Waiting for a Happy Ending - Part Two A
Title: Waiting for a Happy Ending
Author: firefly_ca
Pairing,Character(s): Kurt/Blaine, with appearances by Stevie and the Evans family, the Andersons, and large swaths of Glee clubbers (New Directions and Warblers)
Rating: NC-17 for disturbing themes, scenes, etc.
Word Count: TBD - Part Two is 17K
Spoilers: All of S2, up to 3x02
Summary: AU. Blaine Anderson lived under another name for almost nine years with an abusive man he was forced to pretend was his father. He always thought his own family had given up on him, but now that he's found out the majority of his life was spent believing a lie, he has to try to reconcile the life he had with the life that was taken away from him. Sequel to Looking for a Happy Ending.
Note: Huge thanks to my betas LoonyLevicorpus and callmerayray for taking the fic and trying to help me avoid stupid typos and things that make no sense this time around. Any mistakes you find are all from last-minute edits I made before I posted. Because sometimes I can't leave good enough alone.
A/N: I've given up trying to make sense of Blaine's age because this show's character continuity drives me nuts. For this fic, he is Kurt's age, and Kurt at any rate is going into senior year. The end.
Also, there are now spoilers from the early episodes of season three, which I hadn't planned on and as a result never warned you about, but season thee Quinn suddenly showed up on Blaine's doorstep as I was writing and she won't leave. I think she wants someone to fix her clusterfuck of a storyline (yeah, I said it). I'll see what I can do ;)
Apologies if I misrepresent True Blood. My betas and I don't watch it so I gave myself a crash course, but I don't know how accurate it is.
EDIT: Eep! I almost forgot, but if you've never heard it before, the song future Kurt sings is "I've Got a Little List". Unfortunately it's almost impossible to find a version without updated lyrics, but the good thing is every version you find is funny.
Some Day
Kurt tells him that his biggest failing is his complete and total inability to pay attention to the world around him.
"When I need to know what to get for the friend we haven't spoken to in six years for a birthday present, I can ask you and you'll come up with something that ends up in happy crying every single time," he says. "But I ask you why the SWAT team evacuated half your building yesterday and you just thought everyone took an early lunch."
In Blaine's defence, that only happened one time, and he'd had his headphones on so he wouldn't be distracted from writing a very important fundraiser speech at the time. Still, Kurt has a point, and Blaine is never more aware of that fact than he is when he realizes they've decided it's time to start a family. It's not a decision they reach lightly, but still, it would be a lie to say that Blaine was aware of exactly how far along they were in the entire decision making process.
Blaine finally catches up to everyone else one evening not long after Kurt starts rehearsals for his first significant original role Off-Broadway. Everything is still early stages, but there's already talk of it going all the way to Broadway, something Kurt refuses to acknowledge out loud, which means that there's a good chance the rumours have some weight to them. Blaine is very happy for him, but he's also going a little crazy being around him, because Kurt is nervous. Very, very nervous and nervousness in Kurt always leads to something Blaine likes to call "Stress Singing," which is nowhere near as much fun as it sounds. It involves copious amounts of angry, frustrated bursts of Barbra Streisand medleys or random musical numbers whenever he forgets a line, or can't hit a note in just the right way, or when he gets a note to change something about his performance. At first it's always funny, but after a while it devolves into a frustrating and pathetic display that Blaine would sell a kidney to put an end to.
This is where they currently are in the stress cycle when Kurt comes storming into the kitchen where Blaine has been making a grocery list. Appropriately and terrifyingly enough, he's singing that weird song from The Mikado about the people on the executioner's list, and he's put enough thought into it to come up with his own lyrics. He looks like he's finding it just a little bit too cathartic to be normal.
"When we make babies, we're using my gene pool," Blaine tells Kurt, bluntly. "This bursting into song nonsense is alright when you're an artistic soul or whatever, but if we have a son who dreams of accountancy, he'll be screwed."
