TAKE A POISON DART TO MY HEART (AND THEN I'M DONE)

There are two kind of days for Leo. The totally dumb days, when he just goes to school, gets bored to death and then comes home. And the totally dumb days that turn totally awesome when something good and unexpected happens to him. Today he doesn't exactly know what kind of day it is because his uncle Finn did told the glee club they are going to perform a Monster Under The Bed's song to regionals – which is pretty awesome, considering they are Leo's third favorite band – but all in all the news hasn't changed the rest of the day, which has been pretty dumb, with two written tests and the most boring lecture on the American revolution he has ever heard. So, as he walks back home alone, he's trying to decide if he should consider it a bad day turned good or a good day turned bad. After a closer look at it, he goes with the first option. Besides, nothing is ever really awesome lately, if it doesn't involve Blaine. So, unless Blaine is expecting him in front of his house, leaning on his huge and shiny black SUV, the day is gonna be totally dumb for sure.

Unfortunately, Blaine is nowhere to be found but there's a young woman standing on the sidewalk right in front of Leo's house. She's tall and slim with wild curly hair just like his own. Leo has never seen her before, but she looks like she's looking for something, so he tries to be polite. “Can I help you?” He asks, and then he remembers that she's not the only one who has lost her way lately. “If you're looking for the house for sale, is five house down the road, that way. They wrote the wrong address on the ad.”

The woman is startled by the sound of his voice and turns around quickly. For a long moment, she doesn't say anything and just stares at him with big blue eyes. She looks like she's in her late twenties but she's dressed like a kid his age, wearing a silly t-shirt and a hoodie too big for her on a pair of skinny jeans. She has a confused and sort of hesitant look in her eyes, and gives Leo the feeling he always gets looking at a grown up who doesn't act like one. Adults who look too much like kids always seem messed up to him.

“Are you alright?” He asks her.

She nods, smiling sweetly. “Do you live here?”

Leo can't help but frown. He can't keep his thoughts out of his face for his life, even when he needs to. His fathers always end up grounding him more for the reactions he has to what they say than for what he does. “Yes, I do,” he answers, deciding that she doesn't only look like a weirdo. She definitely is one.

She nods again and seems on the point of reaching out for him or something, so Leo instantly takes a step back. “I should probably go now,” she says. “Thanks for your help.”

Leo just nods, wishing her gone already. He has a bad feeling about her, even though he doesn't know why. She looks harmless, still he doesn't like the way she is looking at him. So, he's happy when she finally walks away, sticking her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and not looking back once.

Later that night, he tells his fathers about the weird woman standing in front of the house. “That's strange,” Kurt says helping himself with the salad. “Did she tell you what she wanted?”

“No, she was just standing there,” Leo answers. Since Kurt is always on some diet or another and he has been making their life crazy with the last one for the past three weeks, Leo and his father are now on a strict regimen of no vegetables whatsoever. So they both skip the bowl of salad and tomatoes and cover their steaks in barbecue sauce.

“How did she look like?” Dave asks, ignoring purportedly his husband's disgusted face.

Leo shrugs. “Normal,” he says, but he always says that. As everything else with him, people divide into two groups: people so stunning he can't help but want them, and people not stunning that he barely notices. They fall in the normal category, which basically means they are not aliens from another planet with four arms and three sets of eyes.

“Care to be more specific?” Dave mocks him.

Leo huffs, thinking about her. “She was tall, about twenty-five or twenty-eight. Black hair. I don't know,” he answers “She was sort of sketchy and weird, tho. Like the guys you find in those counseling places were people go to get rid of bad habits or something.”

“Do you mean rehabs?” Dave asks.

Leo shrugs again. “I suppose,” he answers. He actually stopped caring about that woman hours ago. He picked her up again just to make conversation with his parents.

“Are you saying she was a drug addict?” Kurt asks, shocked.

Leo rolls his eyes. “No, dad. I just said she looked like one, but who cares?” He sighs. “She was probably just lost or something. Anyway, big news. You know we're gonna go to regionals, right?”

“Of course we do, sweetie,” Kurt smiles, his eyes immediately filling with pride at the mere mention of his son's glee club results. “We're gonna be there for you.”

