As The Present Now will Later be Past (1/4)
"Jessie is a friend…”
Drunken toga-clad members of the Pi Upsilon Pi (“Yeah, Porcupines!”) fraternity belt out the lyrics at the top of their lungs.
Outside the Porter Street fraternity house, the first of autumn’s leaves are drifting earthward. It’s September at North Adams State College, a small liberal arts school situated in the far northwest corner of Massachusetts.
“Yeah, I know he’s been a good friend of mine...”
A handsome boy of about nineteen with dark, curly hair and burnt-bronze eyes leans against the kitchen wall with his arms folded across his chest. He watches the group stumble their way through the song and he sings along under his breath in a clear, beautiful baritone:
“…and she’s watchin’ him with those eyes, and she’s lovin’ him with that body, I just know it, yeah, and he’s holding her in his arms, late, late at night…”
The boy ducks his head as a girl stumbles past him and he cuts off his singing abruptly.
A large blond boy in a “toga” - a whiteish bed-sheet draped haphazardly over jeans and a black Lacoste alligator shirt - sees him standing across the wall and shouts at him:
“Yo, Anderson! Get your fuckin’ ass over here!” Despite the crudeness of the words, his tone is jovial. He gestures wildly toward a gaggle of party-goers in the living room, who are sloppily pouring random bottles of liquor into what he sincerely hopes is a lined trash can.
Cuckoo juice, they call it. The recipe’s fairly easy to remember, even if you’re totally smashed: Enough alcohol to satisfy an army regiment and enough Kool-Aid to make it drinkable.
“Sorry, dude,” he says apologetically. “I’m waiting for Jackie to get out of the bathroom. She wants me to walk her back to her dorm; she hates being alone on campus after dark.”
“What the fuck?” laughs the blond boy, his words slurring together noticeably. “Chicks, man. We’re s’posed to be like their fuckin’… checkbooks and their fuckin’…psychist- psychiatrists that listen to their little girl-problems and now we gotta be their fuckin’ bodyguards, too?”
He laughs insincerely, edging away from him. “Yeah. Something like that. Catch you later, man.”
Without a backward glance, he exits the frat-house, wiping damp, sweaty curls from his forehead and relishing the feel of the grass brushing across his toes as he crosses the lawn in his flip-flops.
He catches the last remnants of the party; hoarse voices bellowing: “Where can I find a woman like that?” and faint strains of laughter, echoing in the early autumn air.
He’d lied to the blond boy; Jackie had actually left the party an hour ago, with Vicki and Lisa. She’d smeared lipstick on his cheek when she’d kissed him goodbye, and she’d told him to drop by her dorm after his Accounting class the next day.
Instead of heading back in the direction of his residence hall, he turns onto Church Street and makes an immediate left onto the Bradley Street Extension. He traverses the sprawling campus footpaths, passing no one save for a couple making out on a bench and a boy in a telephone booth, shouting drunkenly into the receiver: “Jus’ gimme another chance. Jus’ gimme one more chance, babe. I didn’t fucking sleep with her, okay? I swear.” There are a few seconds of silence. “Oh, well… if she says I did, I guess that’s the end of that, huh?” Another pause. “Okay, okay, fine, I fucking slept with her. But babe, I didn’ know she was your sister. There was no fucking way I coulda known.”
The dark-haired boy laughs to himself as he slowly edges beyond the campus grounds toward his destination, a secluded copse of trees at the shore of Windsor Lake. It’s breathtaking this time of night - the sound of the water lapping gently at the shore; the lake and the forest bathed in the dim, silvery glow of the moonlight.
He looks around him cautiously as he heads toward the tree-grove. You never can be too careful, even though it’s true that in all this time he’s never seen another living soul here except -
“Anderson,” comes the breathless voice. “You made it.”
He turns to face the source of the sound, a boy with fair skin and auburn hair and dark, laughing eyes.
“I made it.”
The other boy extends a strong, callused hand and he takes it unhesitatingly. Once their palms are firmly clasped, the auburn-haired boy pulls him into his arms with practiced precision. “You’re so tense,” the auburn-haired boy whispers to him. “Your shoulders feel like they're frozen solid.”
"I can't help it."
“I know, but let’s just… try and relax, okay? We barely get to see each other.”
“I'm telling you I can't help it”-
“Ssh. Hey, stop, we’re okay now”-
“No, we’re not.” He pulls back suddenly. “Drew, we are not okay; this is not okay. I have no clue how I made it through the summer without you, and now it’s almost worse because I see you every day and I still can’t ... god, at least over the summer I didn’t have to pretend to look straight through you every time I saw you."