Ordinarily Kurt would laugh or throw an avocado at Blaine's head in retaliation or something, but now he just stops in his tracks and looks at Blaine in disappointment.
"We're not adopting?"
It's Blaine's turn to stop in his tracks.
"What?" he says. Kurt shrugs.
"You care so much about adoption, I thought it's what we're doing."
"Oh. Well, I never wanted you to feel like you had to," Blaine says. "You've never brought it up so I thought we'd wait for a while anyhow. It has to be something both of us are ready for, you know? You can't bring a kid into a family if you're only half ready."
He doesn't specifically say, "You can't bring an older, traumatized kid into a family if you're only half ready" but he's hoping Kurt will pick up on that part by himself, because Blaine doesn't know if he can handle the idea of adopting a brand new baby with no problems when there are so many children out there who need good homes because someone else screwed them up. He knows people think it's weird that all the fundraising and public speaking that he does focuses just as much on raising awareness about adoption issues as it focuses on child abduction, but he can't help it.
He's the first one to agree to talk about programs that work at finding ways to let kids in trouble know how to find help, or to petition for more effective monitoring of criminals by creating sophisticated sex offender registries that don't classify people who urinate in alleyways as synonymous with people who rape five-year-olds, but when it comes right down to it, he's never forgotten how he felt when he thought no one wanted him. He remembers waking up some mornings and feeling completely empty inside, not because of what Tom was doing to him sexually, but because he knew he wasn't good enough for anything else. He knows what it's like to let yourself be trapped in a place because you think you'll never find anything better, so long-term foster care and adoption programs are kind of a really big deal for him.
He's been working as a spokesman for both adoption awareness foundations and children's rights organizations for almost three years now and he's met enough kids to know that if he and Kurt adopt, they'll never get a baby. He's never mentioned this to Kurt, though, whose life is always so impossibly chaotic that any sort of serious planning about kids seems stupid, but it hasn't stopped him from thinking about it on his own. A lot. He has no idea why he thought Kurt wouldn't be doing the same thing.
"Why would you think I don't want to adopt?" Kurt asks, so incredulously it makes Blaine uneasy. That tone only ever comes out when he's missed something he's going to get in trouble about missing.
"You never said anything," he says, quieter than usual, like making Kurt strain to hear will magically make him less frustrated.
"I ask for recommended reading from your job all the time!" Kurt says. "Blaine, why would I be asking you to bring me books about the logistics of adopting troubled pre-adolescents if I wasn't fully expecting to do that very thing once we've finally made the space in our lives to do it?"
"I thought you were being supportive?" Blaine tries.
This does earn him an avocado to the head, which he catches and begins to peel almost on autopilot, so he can make apology guacamole and pita chips. Kurt will have to make the chips, as usual, because Blaine always gets distracted and burns them, but hopefully it's the thought that counts.
"When will we have space?" Blaine asks a little later when they're sitting down at the table.
"Two years," Kurt says almost at once.
Blaine raises his eyebrows but Kurt only shrugs.
"All that paperwork takes years to finalize, and they make you go to classes and get background checks and meet people who get to decide if you can take it..."
He trails off when he realizes Blaine is staring at him.
"What?"
"When were you planning to let me in on this?" he asks.
Kurt snorts and grabs the chips and guacamole, walking away without saying a word. Blaine calls his mother.
"I don't know why I'm in trouble," he says as soon as she picks up. He doesn't bother to say hello. They're all used to these kinds of conversations. Even Finn has gotten used to them, because even Finn is better at noticing things than he is, and Finn lacks so much self-awareness Blaine has actually seen him go an entire day wearing two left shoes without realizing it. Whatever is going on now, Mom is bound to know more about it than he does.
"Oh honey, really?" She says once he's finished. She sounds sad, like she sounds when she tells him about their newest pet - a dog who is so stupid they've had to put padding against the one wall in the house that he can never seem to remember exists. "You two talk about family all the time."