“Yes, I know, whatever,” Leo says, dismissing him quickly. “The important thing is that uncle Finn has finally given up and he's letting us do Lilies.” Leo makes a dramatic pause, waiting for their reaction but there's none. They are both totally unimpressed by the news. He sighs. “Oh come on, guys!”

Dave shrugs. “Sorry, kid. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Is it a famous song?” Kurt asks.

“Famous?” Leo frowns. “It's only the most aired song of the past two years! You must have heard it at some point unless you live under a rock.”

“Who sings it?”

“Monster Under The Bed,” Leo answers, knowing that it's useless anyway. Dave can only remember names of bands and singers of his time, and Kurt only listens to Broadway songs and to giant legends of pop, better if female and gay-friendly.

Dave's blank face confirms what he already knows, but Kurt immediately reaches out to pat Leo's hand and smile, sweetly. “We are very happy you get to do a song you like, babe,” he says. “What about the rest of the glee club? Is everyone happy as well?”

Leo knows perfectly well this is not a real question. Obviously Kurt is happy to know that Leo is doing something that he likes, but he's not particularly interested in the well being or happiness of other people's kids. It's just not in his nature to care for someone who's not directly connected to him, or depending on his parental skill. Sometimes, even not being selfish for his own son's sake is hard for him.
But, like any other parent, he's scared of losing contact with his teenage son. Actually, Kurt being Kurt, it's safe to say that he's not only just scared, he's terrified. And so he tries very hard not to let any conversation die out, lest his son decides not to tell him something important when the moment comes, just because during a lunch three months earlier, he didn't inquire about his friends. Teenagers are vindictive creatures, it is known.

“Well, nobody's really happy in the glee club,” Leo says, after swallowing a bite of steak as big as his fist. As the tradition goes, the glee club is the only club at McKinley where more than half the members are coerced into participate because of choir contests' regulations on the number of participants, and then they just stick around because the club still gives you credits and it's not very demanding. So, it's not like people really believe in performing and such. Except Harper, that is. “But nobody was disappointed, which is an improvement, I guess.”

That's enough to trigger Kurt and be set for what's left of lunch, conversation-wise. Kurt can reminisce about the times when he was in the glee club for hours, without help of any external prompting. He goes through the usual: overachieving aunt Rachel, sassy Mercedes, unbearable Santana – which is gorgeous aunt Tana for Leo, who's got a crush on her since he was six – and so on and so forth.

Some time during the tale of how they won sectional with an original song written by Rachel the night before, Leo usually gets up and goes upstairs, allegedly to do his homework. This time, he doesn't let his father go that far and he doesn't even have to lie because an essay on mitosis is really waiting for him, and he can't postpone it any longer if he hopes to get a good grade on it. And he does hope that, because good grades are the only currency to buy week ends at Blaine's from his parents.

“Yes, it's so interesting,” he says, sounding anything but. He stands up and grabs a roll of bread and two apples. “But I really need to go now. School. Homework. Grades. And so on. See you at dinner.”

Kurt has barely the time to turn around that Leo's already upstairs.

*

The phone call happens two weeks later.

He doesn't usually listen to his parents' phone calls – he has no reason to, and most of them are boring calls to relatives, teachers and producers, so – but he notices this one because it feels weird right from the start.
He's in his room, facing the fortieth level of Crimson Dawn – awakening of the virus for the umpteenth time, when the phone rings. He listens to see if anybody's gonna take the call, and when Kurt does after only two rings, he goes back to killing zombies. If he doesn't manage to get to the stupid church before the horde can kill everybody once again, he will have to take a peak at the walk-through, and he hates that. Yet, a guy can only repeat the same level over and over so many times.

But the door of his bedroom is open and Kurt's distressed voice gets through to him before the screaming of the helpless citizens dying in his video game. “Who gave you this number?” His father is saying.

Leo pauses the game, the screen freezing on the image of a zombie chewing onto an old man's neck. He types AFK in the chat window he's got constantly open with Adam, and silently walks out the room and on the walkway. His room is right above the corner of the sitting room where the phone is, so he just needs to lean on the banister to see his father clutching the receiver.

