As the Present Now will Later be Past (4/4)
“Okay,” says Kurt, letting his fingers hover over the keyboard in a decidedly theatrical manner. “What do we know?”
“MCLA,” says Blaine. “My mom doesn’t remember what it stands for, but that’s where he went to college before he transferred to OSU.”
“I’m on it,” says Kurt confidently. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you, but why am I on it? I can’t believe you were able to contain your curiosity long enough to wait for me.”
Blaine gives him the most charming grin he can muster. "What if I told you that watching you sleuth around for clues on the internet is one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen?”
Kurt glares at him.
“Sorry. It’s true, though.”
“Well,” sniffs Kurt. “Lucky for you, I’m choosing to take that as a compliment. Moving on,” he says, dropping his eyes back to the screen. “MCLA, MCLA… okay, we’ve got the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association…”
“Doubt it,” says Blaine.
“The… Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles? I don’t suppose he spent his college years indexing and restoring all the public murals in L.A?”
Blaine raises an eyebrow. “If he did, I don't think I'm ready to know about it.”
“And… oh, here we go. Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.”
Blaine sits up straighter, his pulse picking up speed. “Is… that it? Is it a small college, like my mom said?”
“Well, it’s not that small, but it…” Kurt trails off.
“What?”
“But it was quite small in the 80s. And it had a different name then, too.”
“What was it called?”
Kurt looks at Blaine meaningfully. “North Adams State College.”
“Oh my god,” whispers Blaine. “North Adams? As in…”
“Yes.”
“And Southview Cemetery - ”
“- is practically on campus,” finishes Kurt. “It’s a quarter mile down the road from the admissions office.”
Blaine closes his eyes, feeling the cool, quiet rush of air from his ceiling fan pass over his face. This is it. It’s all coming together. Kurt’s discovery has made this real, in a way that it hadn’t been before. It's not that he'd thought his dad was lying - and it's not that Blaine had thought he'd misinterpreted anything - but somehow knowing the specific location of where this man's body is decaying, under layers of hardened earth, is unsettling.
And knowing that it's so close to campus - knowing that this man must have walked past this cemetery time and time again, maybe even with Blaine’s father - and that he couldn't possibly have known that in the not-too-distant future his final resting place would be mere feet from where he was standing -
"Blaine?" asks Kurt gently, pulling him from his morbid musings.
"Yeah?"
"There's a directory for the cemetery on Find A Grave. It has a listing of all the, um... interments."
"Oh," says Blaine, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his chin on them. " How many are there?"
"There are 1,137. If you really think you want to find out - "
"I do," says Blaine automatically.
"In that case," says Kurt, "I'd say our best bet is for us to print out a list of the names. You can go through them and circle the likeliest candidates - you know, based on gender, year of birth, year of death, et cetera - and then I'll Google the names as we go. If we don’t find a match, we can look through the list again and widen our search parameters, and if we still haven’t found anything… well, we’ll have to think of something else. I know that's kind of time-consuming but I can't seem to think of a better way."
"No," says Blaine. "That sounds good. I don't mind doing research, do you?"
Kurt shakes his head. "I'm just as curious as you are now."
"All right," says Blaine, stepping off the bed. "Let me turn my printer on."
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This is how they spend the evening.
He can’t imagine what Kurt must be feeling, but Blaine feels as though this particular research project is slowly wringing him dry.
Each name Kurt researches makes Blaine’s heart beat faster - could this be the one? - and there is almost always a reason that it couldn’t possibly be the man in question. They end up creating a short list of names - the ‘could-be’ list - and the men on it are either people they don’t know enough about or people whose information doesn’t rule out the possibility of them being him.
The work itself is tedious, which is draining in its own way, and on top of everything else, there’s the inevitable sadness that comes with the sheer amount of death he’s facing. So many young men. He doesn’t think there’s a disproportional amount, but in a cemetery of 1,137 people, it still turns out to be a depressing number of names. He almost feels like a priest or a pastor, solemnly intoning names at a memorial service: William V. Balengar, he reads to Kurt. Philip Bianco. James Cavanaugh Campbell. Lester Francis Chenail. It feels decidedly strange, seeing these names printed out and reading them; some of these names may not have been spoken aloud by anyone in years. Blaine has a sudden macabre vision of skeletons stirring faintly in their coffins (“Yes? Did someone call me?”).
As he goes through the names, it becomes apparent that their candidate criteria include a broad range of men, owing to the fact that they know so little. Matthew Donovan, for example, had made the list; he’d been born nine years before his father and had died in 2010 at the age of 56. And Anthony Dorsey had been born two years after his dad, dying in 1989 at the age of 24.
But at 8:33, an hour and forty-one minutes after they’d started, Kurt looks up at Blaine and says in a slightly choked voice, “I think I found him.”