"When?" Blaine demands.
"What do you think is happening when the two of you sit down and talk about the best schools to send your kids to, or when you come up with house rules and curfews? You've even asked us how we'd feel if you tried to get them to call us Lola and Lolo. And asked us to be emergency contacts."
"But those weren't real plans," Blaine protests. "I mean, yeah we've made some practical decisions for when we're both ready, but it was all conjecture. Castles in air or whatever."
"Oh my God, Blaine," Cynthia cuts in and Blaine wonders how long she's been listening. "Castles in air are, 'What colour will the bedroom be?' or, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we raised a future president?' They are not 'Let's get some good therapist referrals from my co-workers, just in case.'"
Blaine can't deny that she has a point, he'd just never thought about it the right way before. He dutifully lets himself get berated a while longer before he says goodbye and finds Kurt, who is back to running lines in the bedroom.
"What did they say?" He asks, because he's used to how these failures of communication work themselves out after all the practise they've gotten.
"That I'm a dumbass, basically," Blaine says as he sits next to Kurt on the bed and leans his forehead on Kurt's back. "Has it ever occurred to you that I might be too emotionally stunted to raise a hurt kid?"
He can feel Kurt's shoulders move a little as he laughs.
"You're not as bad when you're in the thick of it. You've always been better than me at extended crisis, and we'll have plenty of that, so how about you help me with the bad times and I help you with the good times? That's teamwork, right?"
"I can't believe I didn't sort this out," Blaine says. "I've been trying to figure out how to talk to you about it for real, but subtly. So you wouldn't feel forced into anything."
"I wish I could say I was more surprised," Kurt says, and Blaine can tell when he's being laughed at. He decides he doesn't mind at all when Kurt adds, "I've been thinking we should ask one of your co-workers for the names of some good classes that help you prepare to adopt. I've been thinking about references, too."
"Can you take a break?" Blaine asks suddenly, lifting his head and looking over Kurt's shoulder at the marked up script.
"Probably," Kurt says. "Why?"
"I don't think being gay is a good enough reason to throw away a perfectly good tradition," Blaine says, snatching Kurt's script and tossing it onto the night table.
"What do you mean?" Kurt asks, before Blaine starts grabbing at the bottom of his shirt, trying to get it untucked and off as quickly as possible without getting crucified for popping a button.
"Sex, Kurt," he says impatiently. "You're doing that thing where you make me want to do dirty, nasty things to you, and families just aren't as good unless they start out with two people fucking."
Kurt starts to make a sarcastic comment about the death of romance but for once he's the one who gets distracted before he has a chance to finish.
***
For Now
With the exception of the day his cast finally comes off, Kurt is the best thing about an remarkably bad summer. It doesn't seem right that Blaine's first summer back with his family should be so terrible, but it really is. Each new day comes with a sense of trepidation, because Blaine never knows when he's going to find out some new piece of information that sends him into yet another tailspin. Like the day he finds out Tom is pleading guilty to kidnapping and statutory rape but not guilty to just about everything else, which means Blaine will probably have to get on a witness stand and tell a room full of people about every little thing Tom did to him. He wants to crawl into a hole somewhere and never come back out again, but his parents are seething.
"That sick bastard is just saying it because he thinks he can get away with telling people it was consensual," his dad says to him one day. "He's trying to make you into a liar, like he really thinks the world doesn't see right through him."
"I think a lot of people believe him," Blaine says, shrugging when his dad looks at him incredulously.
"Blaine there's no way you wanted any of that," his dad says in a voice that makes it clear it's not open for discussion.
Blaine thinks about all the times where he was the one who made the first move during the last year and says nothing. He may not have wanted it when he was little, but he sure didn't fight very hard when he got older. He knows it won't make him look good to anyone when they really think about it, least of all his father, but he ignores the unpleasant feeling in his stomach and tries not to think about it as he goes back to texting Kurt on his new cell phone. His mom finally went out and picked one up for him after telling him she was getting sick and tired of him acting like he was doing something wrong when they caught him using the landline.
