giving them their graceful lift toward light

possibilistfanfiction:

[Faberry evolution through Kurt’s POV, from before season 1, canon through current season 4 episodes, with faberry romance at the end. title and epigraph from robert hass’ “four poems.” references to ‘i’ve got your number’ by passion pit. also at ffn.]

…

giving them their graceful lift toward light

.

To study their shapes, because it is he

Who gets to decide

Which limbs get lopped off

In the kingdom of the dead.

…

Quinn is only beautiful the first time Kurt realises that she’s sad. It’s freshman year, in English class, and they’re starting a brief poetry unit. The assignment is to bring in their favourite poem.

“Would anyone like to volunteer to read aloud?” their teacher asks.

The room is silent, shuffling. Everyone looks down intently at their papers. Like Kurt’s, most are printed from the internet.

Finally, Quinn raises her hand, timidly, and the teacher smiles at her. Quinn does not smile back, and she takes a deep breath, tucks a strand of long, perfect blond hair behind her ear. She smooths out the crease in leather-bound book; it is not old, although it is worn.

“Four poems, by Robert Hass,” she says. “Three.” She licks her lips once, and it doesn’t give them any more life, doesn’t make them pinker. “You can fall a long way in sunlight,” she reads. “You can fall a long way in the rain.”

She recites the rest of the poem steadily, like she’s read it before and again and again, and it seems like the room exists entirely of Quinn’s voice, space and time being rounded up by her always-stuffy nose and pauses, the hitch of her breath. This is probably what poetry really is.

Kurt decides he does not like poetry.

Quinn finishes and the teacher thanks her. Her eyes are open wider and for a second she’s the most breathtaking thing he’s probably ever seen, the way that his mother was when she was in her casket at her funeral, her skin all perfect, her eyes bright, her jaw broken and set just so. It hits him that maybe if she cried he could love her, not in any romantic way, but with humorless sorrow, without choice, the way everyone falls in love with their friends.

Quinn closes her book. She blinks. All motion returns to the room and Kurt tries to understand that she is smarter than anyone else he knows, and that maybe this imbues her with an inherent sadness, and she’s stuck in language just the same as he is, the same language and the same hum of existence, and that possibly this is what poetry is really about.

Kurt tries not to hate her for it, but she stands and breezes out of the room, ignoring that he sees the little invisible nooses of her ribs too. He tries not to hate her, but he does anyway.

Her locker slamming sounds like her laugh, brittle and reverberating: A ghost.

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