That short, softly-spoken statement sends Blaine's pulse sky-rocketing. He fumbles for the sheet below him and looks down at the name he’d read to Kurt a few minutes ago. “Which one?" he asks breathlessly. "Andrew McKenna?”
“Yes. I’m almost positive it’s him,” says Kurt. “Here’s his obituary; it was archived in a newspaper called The Greenfield Recorder. Do you want to read it?”
“I can’t right now,” says Blaine unsteadily. “Can you, please?”
“Sure,” says Kurt gently, clearing his throat. “Andrew B. McKenna, age 22 of Turners Falls, Massachusetts died Friday, August 2, 1985 at his parents’ home of complications from pneumonia.”
“Pneumonia? A 22-year-old?”
Kurt shakes his head. “I don’t know. That seems weird to me, too.” He keeps reading:
“Born in Greenfield, he was the son of Clarence and Patricia McKenna and was the brother of Robert McKenna and Kathleen McKenna Golec. Andrew had just completed his Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from North Adams State College in June, and was residing in the town of North Adams prior to his illness. At Turners Falls High School, he was a top student participating in National Honor Society and track and field. He was also a member of Blessed Sacrament Church, where he served in high school as an altar server. Burial will be private.”
Blaine lets out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “Okay,” he says slowly, trying to process what he’s just heard. “He definitely fits the criteria, but - I mean - are you sure?”
Kurt looks at Blaine sadly and extends a hand toward him. “Come here,” he says softly, almost under his breath.
Nerves thrumming in anticipation, Blaine slides across the bed next to Kurt, who angles the laptop toward him.
Blaine’s breath catches in his throat at the sight of this man. It’s a black-and-white photograph and Blaine’s sure it doesn’t do him justice, but even so - he’s beautiful. He’s smiling placidly, but his eyes are dark and full of life. He looks like he’s on the edge of breaking out into a grin, or like he’s just been told a joke and is trying to keep it together long enough to have his picture taken.
But as much as the sight of the picture unnerves him, it's not the reason why all the breath has been forced from his lungs. The reason for that is the caption beneath the photograph; just three simple words that he almost refuses to believe he's seeing:
Andrew Blaine McKenna.
He stares at the picture for so long that his eyes start to sting.
"Blaine?" asks Kurt tentatively. "Are you okay?"
"He told me," says Blaine hollowly, still staring at the screen, "that I was named for a character in a book he'd read in college."
"What book did he - ?"
"He said... that he couldn't remember the title or the plot anymore. He just remembered... liking the name."
"Blaine... "
"I've always thought was strange," he says, his voice sounding mild and detached to his own ears. "I used to worry when I was little. Like, what if Blaine had been this really evil, awful character and my dad hadn't remembered that? And when I got older..."
"Sweetheart." Kurt's voice is whisper-soft and soothing. Blaine feels like he could sink into it, but he refuses to let himself.
Blaine lifts his arm and gestures toward the laptop, the limb feeling oddly heavy. "I even tried to look up... online, I tried to find ..." He lowers his arm, shakes his head. "I didn't find anything," he whispers, his voice breaking on the last word.
He’s not sure whether it's the gentle pressure of Kurt’s hand on his shoulder that causes him to break down or if he'd started to break down first and Kurt had just been ready for it. But either way it happens - tears spilling down his face as he takes deep gulping breaths. He finds himself being clasped tightly against Kurt’s chest, the solid warmth of his body stifling the sound of Blaine’s crying and the wetness of his tears seeping into the material of Kurt’s shirt.
“Whatever happened," says Kurt as he rubs Blaine’s back,"they must have cared about each other very much.”
“Wh-why didn’t I know?” chokes out Blaine. “Why didn’t he tell me ”
Kurt smiles sadly. “I don’t know, sweetie. I’m sorry.”
“Fuck, he was just so young,” shudders Blaine, the statement barely intelligible, the words trapped between Blaine's mouth and Kurt's sternum. The rhythm of Kurt's heartbeat soothes him, a steady metronome by which he can control his own breaths and slow his racing thoughts. He pulls back from Kurt a little. “I need - I need to talk my dad. I have to talk to him.”
He feels Kurt’s body tense against him - but then he breathes out slowly, rubbing Blaine’s back with the strong span of his hand. “I understand. Do you want me to leave?”
Blaine feels himself trembling a little. “I think… yeah. Not - not because I want you to, but because I know I have to do this now. I’ll lose my nerve otherwise.”
Kurt tilts Blaine’s face up and kisses him swiftly on the mouth. “All right,” he says shakily. “I know things are bound to be… emotional, Blaine, but just please, please at least text me afterward. I won’t be able to sleep until I know you’re okay.”
“I will.”
A few quick, teary kisses later, Kurt is gone. Blaine’s room has never felt so still or silent, and he finds himself purposely making more noise than necessary as he carries his laptop from his bed to his desk and plugs it in. He stares at the picture on the screen as he clicks on File. He’s still staring at it as he clicks on Print.