"If it will make you feel better having your own phone, that's what we'll do," she said. "We'll get you a plan so you can talk to your friends as long as you want without it costing any extra. You're allowed to have a life now that you're back home, Blaine. We want you to talk to your friends and to spend time with the people you care about. This is what we've wanted ever since you were taken away."
The phone isn't as good as his old one, but it's so much better than nothing, and the plan is the same, so he doesn't have to worry about running up any bills because he's texting Kurt more than he's talking to his family. Which he is. Because texting with Kurt is also better than talking with his father.
Blaine doesn't know how to deal with his dad. He loves him and he loves that he's so different from Tom, but his dad is so serious compared to his mother it throws Blaine off-kilter when they talk. He can't get a good read on him and it scares Blaine a little. His dad is also very intense and even though he's never gotten mad at Blaine, there are some days when Blaine can literally hear him shouting from every room in the house. It doesn't happen a lot but whenever it does it's always about Blaine, and something else that's happened with Tom. When Tom's bail is set at a ludicrously high amount and Blaine is back to sleeping on the couch again because he can't stop worrying about what will happen if Tom somehow finds a way to post it, his father rants about the inadequacies of the American Justice System until Cynthia starts crying. He yells when Detective Warren tells him Tom says the sex didn't start until last year, and when he finds out that Tom is telling everyone the reason he decided to take Blaine from his dad in the first place was he saw him hurting Blaine that day in the mall.
That Tom might be able to post bail is terrifying for Blaine, but in the end it's just fear that he's feeling, and Blaine is used to fear. But the stuff Tom is saying about his dad makes him feel sick. His dad doesn't deserve to be dragged into the middle of this thing between the two of them. Tom is angry at Blaine for leaving and he's taking it out on the people Blaine cares about by making up terrible lies in the hopes that someone will listen, but Blaine's certain his father would never hit him and doesn't want anyone to even entertain the possibility. Even when he sees him angry, his dad never even makes so much as a single violent gesture to anyone or anything. Blaine's been around violence for most of his life, and he knows what a person looks like when they're out of control. His dad is not that person. Not that it stops Blaine from flinching whenever his dad is on a tear and starts to edge into Blaine's personal space. He tries hard not to, especially when he sees how devastated his father looks the first time he catches on to what's happening, but knowing someone won't hurt you and feeling it are two different things, and Blaine's just not there yet. Tom had gotten so bad in the last few years he can't help it and no matter what his dad thinks about it, it has nothing to do with him at all. Blaine flinches around everyone.
He's even caught himself flinching at Mr. Hummel's garage, one time when he was there with Kurt, right after a mechanic broke a part he'd been trying to install into a customer's car. The difference between Mr. Hummel and Blaine's father is that when Mr. Hummel glanced over and saw Blaine frozen in his tracks, he'd only calmly shouted at his employee to take his break and come back when he was ready to behave like an adult. Blaine's dad hadn't been able to look him in the eye for a week, until his mother had given up and grimly marched the entire family into therapy. She signed Blaine up for one-on-one sessions too, even though he keeps telling her he doesn't need them and she's wasting her money. Blaine hates going to see a psychologist. It feels like everything he says is being scrutinized and used against him and no one ever tells him why. He never knows if he's saying the right thing and even though he knows they always say everything is confidential, he feels like if he starts to admit things, somehow his parents will find out about it. In the end he never even tries to talk to her about what he's feeling, just sits there and politely answers the superficial questions while pointedly ignoring the important ones. And if he can't talk to the professionals, he certainly can't talk to his father, either.
Blaine thinks his dad wants to talk to him, but he always feels pushed to talk about things he doesn't want to talk about. He can tell his father desperately wants conclusive proof about Blaine's sexual orientation, like he's always two minutes away from flat-out asking if Blaine is gay or not. He's forever making comments about girls while he tries unsuccessfully to look disinterested in the response, like it wouldn't be a big deal if Blaine wasn't interested, but whenever anyone so much as hints that Blaine might not be 100% straight, he bristles. Blaine's palms sweat a lot when he talks to his father.
