As the Present Now will Later be Past (2/4)
As soon as Blaine reaches his bedroom, he digs his phone out of his pocket. There’s already a voicemail from Kurt. Blaine listens to it right away, noting that Kurt's voice sounds tense and worried: “Hey. I’m hoping your phone hasn’t been taken away. Give me a call when you get this, okay? I love you so much and I’m so sorry about tonight.”
They usually text each other at this late an hour, but Kurt probably wants more direct confirmation that he's all right. Blaine wouldn’t mind hearing Kurt’s voice right about now, either. He slides in underneath his sheets and calls Kurt's cell.
Kurt picks up on the first ring. “Blaine?”
“Hey,” he says, trying to keep his voice as low as he can.
“Oh, thank god. I was so freaked out when I left. What happened? Are you okay?”
Blaine nods reflexively. “I am. We had… kind of an intense conversation, but yeah, I’m okay.”
“Are you grounded?”
“No. You?”
“No, I’m fine. I pushed the speed limit and only ended up, like, eight minutes late. So… what did you guys talk about? He just seemed so”-
“Upset? Yeah. He was.”
“And you fought?”
He pauses, turning the question over in his mind. “It wasn’t a fight, exactly. Or - I don’t know, maybe it was. I don’t think I fight enough to really know.”
“I was there at the coffee shop that time, Blaine. You know - after the thing with Rachel? You can fight just fine.”
Blaine blinks in surprise. They haven’t brought that up since it happened. “Yeah. Uh. You, too,” he offers, a little wary. “Good to know we can… both stick up for ourselves?”
“Mm-hmm,” comes the reply. “So can I still see you Sunday night? You know I’m going out with Mercedes tomorrow.”
“Yeah, definitely. I’d love that.”
“And should I...?” Kurt pauses, sounding uncertain. “Where should we go?”
Blaine toys absently with the corner of his sheet and tries valiantly not to imagine how the color of Kurt’s skin would look splashed against the dark blue fabric of his comforter. “Um…” He takes a deep breath. “Here. Come here.”
There is silence on Kurt’s end for a few seconds. Then: “At your house?”
“Yeah, at my house.”
“After tonight? I figured at the very least I’d be banned from the premises.”
“You’re not,” Blaine assures him. “My dad accused me of compromising your safety, by the way, not the other way around.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
Kurt groans. “Oh my god, Blaine, how in the world am I supposed to look your dad in the eye?”
“It’s okay, Kurt. I mean, he was a teenager once. I’m sure he did impetuous things occasionally, even if it seems hard to believe.”
“I guess,” says Kurt doubtfully. “I can see that more with my dad. Like, with some of the dumber things Finn does especially. I can hear my dad asking him why he’s done something so moronic, but I just know that part of him is impressed. He understands Finn much better than he understands me.”
There’s a half-envious, half-wistful edge to Kurt’s voice and Blaine closes his eyes, trying to fight through the haze of confusion and exhaustion. Does Kurt expect him to… negate that sentiment? Agree with it? Express regret about it? He just has no idea; he’s so completely drained.
Kurt moves on. “Anyway, you’re sure about this? I thought your dad didn’t even like it when I came over period. You expect me to believe that after tonight, it’s suddenly okay?”
“It’ll be fine. We talked and it’s fine.”
“But… where will we even go? Not your room, obviously.”
“Yeah, my room.”
“But”-
“Kurt, just trust me on this. I’ll see you Sunday, okay? Five o’clock, my house.”
“If you say so,” replies Kurt, sounding dubious. “Fortunately for you, I’m too tired to question it.”
“Yeah, I’m about to collapse. Talk to you tomorrow?”
“Mm-hmm. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
“Night.”
“Night.”
He sets his cell phone on his nightstand, curls up on his side, and flips his pillow over so that the cooler side is pressed against his cheek. The faint, lingering scents of grass and earth and Kurt hover in the air around him.
Blaine closes his eyes and sleep claims him instantly.
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Blaine wakes up a little after nine, showers, dresses, and heads downstairs.
It’s a Saturday so his parents are both home, but the kitchen is empty. Fortunately, one of them was thoughtful enough to make coffee. Blaine pours himself a cup and swipes an apple and a banana from the fruit bowl on the 'peninsula' - which is actually a kitchen island that extends outward from the wall. When Blaine had been ten, he’d come home from school and gravely informed his parents that it failed to meet the geographic definition of an island. They’ve called it “the peninsula” ever since.