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Blaine spends the next half-hour rehearsing what he’s going to say.
He even writes out a few notes to help him organize his thoughts, and he replays his main talking points over and over again in his mind.
It’s 9:15 on a Monday evening, which means that his dad will be downstairs watching TV until at least 10:00. If his mom is downstairs with him, he’ll ask his dad to come up to his room so they can talk alone. If his mom is upstairs reading in bed - her preferred weeknight wind-down activity - then Blaine will join his dad on the couch, ask him politely to shut the TV off, and start talking.
Just stick to the plan and you’ll be fine, he tells himself as he shuts his bedroom door behind him and heads down the staircase to the living room - and of course it turns out that his dad isn’t even in the living room, so phase one of the plan has already been shot to hell.
His mom is curled up on the couch with a bowl of her Weight Watchers popcorn, watching The Big Bang Theory. “Hey, Mom. Seen Dad around?”
She glances back toward him briefly. “I think he’s working in his den.”
“Thanks,” Blaine says shortly, considering his options.
Assuming his dad isn’t completely swamped with work, having the conversation in the den could actually work to Blaine’s advantage. It’s more private, for one thing, and the room is very much his dad’s territory, which means he’s less likely to feel caged or guarded.
He makes his way to the landing between the first and second floors that contains the den, a powder room, and a hall closet. Blaine stands outside the room for a minute, composing himself as best he can, and then raps firmly on the door.
“Lynn?”
Blaine clears his throat awkwardly. “Um. No.”
“Blaine?”
“Yeah. Can I come in?”
There’s the slightest of pauses. “Uh… yes. Come in.”
Blaine opens the door slowly, peering into the room.
His dad is seated at his desk, quickly stuffing a small stack of papers into a desk drawer. Blaine is sure the papers are work-related, and he’s equally certain that his dad isn’t trying to be covert about what he’s doing, but the gesture can’t help but annoy him. At the moment, it just seems to symbolize everything that’s wrong in his relationship with his father.
Even from a young age, Blaine’s parents had instilled in him a great respect for people’s privacy.
Each of the Andersons has their own space. His father has his den, his mother has her work-out room, and Blaine has his bedroom. It’s understood that these are personal spaces, not to be entered by the other two unless they’re given direct permission. In the Anderson household, the phrases I’d rather not talk about it or I’d prefer not to say are understood to signal the end of a discussion; even Blaine is afforded that privilege. No one wants to feel like they’re prying, or pushing, or making anyone else feel uncomfortable.
When someone says they don’t want to talk about it, you need to respect that. Don’t bother Mommy when she’s in her room. Daddy needs some alone time now, Blaine. It’s rude to ask questions about that kind of thing. That’s personal, Blaine. That’s private.
He hadn’t questioned it when he was younger. But he wonders now if it had been a conscious choice on his parents’ part. We won’t ask him any uncomfortable questions, he won’t ask us any uncomfortable questions, and we’ll all get along just fine.
Blaine’s thoughts are interrupted by his dad looking up at him, half in expectation and half in annoyance. “Yes?” he prods. “Can I help you?”
It takes every ounce of self-control not to break down at the sound of that distant, too-polite tone. Can I help you? Like he’s walking into a fucking store. Like he’s in a dentist’s office. Like he’s standing on a street corner lost and someone sees him looking around in confusion. Can I help you?
If the den had windows, the words of his carefully-planned speech would be soaring out of them right now. Blaine grasps the door handle tightly, pulls it shut behind him, plunks himself down in the chair on the opposite side of his father’s desk, and says with grim determination:
“Yes. I’m sorry to bother you, but this is important, Dad. I really want to talk to you.” He takes a deep breath and feels the blood pulse painfully in his wrists. “About Andrew.”
Blaine is prepared for a broad range of reactions - but not this one. Not his father raising an eyebrow and looking at Blaine with honest-to-god bewilderment on his face.
“Who’s Andrew?”
For a second, Blaine falters. Could they possibly have been wrong? But then he thinks about the staggering enormity of the odds - and of the indescribable swoop in his stomach he’d felt when he’d looked at the photograph - no. It’s him. It’s him.
Blaine tries again.
“Andy.”
His dad’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Blaine, I’m honestly not sure what you’re - ”
“Drew.”
The look that sweeps across his father’s face is nothing short of astonished. Every muscle in his body seems to tense; every bone seems to tighten and draw in on itself.
“Drew,” repeats Blaine, more quietly. “That’s… he was your friend, right? The one from college?”
His dad continues to look dazed. “How - Blaine - how?”
“I did a little research,” he says quickly, not wanting to elaborate. “I wanted us to be able to talk about him and I wasn’t sure how to start a conversation."
“I - you - ?” His dad is floundering; he’s utterly adrift. He looks the way Blaine’s been feeling for the past several days. “I don't even know where to - " There's a moment where he's someone else, someone not Blaine's father - and then he seems to gather himself together, reclaiming all the paternal authority he can muster. He draws himself up straighter in his seat, his eyebrows lifting and his jaw tightening perceptibly.
