(no subject)

[puphart]

WHO: Chloe and Kurt
WHAT: A heart to heart and a birthday gift! In the form of an after-school special. (Not really.)
WHEN: Backdated to October 2nd
WHERE: The Atrium
WARNING: C for Cute (& PG-13 for very mild language.)

Kurt skimmed the page of his History of Magic textbook for what felt like the sixth time. He had a little time before Chloe was supposed to get to the Atrium and had planned to work on his essay, but he was too distracted and nothing would stick. He shifted his feet onto the couch with a sigh and looked down at the parchment — what few notes he had taken were covered with doodled circles. Yeah, that was a great plan. He scanned the room for Chloe, which he’d probably done as many times as he had skimmed that page. The anonymous writer had only posted last night and the pit of gross feelings in his stomach was doing nothing except getting bigger and bigger. Or deeper. Or both. Whatever, he wasn’t a pit expert. He put his elbow on the arm of the chair and scratched his hair idly, trying to distract himself with something, anything. For lack of any better distraction, in his mind he started naming all of the horses he could remember had been housed at the stables, starting with ‘Achilles.’ When he’d messaged her over the journals, Kurt had sounded worried. Now, spotting him across the room, he didn’t look much better off. He had a tense, fidgety air about him, and even seeing him that way made Chloe feel tense by proxy. She walked up behind him, placing her hands lightly on his shoulders. “Hey!” she said, once she had his attention, leaning forward as he looked back so that they were looking at each other’s faces. “How are you, Kurt?” He jumped a tiny bit (he was on ‘C’ and had had to start over when he listed Bezaleel before Bartholomew), but calmed pretty quickly and smiled a little. “C-Carthage!” realizing that was the next horse in the list, he corrected himself. “Chloe. Sorry. Hi Chloe.” He shook his head, “You’re, um, you’re not a horse.” He shuffled up so he was more upright. “T-thanks for coming.” And finally, he replied, “I’m okay. S-sort of. I don’t know.” Kurt gave a little shake of his head, as if to say, ‘I’m okay. Sort of. I don’t know.’ “Neigh, not last time I checked. But I guess there are a lot worse things to be,” she replied, pulling up a chair beside him. Chloe was prone to awkwardness (awkward jokes included), but they usually worked with Kurt. He didn’t seem to be particularly in a joking mood, though, and her attempt to ease the tension fell flat. “Okay,” she said finally, “You’re freaking me out. What’s wrong? Did you murder someone and you need me to help you hide a body?” She thought back to the context of his request. Something about the anonymous writer post. “Did you tell the anonymous writer your deepest darkest secret? Did you tell the anonymous writer that you murdered someone? Oh, did you murder the anonymous writer?” Realizing she was getting carried away, she added, “I’m kidding. Obviously.” Despite the low-quality pun, Kurt couldn’t help but give a tiny smile. He crossed his legs on the couch and busied himself by playing with the drawstrings of his hoodie. Finally, he shook his head and tried to reassure Chloe. “I tried not to murder anybody this time. But that’s not what I’m–” he stopped and chewed on his bottom lip, trying again. “It’s not the–” No, that wasn’t it, either. He sighed a quick and exasperated sigh, and rubbed his forehead. The only solution here was the band-aid solution: quick and painful. With his hands on his forehead, ever-so-conveniently shielding his eyes from Chloe’s sight (mostly because he was afraid of how disappointed she would look when she found out), he carried on at a much quicker pace and kept his voice low enough that only she would be able to hear: “I wrote something on the anonymous post about somebody and I thought it would make me feel better about stuff but it made me feel worse.” He brought his hands back down to the drawstrings and looked at Chloe. “Like, way worse. Way bad.” She wanted to be the comforting confidante kind of friend, and she was usually at least good at the confidante part, but she couldn’t help but gasp at the way he emphasized the word “bad.” Chloe had a good imagination, and she could imagine a lot of terrible things a person could anonymously say, even if she couldn’t quite picture Kurt himself saying them. “What… what did you say?” she asked, trying to remember what she had read in the post before she’d finally given up on it. It was confusing, and scary, and Riley had dragged her to the Azurcrest party. She’d hidden out in Levi’s closet, but ended up falling asleep there, missing out on much of the Anonymous Drama. “And about who?” Kurt looked at the fireplace, the ceiling, the floor — really, anywhere but Chloe. Her gasp had basically confirmed his worst worries: that he was going to be branded Worst Person Ever. And he wasn’t much enjoying that thought. “I-i, um, called somebody an–” he stopped, his lips tightening. His stutter returning (with Chloe, of all people) was evidence of how grossly uncomfortable he was at that moment. Kurt’s stutter crept back up on him, which made Chloe even more nervous. She couldn’t even remember the last time he’d stuttered just talking to her. As he struggled to confess whatever horrible thing he’d said, Chloe leaned forward, eyes wide, fingers digging into the arms of the chair like she was watching a horror movie approaching its