“No, it is important,” Kurt continues. “This is a personal number and you shouldn't have it.”

Broadway actors don't have stalkers. That's a perk of being an Hollywood star. But Kurt gets the occasional obsessive fan every once in a while. They are mostly harmless – looking for an autograph, a picture, sometimes suggesting a dinner that his father politely declines and so on – but this must be the first one that calls Kurt home. At least, this is the first one Leo witnesses.

“No—No, it doesn't matter that they gave it to you at the agency,” Kurt insists. His voice is strained with such nervousness that whoever is at the other end of the line must be very annoying. “Quite frankly, I don't believe you. But even if, this person did something illegal.”

Leo is not sure what agency his father is talking about, but it must be the one his agent works for. Also, he doesn't think that they gave this person their number either, but it can't be illegal. “No, I'm not calling you a liar,” Kurt sighs. “I'm just saying that, either way, this phone call shouldn't have happened, and I'm about to hang up.”

But he doesn't. He sighs instead, covering his eyes with his free hand. “Yes, I know who you are,” he answers. “That's exactly why you are not allowed to have this number.”

That's interesting. Leo leans further over the banister as he tries to work out the voice at the other end of the line, but all he can hear is a vague buzzing.

“No. No, that's not how it works,” Kurt goes on. Leo knows his father enough to know that he's trying very hard not to burst, but he's just one step away from it. “This is not—oh, absolutely not. This is our decision to make. My husband and mine. And you're not--”

There's a long, tense silence after that. Leo can still hear a low murmuring going on and on from the other side of the line, but he can't make out a single word. Either this person's voice is really low or he's father is pressing the receiver too hard against his ear. Anyway, what Kurt just said doesn't fit with the idea of this call being from a fan. At least, it doesn't look so.

“He doesn't even know you exist,” Kurt finally says, coldly. “And I can assure you that I'll make it so it's gonna stay this way.”
Another silence. His father's hands are trembling, no matter how hard he's holding that receiver.
All of a sudden, Leo doesn't feel quite at ease anymore. There's something strange in his father's posture. He has never seen him so tense, not even before an important opening night. This doesn't look like his normal anxiety. This looks like concern, like something bad happened.

“No, you are not,” his father says, and Leo has never heard him speak so coldly to anyone in his life. “If you were, you'd know that it's not about what you want. It's never been about what you wanted, but what's best for—No, you listen to me, now. I've been more understanding than this conversation requires me to be. I don't owe you anything. You don't have rights to anything. And I will take measures, if I feel forced to.”

Leo knows that the other person is speaking again because his father falls quiet, and he looks intent, as if every word were of the utmost importance. “Do that,” he snaps finally, and there's a dare in the way he spits out those words, “and I'm gonna give you hell. This conversation is over.”

Kurt puts the receiver down with a shaky hand and Leo takes a step back on the walkway before his father can see him. He waits five seconds before coming downstairs. He sees his father flinch in the corner of his eye, but he pretends not to. “Who was at the phone?” He asks as casually as he can, picking a grape from the fruit bowl and acting like he just heard the phone ring. That's all.

“Uh, no one. Just work,” Kurt answers, his smile is so well faked that it would fool him if he hadn't heard the whole call. “Did you finish your homework?”

Leo looks at him, trying to catch a crack in the perfect mask his father is obviously wearing. But Kurt's an actor, and you can't do that with the good ones. “Yep. Is there something to eat?” He asks.

Kurt nods, smiling again. “Check the fridge. I saved you some chicken salad. You can make yourself a sandwich. But do not touch the cake. That's for dinner,” he says, walking towards the study. “I have to make some phone calls.”

“Got it.” Leo watches him close the door behind himself and wonders what possibly could have happened to make him hide in there.

*

Leo is still trying to find a way to ask Kurt or Dave what was that phone call about – there was something wrong with it and deep inside he knows he wasn't supposed to hear any of that – when the woman shows up again a few days later. Leo is coming back from school and she is there, like the other day, but this time she doesn't look like she's lost. She's leaning against their fence like she was waiting for someone.