"As I assumed you gathered from the garage, Blaine, this is not something I’m comfortable talking about.”
I know you're not comfortable, thinks Blaine. Believe me, I know. That's the same thing you told me when I asked you about what Grandpa was like. It's also why I've had to learn everything I know about sex from the internet. It's why you cut off every conversation that even vaguely alludes to my being gay. It's why we can't talk about Kurt -
“Dad,” he says, leaning forward a little. “I know this is hard. But if we limit all our conversations to subjects we’re both comfortable with… what kind of a relationship is that? I have a lot of friends who can only talk to their dads about the weather or the news or sports and - and I just don’t want that to be us. We care about each other and we have things in common. I know we do.”
His dad is staring at him uncomprehendingly. “And you thought… that this would be a good starting topic?”
Blaine winces slightly. Well,when you put it like that.... He clears his throat awkwardly, trying to explain his rationale. "I - I just thought since you’d been friends with someone…who was like me…”
“Yes,” says his father, a little too quickly. “We were friends. Casual friends who shared a few classes and studied together once or twice. I was sorry to hear about… his death.”
Blaine’s heart sinks at what he’s being told, but he tries not to let it show. He also refuses to let his gaze drop away from his father’s face.
“Casual friends?” he echoes.
“Yes.”
Blaine's eyes are steady and searching. “He was in your classes? That’s how you knew him?”
“Yes.”
“And you never…? You weren’t close?”
His dad clenches his jaw tightly. “No.”
For reasons Blaine can neither understand nor explain, his dad's staunch denial of Andrew - Drew, he tells himself - feels like a staunch denial of him as well. It feels like his father is ashamed of them, like he's washing his hands of both of these not-right boys. Blaine feels an increasingly-familiar stinging behind his eyes. “Please don’t lie to me, Dad,” he begs in a choked whisper. “Not about this.”
“Blaine - ”
“He wasn’t just some random guy to you; I know he wasn’t.”
Feeling like he’s been completely hollowed out from the inside, Blaine reaches into his pocket and grips the obituary tightly between his shaking fingers. He quickly unfurls it and sets it down on the desk, shoving it toward his father. “Look at it,” he says with an unsteady voice, tears blurring his vision. “Look at the picture and tell me again that you never cared about him."
His dad looks down at the photograph - and then literally pushes his seat backward, away from it, pressing a hand to his mouth in shock and letting out a startled, pained cry.
Blaine scrambles to get out of his seat and over to him. “Dad - ”
“No - ” He holds a hand out, as if to ward Blaine off.
Blaine can’t see the picture, but he can recall it as easily as if it’s been branded into his memory: The handsome, dark-eyed boy smiling at the camera, with no awareness of what his future holds.
And in his mind’s eye, he can see the caption beneath the photograph: Andrew Blaine McKenna, 1963-1985.
“Blaine,” says his dad raggedly, “why would you - why on earth would you - ?” He swipes at his eyes with the back of his wrist and takes a deep, shuddering breath. When he finally, finally looks back up at his son, the light of understanding is in his eyes. “My god,” he whispers. “You know. You know about…?”
Blaine bites his lip. “I don’t know what I know, exactly. But I think…that at one point, he was your…?”
“… everything,” whispers his dad, sounding more exhausted than Blaine has ever heard him sound. “At one point, he was my everything.”
“Tell me,” Blaine begs, trying to blink back his tears and failing miserably. “Please. It’s not - I’ve been saying to myself that it’s curiosity, and maybe it is a little, but it’s so much more than that. Because whatever happened to the two of you, I know it has to do with how you feel about me. About who I am.”
His dad puts his elbows on the desk and buries his face in his hands. After a painfully long pause, he begins speaking, his voice sounding raspy and weak.
“In a way, Blaine,” he says, “it almost feels like none of it happened to me. It was a lifetime ago. I’ve relived it so many times, lying awake at night, but I never, never talk about it. It’s been so long and I feel so… disconnected…” He trails off, and Blaine can see him try to collect himself - ever the stoic.
“No one knew,” he continues quietly. “Literally not one person. When he died, I had… never grieved like that, I’d never known I was capable of grieving like that, but no one knew. I’d cut myself off from that life so completely that there was no one to comfort me or share memories of him or… ask how I was holding up. I couldn’t even process it. It didn’t feel real; it felt like I must have dreamed the whole thing. The closest I got was a nurse at a clinic. I went to get a… test done and I was just beside myself. And the nurse asked me what was wrong and I told her that …my ex-girlfriend had died suddenly and I just… broke down in the office. I’m sure I startled her badly.”
“What,” asks Blaine, throat dry, “did he die of?”
His dad presses his lips together in a thin line. “He was a young gay male in the 80s, Blaine.”