He sits down on the living room couch with his breakfast and absently flips through TV channels, settling on a guilty-pleasure reality show. He becomes absorbed to the extent that he doesn’t hear the footsteps behind him.
“Blaine?”
Startled, he twists around.
His dad is standing behind him, dressed down in jeans and a Buckeyes t-shirt, his salt-and-pepper hair gelled down in a style not unlike his son’s.
Blaine straightens up in his seat. “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
A few seconds of silence.
“Sleep well?” his dad asks.
“Yeah. You?”
His father’s expression is unreadable. “No, actually, I didn’t. I slept lousy.”
Blaine tries to swallow down the sudden lump in his throat. “Oh. I’m… sorry.”
“It’s okay.” His dad takes a deep breath. “I, uh, just got back from the hardware store. That hinge on the pantry door came loose again, so…”
“Oh, right. I noticed that,” says Blaine, gesturing vaguely toward the kitchen.
His dad looks down at him expectantly. “Feel like giving me a hand?”
Blaine blinks up at his dad in surprise. “You want me to?”
“I could use the help.”
It’s a home repair project, so he can’t swear in a court of law that this isn’t just another tactic in the Straighten Out Blaine Campaign - but it feels good to be asked, especially in light of last night’s events.
“Sure,” says Blaine, standing up. “What do you need me to do?”
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It’s nice, actually, helping his dad like this - even though “helping” might be overstating things a little.
His dad examines the hinge carefully and shakes his head. “I think the screws that came with the hinge might have stripped out the wood.”
Blaine leans in closer and nods. “You could be right.” It’s a deliberately vague statement of support, because Blaine doesn’t have the faintest clue whether he’s right or not, but hey - he could be.
They head out to the garage and grab the step-ladder, a couple three-inch screws, and a screw gun. They spend the next few minutes in companionable silence, Blaine’s dad working on the hinge while perched on the ladder and Blaine holding the ladder steady and handing things up to him as he asks for them.
Finally, his dad turns around and nods down to Blaine. “I think that should do it.”
“Cool,” says Blaine.
“Thanks for your help.”
“No problem.”
Blaine carries the folded-up step-ladder to the garage and his dad follows him, carrying the DeWalt. As they head in, his dad clears his throat uncomfortably and says: “So, uh… I wanted to talk to you. About last night.”
Blaine stops in his tracks. He turns around to look at his dad, his heart starting to beat a little faster. “Uh-huh,” he says in a small voice.
“Look, I know I was a little...?” He seems to be searching for the right words. “I didn’t mean to scare you; I think I might have and that was never my intention. But it was a very foolish thing you did, and I hope you know that.”
Blaine closes his eyes briefly and readies himself to give the short speech he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to deliver; the one he’d rehearsed this morning while taking his shower.
“I’m sorry, too,” he says earnestly. “I really am. But I want to be very clear about what I’m sorry for. I’m sorry you found us like that and I’m sorry we weren’t as careful as we could have been. But I’m not apologizing for being attracted to my boyfriend. I’m not apologizing for being gay, Dad.”
His dad shakes his head. “Blaine, I know you can't help who you're attracted to; despite what you think, I do know that. But I just think... I don't know... don’t you think you’re a little young to be labeling yourself this way? I mean, for god's sake, Blaine, you were only fourteen when you came out. Who the hell knows anything about themselves when they’re fourteen?”
Blaine feels oddly hollow. “Well, I’ll be eighteen in November, Dad. And as awkward as last night was for both of us… you can’t possibly hold out hope that I'm straight after what you”-
“Blaine, it's not about my holding out hope. I’m just saying that you don’t know what will happen to you later in life. Maybe...maybe you’ll meet someone..."
A faint thrill of anger courses through Blaine. “Like, as in a female someone? Are you seriously standing here and trying to tell me that I just haven’t met the right girl yet?”