He's okay with the hugs and the encouraging, manly, "my boy's a man now" claps on the shoulder, in fact he kind of likes them. His dad is always a little too awkward about it, like he's not used to demonstrative affection but isn't about to waste the opportunities now that he finally has them again, but Blaine still wishes he'd do it more often. He tries his hardest not to let himself analyze how he feels because it's so weird, but it's nice to be able to have that decidedly masculine contact without having to worry about it escalating into something else. But talking to his dad, who watches Blaine with a sombre expression as he worriedly tries to find the smallest hint of something wrong, leaves Blaine's nerves frayed around the edges, because he knows that if his dad ever sees anything "wrong," whatever it is, it will automatically turn into a Big Problem. And knowing Blaine's luck, the problem his dad finds is likely going to have something to do with how he's completely indifferent about girls.
"He doesn't have any problems with me," Kurt offers one day when Blaine is over and they're sitting together on Kurt's bed looking at something stupid on Facebook. "And I'm so gay I practically have my own private Lady Gaga following me around, catering to my needs like my own little helper monkey."
The conversation inevitably gets derailed for a while as they try to work out the logistics of owning a "Gaga monkey," but eventually they make their way back to the depressing topic at hand.
"A lot of people are okay with queer until it's their own kid who comes out of the closet."
Kurt doesn't have anything encouraging to say about that because they both know it's true, and like it or not, Blaine's dad seems more and more likely to be one of those people, especially after what happens the first time he's taken to meet his grandmother.
"You have to meet her again. It's not right that you haven't seen Lola yet," his mother tells him. "Even if you have spoken with her."
They'd been holding off on house calls until Blaine started to settle into his own home a little better, but now that his cast is off and his ribs are almost completely normal again, the grace period is officially over. Blaine decides that's alright because all in all, it's not a terrible thing to be stuck going to see his only surviving grandparent anyhow. Besides, he thinks there's a good chance he likes Lola Grace. She's been slowly recovering from a broken leg ever since Blaine first came back and as a result still isn't fit for travel outside of her senior's residence, but Blaine's already had several awkward phone conversations with her, the worst being the one where he accidentally let it slip that he thought her first name was actually "Lola."
"It's not my name, it's who I am," she scolds. "You need to take a better interest in your family, Blaine. You've forgotten too much. You need to improve your attitude."
Blaine agrees with her until she stops giving him a hard time because she's old, harmless, and just a little bit beyond connecting her thought processes to what's happening in the world around her. She's feisty and proud of her heritage and obviously wants her descendents to feel the same way. It's important enough to her that no matter how many times Blaine's parents step in to gently remind her that Blaine hasn't so much forgotten about being part Filipino as he's been severely encouraged not to think about it, she can never quite hold on to that piece of information when she starts to talk about how bad he's been for forgetting all the Tagalog she's taught him over the years.
Still, Blaine is actually looking forward to seeing her, at least somewhat. She's so blunt it makes his skin crawl, but she always laughs when she talks to him and even though he can't remember her specifically, her accent makes him feel like he's stepped into a time machine. When he talks to her, it's like he's suddenly seeing the world from the perspective of someone still too small to see on top of the kitchen counter and whose ignorance has tricked him into believing that the world is a wonderful place. It makes the painful frankness almost worth it.
Or so he thinks before he actually does go meet her in person. Which is when he experiences what it's like talking to her while his parents are in the room with him and can actually hear what she's saying instead of just listening to his side of the conversation and making guesses. One minute he's sitting next to her, getting another lecture on how poor his language skills have become while his parents try not to let their boredom show (Cynthia has long since abandoned them to go play with the little girl visiting her grandfather down the hall), and the next minute she's putting a wrinkled hand on Blaine's knee as she sympathetically says,
"I watch on the news about you, you know."