The auburn-haired boy heaves a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know what to tell you. You know the rumors about me. Everyone suspects, okay? If people see me with you…”
“I don’t care.”
“You do care.”
There’s a long pause, during which the dark-haired boy swipes tiredly at his eyes with the back of his wrist. “Yeah, well… I'm caring less and less about it every day."
“Can’t we just”-
The sharp crack! of a tree branch shocks them out of their conversation. The boys jump apart and survey the landscape with wild, hunted eyes, as if to make up for the distinct lack of care they’d shown just moments earlier.
“Shit, shit!”
“- what was that?”
They strain to hear the noise again, but the forest is silent.
“Maybe a fox or a raccoon?”
“I guess…”
They look over at each other again, a cascade of emotions flickering across their faces as the adrenaline courses through them. "Drew, I..."
“Look," says the auburn-haired boy steadily. "I know it sucks. I know everything about this sucks, but this is the only part of my week that doesn't suck and I'd really like it to stay that way. Can we please just be kissing right now?" The dark-haired boy nods, reaching out to take his lover's hand. They wonder what it would be like to embrace during the daytime; exchanging slow, languid, lazy kisses in the afternoon sun. But they’ve only ever kissed with the dark eyes of the night trained on them, where a frantic, furtive edge sharpens even the softest moments between them.
They lean in to kiss one another, anyway; it’s impossible not to. Both their heartbeats are racing but they try to shut out the fear and focus on the moment. They’re both worried about a thousand things - what would happen if they’re caught, what would happen if someone so much as suspected, what would happen if this feeling never goes away, and what would happen if it does -
By the time the moon has risen to its apex, they’re stretched out on the forest floor, kissing desperately as the leaves drift downward, as the night creatures come out of hiding.
“Drew…” says the dark-haired boy, voice shaking slightly. “I missed you this week. I missed you so fucking much.”
The auburn-haired boy wraps his arms and legs around him, pulling him in closer and kissing away as much of the sadness as he can. “Nathan, come on," he whispers, his voice low and loving. "Just be here with me, okay?"
"Do I look like I'm going anywhere?"
"You look like you're a million miles away. Nothing is going to happen to us, Nathan. We're here now, and we have the whole night ahead of us. Let's make the most of it."
The year is 1982.
The future is vague and ungraspable for them, and they make the same mistake that all young people in love make, which is to delude themselves into thinking they have all the time in the world.
They both think we’ll be young forever, and as it turns out, only one of them is right.
They have no way of knowing that two months later, a group of young men will find them in this same secluded spot and savagely make their opinions about such activities known. They'll emerge from the incident with black eyes and cracked ribs - and they'll end things then and there, for both their sakes. They have no way of knowing that the dark-haired boy - Nathan - will leave the school and the state a month after the assault. He’ll transfer to a large university in Ohio, he’ll study law and politics, and he’ll ask the pretty blonde girl in his ethics seminar to the spring formal. He won’t fall in love with her, but she’ll be fun to pass the time with.
They have no way of knowing that the auburn-haired boy - Drew - will die three years later, of a mysterious epidemic that will only be talked about in hushed, panicked whispers. When he’s diagnosed, his family will try to keep it a secret, but people will know. They’ll nod sagely and say: “It’s a shame, of course, but at the same time, only certain men seem to contract it - do you know what I mean?”
Nathan will hear the news about Drew on a Sunday in August. He’ll spend the entire night throwing up and the next day he’ll walk, hollow-eyed and shaky-legged, to his doctor’s office and ask to get tested.
He’ll test negative, but he’ll never forget the way his doctor looks at him.
He won’t attend Drew’s funeral because there won’t be one.
Most funeral homes will succumb to paranoid public perception and will refuse to accept the bodies of HIV victims.
Drew’s family will be told by their priest that not only will he not conduct a service for their son, but that they will not be permitted to bury him ‘on hallowed ground.’
Nathan will turn on the news in September and watch President Reagan give a nationally televised press conference, during which he is asked: "If you had younger children, would you send them to a school with a child who had AIDS?” And he will watch the President say: "I'm glad I'm not faced with that problem today.”
The President will say more, but that is all Nathan will hear of it, because he will walk over to the wall after that statement and yank the television cord from the outlet, which will feel much more satisfying than simply changing the channel.