“Of course not. I’m just asking you to be open-minded. Even in my own life, Blaine, I’ve… heard of men who’ve fallen in love with other men, but then later they discover they’re perfectly capable of falling in love with women - ”
“Well, then they’re not gay,” Blaine hisses in exasperation. “I’m not romantically or sexually attracted to women, Dad. The person you’re describing isn’t a person who ‘grew out of it' or 'got over it' or whatever it is you’re thinking they did. That person is bisexual, at least on some level.”
His dad’s eyes widen. “That's - no. That’s not what I… Blaine, not everything has to have a label. Why is your generation so obsessed with labels?”
Blaine shakes his head. “We’re not obsessed with them. We’re trying to make things better. Don’t you think it’s hard to fight for change if you don’t have some sort of … collective identity?”
“This isn’t an identity you want, Blaine. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” The look in his dad’s eyes is halfway to pleading. “Life is so much more difficult for gay men, Blaine; the world is so much more dangerous. It's not a life any parent would choose for their child”-
Blaine blinks back tears furiously. "You're acting like this is something that's up for discussion. Dangerous or not, this is an unchangeable part of who I am, Dad. And I’m sorry if it scares you... but just... where do you get off telling me how hard it is to be a gay male? Do you have any idea how insulting that is?”
His dad's expression turns suddenly grim. “Son, I know that at this age, you think you know everything. But I’m asking you to consider the possibility that I might know more than you about the way the world works.”
An outraged exclamation spills from Blaine's mouth. “What - seriously, what is this, Dad? Where is this coming from? Do you even know any gay people aside from me?”
His dad sticks his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and stares at the garage floor. “I… did, yes. In college, I had a friend. He… we were friends.”
Blaine narrows his eyes disbelievingly. “Really. A friend in college,” he echoes.
“Yes.”
“And where is this friend now?”
His dad lifts his head up suddenly - and Blaine finds himself actually taking a step backward, putting distance between them. He has never seen an expression like that on anyone’s face in his life.
It is raw, unadulterated pain.
His dad breathes out two words, voice shaky and rasping.
“Southview Cemetery.”
The bottom of Blaine’s stomach drops out as his dad shuts the lid of his tool-kit, opens the door from the garage to the house, and - for the second time in as many days - turns his back on his son.
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It takes Blaine a minute or so to act. But he pulls it together remarkably quickly, all things considered. He can’t let the conversation end on that note; he just can’t. He has to find his dad - apologize - ask questions - explain -
He rushes out of the garage. “Dad? Dad”-
“You just missed him,” says Lynn Anderson cheerfully, poking her head out of the kitchen. “I just heard his car pull out of the driveway. Did you need him for something?”
“Yeah.” Blaine gestures toward the garage. “I need to apologize. We kind of… got into it.”
“Oh, Blaine,” she sighs. She steps back into the kitchen and Blaine follows. His mother is a petite, attractive woman, and at the moment her dark-brown hair is twisted up into a messy bun. Blaine can tell she’s just come back from her morning run; she has on yoga pants, a t-shirt, and athletic shoes. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with the two of you,” she tells him.
“It was my fault this time,” he says miserably. “I struck a nerve.”
“A nerve?”
Blaine hangs his head. “More like an artery, I think.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No,” says Blaine emphatically. “I just... god, how is it that we’re so different, Mom?”
His mom laughs a little as she grabs her water bottle off the peninsula and heads over to the sink to wash it out.
“What’s so funny?” he asks suspiciously.
“Just the fact that you asked me that,” she says with a shrug. “I think most of the trouble between you stems from the fact that you’re unbelievably alike. Can you really not see that, honey? I think he does.”
Blaine crinkles his face in confusion. “Dad and I? But… he’s always acted like I can’t measure up to his standards.”
She throws him an annoyed look. “Blaine, you’re being ridiculous. That’s not true at all.”
“But he has such high expectations!”
“Well, of course he does. You’re talented and intelligent and of course he expects great things from you. But he’s so proud of you, sweetheart. You should have heard how he was talking about you at his work party three weeks ago: Your grades, your speech and debate competitions, the Warblers winning Sectionals and placing at Regionals…”
“Did he mention that my duet with my boyfriend helped us place at Regionals?”
“Blaine,” she says warningly.
“Mom”-
“Blaine, that’s not fair. First of all, I didn’t hear anyone at the party bragging about their teenagers’ significant others. And secondly… I wish things were different, but it’s a controversial issue for a lot of people, and your dad and I both still face a learning curve. We grew up in a different time, sweetheart; in fact, we met during the height of the AIDS crisis. You can’t imagine what it was like."