Blaine’s heart clenches. “Oh my god. He died of - ”
“AIDS. Yes.”
“And you - didn’t catch it, obviously?” It’s one question containing many implications.
“I tested negative.”
Blaine inhales sharply. There doesn’t seem to be enough air in the room for him. “So you’re not… straight?”
His dad stares unseeingly down at Drew’s picture. “Not entirely, it would seem.”
“And you…” Blaine runs a hand through his curls and tries to breathe as evenly as he can. “You never thought at any point that I deserved to know that? Not when I came out to you? Or after the... dance? Or when I told you about Kurt?”
“I’m not like you, Blaine,” he says. “It’s not something I can… talk about. Your mother doesn’t know, Blaine. No one knows and I’d very much like to keep it that way.”
He’d told himself to expect that answer. He’d prepared himself for it, and he’d told himself not to be hurt when it happened. But apparently he hadn’t done a very good job of listening.
“And Drew was the only…?” A shadow seems to pass across his father’s face every time he says the name. “He was the only…?”
“…the only what, Blaine?”
“I don’t know,” says Blaine wearily. “Boyfriend, I guess? He was your only boyfriend?”
“Yes. First, last, only.”
“And the only man you’ve ever cared about, in that way?”
His dad pauses. “In high school, I had a friend - but it was nothing. He wasn’t like you. Or me. It was one-sided, certainly.”
Blaine tries to process that fact; the simple fact that his father knows what it’s like to fall for a straight boy. If Blaine had known that when he was fourteen - god, the talks they could have had -
“Why did you transfer?” he blurts out suddenly. “Mom said she didn’t know. Did you and Drew have a fight?”
His dad laughs mirthlessly. “A fight would be one way of putting it. Drew and I had a meeting-place, in a grove of trees near Windsor Lake. We used to… be together there. It was stupid and reckless. And we paid for that recklessness the same way you and Steven did.”
Memories from the night in question break through the surface suddenly, unbidden and unwelcome. Blaine had thought he might end that night knowing the taste and touch of a boy's lips against his own. And instead he'd learned for the first time the blunt sharpness of a boy's elbow smashing into his stomach; the raw-boned pressure of a boy's knuckles slamming into his jaw; the feel of a boy's body on top of his, shoving him down against the concrete. Yes, Blaine had learned a lot about teenage boys that night.
He looks up abruptly when his dad begins speaking.
“Between the physical injuries and the rumors about the two of us… it all became too much for me," he intones slowly. "I took the coward’s way out. I transferred. I ran away and I never looked back.”
Blaine has the strangest sensation that he's watching himself in thirty years' time. This is the way I will look. These are the things I will tell my son or daughter. This is me.
“Do you think that’s what I am? You think when I transferred I was being a coward?” Blaine isn’t trying to be argumentative or challenging; he honestly wants to know.
His dad shakes his head. “I think you were fourteen years old, Blaine. That’s what I think."
“How old were you when it happened?” asks Blaine. “You couldn’t have been much older than I am now.”
“We weren’t,” says his father quietly. “We were both nineteen.” His breath hitches. “God, one minute we were just… and the next it was a nightmare. It was like I woke up in a nightmare.”
Blaine's vision blurs. "I know what that's like," he whispers.
His Dad reaches for the tissue box on his desk, handing one to Blaine and keeping one for himself. “I know you do," he says, his voice choked with emotion. "And Blaine, you can’t imagine what I felt, seeing you there in the hospital bed. It brought everything back, and it felt like I’d done it again, like I’d failed you the way I’d failed Drew. I thought maybe… I could fix things. Make life better for you.”
“You can’t. Not like that,” says Blaine, sympathetic but firm. “I’m not bi, Dad. I’m gay. I’m never going to have what you have, and that’s fine with me. I want what I have with Kurt. Is that - ?” Blaine tries to phrase this carefully. “You’ve never seemed to be especially fond of Kurt and I as a couple. Is - is this why?”
His dad nods slowly. “Please understand that I’m not ashamed of you, Blaine. But I meant it when I said that I wouldn’t choose this life for you. I’m glad that you can be proud of your orientation. But please respect that I just… can’t be. Not with you and not with myself. It’s difficult for me to associate this with anything other than danger. To me, it means… beatings and diseases and ostracism. It means...” His voice breaks, a choked, cracking syllable. “…a boy I loved being lowered underground in a casket, and my fourteen-year-old son in a hospital bed, and me drinking myself into a stupor every night when I was twenty-three. I tried to kill myself, you know. Or… it’s less that I tried to kill myself and more that I did things that could easily have killed me, and didn’t much care what happened.”
Mute horror envelops Blaine. How could he not have known?
He’s lived with his father his whole life. He’s been raised by him. Their bedrooms are across the hall. They share a home, they share a family, and they share seventeen years’ worth of memories. Half of the genes in Blaine’s body are identical to the genes in his father’s and how could he have had no idea?
