likesboys | i'm a wandering soul; i got no place of my own

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i'm a wandering soul; i got no place of my own

It was about two weeks before Kurt's birthday and he couldn't decide on what he wanted to do to celebrate, if anything. The already fairly arbitrary date felt a lot more so once he'd been shunted back and forth in time, not only physically, but emotionally as well, and just thinking about having spent over a year in Darrow left Kurt feeling a bit lost and hopeless. As well as he managed to establish himself in the city, it still wasn't where he wanted to be for the rest of his life. It wasn't New York.

Normally, he'd just ignore the birthday. Try to treat it like any other day. But he'd been dating Gavin for well over a month by that point, and somehow, it delighted Gavin to know that they'd be sharing this milestone so soon into their relationship. Gavin had been going on and on about reserving time at the best restaurants, toiling over trying to figure out which might appeal most to Kurt's tastes.

And so Kurt tried to go along, vaguely working through the motions, because it was the easier thing to do. A lot about Gavin seemed to be about the easier thing — he was handsome, he was caring almost a fault, and there was no logical reason not to be in the relationship. Maybe that was part of the problem, though. Being with Gavin wasn't especially interesting.

Coming back from a date, Kurt rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension as he unlocked his front door. Immediately, Cat surged out to meet him, pawing at his trousers until Kurt bent down with a grin to pull her up and into his arms, nuzzling her soft fur. "Hey, Cat. Are you proud of me? I kept to my curfew tonight."

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"Must not be a good fuck if you're staying to curfew," Lisbeth observed from the shadows. Only the cherry of her cigarette would be visible at first, then a plume as she smokes the last of it.

"Gavin," she adds, testing the name. "Poor Gavin."

Gasping and nearly jumping out of his skin, Kurt quickly leaned against the door, eyes wide while Cat meowed petulantly from his arms, displeased with the sudden jostling. Even though Lisbeth's voice was about as familiar as anyone's by then, it was the suddenness of her approach that seemed to get him every time. Pressing a hand against his pounding heart, Kurt shook his head.

"Jesus, Lisbeth, have you ever thought about knocking?" Kurt asked, raising a brow as he quickly calmed Cat down by petting her head. He could sense the judgment in her tone, and maybe the bit that bled into her expression. "And not that it's any of your business, but Gavin and I are taking things slowly, for your information." He waved for Lisbeth to follow as he stepped into his apartment, not wanting to keep the conversation public in the halls.

As if Lisbeth didn't already know they were taking it slowly. No cameras in his apartment, of course, or even in the hapless suitor's place but she knew when the patterns of two people would show they were fucking.

These two weren't. She put her cigarette out before entering the apartment.

"Bullshit," she said. "You might be taking things slowly, but it's not out of fear of ruining what the two of you might have." Her dark eyes followed him as he walked. "You don't want to take it any faster."

Kurt loved Lisbeth. He really, really did. There was no one better in the city for helping to make Kurt feel safe, no one else at that point who he would have been happy to let into any aspect of his life, if only because he knew that her motivations were always good. Usually sound, too. But there were certain types of judgment calls that Kurt liked to keep to himself, and romance was one of them.

The only problem was that there was something in her words which resonated uncomfortably against his chest.

What kept him from making any statement with complete certainty was the fact that this was the first time Kurt was really trying to date anyone since breaking up with Blaine. Moving on from a love that wasn't superficial or doomed to begin with, it was hard, and Kurt could only be made to assume that every transition would be this hard. But that didn't mean that moving on was a bad thing, right?

He narrowed his eyes, shaking his head minutely. "And is there something wrong with that? I'm still getting over my last relationship, so I probably shouldn't be throwing my all into the next one."

Pushing her hood back, Lisbeth went to sprawl on the nearest piece of furniture. For someone so small, she could take up quite a bit of space when she wanted to do so. "It's been long enough," she said. "If you were meant to get over it, you would have. I did a study."

She pulled out her phone, and tap tap tap, brought up a plain black and white webpage.

Lisbeth Salander was always prepared.

"See. The data doesn't lie. I'll get rid of Gavin if you want."

He listened carefully all the way up to the suggestion that Lisbeth could simply get rid of Gavin, at which point Kurt's eyes widened and he quickly shook his head in panic. He wasn't sure what getting rid of Gavin would entail, coming from Lisbeth, but regardless — it was his own situation to deal with, whether or not he continued things.

"God, no, please don't do anything to Gavin. If you've been watching us, then you know how kind Gavin is to me. He hasn't done anything wrong and he deserves respect." Pressing his lips thinly together, Kurt sat down in a corner of the couch, feeling his entire body start to shake. "Lisbeth, I don't know if you understand," he added, words tremulous. "I really... I really want to get over Blaine. It still hurts to think of him. And I know what that means, I know that I'm probably still in love with him, but I just, I don't know if that's enough. I don't know if being in love with someone is really enough."

Well, fuck.

Lisbeth sat up again. "Do you think," she said very precisely, "that I don't know how it feels? I was in love when I came here." Somehow, the revelation was less devastating than she expected, in the quiet of Kurt's apartment.

"Mikael Blomkvist," she said, letting the name fall off her lips for the first time in nearly a year. "The feeling doesn't go away. Why the fuck are you making yourself miserable when you don't have to be?"

