowly to assess the look on Kurt’s face, wary of what he might see. Kurt, for his part, keeps his expression impassive, waiting patiently for further explanation, but he knows what Colin is getting at. And as much as he could be upset over Colin’s reasoning, or offended on Sebastian’s behalf, Kurt has to admit that Colin has a point. “Gay men are acceptable if they can be hyper-masculine alpha males. Trans people are okay if they can pass 100% for their gender. Lesbian women are fine as long as they’re model gorgeous, that sort of thing …”

“Yeah,” Kurt says sadly. “I know what you mean.”

“With your boyfriend …” Colin’s face pinches. He knows he’s treading into dangerous territory, but there’s nowhere for him to go from here but forward. If he’s going to be a journalist, he can’t shy away from difficult topics, even if that means possibly insulting people he admires “… I see someone that most people wouldn’t peg as gay in particular because they have a preconceived notion of how gay men look and act. And Sebastian doesn’t fit that. But you … a---and me … even if we were straight, people might automatically assume …”

“I understand,” Kurt intervenes, giving poor Colin a pass from having to explain any further, especially since he’s holding his phone so tight in his hands, the screen might crack.

“Sebastian on the cover of my newspaper, dressed in his hockey uniform, might get me more readers, gay and straight - I’ll admit that. But it won’t have the impact that you will. Not to the kids who really need to see a person that represents who they might see when they look at themselves in the mirror.”

“It’s alright,” Kurt says, putting a hand on Colin’s shoulder when he hears the boy’s voice shake. “I get it. You don’t have to say anything else.”

Colin nods, a pained but grateful smile stretching his lips. “I---I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I only have a handful of questions.”

Kurt gives Colin’s shoulder a squeeze before going back to rubbing his own stiff muscles. “Go for it. Lord knows I need a break from lugging all my stuff around.”

“Wonderful!” Colin stops throttling his phone, switches it to the camera setting, and starts recording. “Okay, well, to start, that was an exciting game! You had that goal covered! I mean, shot after shot, you were on it! It must have taken a lot out of you!”

Kurt yawns again - a long one this time - before he answers. “You can say that.” He laughs. “Figure skating is hard, but hockey is hell on a whole other level.”

“Would you say that hockey is harder than figure skating?”

“Yes and no,” Kurt says, massaging his other arm. “There’s so much technique you need to master in figure skating –required elements, posture, edge placement, arm movement ... Remembering it all can get exhausting! You need to have the grace of a ballerina, the strength of a football player, and the balance of a trapeze artist, all the while knowing that one wrong landing can, at least, end your career, and at worst, injure you for life.”

“That sounds terrifying!” Colin says, snapping a quick picture before Kurt can yawn again.

“It is. You have to be a special kind of crazy to want to be a figure skater, especially for those of us who’ve broken a wrist or a leg and still get back on our blades. But you have to be a special kind of crazy to play hockey, too. It requires just as much strength and skill. The finer details may not matter the way they do in figure skating, but power and agility do. Plus, you have to be able to look ninety places at once, anticipate the moves of a dozen different people, and control your blades all while pushing a puck the size of a small avocado around the ice.”

“It seems like hockey would be the safer sport, though, because you get to wear all sorts of padding and a helmet.”

“Believe me, that helps,” Kurt replies, “but it’s still scary to see three or four equally padded players racing at you at Mach 30 with sticks in their hands, who have no problem knocking you to the ice or flipping you in the air. A few of them even keep tallies of how many teeth they knock out in a single season – theirs and other players’!”

“Yikes!” Colin laughs, more at ease than he’d been a few minutes ago. “That final play though, with you throwing yourself in the way of that forward …” Colin shakes his head in disbelief.

“That was all Sebastian’s idea,” Kurt says proudly. “He pinpointed that kid’s weakness right off the bat and came up with that play. Sebastian is an exceptional hockey player, but he’s one helluva captain.”

“But the goalies pull all the weight, right?” Colin says with a wink.

“That’s right.” Kurt gets the feeling that Colin might be flirting with him. But Kurt doesn’t get any negative vibes from Colin, who’s already acknowledged that Kurt has boyfriend, so he doesn’t let it bother him. The way Colin talks, the way he behaves, the way he dresses, reminds Kurt of Blaine. He thinks Colin and Blaine could even hit it off.

Bearing that in mind, Kurt wonders if Colin is single …

“Still, if that play didn’t go the way he planned, that could have put you out for not just the next hockey season, but figure skating as well.”

“True. But I didn’t have to do it. He gives me the option to decide how much risk I want to take. He knows what’s at stake. It was kind of a harebrained and gutsy move, but then again, that describes Sebastian to a T. I think he was trying to make my final game one to remember, you know?”

“It definitely was that. It’s great that you guys have that kind of relationship.”

“We do have a great relationship. But Sebastian cares about his entire team. We’re not mindless pawns to him. He doesn’t force any one of his players to do something they’re uncomfortable with. He always keeps a plan b and c up his sleeve, and they’re equally as brilliant as plan a.”

Colin glances nonchalantly left and right, as if he’s expecting someone else to join them. “So, where is Sebastian? Is he out celebrating with the team?”

Kurt’s shoulders stiffen up again at the mention of his boyfriend. “No,” he grumbles, and thumbs behind him to the gear bag he’s been pulling. Colin peeks over Kurt’s shoulder and snickers. There, lying on top of Kurt’s bag, which is larger than most considering the size of the pads in it, is Sebastian, curled into the fetal position and knocked out cold.

“Does that happen a lot?” Colin asks. He raises his phone to snap a photo of Kurt’s sleeping boyfriend, but waits for Kurt to give him the ok, which Kurt does with a jerk of his head that could be best translated as be my guest.

“It’s about 50/50, to be honest.”

“You’d think he’d help you out, seeing as you were obviously the MVP of this game.”

“Yeah, well, you said it yourself,” Kurt says, bracing himself for the moment when he’s going to half to lift the handle to his gear bag and roll Sebastian’s ass out to his SUV, “goalies pull all the weight.”