His dad continues. “So the phrase gay pride is...” He laughs bitterly. “... an unfathomable oxymoron to me. I know you feel differently and I’m sorry. I really am.”
Blaine can't bear the guilt and shame he's seeing in his father's eyes. "God," he whispers, "I can’t imagine what you went through.”
“Yes, you can,” says his dad hollowly. “That’s the worst of it for me, Blaine. You can imagine it. You’ve already lived some of it yourself. The taunts, the comments, the… isolation. The violence. You haven’t met anyone living with HIV yet, but if you’re honestly planning on pursuing a music career as a gay male in New York City, then you will soon enough.”
“So you think my relationship with Kurt… puts me in danger,” says Blaine slowly. “That’s the issue?”
“Not - exactly,” he says tiredly. “It’s certainly safer to be in an exclusive relationship. I assume it’s exclusive?”
Blaine nods.
“Okay. Good,” his dad says. “So that’s safer. And Kurt seems like a nice boy. But I worry. He - seems to like drawing a certain amount of attention to himself.”
“And that’s the problem? Kurt would never put me in danger.”
“I’m not saying he’d mean to do it.”
“And I’m saying he wouldn’t do it even accidentally. We take really good care of each other. Kurt’s not reckless; he just doesn’t let people intimidate him. I couldn’t change that about him even if I wanted to, which I don’t. But besides that, is there anything we can do to make our relationship… easier on you?”
His dad stares at him evenly. “Well… not having sex near the hydrangea bushes would make things significantly easier on me.”
Blaine practically recoils. “What? Dad, first of all, Kurt and I were not having sex. We were just kissing.”
He holds his hands up in a surrendering gesture. “Fine. Noted. And your second point?”
A short pause follows that question. “I don’t know,” admits Blaine. “I don’t think I had one. Well - technically, I think we were closer to the forsythia bushes.”
“Also noted.”
“So that’s it, then? That’s the only thing we’ve done that’s upset you?”
His dad stares down at the picture again and looks up at Blaine with a pained expression. “Blaine, I’m honestly not sure what you want me to say.”
“Dad - ”
“Do you want me to say: ‘It would be helpful if Kurt looked a little less like Drew, because every time I see him in the half-light, I swear I’m seeing a ghost?’ Or ‘It would hurt less for me if the two of you didn’t look so in love?’ Or ‘I’d feel better if the two of you agreed to never go anywhere in public together?’ Because all of those statements are entirely true.”
Blaine shuts his mouth, opens it, and shuts it again.
“I’m sorry,” says his dad. “I’m sorry that I can’t be more supportive. I’m sorry that I can’t offer you any help or guidance in this area. The only thing I can really offer you is commiseration. If you ever want to talk about how cruel and unforgiving the world is… that I can help with.”
Blaine gives him a tired smile. “It’s more helpful than you’d think, actually. Just knowing that you know how hard it can be. How hard it is.”
“I do. I do know that,” says his dad. He picks up the obituary and holds it out toward Blaine.
“Don’t you want to keep it?” he asks hesitantly.
Their eyes meet as the paper is handed over. “No, Blaine. I don’t.”
Blaine takes the photograph and realizes that he’s being dismissed. “Thank you,” he tells his dad. “This was… well, not nice, I guess, but it was…”
“…necessary?” his dad asks. “Maybe it was. I don’t know.”
“Did it… feel good at all to talk about Drew? I mean, it’s been so long since you’ve been able to.”
“If Kurt died,” his dad says harshly, “do you think there would ever be a point where it felt good just to talk about it?”
Blaine’s blood freezes in his veins at the thought of it. “Not - not in the short term,” he says cautiously. “But in school, we learned the stages of the grieving process and - ”
His dad’s eyes flash. “I’m well acquainted with the grieving process, thank you.”
“I - but - if you never talk about it - ”
“We just did talk about it.”
“But don’t you think maybe - ?”
“What I think,” says his father, jerking suddenly out of his seat and standing upright, “is that I’ve suffered enough because of a damn mistake I made thirty years ago.”
“Dad…”
“Blaine - you’re my son, and I care about you. If knowing about… this… has been helpful for you, then I can force myself to be glad we talked about it. But I’m telling you that this is very painful for me. And if you bring it up again? I’ll know you’re doing it either to be cruel or to satisfy your own morbid curiosity.”
Blaine chokes back a lump that’s forming in his throat. “I never meant… I was just trying to understand, that’s all.”
“I know,” says his dad. “But some things just can’t be understood. There’s no explanation, there’s no lesson to be learned. Sometimes things just - ”
Blaine’s cell phone goes off in his pocket. It’s Bad Romance, which is Kurt’s ringtone. Blaine clutches the phone like a life preserver, suddenly desperate for an excuse to leave the room.
“I should take this,” he says, trying to sound apologetic.
“Go ahead.”
“I’ll talk to you later?”