Two years later, he will fall in love with an intelligent, sharp-eyed brunette named Lynn. For reasons he will never be able to fathom, she will love him back. He’ll marry her.
He’ll have a son.
And sixteen years later, that son will stand in the senior commons of his prestigious private high school and sing a beautiful lie to a sad-eyed boy. “You and I…” he’ll belt out in his clear, beautiful baritone, “will be young forever…”
July 2011
Kurt’s eyes fly open mid-kiss, the muscles in his back and shoulders tensing abruptly beneath Blaine’s fingertips before Kurt pulls away from him altogether, his breathing a little ragged.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
Kurt licks his lips nervously. “That noise. I distinctly heard a noise, Blaine.”
Blaine looks around his side-yard, straining to see in the darkness. “I didn’t hear anything, Kurt. It was probably just a squirrel.”
“Are squirrels even nocturnal?”
Blaine shrugs. “Maybe this particular squirrel is a sleepwalker.”
“I’m serious,” says Kurt insistently. “I really hate this whole ‘covert-ops, making-out under cover of darkness’ thing. It’s… unsettling.”
“I’m sorry,” says Blaine softly. “I know it’s not ideal, but I couldn’t seem to think of anywhere else. Do you want to just call it a night?”
Kurt shifts his weight to the opposite foot, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth and glancing expectantly down at Blaine.
“No. But I don’t like the outdoors much,” he says finally.
Blaine gropes for Kurt’s hand in the darkness and clasps their palms together, reassuringly rubbing his thumb along the back of Kurt’s wrist.
“We can sit on my porch if you want,” Blaine says gently. But you know I can’t kiss you if we do. The unspoken reminder hovers in the air between them.
Kurt leans in closer and tilts his head down, pressing his forehead against Blaine’s. “Why,” he whispers, “is it so hard to find a place in the world where I can just kiss you? That’s all I want to do, Blaine.”
“All you want to do?” asks Blaine with a nervous half-laugh and - okay, that probably hadn’t been the exact-right thing to say just then. But he’d been trying to make Kurt smile again; to dissipate some of the tension between them. And instead it looks like he’s just made things worse. Damn it.
“I don’t even know,” says Kurt solemnly. “I think I’m ready to do more than kiss you, Blaine. I mean, I think I am. It’s… something I’ve kind of been thinking about a lot lately, when I’m alone.”
Blaine’s mouth falls open, just a little, and he’s glad Kurt can’t see his face very well, cloaked as they are by the blackness pressing in on them.
“But how would I even know? As it is, we barely get to…”
“Kurt.”
“No. I know,” he says. “I know, Blaine. I know there are a million reasons why we can’t… anywhere public. You and I don’t get to make out in the back of movie theaters like normal couples. We can’t get to second-base in the Tunnel of Love ride at the Allen County Fair like everyone else our age.”
“Oh, well, you know…” Blaine keeps his tone deliberately light. “You probably wouldn’t want to, anyway. I doubt they clean off the seats between couples and I’m sure it’s pretty”-
“Blaine.”
Even with his face mostly-obscured, Blaine can see the see the hard set of Kurt’s jaw and he squeezes Kurt’s hand gently, to show that he understands.
“It just… it sucks, that’s all,” says Kurt, with a miserable, helpless shrug of his shoulders. “My dad and Carole have all these rules in place for Finn and I - and I know they try really hard to have everything be the same for both of us, to have everything be fair.”
“Makes sense,” murmurs Blaine.
“Right,” says Kurt. “Except… how do you explain that it’s not fair? How do you explain that - even though Finn and Rachel don’t get to be alone in Finn’s room - that rule hardly affects them because they can basically go anywhere else? Rachel’s dads don’t mind if she brings Finn home. They can go in her room. They can make out at the movies or at the park or on a picnic - probably even at the mall if they don’t get too hot-and-heavy. They can go park on a Lover’s Lane if they want. We can’t” - Blaine can see Kurt’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows heavily. “Those aren’t options for us. You and I can’t afford to take those types of risks.”
Blaine sighs. “Have you - ? I mean, I know this is a long-shot, Kurt, but have you tried talking to your dad about any of this? I’m sure he wants you to be safe”-
Kurt lets out a short, mirthless laugh. “God, Blaine, can you imagine? I mean, he’s been incredibly understanding, but I don’t think he’s going to be sympathetic to this particular plight. Not to mention the fact that I’m trying to avoid upsetting him. I don’t want him flooded with mental images of all the people in the world who hate me and who might want to hurt me just for existing. That’s why I haven’t told him about, you know… what happened to you and Steven. To be honest, I’d worry that he’d never let us go out anywhere again.”