She changed her shirt and pants, but she's wearing the same red hoodie. Her black, curly hair is tied in a messy ponytail in the back of her head. She looks extremely out of place, like she was cut out from a completely different world and placed there with a wipe of glue. She has just finished smoking and she throws her cigarette butt on the ground, crushing it under the sole of her tennis shoe. She smiles when she looks up and sees him coming down the road.

“I'm supposed to quit,” she says apologetically. “But chewing gum doesn't have the same effect on me when I'm nervous.”

She is talking to him, so Leo feels compelled to stop at the beginning of their driveway, a few feet from her. He doesn't know how to deal with her friendly attitude. She's not just being polite, she's being intimate and that makes him feel a little uncomfortable. “Did you find what you were looking for?” He asks, trying to take the conversation back to the only one they have ever had.

“I think I did,” she says. She looks around a little nervously, and then smiles again. “God, I don't even know what they called you.”

Leo starts to think that this lady is not quite well. “I should go, now” he says, as politely as he can. He doesn't want to make her mad or anything.
“No, wait!” The woman says, and there's a note of pure desperation in his voice. As if she knew that, whatever she's trying to do, it's not working and she doesn't know how to fix it. “Wait, please. I just wanna talk.”

Leo stops again, a hand holding tight to the strap of his backpack. “Listen, I don't know you,” he says, hoping that this will be enough to make her realize that she's being a little creepy at best.

“I know,” she nods. “And I know that I've got no business being here, but I just wanted to see you. My name is Mia. And I'm your mother.”

For a moment those words don't make a lot of sense to him. Not because he has never thought about the woman who gave birth to him, but because he thought this woman was a drug addict, a pickpocket or a crazy person. This is the last thing he was expecting to hear coming out of her mouth. Sure, she could still be crazy but the words are still unexpected. “What?”

“I'm your mother,” she repeats again. “How do they say? Your biological mother.”

He shakes his head with a sigh. This woman is clearly out of her mind and probably lost. Maybe she's been wandering about the neighborhood for the past few days, unable to go back to whatever place she escaped from. “I think you're confusing me with someone else,” he says politely. But he takes a step back and then turns to go inside.

She follows him quickly. “You were born on 21st March, 2016, at St. Rita's,” she says, stopping him halfway to the door. “And I don't know much more because you were adopted a few moments later.”

Leo doesn't look up this time, but he can't find it in him to just go inside and slam the door in this woman's face. “You could have read my birthday literally anywhere, and there are only four hospitals in Lima. You took your chances,” he says.

“I called your father Kurt the other day,” Mia continues. “Told him I was in town and asked him to let me see you. Listen, I wanted to do this right, but he wasn't very friendly with me.”

The phone call. That's what it was about. It was her. No wonder Kurt sounded so distressed, and then suddenly there was a secret in the house. Leo's brain starts to think too fast too quickly. He's aware that this woman could still be a scam. After all, the only thing she knows about him is his birthday, which must be written on any social media known to man. She saw him around and did a little research. Just with his address and surname his identity must pop up in the first two pages of results. Hell, all she needed was a Nintendo DS, and she could have downloaded those information just passing by him one morning. Yet, the phone call did happen, and the only way she can know about it is that she was on the other end of the line.

“Listen, I don't want anything,” she insists, gently. “Just get the chance to meet you.”

This is not a good idea. Even he knows she shouldn't be here, and they shouldn't be speaking at all. There must be some kind of law against it because this can seriously fuck with his brain, maybe it already did. It's like in comic books. When the hero gets to the turning point, the big event that will decide the rest of the story, he doesn't get a second chance. And he doesn't get to go back. He can either refuse it or embrace it, but he's already changed by it because now he knows.

“One coffee,” Mia smiles. “Or whatever you want. My treat.”

Leo reads enough comics to know that running is always pointless because what is supposed to get the hero will ultimately catch up with him. He is supposed to face whatever comes his way.
Besides, no matter how scared he is right now, he knows he doesn't want to run at all.