She sets the water bottle on the drying rack and starts unloading the dishwasher. “And it’s harder for your dad than for me; you know how conservative Grandpa and Grandma were. You’re asking him to go from being told something is wrong to seeing it as a point of pride in the matter of a few short years.”
“But he should be able to do it,” insists Blaine stubbornly. “I’m his son.”
His mother turns away from the dishwasher, steps into Blaine’s space, and places her hands on either side of his face.
“It sounds to me,” she says pointedly, “like your father isn’t the only one with high expectations. And I know for a fact, Blaine, that you’re not the only one who’s scared that they won't measure up.”
She turns back to the dishwasher and hands Blaine a stack of clean plates that he wordlessly accepts. He puts them away in the cabinet, lost in thought as he cautiously tests the weight of his mother’s words.
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Blaine spends the next half-hour at his desk in his room. He’s trying to write the Bass II part for the arrangement of “Viva la Vida” the Warblers will be learning this fall, but it’s not going well; he feels jittery and hopelessly unfocused. By the time he’s ruined four pages of staff paper, he heaves a sigh of frustration, throws his notebook onto the floor, stands up, and faceplants dramatically onto his bed.
The next few minutes are spent wrestling with his emotions; he vacillates between feeling abjectly sorry (I’m such an insensitive idiot) and feeling a slight sense of indignation (Well, how on earth was I supposed to know?).
And - now that he’s properly thinking about it - why hadn’t Blaine known?
A high school friend of Blaine’s father had died in a car crash fifteen years ago, and his dad has shared countless stories and memories of him with Blaine. They’ve even gone and visited his gravestone a few times. What makes this friend so different? Is it because he was a gay friend? Had his dad been ashamed of him somehow?
Of course, it’s possible that he hadn’t been as close to this particular friend - but no, that can’t be right. He can’t block the memory of the look on his dad’s face, even though a part of him desperately wants to. He’d looked like…
Blaine can’t even put it into words. He’s never lost anyone close to him, but he imagines that’s how he’d look if something ever happened to Kurt (his stomach twists painfully just at the idea of it) and he can’t quite reconcile the expression on his father’s face with this nameless, faceless gay friend who his father has never once thought to mention.
Even now, he’d only brought him up under duress, in the context of explaining how difficult life is for gay males, something he’d claimed to know more about than Blaine, which is laughable considering that -
Wait.
Blaine sits up suddenly, eyes flying wide open but not taking in anything.
Wait.
His heart starts pounding rapidly.
I’m imagining things. I’m tired… and I’m emotional… and I’m not thinking correctly.
But of course it’s too late. The thought has already embedded itself in his consciousness and he can’t un-think it. And now his brain is fitting things together in earnest; identifying patterns, establishing new connections, and replaying snippets of conversations:
“He… we were friends.”
“The world is so much more dangerous.”
“Even in my own life, I’ve known people…”
“Your father and I grew up in a different time…”
“…fallen in love with other men…”
“I know more than you about the way the world works.”
“…you two are unbelievably alike. Can you really not see that, honey? I think he does.”
Blaine has to stand; there’s no outlet available for the nervous energy coursing through him and it’s painful to keep still. He paces back and forth across the length of his bedroom, his brain still frantically whirring -
Could it be? Could his dad be… gay?
Not gay, Blaine reminds himself. He’s spent years watching his mom and dad interact and there’s no way his dad is faking that level of attraction. But he could be bisexual; it’s a definite possibility. In fact, it would explain - god, it would explain so much…
But what’s the story? The only thing Blaine knows for sure is that his dad had cared for this man, on some level, and that the friend is now dead. When had he died, though? Recently? Back in college? Who was this man? Blaine ached to know more about him. Had he and his father had a relationship? Or had it been one-sided, with one of them pining for the other? Or -
Blaine would give anything to be able to talk to his dad about this, but there are a thousand reasons why he can’t - not the least of which is that he could still be wrong. It is just a theory. There are a thousand-and-one reasons he can’t talk to his mother. He certainly can’t share this with Wes or David or any of his Dalton friends - but he has to talk about this with someone or he’ll go crazy.