Blaine’s spine had stiffened as soon as Kurt had mentioned Steven, but Kurt hadn’t seemed to pick up on it.
“And I don’t know,” Kurt continues. “Maybe it’s stupid, but…” He trails off, looking lost in thought.
“But?” prods Blaine.
Kurt’s voice sounds unusually small. “I’d prefer not to have to highlight how different I am from Finn; how much weaker I am and how much more likely I am to be picked on in the first place. Aside from adding to the strain on my dad’s heart, it’s just flat-out embarrassing, Blaine. Dad probably already half-way thinks of me as the daughter he never expected to have and it’s just…” Kurt closes his eyes. “…god, Blaine, I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.”
Blaine is equal-parts grateful and concerned to hear Kurt speaking with such vulnerability.
For all that Kurt seems to have a strong, visible support group - a loving family and a fairly large group of friends - Blaine has found that Kurt tends to keep a lot of things to himself. This is just one example out of dozens, but Blaine has a very clear memory of the day when Kurt had off-handedly referenced the Karofsky-kiss to him, several months after the fact. And Blaine had said curiously: “By the way, you never got around to telling me what your dad said when he found about that.”
And Kurt had stared back at him with wide, solemn eyes and said: “I’ve never told anyone but you.”
It hadn’t been clear to Blaine why he’d been so shocked by that admission, but he had been.
At the point in time when Karofsky had kissed Kurt, Blaine had barely known Kurt at all. He’d met him once and had spoken to him for a grand total of maybe ten minutes. Blaine had introduced himself, flirted shamelessly with him in front of a group of teenage boys, bought him a coffee that, in retrospect, had contained roughly seven times the amount of sugar Kurt likes, given Kurt some advice that - again, in retrospect - hadn’t turned out so well, slipped him his phone number, and sent him on his merry way.
And Kurt had called Blaine a few days later and told him what had happened between him and Karofsky - which hadn’t seemed so strange until Blaine had learned that he’d never told anyone else.
Blaine thinks of all the variations on that statement he’s heard from Kurt in the time they’ve known each other:
You’re the only one I’ve ever told that to.
No one else knows.
Don’t mention that to anyone, please? I don’t want it to become public knowledge.
No, I never told Mercedes.
My dad has no idea.
Seriously, Blaine, are you kidding? I’d never tell something like that to Finn.
This isn’t the sort of thing I generally share with people.
The problem isn’t that Kurt’s a private person. The problem is more that some of the things Kurt has confessed, particularly the things related to bullying, honestly scare Blaine. He wishes he could content himself with the knowledge that a real adult knew about them. On the one hand, it’s flattering that Kurt trusts Blaine enough to confide in him, but on the other hand, he’s just Blaine - he’s just himself - and he has no idea what to do about most of these things.
It would be one thing if he and Kurt were still ‘just friends.’ He hadn’t felt particularly guilty about going to the garage to talk to Mr. Hummel; he’d told himself that he was looking out for Kurt’s best interests. This is the sort of thing good friends do for one another, he’d reassured himself at the time - plus Blaine thinks he might still have been laboring under the delusion that Kurt was his baby-gay protégé of sorts.
But that’s not what boyfriends do, or at least Blaine doesn’t think so. If you’re equal partners in a relationship, then you don’t assume you know what’s best for the other, even if it seems obvious, right? And Blaine supposes there’s a selfish part of him that just… doesn’t want to give Kurt a reason to be angry with him. This is supposed to be a beautiful time in their relationship. So what if the rest of the world is determined to keep them from properly enjoying it?
Kurt breaks through his train of thoughts. “You sure we can’t - ? Your dad won’t like it if we - ?”
“Go inside?” finishes Blaine unnecessarily. “I don’t...” God, this is killing Blaine to say. “I’m sorry, Kurt. I’m so sorry. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Dad wouldn’t do anything, he probably wouldn’t even say anything, but I just think it’s… better if we don’t,” he finishes lamely.
Kurt nods, looking sympathetic but not particularly surprised.
His mother had invited Kurt to dinner a few weeks ago, and his father, Nathan Anderson, had met Kurt for the first time.