Kurt wasn't really sure what it was. Maybe he was just exhausted after a long day, and one filled with smiles that he didn't feel deeply in his chest, smiles that he had to work at rather than ones that came naturally. Maybe everything lately had left him tired, the distance and the fighting, and throwing himself into school and auditions even more in his free time. The only thing that felt easy enough was being there with Lisbeth, and he could feel it in the way his shoulders suddenly trembled, tired after carrying so much weight.

Hearing her talk of love, Kurt looked to the side, eyes shining and wet, and he cautiously reached out towards her hand, keeping his own open and waiting.

"I'm sorry that Mikael isn't here," he said quietly first, his expression open in case she wanted to talk more about the issue, but his words withdrawn in case she didn't. "My issue is just... trust, Lisbeth. It's not even that I think Blaine has any ill will towards me, but obviously something really broke between us if he turned to someone else. I don't think we've fixed that. I don't think we've really addressed it. What if it happens again? Or what if Blaine never gets over that guilty feeling and just feels obligated to me when we're together? I don't want him to be constantly hurting, either."

Lisbeth took his hand, and then pulled him roughly to sit beside her. "I'm not going to pretend I know the answer to all of that," she told him, her voice quiet and raspy. Fucking emotions.

So she gave him another little piece of herself, the Salander before Darrow. "I didn't usually investigate cheaters. Didn't have the fuckin' time for it. Turned out that a lot of the dickheads I did check out had affairs. You think I would look twice at Blaine if I thought he was going to make this a habit?"

Lisbeth exhaled. "You both hurt. Human condition."

It was nice to have someone giving him direction. Nice to have someone who cared enough to be forceful with it, and Kurt let himself lean slightly against Lisbeth as he sat next to her, closing his eyes and hoping that he wasn't singlehandedly being a burden to her. That was always his greatest fear when it came to Lisbeth, not having enough to offer her. He knew that she had times when she hurt. Maybe it was even the status quo. He just didn't know what there was to do to fix it, aside from the small things, like running his thumb over her hand now, the little touches that always meant the most to Kurt when they came from his parents, or until recently, from Blaine.

"I wish people didn't have to hurt," he pondered idly, squeezing her hand. "I wish good people were always happy and that life wouldn't try to screw everyone over. Sometimes it feels like the most deserving people are never... happy enough, you know?" He glanced her way, eyes wide and watchful. "I know that I still need to work out things between me and Blaine, but you know... you know that I care about you too, right? I love you very much."

"Most people," Lisbeth said carefully, knowing that she could easily fall into this trap, "confuse comfort with happiness. Happiness is a rare thing. It's hard. Comfort is easy."

She watched his hand atop her own. Protecting him and Blaine, she realized, gave her a measure of happiness.

"I don't think you're the kind to settle for comfort," she finished, and then gruffly kissed his forehead. "I love you too. That's why I am here." That last bit was barely muttered.

"Both of them feel kind of hard to keep a hold on here," Kurt confessed quietly, worrying on his lower lip. "I mean, you've been there through the worst experiences I've ever known. Maybe I'm sheltered, maybe Ohio was better to me than I ever realized. Sometimes it's easier not to think and just let myself get through the day without paying too much attention to it all."

He swallowed thickly, squeezing his eyes tightly shut before turning and pressing a kiss against Lisbeth's temple. "I'm glad to have met you, though. I just kind of wish that Lima would reach out and pull all of us back there, I guess."

"I wish these had been my worst experiences," Lisbeth admitted quietly, with a twist of her mouth. "I don't think your Lima and I would be a good match." Her tone was darkly amused there, tempered with a surprising concern for Kurt's feelings.

She wondered what she might have been like, raised in a place so far from Zalachenko and the institutions.

"This isn't the worst place."

"You'd be a good match if for no other reason than the fact that you'd stay with me," Kurt replied, reaching around with an arm to drape over Lisbeth's shoulders. Sometimes, it was easy to forget how very small Lisbeth was until they were side by side like this, and Kurt had to marvel at how much strength could be packed into so small a person. Even if he would rather have had her go through less in life, be a little less strong, but carry fewer scars.

"I know this isn't the worst place," he mused quietly. "I mean, if nothing else... the people here have been nicer on the whole than back in Lima. But I miss the people who really made Lima home. Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to have them here."

"You have someone from home here," she said. Lisbeth tried to imagine having more than one or two people she would want in this town. She found that she could not say her claim would be strong enough on any of them to pull across universes.

She was not important enough in any of their lives.

"You have us, too."

"Not lately," Kurt replied quietly to the thought of people from home, chewing on his lower lip. Maybe Lisbeth was right. Maybe that was his own fault for not being honest enough with himself, maybe he wasn't forgiving enough, maybe so much of this fell on his own shoulders without Kurt realizing, but it was still hard nonetheless. Trust was so easily broken; building it back up was the problem. He wanted to keep Blaine around in some capacity. But without trusting him as well, that would only end up hurting Blaine more.

"But I'm glad I have you. You're incredibly important to me," he murmured, closing his eyes again. "You're family."

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i'm a wandering soul; i got no place of my own

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