His dad nods and then looks pointedly at the phone. Blaine gives him a brief half-smile and exits the room, a dozen emotions coursing through him as he heads up the stairs and takes the call.
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“Sorry, I couldn’t wait. Is everything okay?” Kurt asks, voice clipped and high-pitched.
“More or less,” replies Blaine wearily.
“And what’s the… verdict?” asks Kurt uncertainly.
“Well,” says Blaine grimly, as he peels his socks off and tosses them into his hamper. “He’s not coming out anytime soon, either. Between my dad, Karofsky, the intervention I tried to stage for that guy in my history class, and that time at Cedar Point with Santana, my record stands at… 0 for 4.”
“At least you’re consistent. And at least you’re trying.”
Blaine shakes his head in frustration. “Kurt… am I stupid to hope that things will be different? Better, I mean, for our generation? And even better for the one after? Sometimes it just seems like wishful thinking. Is it?”
Probably,” Kurt concedes. “But to be honest, your naïve optimism is one of the reasons I keep you around. I find it charming.”
Blaine smiles, letting Kurt’s voice settle him back into himself. “Kurt Elizabeth Hummel,” he says steadily, “have I ever told you that you’re my everything?”
“Um. Not to my recollection?”
“Well. You are.” Blaine can practically see Kurt blushing over the phone.
“Thanks,” Kurt says quietly. “Now tell me what happened. I’ve been dying to know.”
This is how they end the evening.
They talk until their voices are hoarse and they leave their phones on as they finally drop off to sleep, each boy placing his cell on the pillow next to his head.
There is so much they don't know in this moment.
The year is 2011. The future beckons invitingly and they both want to run toward it as fast as their legs will carry them.
They both think they'll be famous, and it turns out only one of them is right.
Kurt has no idea that the Kiss Me, Kate soundtrack on the nightstand next to him will one day have a home on his and Blaine's CD rack, wedged alphabetically between Blaine's copy of Katy Perry's Greatest Hits and a copy of Kristin Chenoweth: Some Lessons Learned that they'll both swear was originally theirs.
And Blaine can't possibly know that the guitar leaning against his bed will one day make its way around the world, accompanying its owner to New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and Milan. It will be played on expensive beds in posh hotels and on balconies that look out over foreign, unfamiliar vistas, and the sound of it will never - never - fail to make Kurt smile.
They don't know that gay marriage will be legalized for the entirety of the United States in 2027. At the time of the law's passage, only seven states won't have enacted it, and Ohio will be one of those seven. It will be an ugly, bitter fight - and even though neither Kurt nor Blaine nor their four-year-old son Max will be living in Ohio at the time, they will turn on the news and watch as their former neighbors, colleagues, teachers, and classmates list reason after reason that Kurt and Blaine shouldn't be allowed to have what they have, and they will hold each other on the couch and blink the tears back. However long they've dreamed of living in New York, they are born-and-bred Ohio boys and it will hurt, god, it will hurt to see people's hate laid bare like this.
They have no idea right now that the AIDS vaccine will be discovered by a scientist in Norway in 2031. There will be a minor outcry raised by the right-wing in the U.S. (Allowing your teenager to receive this vaccination will encourage rampant promiscuity!) but it will be largely ignored by a country whose new TV obsession is a reality show where the audience watches horny college students kiss members of both sexes, and then tries to guess whether they're gay, straight, or bi. ( "You can catch 'Freshman Orientation' on Wednesdays at eight! Watch the make-outs and spot the fake-outs!")
Kurt and Blaine will be overjoyed when the vaccine is found, but it will never mean to them what it will mean to Nathan. And it will never mean to their son what it will mean to Kurt and Blaine. They'll notice it when they're filling out medical forms for his exclusive private high school. Max will gloss over it, checking the vaccination list off the chart: Diphtheria, Tetanus, MMR, HPV, Hepatitis, HIV, Typhoid, Polio. He won't understand, not really. To him, HIV will be something you wouldn't want to catch, certainly, but you're no more likely to catch it than you are to catch Polio or Typhoid. It will be something old people died of - and it will be just one more box to check off on one more form that will take him one step closer to high school.
Speaking of high school -
Kurt will walk down the halls of McKinley again in a few short weeks, head held high and fashion-fabulous, and he'll have no idea that decades in the future, the floors and lockers and windows will be bright and beautiful. There will be an entire wing of McKinley High School dedicated exclusively to the arts. He'll finance it himself, and this section of hall will be called The Kurt Hummel Runway. The kids that are shoving him into lockers and throwing him in dumpsters - and the rest of them, the ones who sit by and watch it happen and do nothing - will one day tell their children that they went to high school with Kurt Hummel. Their children will stare up at them ("Really?") and they'll smile awkwardly back and they won't quite meet their children's eyes.