Blaine doesn’t understand how anyone could look at Kurt - beautiful, ebullient Kurt with his musical voice and his laughing eyes - and be afraid of him, as his father had seemed to be. He’d stared at him practically the whole night with a pinched, half-pained expression that Blaine couldn’t even begin to fathom.
It had confirmed everything Blaine had ever suspected about his father’s opinion toward him. When Blaine had first come out at the age of fourteen, his father hadn’t seemed comfortable with the announcement, per se - but he’d told Blaine that his sexual orientation wasn’t a factor in whether or not he loved him, and Blaine had taken him at his word.
That statement of support had been tested two months later on a rainy evening in early April. Blaine has never been the type to be overly concerned with fashion, but he’d spent a good hour and twenty-five minutes of that evening agonizing over what to wear, trying on basically the entire contents of his closet, attempting to decide which combination of clothing would make him look the most grown up at his first school dance.
Blaine can’t remember now what outfit he’d chosen to wear that night.
But he’d woken up the next morning in a recovery room, in the pediatric wing of Mount Carmel St. Ann’s, wearing a hospital gown with a pattern of trains and fire-engines on it.
His mom and dad had been understandably shaken and horrified by the incident, and less than two weeks later, Blaine had exchanged his blue jeans, sweaters, and t-shirts for gray slacks and a navy-blue jacket emblazoned with the Dalton Academy crest. He hasn’t set foot on the grounds of Westerville North High School for over two years.
The school transfer hadn’t been the only change, however - it had marked the start of what Blaine privately refers to as his father’s Straighten Out Blaine Campaign. It’s maddening. It’s pointless. But in terms of siege tactics, it’s brilliant, because it manages to be both relentless and yet so subtle that he can’t directly call his father on it.
“He just has trouble understanding you, that’s all,” his mother had informed him. “Things have changed a lot since your father and I were teenagers, Blaine, and he’s having a little difficulty adjusting. But he loves you very much, honey. You mean the world to him.”
Well, maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t. But in any case, his father’s period of adjustment doesn’t seem to be finished - which is why Blaine’s standing underneath an oak tree with his boyfriend in the darkness instead of exchanging good-night kisses on his front porch.
“You should get in,” Kurt informs him, reluctantly glancing back toward Blaine’s house. “We both have curfew.”
“I know, I know,” groans Blaine miserably.
Kurt gives him a sad, resigned little smile. “Kiss me good night?”
Blaine sighs dramatically. “Man, it’s like I’ve created some sort of monster. I mean, you kiss a guy once at school just to see what it’s like and soon enough he’s expecting them all the time”-
Kurt swats half-heartedly at Blaine’s arm and Blaine laughs, drawing Kurt in closer until they’re standing with their chests pressed together, foreheads touching once more.
Kurt’s tall, and the shoes he’s wearing tonight make him taller still. Blaine tilts his face upward, stretches up onto his toes - and god, he loves that he needs to do that, to lean up to Kurt to be able to kiss him - and brushes their lips together lightly.
It’s a soft, teasing pressure that makes Kurt whine in frustration against Blaine’s mouth. It’s surprisingly sexy, kissing like this - just this light, barely-there drag of his lips against Kurt’s. He takes his time, memorizing the shape of his mouth, ghosting over Kurt's beautifully-shaped lips with his own and then tracing over them with his tongue. He can taste Kurt, but only just. He deliberately keeps Kurt on the edge, drawing back slightly every time he darts forward, keeping the kisses whisper-soft and frustratingly chaste until Kurt groans overtly, grabbing a fistful of Blaine’s t-shirt and pulling him forward, holding him in place.
When Blaine hears that low sound emanating from Kurt’s throat, he surges forward, sealing his lips firmly over Kurt’s and deepening the kiss unexpectedly. Kurt gasps into Blaine’s mouth - an action that is far, far hotter than it has a right to be - and suddenly Blaine’s no longer interested in teasing Kurt or pleasing Kurt or eliciting any particular reaction from him. He’s just a boy who wants to kiss and be kissed.
Blaine angles his head to allow for better access, and Kurt follows the movement, like a dancer, tilting his head until they’re at the perfect angle to brush their tongues together in a hot-slick-wet-sweet glide. Kissing like this is fantastic; it just feels fucking fantastic to the point that Blaine’s honestly not sure why he and Kurt do anything else. They should really be doing this, just this, all the time.