*

Lima is a small town, there's no much of a choice in terms of coffee places, so they end up at the Lima Bean. Leo refused to get in her car, so they walked all the way here. Mia tried to have a conversation, but she gave up, realizing she was the only one talking. “You know, it was a wise decision. Not to get in my car, I mean,” she says as they sit down at the table with their orders. Leo is holding his cup so tightly that it's probably gonna burst. “I mean, not that I would ever kidnap you, but that's wise thinking.”

“Oh, I'm very smart. I don't even accept candies from strangers and I always look twice before crossing the road,” he says. All of a sudden, he feels irrationally angry at her for the way she's dealing with this situation and the fact that she treats him like he was four.

For a moment, Mia stops and looks at him. Leo can almost see a flick of annoyance in her blue eyes – same blue as his own – but then it disappears and she smiles nervously. “Okay. I got it. You're right. You're not a kid,” she says. “I'm sorry. Let's start over. I don't even know your name. I told you mine, but you stayed quiet.”

Leo sits with his arms crossed against his chest, more because he needs the half-hug they provide than to keep his distance. “Leo,” he murmurs. The more he looks at her, the more he thinks he sees a resemblance. They have the same exact colors. The nose and chin are different – Mia's got a rounded face, his is more of an oval – but the shape of the eyes is exactly the same. This is the first time he can look at someone else and see something of himself in them. Yes, he and Blaine look alike, but it's an illusion created by their hair and colors. They don't have the same kind of face or the same features. He and Mia do.

“Leo,” she seems to try his name in her mouth. “Is it short for something?”

“Leonard,” he supplies.

“It's a very uptown name,” she chuckles. “I would have probably called you Austin, like your grandfather.”

“My grandfathers' names are Burt and Paul,” Leo says, looking up just the time to speak and then going back to look at his cappuccino.

Mia makes just a little pause, and then goes on as if he didn't say anything. “But you are an uptown boy, aren't you?” She chuckles. “The way you dress, your attitude, even your accent is different than mine. And you live in a very big house. They must be very rich, you have been lucky.”

“I'm lucky because my fathers love me,” Leo points out.

“Of course,” she nods right away. “I didn't mean anything bad. You don't... you don't have to be so hostile with me.”

Leo sighs. “I'm sorry,” he apologizes. “But this is really weird for me.”

“Oh, it is for me too!” Mia laughs a little. “I'm not good with kids your age. And you've always been this idea, you know, this son that I had somewhere. I only knew you were a boy because I had done all the ultrasounds and stuff. But when you were born, they didn't even let me see you once. It was against the rules, you know. I could grow... attached, they said. I imagined you so many times, but now you are here. Flesh and blood. Right in front of me. And it's very overwhelming.”

Leo realizes that he has never thought about her, instead.
He has always known he was adopted, of course, and he would think about his biological family every now and then, but not about his mother specifically. Not about a mother. Being raised by Kurt and Dave since he was a newborn, the only family he has ever know are them, and he never missed anything. His idea of a mother and a father somewhere in the world that he was never going to meet was even more feeble than Mia's idea of him. She became something real only the moment she showed up on his doorsteps. But he thinks it's better not to tell her that.

“Why now?” He asks instead. “Why did you look for me? And how? Shouldn't my name be a secret?”

“Let's say I just bended the law a little,” Mia answers. “I went through a rough patch, a quite long one, actually. I had some problems. But I'm fine now. I'm working on myself and stuff. And I thought, you know, to make things straight, put everything in order. Start properly, as they say. And I knew you must be old enough to know things. How old are you know?”
“Sixteen,” Leo answers.

“See? You're not a kid anymore. You still in school?”

Leo frowns. She asks this as if there was another option. Maybe there is for someone whose father's not Kurt. “Yeah, I'm a sophomore.”

“Oh! I was exactly your age when I had you,” Mia nods. “And do you have good grades? I was a shitty student, but I liked Math. Not enough to go to college, mind me, but enough to pass it. And I've always known how to balance the books.”

“I get by,” Leo answers, as if he didn't care. “I hate Math, though. And I'm in the glee club.”

“Oh, you sing!” She chuckles. “That you definitely didn't take after me. I can't carry a tune in a bucket. But your father... sorry, your biological father, used to sing. So, that's all his.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she nods, her whole face lightens up. She seems happy to see some kind of interested reaction on his part. “He was performing with his band at the prom that night, that's how I met him.”