She clucks a little and shakes her head. He can see his parents start to tense up, like they're waiting to run in and do damage control.
"The things they say about you!" She shakes her head in disapproval. "One said you were there because you liked men! You know. Because you're a gay? What a disgusting thing to say."
Blaine just stares at her with his mouth hanging open until his Dad starts into action.
"Grace," he says, skipping right past the Lola. "You cannot say things like that. That is completely inappropriate and uncalled for."
His grandmother doesn't even flinch.
"I know," she says, patting Blaine's knee again. "But there's no point shouting about it, Jason. Besides, there's nothing to worry about now. I took care of the awful man myself. I wrote a letter and told him it was none of his business. Blaine is allowed to like other young men without bringing that gago into it."
She smiles at Blaine, who doesn't smile back, instead opting to continue staring blankly at the wall.
"Gay boys aren't all bad. I'm sure you're fine."
"Grace," his dad says again, and he sounds livid. Blaine's never seen him this upset before, but then no one's called him out on being gay with his dad in the room before, either. "This is not appropriate."
His lola turns hard eyes onto his father and points an accusing finger at him.
"You need to clean up your act," she lectures. "The world is passing you by, Jason. I used to be like you, but do you know what I did? I bought cable. I subscribe to HBO, young man, and now I know how the world works."
"I have to go check on Cynthia, excuse me," his mother semi-gasps out before getting up and leaving the room.
Lola is all smiles again when she looks back at Blaine.
"The girls on our floor like to get together every week and watch that show about the vampires. Crafting club has gotten very angry sometimes, now that Eric is half-gay and a lot of us want him to start seeing that black fellow with the nice eyes. If neither mind sleeping with other men, why should I? Anyhow, I think they would make a very attractive couple. Do you have a boyfriend, Blaine?"
Blaine might have been mortified by the entire exchange, but when Kurt hears about it the next day he laughs until he's wheezing, air hissing in and out of his lungs like he's sprung a leak.
"It wasn't that funny," Blaine says, not even bothering to hide his annoyance. "Do you know how uncomfortable it is to have to break a frail old lady's heart by refusing to admit that you like cock?"
"Hey," Kurt says, calming down enough to nudge him in a gentle reprimand. "Stop trying to make who you are sound like something you need to keep hidden under a mattress. It's not dirty, it's just who you are. That's why your grandmother wanted to talk to you about it. She wants you to be happy, that's all."
"That's sounds really nice, Kurt," Blaine says, unimpressed. "But she watches True Blood. I think she's less concerned about the beauty of love than she is watching hot vampires sleep with each other."
Kurt snickers again.
"Do you think she writes Twilight slash, too?"
"Hey!" Blaine says, snatching a pillow off the bed to throw in Kurt's face. "Don't talk about my grandmother like that. She's got taste, Kurt."
"Well, she does seem to like you, so you may have a point," Kurt says, smiling as he reaches over to pull Blaine down onto the bed next to him. Blaine is more than happy to comply, and Kurt seems interested enough, so he goes to lie on top of him, deciding that now is as good a time as any to see how far Kurt is willing to take things, but Kurt squirms out from underneath him almost instantly to ask,
"Would you have told her you're gay? If your dad wasn't in the room, I mean. Would you have told her?"
"Probably not," Blaine says. "I mean, it's pretty obvious that she doesn't get how privacy works anymore, so there'd be nothing to stop her from talking to my parents about it. If I'd have known it would stay with her? Maybe. It would be nice to have someone who I know won't have a problem with it before I have to say anything."
"It doesn't sound like your mom would mind," Kurt offers. "She thought the whole thing was pretty funny, too."
Blaine shrugs and doesn't answer. He doesn't want to talk to one parent without talking to the other one, too. He doesn't think he can handle the idea of coming out more than once to these people. He doesn't have that much courage.