Blaine slides his hands, which had been cupping Kurt’s face, down Kurt’s back and settles them low on his hips. The kiss turns hotter if that's possible - less controlled, more frantic, more tongue, more teeth -
One of Kurt’s hands is splayed against the small of Blaine’s back. Blaine has no memory of it getting there, but he’s acutely aware of its presence now, and the intimacy of it feels incredible. Blaine stretches up higher onto his toes, trying to kiss Kurt as deeply as he can, and the thin cotton of Blaine’s shirt rides up just as Kurt’s hand slides down a little further, and suddenly a good portion of Kurt’s hand is touching the bare skin of his lower back.
Kurt seems to realize it a second later than Blaine does. Kurt makes a noise in the back of his throat that is equal-parts sexy and adorable; a startled, curious little, “…mm…?” against Blaine’s mouth. As if that alone isn’t enough to undo Blaine completely, Kurt’s fingers start tracing a slow, exploratory pattern, mapping out the contours of Blaine’s skin. It’s just this side of innocent; if Kurt’s fingers dip any lower they’ll be right at the swell of Blaine’s ass. In fact, if Blaine shifts just the right way, he thinks Kurt’s pinky would dip down below the waistband of his pants - and fuck, he really wants that to happen - should he - ?
Kurt breaks the kiss, panting raggedly. “Blaine, c-can we… kneel or sit down or…”
Blaine groans and gladly sinks down in the grass, practically yanking Kurt down next to him. It’s a testament to how far gone Kurt is, too, that he’s willing to get grass-stains on his designer pants just for the sake of his hormones.
They dive back into kissing immediately, and they start out sitting, but the grass is so invitingly soft beneath them that they end up stretched out on their sides, with Kurt’s left leg looped around Blaine’s calf. It’s impossible to keep their hips as far apart as they normally would. It’s impossible for Blaine’s hands not to stroke along the outsides of Kurt’s thighs, eliciting a low moan from Kurt. In fact, Blaine’s finding it impossible that he’s really here, with this gorgeous boy plastered against his chest, Kurt’s voice whispering his name: “Blaine… oh my god, Blaine… Blaine…”
“Blaine!”
That sharp, barked syllable causes Blaine’s blood to freeze in his veins. His insides twist and his heart thuds sickly in his chest as he sits upright, then nearly trips over his own feet in his haste to stand -
As his own stupidity stares him in the face.
As his boyfriend stares up at him with disheveled clothes, mussed hair, and terrified eyes.
As his own father stares at him, not five feet away, looking at his son like he’s never seen him before.
0000
0000
0000
It’s a thousand times worse than anything Blaine could have imagined, the sight of his father standing there in flannel pajama pants and a dark blue t-shirt, looking sleep-startled and tense and unbearably grim.
He and Kurt had been basically writhing around on the grass - god, what it must have looked like to him -
Blaine frantically tries to flatten down his hair, his scalp still tingling from where Kurt’s hands had been gently tugging on his curls. He can feel something - a twig or the long stem of a leaf - matted into his hair and he tries instead to brush off his shirt, only to find that it’s ripped in one spot and hopelessly grass-stained.
“Dad,” he says wildly. “We were just”-
“Come here, Blaine,” says his father, deadly quiet.
Kurt scrambles to get up as well, the harsh sound of his father’s voice shocking him into action. “Mr. Anderson,” he says breathlessly. “I - I’m so sorry. This was all my fault. I” -
“Kurt,” his dad says evenly as Blaine steps toward his father. “I think it would be best if you went home now. As you’re no doubt aware, it’s very late.”
“I”- Kurt casts an apologetic, half-pleading look in Blaine’s direction.
“It’s okay,” says Blaine, trying to look as reassuring as he can. And it is okay. It will be okay, right? Blaine’s a very responsible person and he’s not at all used to getting in trouble. But he’s seventeen - he’s expected to mess up every once in a while, isn’t he? He glances up at his father. Isn’t he?
Kurt exchanges an agonized look with Blaine. He glances up at Blaine’s father and then back down at Blaine, and he steps forward as though intending to embrace him. Blaine can see the hard, determined set of Kurt’s jaw and his heart swells at the thought that Kurt would do it; he’d reach over and hug or kiss Blaine and he wouldn’t care what anyone had to say about it.
But Blaine shakes his head almost imperceptibly, trying to convey a look that says: I love you, but it would just make things worse.
Kurt nods and turns around slowly, as though he’s extremely reluctant to do so, and walks back toward his car. Each footstep Kurt takes is nerve-wracking; it seems to take him an unusually long time to get situated in his car and start the engine, and Blaine’s dreading the second that Kurt pulls away because he just has no idea what to expect.