A few seconds later, Blaine’s knocking his cell phone off the nightstand in his haste to grab it, in his haste to talk to Kurt. Kurt.
He’s the only person who can possibly understand the full import of this; the only person who will be just as shocked and blown away and inquisitive, and Blaine is bursting with the need to tell him the whole story, to let every half-formed theory in his brain spill out of his mouth.
But before he can share any of this with him, he thinks, as his finger hovers above Kurt’s name in his phone contacts -
- there’s something Blaine needs to know.
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“Hello?”
The familiar, half-breathless chirrup in his ear is pretty much the only thing tethering Blaine to the planet. He thinks for a second that his cell phone is shaking, and it takes him way too long to realize that it’s actually his hand.
“I didn’t think I’d hear from you till tonight,” says Kurt with an airy laugh. “Couldn’t stand to go another minute without hearing my dulcet tones?”
Basically yes.
Kurt’s voice turns questioning. “Blaine? I can hear you breathing. Or - well, I hear someone breathing. If you’ve stolen Blaine’s phone, you should know that this is Blaine’s fiercely protective boyfriend and I’m actually a lot scarier in person than I sound”-
“Kurt,” interrupts Blaine. “It’s me.”
“I assumed as much,” Kurt informs him dryly.
“Kurt,” he says again, trying to keep his tone as even as he can. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” he replies breezily.
Given Kurt’s mood, Blaine will almost certainly receive a flippant answer, which is the last thing he wants. “This is serious.”
Kurt inhales sharply. “What is it? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No, no,” Blaine assures him. “I just - I need a straight answer to this question, okay?”
Kurt lets out a low, shaky breath. “Oh, thank god. This is just you being melodramatic about something, right?”
Blaine’s not sure, but he doesn’t think so. “Kurt. I need to know... if you meant what you said in the coffee shop”-
“-when I said I loved you?” asks Kurt, sounding resigned but a little amused.
“No,” says Blaine shortly. “That time when you said you didn’t think bisexuality was real.”
There is a shocked silence on the other end of the line. Blaine is pressing the phone so tightly against him that he can feel the blood pounding in his ear.
“Blaine… what is this about?”
“I need to know,” he says. “I just need to know.”
He wishes he’d done this face-to-face. He wants to see the warmth in Kurt’s eyes; he wants to see the regret on his face and feel the reassuring weight of Kurt’s hand in his when Kurt tells him oh, Blaine, of course I didn’t-
“Yeah,” says Kurt, his voice tinged with suspicion. “I meant it. Why… why are you asking me that?”
He stares straight ahead at the wall, not saying anything. After a good twenty-second pause, he hears Kurt say nervously:
“Blaine, I’m not saying I necessarily feel the same way now. Or I guess… I know why I shouldn’t feel the same way now. I know it’s a terrible thing to say - but you’re the only person I can say politically incorrect things to.” Kurt clears his throat uncomfortably. “The truth is that I don’t really know what I think. But… if you’re asking me if I meant it at the time? Yes. Yes, I meant it.”
Blaine nods dumbly. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
“Can you please tell me why you’re asking me that?”
Blaine shifts his weight from one foot to the under, scratching idly at a mosquito bite on his left leg with his right shoe. “I’m sorry,” he says. “But no. Not right now.”
He feels Kurt’s dejected sigh right down to his toes. “God, I screwed that up, didn’t I? I’m sorry. It’s just - total honesty”-
“I know,” says Blaine. “You’re right. I know.”
“Something’s bothering you.”
Blaine thinks he might have overdone it with the mosquito bite. He heads to his bathroom to get a bandage from the medicine cabinet. “Yes.”
“But you won’t tell me what it is?”
“Kurt, listen,” he says, pressing the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he reaches for the rubbing alcohol. “I’ll text you tonight.”
“Blaine, I hate to leave things like this”-
“We’re fine,” he tells him. “Do you still want to come over tomorrow evening?”
“Of course, but”-
“Great,” says Blaine shortly. “I’ll see you then.” He winces at the burn of the alcohol on the open cut.
“Blaine, I love you.”
“Same here,” he says, as smoothly as he can under the circumstances.
Blaine disconnects the call and pockets the phone, leaning back against the far wall of the bathroom.