"It felt wrong lying to her," he says. "She just wanted to know if I was happy. After I'd denied your existence loudly enough for it to register with her, she went straight to asking about girlfriends. She kept saying how I was just like everyone else my age and I needed to remember to act like it. If I'd told her about you at least I wouldn't have felt like I was letting her down."
Kurt is looking at him strangely, sort of like Blaine's grown a new head, but for some reason Kurt is really happy about it.
"What?" he asks.
"Am I your boyfriend?" Kurt asks, and he sounds so hopeful it's the only thing that keeps Blaine from jumping off the bed and backing out of the room, apologizing for being a presumptuous asshole.
"I'm sorry," he says. "Is that weird? That I think of you that way, I mean? I know we haven't done a lot with each other yet, and I kind of wanted to wait a little longer before I asked you about it, but don't worry if you don't want to say yes, or if you want to just keep doing what we've been doing or whatever, I'll do whatever you want."
"Blaine, shut up," Kurt orders, a little harshly considering the expression on his face. "You're dangerously close to ruining another first for me. This is not something you apologize about, okay? This is something you ask me, and then I get choked up and maybe cry about it a very little bit, but you don't mention anything because you know I'd get embarrassed and it would spoil the moment, so you just wait, and then I say yes, and then this happens."
Kurt pulls him into a kiss and Blaine is more than happy to reciprocate, but before they have a real chance to get started, Kurt stops and pushes him away, staring expectantly.
"What's wrong?" Blaine asks, confused.
"I'm waiting," Kurt says.
"For what?" Blaine asks.
"Blaine," Kurt says in genuine exasperation. "I'm not going to ask myself to be my boyfriend. I have standards."
"Oh," Blaine says, sitting up a little. Sometimes Kurt gets really hung up on doing things properly. "Kurt, do you want to be my boyfriend?"
He barely gets the words out before Kurt lets out what has to be the most adorable squeak of excited laughter Blaine has ever heard and then Kurt is surging up and wrapping him up in a hug, saying,
"Yes! Okay! Boyfriends are good. I would like that. Yes, please! That was perfect, yes!"
Blaine laughs a little too, kissing Kurt softly before he lets his head drop onto Kurt's chest. In a few minutes Burt will probably come knocking on the door telling them to "leave it open, you two. Seriously, how many more times do I need to tell you?" But Blaine doesn't care. Kurt's happiness is infectious and settles inside him like the memories of his life before Tom. For a minute he forgets who he is. Blaine wishes there was something he could do to show Kurt how much that minute means to him, but the peaceful feeling inside of him has an almost debilitating effect and he stays quiet, enjoying it while it lasts.
***
Blaine has spent so much time worrying about how he'll handle his senior year in a strange new school where he has no friends, and more to the point no Kurt, it's never occurred to him that he could be worrying about the wrong thing. Because finally one day his mom and dad tell him that all the public schools they've spoken to are telling them the same thing: he's missed too many days and his grades fell too far down in those last few months of his last semester to be able to graduate at the end of his next year. Not even summer school is presented as an option, because apparently he's missed too much time to be able to do that, too.
"It wouldn't be fair to you anyhow, honey," his mother says, finally accepting the inevitable after her third meeting with a principal. "You'd be spending all your time trying to make up what you've missed and you were already struggling so much before, especially since your attendance will be affected again if you have to testify at Brenner's trial."
"I don't know why I have to be punished because of this," Blaine says, angrily. "It's not my fault. It's not like I'm stupid or anything. I had other things to worry about."
"That's putting it mildly," his dad says, squeezing Blaine's shoulder consolingly. "No one's trying to punish you, Blaine. We're trying to do what's best for you. The Westerville principal seemed really positive that you would do well this way."
The Westerville principal is another problem Blaine finds himself facing over the summer. Not her specifically, but how much his parents seem to like her. Mrs. Kingston is positively effusive over Blaine when she meets him, talking excitedly about her plans to help integrate him into the school and make him feel welcomed.