“Why didn't he come too?” Leo asks. Having them both showing up would have been probably a disaster – he can barely deal with the fact that she's here – but the question slipped out of his mouth before he could stop. He tells himself that he's suddenly very curious about his father because he's not clicking with his mother at all, so perhaps it would be different with him. But she manages to break whatever idea he was having about him with just a few words.

“Oh, I have no idea where he is,” Mia says with a shrug. She put two sugars in her coffee at the beginning, but she puts another one now. “Last time I heard about him was when he heard about you. Then it was only his parents and a lawyer.”

Leo frowns. “You were together and he left you because you got pregnant?” He asks, shocked. He should have probably expected something like that, knowing that his parents were teens when they had him, but he still feels that that's an awful thing to do, and knowing that he is effectively the reason why they split up doesn't make the feeling any better.

“We weren't exactly together,” Mia says. “As I said, he was performing at my school's prom and I met him there. It was a mistake. But everything that night was a mistake, after all - your father wasn't even the biggest one – so I shouldn't be surprised.”

She must have phrased the sentence wrong. It was a slip.

Leo expects her to apologize. He waits for those words, but they never come.
He feels the temperature drop as his heart beats faster, but he realizes in horror that it's only happening to him. She hasn't even flinched. She keeps stirring her coffee as if nothing happened, totally unfazed by Leo's sudden silence, not even looking up to notice how pale he suddenly is. He wonders why she bothered to find him and show up at his house just to tell him that he was a stupid mistake. He wonders if this was exactly what she wanted to do.

“Is that why you came here?” He asks, his voice shaking a little. The lump in his throat is making hard for him to talk. He had never dreamed much about meeting his mom, but the few times it happened, she surely loved him. At least a little bit.

“Uh?”

“Did you show up just to tell me that I'm your biggest mistake?” Leo says.

“What? No!” There's a trace of panic in her eyes now, but it's hard for him to be sympathetic with her. “I didn't mean that. I was just young, Leo. And you must agree with me that that wasn't the best decision I made.”

“No, I don't have to agree,” he says. “I don't have because you're talking about me. You're saying that my birth was a mistake, and the fact that you don't even see what's wrong with that is unbelievable.”

“I'm sorry that you're taking this so wrong,” Mia says.

“As you're sorry that you got pregnant?” He snorts.

“I didn't say that,” she replies. And her voice changes, it becomes harder. She closes up – it's almost a visible change in her – and it pains Leo because he knows that he does the exact same thing when he feels threatened.

“You didn't need to,” he says. The chuckle that comes out of his mouth is bitter and sad and a little shaky too. He reaches down to grab his backpack. “I'm gonna go now.”

She stands up as he does, the little table rattles between them. “Leo, please.” She reaches out and grabs his arm but she lets go when she feels him tense instantly. “I'm... I'm sorry. Okay?”

He doesn't look at her as he nods. “Whatever.”

“I mean it. Why would I come all this way to meet you just to make you angry?”

“I don't know why you would do something like that,” Leo answers. “I don't know you.”

Mia sighs. “Then, give me a chance. Talk to me. So you will know me.”

“I don't know if I wanna do that,” he says, honestly. She does look hurt then, but he can't find it in himself to feel guilty about it. He doesn't believe he has to.

There's an awkward silence and he tries to survive it by looking at the floor. “Why don't you take a little time,” she finally says. “Think about it.”

He doesn't wanna think about anything. The only thing he wants to do is to leave this place. He's not even sure he wants to go home. Maybe he can catch a train to Westerville and text his fathers on the way, say that he's gonna stay a couple of days with Blaine. They will ground him, but it doesn't matter right now.

“Leo?” She calls.

“I have to go,” he breathes out.

“Can I see you again?”
Leo hears her asking that and he doesn't answer.

He walks quickly out of the coffee shop and he starts running the moment his feet touch the sidewalk. If she really wants to connect with me, she will insist, he tells himself. She will find a way. He just doesn't know if that's a threat or not.