So it’s just him, then.
He really is alone in this.
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Blaine spends the entire night immersing himself in research; he scrolls feverishly through website after website, reading everything from academic journals to Wikipedia entries to personal blogs, trying to acquaint himself with the elusive creature known as the American bisexual male.
He wishes there were some sort of symptom-checker. Has the person in question exhibited any of the following behaviors? But then he thinks of the sorts of questions that would be on such a list and shudders. He doesn’t want to have to think about whether or not his dad has casually checked out another man’s ass, for example. (He hasn’t, to Blaine’s memory. But then he’s also never seen him check out a woman’s ass. But then Blaine has never really thought to look at his dad’s reactions to such stimuli…) Blaine shudders again.
Undaunted, he keeps reading. He stays up absurdly late, sleeps for a grand total of five hours, and wakes up around ten-thirty with a killer head-ache. His mood doesn’t improve when his mom informs him that he needs to mow the lawn this morning. The Anderson’s yard is quite large and Blaine doesn’t finish until after lunch-time. He’d ignored his mother’s reminder to put on sunscreen - just to be contrary, basically - and by the time the lawn is done, Blaine is sweaty, grouchy, exhausted, and decently sun-burned.
He feels slightly better after his shower, and he feels something approaching normal after wolfing down two grilled-cheese sandwiches and a blueberry muffin. But then his dad very pointedly avoids him - walking out of whatever room Blaine walks into - and his mood once again rapidly deteriorates. Part of him is hoping that Kurt will make plans with someone else at the last minute and cancel on him. It’s a fool’s hope since Kurt has never canceled on him before - but Blaine just doesn’t want to see anyone right now, not even Kurt. Maybe especially Kurt.
If he’s honest, what he really wants to do … is play his guitar. Yeah. That would be good; that would help.
He goes up to his bedroom and plays for a good half-hour. When Kurt arrives, he doesn’t greet him at the door. He lets his mom usher him in and send him upstairs and although Blaine knows he could shut the door, he tells Kurt to keep it open. He’s not in the mood to do anything they’d have to shut it for.
Kurt, however, surprises him. He seems to have been expecting this, and he seems perfectly content to wait Blaine out. He’d even brought school-work, and when Blaine keeps plucking away at his guitar, not even bothering to stand up and kiss Kurt hello, Kurt just shrugs coolly and kisses Blaine’s cheek.
Five minutes later, Kurt is lounging on his side in the center of Blaine’s double bed, palms curving around his Kindle, assiduously scrolling through the latest reading assignment for the online summer class that he’s taking for college credit: English 205: Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation.
Blaine is still sitting with his feet dangling off the edge of the bed, tunelessly strumming his acoustic guitar.
“Are you ready to talk about whatever’s bothering you?” Kurt asks, pointedly keeping his eyes on the screen in front of him.
Blaine slides his ring finger up to the fifth fret and lets the note ring out. “No.”
He can feel Kurt’s eyes on him now, two sharp, narrow points of focus. “Okay… well, do you maybe want to stop playing the same four horribly depressing harmonic minor chords over and over again?”
“They’re melodic minor chords,” says Blaine shortly. “And no.”
Blaine isn’t sure how long he sits on the edge of the bed, letting his fingers traipse aimlessly across the steel wire of his guitar strings. It could be five minutes or half-an-hour later that Kurt lifts his head up and says:
“The only truth is music. There’s your Kerouac quote for the day.”
“Thanks,” says Blaine absently. “I’ll have to remember that one.”
“Do you think that’s right?”
Blaine sighs heavily. “Do you?”
“I think so. I never feel more exposed than when I’m singing.”
“Mm,” says Blaine with a small, non-committal tilt of his head.
“And I think,” persists Kurt, “that when songs resonate with us, it’s because they tell us something true about ourselves. Either the melody or the arrangement or the lyrics”-
“Song lyrics mostly lie,” says Blaine irritably. “You think Ke$ha really wants to party with us? You think Justin Bieber actually”-
“Well, of course she doesn’t want to party with you, you grouch,” snipes Kurt. “But I happen to think I could show Ke$ha a fabulous time.”
Blaine sets the guitar down gently on the blue carpet and angles himself toward Kurt. “You know, the first thing I ever sang to you was probably the biggest lie I’ve ever told.”