When Kur’s car finally makes a right turn onto Worthington Road, his father looks at him sidelong and gestures toward the front door.
“We need to talk,” he tells Blaine.
“Dad…”
“Not here. Inside.”
Blaine follows his father across the side-yard and up the front porch steps, chewing nervously on his lip. His dad turns to face him as soon as they step into the front hallway and shut the door behind them. "Blaine,” he says gruffly, “I don’t know what the hell you were thinking. I don't know what in the world would possess you to do such a thing outside in our yard. But I’m not stupid. I know what that looked like.”
“It was”-
“Tell me you’re using protection,” he demands through gritted teeth, not meeting Blaine’s eyes.
Blaine’s mouth falls open in shock. As far as he can recall, he and his father have literally never discussed, broached, or even vaguely alluded to the topic of sex. It’s like going from zero to sixty without even realizing the engine’s been on.
“What? Dad, no - we haven’t”- actually been having sex, is what he starts out trying to say.
“You haven’t?” he repeats, voice rising in both pitch and intensity.
There’s something else coursing through Blaine now, underneath the shock and embarrassment - an emotion remarkably like annoyance. Where was all this concern, wonders Blaine, when I was fourteen and didn’t have access to a laptop? Where was all this concern when I might actually have needed the facts of life explained to me? Why wait until I’m practically sending off college applications to start caring?
His dad seems to take Blaine’s silence as confirmation of his worst fears.
“My god, Blaine,” he says, and Blaine is stunned to hear his dad’s voice actually shaking. It’s barely perceptible, but Blaine has a good ear. It’s there.
“We’re getting you tested,” he says decisively. “We’re going to Dr. Murray’s office on Monday and getting you tested.”
That is it. That is it. Blaine may have acted rashly tonight, but this? Not only is his dad suggesting that they’d fucked and barebacked, but his dad’s practically implying that Kurt has cheated on him, or that one or both of them has had indiscriminate sex -
“Tested,” echoes Blaine neutrally, resentment welling up inside him. “You know, Dad... I realize that your generation isn’t as informed about the intricacies of gay relationships. And it’s possible that I should have tried harder to educate you.”
He pauses briefly, before folding his arms defensively across his chest and shooting his father an icy, narrow-eyed glare.
“But you do know Kurt can’t actually knock me up, right?”
His father’s fingers curl inward and there’s a startling, surreal moment where not only is Blaine certain he’s going to be hit, but he can see it and hear it and feel it as though it’s already happened; his hands flying up in a vain attempt to shield his face, the sickening crack of bone-on-bone, a sharp blossom of pain spreading outward from his jaw, the view he’ll have of the ceiling when his head snaps backward from the blow -
Blaine has never been hit by his father. But he’s been the recipient of plenty of violence in his young life; he can extrapolate.
As it turns out, the image stays locked in his head; it fails to be borne out by reality. His dad just clenches his fists tightly and stares at Blaine, an unreadable expression on his face.
The silence between them is stretched and painful, and Blaine has no earthly idea how to level things out between them - because he’s not precisely prepared to apologize, but where in the world is he supposed to go from here?
“Please just tell me,” says his dad, maybe a shade too calmly, “if there’s any way in the world that you could test positive for anything. I… was your age once, too, Blaine.”
“Right,” says Blaine shortly. “I’m sure you know exactly what it feels like to be me.”
“Blaine…”
“No,” he says quickly, before he can change his mind. “No, Dad - there’s no way I’d test positive for an STD.”
His dad’s shoulders relax slightly. “So you’re not having sex”-
“I didn’t say that,” says Blaine tensely. “That wasn’t what you asked me and quite frankly, I don’t see that it’s your business whether we are or not.”
Blaine is amazed at his own insolence.
He isn’t like this; he is seriously never like this. Blaine respects his parents. He isn’t a rude person and he prides himself on keeping his emotions decently in check, to the point that he’s generally capable of powering through the worst of his teenage mood-swings with a combination of caffeine and optimism. He just cannot understand his reaction right now. He feels startled and wrong-footed - and for reasons he can’t articulate, somehow everything about this conversation is offending him, including the fact that they’re having it in the first place.
His dad has the right to punish him for missing curfew. He can ground him; he can take away his laptop or his car or any of the other privileges he’s granted Blaine. But he doesn’t have the right to pry into such an intimate aspect of his personal life. That’s between himself and Kurt.