climax. “A-an…” his voice was almost a whisper, “an asshole.” He decided to look back at the ends of his drawstrings for the last part of the confession, because even the ceiling looked to him like it was ever so grossly disappointed in his behaviour. Finally, in barely a whisper, Kurt muttered “About S-stoker.” — apparently to his hoodie, instead of Chloe. Chloe was quiet for a long moment, frozen in the same tense position, staring at him, waiting… for anything else to come out of his mouth. She expected this to be the preamble to something so much worse - something cutting, or gross, or horrible - but Kurt fell silent, and eventually she realized that was all he had to say. A giggle escaped her lips, brief but loud, before she could slap her hand over her mouth to stifle it. “That’s, uh…” she said, trying to think of something comforting to say, but all she could think to follow it with was, “All?” Then, because she didn’t want him to think she was mocking him, “That’s not so bad. People have called him worse right to his face.” ‘That’s all?’? Although he’d been studying his hoodie, his head shop up at the giggle with a wide-eyed, somewhat bewildered expression. “J-just because it’s not the worst doesn’t make it right!” he insisted, curling his legs up under his body. But then he realized that might sound confrontational, and followed it up with a “No, s-sorry, you’re right. They have.” Kurt searched for the right words, but the perfect phrasing escaped him. “I haven’t, though.” He paused thoughtfully, then carried on, “I-i, um, I tried. To do what he does. Maybe I thought he would see, I guess.” He shook his head. Chloe frowned. Okay, she could see his point. Just because Sy was a jerk didn’t mean meeting him on his level was the best course of action. Chloe spent a lot of time on the internet (like, a lot), so she’d seen the lure of being able to say whatever you wanted under the guise of anonymity. She’d even posted a few scathing call out posts herself. Maybe she just wasn’t as nice as Kurt. Maybe she wasn’t the person he ought to have been talking to. Then again, here they were. “Stare long enough into the asshole, and the asshole stares into you,” she said, nodding solemnly. A beat passed until she realized what she said. “Uh, I mean! I didn’t mean that. I was referencing the abyss thing! You know, when fighting monsters, be careful not to become one.” She sighed heavily, but at least it was just Kurt she’d said that too - she’d accidentally said worse to Kurt. … the asshole? The gears in his mind turned slowly, but only in one direction: the naughty one. His eyes grew wider and a shocked (and kind of grossed out?) expression began to creep along his face, but thankfully, it halted when she explained the monsters thing. He exhaled a dramatic breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. After the excitement of the dramatic breath, he stopped playing with his hoodie and brought his arm to rest on the edge of the couch, his chin on top of his forearm. He nodded slowly. “I mean, Sy is a bully,” she said. She’d escaped his notice so far (aside from blowing out the power and making everyone hate her, she generally escaped most people’s notice), but she’d seen his behavior, and there was no other word for it. “I don’t think people should just act like his behavior is okay, or laugh it off, or try to ignore it. He needs to know it’s not okay, right? But you’re right. People shouldn’t stoop to his level.” She leaned forward to ruffle his already disheveled hair. “You’re a good person. Calling someone something mean one time doesn’t change that. If anything, feeling bad about it proves it.” Kurt smiled a little at the compliment and ruffle, and even gave a half-hearted attempt to shuffle it back into place (he knew it would never work) as he considered Chloe’s words. He had managed to convince himself that commenting as he did on the anonymous writer’s post was the first step toward becoming the kind of person he hated the most — except that Kurt’s nature was about as far from antagonistic as a dragon was from a shoebox, so it was more like the kind of person he liked the least. “So…” He reached out with his free arm and picked idly at her sleeve, thinking. “It doesn’t make me,” Kurt paused, “li-like him?” He looked up, brandishing the ever-unintentional Ribbonfin-patented puppy-dog eyes. “I haven’t changed?” ‘Changing’ had been Kurt’s worry since Chloe got into Gooseberry. They hadn’t been in the same school for two years, and her reappearance in his daily life had thrown the differences between Ilvermorny and Gooseberry into stark relief. Said differences were easier to brush off (or laugh about) when you were owling back and forth, but the anxiety had crept into the back of his mind: that being in Gooseberry was what prompted Kurt to aspire to become New Kurt, but would it have happened if he’d never left? Was it even a good idea to try and change that much? Was it even a good idea at all? Inside his head, his psyche gave an apathetic shrug and muttered something about overtime. “Of course not. You’re not like him! You haven’t changed!” Chloe replied immediately, but some old worry squirmed in the pit of her stomach. When she had found out Kurt would be leaving her to go to Ilvermorny, she’d cried in her room for over an hour. She had been convinced he was going to go to his new camp school and play with animals and make new friends and find a pretty girlfriend and forget all about her. He hadn’t forgotten about her. They’d kept up owling each other, and even though she kept waiting for his return owls to slow down and stop, they never did. Still, he was across the country at another school leading a totally different life. She had worried that he was going to be a completely different person from his time at Gooseberry. The Kurt sitting beside her, fiddling with her sleeve wasn’t a totally different person, but he was different. Something was different, and it wasn’t just that he was taller. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was, but this Kurt wasn’t quite the same one she’d been friends with in Ilvermorny. “Well, maybe you’ve changed. You know, in general. Not in a becoming a bully kind of way,” she said, fidgeting and trying to say what she meant in a way that wouldn’t make Kurt stutter again. “Change is good. Right?” Kurt nodded slowly once more, but not until he’d taken a few moments to think it through. If he hadn’t changed at all then it would have been pointless for his parents to send him off to Gooseberry; it was, after all, a conscious decision for them to put their shy and increasingly more anxious son in an alternative school. It even became a conscious decision on his part, once he’d found out about the (extensive!) stables and fairly well-reputed drama club. He nodded again, this time to himself. He sighed, less dramatically this time. “Yeah, I guess so.” He quickly corrected himself, adding, “I guess it can be good.” Hugging his legs, he brought his head up to rest on his knee and looked up at Chloe (‘up’ being pretty much the only way you can look at someone when your head’s sideways), obviously relieved. “You still like me, right? Then it can’t be a bad change.” And he smiled, relieved and evidently convinced by this very valid line of reasoning. “Do I like you? Hmmm,” she said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “Of COURSE I do!” Then, without warning, she popped up from her chair and threw herself on top of him in a squishing sort of tackle hug! Except there was something between them - something literally, physically between them. Something inside her far-too-big olive jacket was poking them with its corners. He laughed and hugged back (okay, he also oopmhed from the unexpected tackle), but was also momentarily puzzled about the pokey-feeling-thing. Other people would ask, ‘Is that a first edition Charles Dickens in your gigantic coat, or ar you just happy to see me?’ Kurt, though, was only mostly unphased because he was used to her Nintendo gadgets or whatever lying around all the time. “Did you bring your… 4P… 2D… uh, your gaming thingy?” “Oh - oh no!” Chloe said, getting up off of him to sit beside him. She dug around the inside of her coat, apparently in some inside pocket. It was hard to tell if she’d charmed it so that it had bigger-on-the-inside pockets or not, because the coat was huge anyway - it would have easily fit a tall, broad shouldered man. It was a canvas jacket, like something military, and someone might have assumed it belonged to her dad if they didn’t know that her dad was the type who wore pastel polo shirts, not fatigues. “Here it is!” she announced, pulling out a slightly crushed box wrapped in blue TARDIS paper. It was roughly the size of a shoebox, but wider, and she placed it in his lap. “Happy late birthday! I ordered your stuff from Amazon, but they had a hard time shipping here.” Kurt watched with curiosity as Chloe dug through her magic jacket, confident that he had no idea what she was doing. But when she pulled out the box, his expression lit up. A birthday present! When she hadn’t mentioned anything about a possible gift on his birthday (which would have been the first time that she’d ever forgotten), he simply assumed that she had, well, forgotten. Or maybe that they’d suddenly reached the secret age where they’re supposed to stop the whole gift-giving thing altogether. Whatever the reason was, he hadn’t held it against Chloe… but that being said, he was still excited to see the box! He hugged her quickly and crossed his legs on the couch, facing her, and began the ceremonial Opening of the Box. He pointed at the paper and added, “Nice.”; he’d been Chloe’s friend long enough to know Doctor Why Who things when he saw them. Inside was the appropriate Audubon Regional Field Guide for Gooseberry’s area, a package of Pop Rocks, and a snail tape dispenser. As he pulled out each of the three items, his smile grew bigger. Chloe was a talented nomaj gift buyer — she knew both what nomaj things he enjoyed (even when he couldn’t remember their exact names) and where to get them (which still bewildered him, despite two summers now spent partially in Manhattan). The snail dispenser was a particular win. “Do you like it?!” she asked. Kurt looked back up, beaming, and resumed the tackle-hug with bravado. “Thanks Chlo!!” When she probably thought he was about to let go, he squeezed once more, and then let go. “These are the best.” He set the snail on top of the book, and pushed it ever-so-slowly across the cover. “You’re welcome! I couldn’t forget your birthday, we’re best friends!” she said, hugging him tightly. She watched him play with the snail, beaming, glad that she did still know what he liked, even after all this time spent at different schools. “And we always will be!” He grinned, again, and replied, “You’re the best!” Kurt left the snail to stand on the book and gave Chloe a thumbs-up, “And obviously we will.”