Kurt arches an eyebrow. “So you don’t think I’m pretty without any make-up on?”
He laughs shortly. “We skipped that verse.”
“Did you? I’m afraid the subtleties of the lyrics were a little lost on me at the time. Pray tell, what was this big musical lie?”
Blaine takes a deep breath and sings softly, almost under his breath. “... before you met me, I was all right, but”-
He feels oddly sad all of a sudden, without really knowing why. He looks down at the bedspread - because he is seventeen years old and these types of things are hard enough to say.
“I barely remember who I was before I met you, Kurt,” he says as steadily as he can. “But I know I wasn’t all right.”
Kurt slides his hand along the bedspread and laces his fingers through Blaine’s. When Blaine meets his eyes, Kurt’s expression is a little shy, a little embarrassed - like he’s flattered, but he doesn’t have the first clue what to say in response. It strikes Blaine at that moment that Kurt is only seventeen, too, and that he’s nowhere close to having all the answers. He’s right about some things and, well, he’s wrong about many others - and being reminded of that right now is strangely heartening.
“I should… finish reading my chapter,” says Kurt. “We have an essay due soon.”
“What’s it about?” asks Blaine.
Kurt looks up at Blaine through lowered lashes. “It’s a biography about this writer, Thomas Wolfe. He was about twenty years too old to be part of the Beatnik era, but he was one of Kerouac’s biggest literary influences.”
“What was he like?”
Kurt shrugs as he drops his eyes to the screen. “Talented. Temperamental. Certain of his own supreme genius and equally convinced he was a chronic failure. Your typical writer, really.”
Blaine grins. “So what kinds of things did he write about?”
Kurt sighs restlessly, scrolls a few pages ahead, and reads aloud to Blaine: “Here’s an excerpt: ‘The modern picture of the artist began to form: The poor, but free spirit, plebeian but aspiring only to be classless, to cut himself forever free… to cross the line wherever they drew it, to look at the world in a way they couldn't see, to be high, live low, stay young forever - in short, to be the bohemian.’”
“Hmm…” says Blaine. “Interesting.”
His boyfriend laughs. “Liar.”
With a fond smile on his face, Kurt scoots back until he’s sitting against the headboard. He crosses his legs, Indian-style, and Blaine curls up sideways on the bed, resting his head on Kurt’s lap.
“So what happened to him?” he murmurs, his breath warm against Kurt’s knee.
“He died in his thirties,” says Kurt, threading his fingers through Blaine’s curls. “Some kind of tuberculosis. There’s actually an excerpt in here of the last letter he wrote. It was to his publisher, this guy named Maxwell Perkins, with whom he had a notably… tempestuous relationship.”
“You want to read it to me?”
Kurt clears his throat and begins reading, enunciating the words carefully. “I shall always think of you and feel about you the way it was that Fourth of July day three years ago when you met me at the boat, and we went out on the cafe on the river and had a drink and later went on top of the tall building, and all the strangeness and the glory and the power of life and of the city was below."
Blaine picks at a loose thread on Kurt’s jeans. Kurt shoots him an admonishing look and bats his hand away.
“It’s kind of sad,” Blaine offers, “that he had all that and then he just… didn’t anymore.”
“I guess,” says Kurt. “Want me to keep going?”
Blaine does.
It’s only six-fifteen, but he’s so drained that he ends up closing his eyes and drifting asleep as Kurt’s gentle, lilting voice spins dark tales about a dead writer.
He sleeps for nearly two hours.
Blaine never knows this, but when Kurt finishes the chapter, he spends the next hour stroking Blaine’s hair gently, pressing soft kisses to his forehead, and singing low, sweet songs meant to keep bad dreams at bay.
Blaine never knows this, either, but his mother pokes her head in the room to see if either of them wants dinner. Far from seeming embarrassed at having his boyfriend’s mother find them like this - Blaine asleep with his head on Kurt’s lap - Kurt places a finger commandingly over his lips, asking her without words to stay quiet. She actually feels a little embarrassed as she leaves to head downstairs, although she’s not sure why.
Kurt’s leg falls painfully asleep but he stays in place, stubborn and unmoving.
He wouldn’t disturb Blaine for the world.
Part three