Blaine waits for his dad to yell at him. He waits to be grounded. He’s waiting, in fact, for any number of things that could potentially occur at this juncture: An angry tirade or a disappointed lecture or an endless barrage of questions. But what does happen is something he could never have expected, not even if he’d been given all the time in the world to anticipate it.
His dad grips the staircase bannister tightly with one hand and says shortly: “Here. Whatever you’re doing… do it here.”
Blaine’s mouth falls open comically wide, although he’s certainly not in a position to appreciate it.
“Wait - what?”
“You have your own room.” He averts his eyes now, staring pointedly at a spot on the wall behind Blaine and pressing his mouth into a hard, thin line. “If you go upstairs with Kurt and lock the door, neither your mother nor I will disturb you. Just be safe.”
Blaine needs to sit down. He needs to stand up and pace. He needs to be alone in his room with his guitar or his keyboard. He also thinks, for the first time ever in his life, that he might need a beer. Blaine doesn’t even like beer - but he’s pretty sure he needs one.
“You”- Blaine starts and stops again, replaying his father’s words in his head just to be absolutely sure that he’d interpreted them correctly. “You’re actually saying you want my boyfriend and I”-
“Stop it,” his dad hisses, jabbing an accusatory finger at his son. “Just stop - I don’t want you to do it all. But you’re seventeen, you think you’re in love, and if you’re going to do it, then for god’s sake, do it in your bedroom and not in public. All it takes is one encounter - one person to stumble across you. That’s all it takes, and then we’ll be seeing you on the news”-
The look on his father’s face is disgust. His father is disgusted with him.
“You want another Sadie Hawkins dance? Is that it? God, Blaine, isn’t sending one boyfriend to the emergency room enough?”
Blaine feels a low, sick lurch in his stomach.
“Dad…”
“Is that how you’d like me to meet Kurt’s mother? At the hospital, like I met Steven’s mom? We can bond over what idiots our sons are”-
“Kurt’s mom’s dead,” whispers Blaine, looking at the floor instead of his father. He can feel his dad’s eyes on him, though, and he feels his face redden perceptibly under the intensity of his gaze.
“I’ll be speaking to your mother,” his dad says flatly, apropos of nothing.
“About what I did?” asks Blaine, his eyes widening as he lifts them - and he’s appalled at the thought, of course - but at least they’re in familiar territory now. Blaine has friends at school who’ve been through this sort of thing and he knows how these types of conversations go. There’s a protocol to these situations; a normalcy. He’ll be able to call David or Wes tomorrow and say man, my parents are such a drag; you won’t believe how hard they came down on me. I’m not allowed out until-
“About giving you your privacy,” his dad says slowly, as though Blaine is being exceptionally dense. “I’ll speak with her tonight and that’s the last we’ll say about this.”
Blaine doesn’t have the faintest clue how to reply. To be completely honest, his knee-jerk response is to say, “thanks, but no thanks,” because, well… seriously.
It’s not that Blaine doesn’t want to be alone with Kurt in his bedroom. In fact, he gets off almost every night imagining the two of them there, sweaty and twisted up in his bed-covers. He finds the idea amazingly hot - because he feels safe in his room, he supposes, and because it’s intimately familiar. Because Kurt is home in the same way that his bedroom is home. In his braver moments, he even confesses that to Kurt, curled up under his sheets at night, whispering I wish I had you here in my bed into his phone and feeling a shiver run through him when he hears Kurt’s answering sigh.
But he tries to picture it - actually physically leading Kurt upstairs, closing his bedroom door and locking it behind him, aware that his parents are heading downstairs to give them their privacy - and it’s just about the least sexy scenario he can envision.
“It’s late,” his dad says flatly, breaking through Blaine’s thoughts.
He turns to head upstairs, effectively ending the conversation, and Blaine should be thrilled that he hadn’t gotten in trouble, but - god, the look on his dad’s face had been nothing short of dismissive -
The words are out before he can stop himself.
“Dad, I’m… sorry,” he says plaintively to his father’s retreating back.
He’d sworn he wouldn’t say it; he isn’t even entirely sure he means it. But he doesn’t have to actually be sorry to want to hear his dad say that he forgives him.
His father’s back answers him. “It’s late,” he repeats. “We should both be in bed.”
“But I”-
“Good night, Blaine.”
Blaine stands there expectantly, stock-still at the foot of the stairs, until long after he’s heard the door to his parents’ room click shut.
He’s not sure what he’s waiting for.
Part two