And Blaine can't possibly know that because of the conversation he had with his father tonight, a fourteen-year-old boy in Topeka, Kansas - a boy who is quaking and closeted and who could never have afforded higher education on his own - will be able to attend the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in four years time. Brendan J. Kirkland will be the first recipient of the Drew McKenna Memorial Scholarship for LGBTQ Youth, sponsored by the Anderson family of Westerville, Ohio.
The two boys curled up on their beds - wanting nothing more than to be bracketed around the other - don't know any of this, and they wouldn't know what to make of it even if they did. They shut their eyes, comforted by the sound of the other's breathing reaching out to them through the phone's speaker, a light caress into their ear.
Kurt falls asleep dreaming of the day when he and Blaine will be older; the day when they’ll share a bed, a home, and a life together, and can do all the things they’ve promised each other they’ll do.
Blaine falls asleep dreaming of two boys kissing in a moonlit grove of trees who had once wished for that same thing, and who had each ended up with something very different.
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Fall 2041
The last of autumn’s leaves are clinging to their branches.
It’s November at the Massachusetts University of Liberal Arts, and two boys are traversing the campus footpaths in the dimming light of dusk, speaking quietly but animatedly to one another:
“…which one’s Marco again?” asks a sandy-haired boy in a lilting southern drawl.
“I know I’ve told you about him,” replies a red-haired boy, his voice high-pitched and frustrated. “He’s this catty little twink who lives in the Church Street dorms. He went to Bellamy with me and he was, like, unbelievable at our prom. He was walking around like, ‘Oooh, make sure not to spill anything on my kilt. It’s a Kurt Hummel original.’ And I’m just like, ‘Baby-doll, do you really think I can’t tell a Kurt Hummel kilt from a Devon Lynnwood?’ I was seriously so pissed when I heard he was coming here, too.”
“Yeah, I remember now. Devon’s going out with him?”
“Let’s not discuss it. It’s entirely too tragic. Fuck, it is freezing, Ryan.”
“We’re almost there.”
“Almost where? You haven’t even told me - oh, no, no, no - you’re taking me to the graveyard?”
“I’m taking you by the graveyard,” says Ryan as he guides them past a gate with a sign that reads Southview Cemetery. The lettering is ornate, but the sign needs to be re-painted; the grounds aren’t as well-maintained as they once were.
“Is it much farther?”
“Maybe ten minutes.” He digs his phone out of his pocket. “I can look it up and let you know for sure.”
“Nah, I trust you.”
They spend the next few minutes walking through the forest in companionable silence. Ryan has to help Jayson (city boy that he is) down a steeper section of hill, and they’re both forced to struggle through a tangle of briars at the edge of the clearing.
“Here,” breathes out Ryan finally once they cross the thicket, and Jayson bites back the whine that had been building in the back of his throat.
Both boys stare out at the sight in front of them. They’re at the far edge of Windsor Lake, looking up at a silver-crescent moon shimmering above them, the light from it spilling out across the icy water. A copse of trees surrounds them; a cluster of sturdy oaks and maples and chestnuts whose naked branches are twisting and stretching toward the dark-blue, cloudless sky.
Ryan half-expects Jayson to make a snappish, unimpressed remark, but the boy next to him has fallen utterly still and silent. If not for the sight of Jayson’s breath, visible in the frigid late-autumn air, Ryan couldn’t have even sworn he was breathing.
“Jayse?” he says softly after a minute or so. “Is everything - ?”
“Sssh,” the boy answers.
After another few minutes of silence, Ryan finds himself blinking back tears from the whip-sharp wind stinging at his eyes and face.
“How…” comes Jayson’s hushed, breathless voice. “…did you find this place?”
Ryan swallows. “I spent a lot of time walking in the woods last year. I - it took me a while to make friends and I missed North Carolina like crazy. This spot was kind of an accident. It’s past the edge of campus and it’s a bitch to get to, so…”
Jayson’s voice is still awed. “Do you think anyone else knows about it?”
Ryan shrugs. “I’ve been here a few times and I’ve never seen footprints or anything. It’d be a good make-out spot, too, when the leaves are on the trees. You’d be pretty hard to see through all the branches. Not that I’m suggesting…” Ryan blushes and ducks his head a little, a shy gesture Jayson has found adorable from the start.
“Shut up and kiss me,” says Jayson, grinning.
Ryan’s eyes widen. “Uh - did you hear the part about the leaves needing to be on the trees?”
Jayson pulls the glove off his left hand, gently pulls off Ryan’s right glove, and twines their fingers together. “I don't have anything to hide,” Jayson tells him steadily. “Do you?”
Ryan stares searchingly at him for the span of several seconds. “No,” he says finally, stepping forward just as Jayson tilts his head up, their lips crashing swiftly together.
They kiss under an open, cloudless sky; they kiss under a canopy of bare-branched trees that conceal little of what surrounds them; they kiss with urgency and affection, their eyes shut and trusting against the coming night.
They kiss in a changed world.
FIN