"We don't believe in special treatment here at Westerville high," she says firmly to his parents. "Blaine won't be singled out by any of our teachers because of what he's been through, I can promise you that. We make allowances for students who have been going through crises, of course, but we never pander to anyone. I can't get into specific examples for obvious reasons, but over the past several years we've had hosts of students faced with things like deaths of loved ones, sickness in the family, and personal illness and injury, all interfering with their learning. We have special remedial classes that we set up for those students during study periods, and they are all assigned buddies within each of their classes to help them stay on top of things. I fully understand that Blaine will be busy over the course of the next year with police business, court dates, and possibly even some therapy or doctor's visits that might require him to have lower attendance. We could easily find room for him in our remedial program under those circumstances."
"She seems like she knows what she's talking about," his dad says afterwards, and Blaine can tell that both his parents have been completely charmed by her. He just looks out the car window and doesn't say anything. Personally, he can't shake the feeling that she just wants him to come to her school so she can brag about how well he's doing under her administration during teacher's conferences. Admittedly he's likely more than a little paranoid about these kinds of things, and his opinion is severely clouded by knowing that his parents aren't going to be sending him to Dalton, but he still thinks there's something about Mrs. Kingston that seems desperate. He is not looking forward to the fall.
"You should just tell them," Wes says one day when he meets up with him and Kurt to go to a movie. When Blaine started spending time with Kurt again, he'd been expecting to spend time with the McKinley glee club again as well, and he has been, a little bit. But for some reason he never expected Kurt to still spend time with the Warblers, too. It's sort of ridiculous, since if anything it should work the other way around, since Kurt is still going to Dalton and hasn't gone to McKinley for half a year, but he's still surprised to be spending so much time with people like Wes and David. David doesn't even go to Dalton anymore, and is getting ready to head off to University in the fall, but he's still always hanging out with Kurt and Wes, and now by extension Blaine.
It's not bad. Blaine likes both of them a lot. For as apoplectic as they can get about a cappella, they're surprisingly low-key and non-judgemental when it comes to Blaine's myriad issues, even when they don't always understand what the problem is. Like right now.
"It's not that easy," Blaine says. "You heard my dad that day at the mall. Not sending me to Dalton was a really big deal. I don't want to get them upset."
"I don't know why you think they'd be upset," Wes insists. "Dalton makes much more sense for you than public school at this point, and it's only fair that they know all the reasons why. You said that Westerville High wants you to repeat all your classes again from last year. My brother shattered his femur senior year when he got T-boned by a drunk driver, and Dalton bent over backwards to make sure he lost as little academic ground as possible at school. I bet if you came to Dalton, you'd only have to repeat the classes from the one semester instead of the entire grade. It's your best option."
Blaine doesn't say anything, pretending he's thinking over what Wes is saying, but at least one person isn't buying it, he realizes when he glances over to see Kurt staring at him sadly. Blaine hadn't expected to be able to fool him anyhow. He's spent too many hours on his phone late at night, listening to Kurt's gentle voice patiently talk him out of panic attacks after he says or does the wrong thing, like accidentally referring to Tom as his dad, or the time he accidentally prompts Cynthia to throw a temper tantrum when he throws out a hideous craft she had made for their mother under the mistaken but justifiable belief it was garbage.
His reactions are always so stupid, and he knows it's not normal by the way everyone around him responds to them, which is the most embarrassing thing about it. Blaine honestly doesn't know why he reacts as poorly as he does, but he seems to be forever making mistakes. It gets to the point where he can hardly sit still, he's so panicked over the thought that any moment he could do something wrong, until one day he decides he can't take the stress anymore. He asks Puck if he can get his hands on some pot one day when several members of New Directions are over at Kurt's house.
"You're still into that stuff?" Puck asks, looking at Blaine in surprise.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Blaine asks.
Puck shrugs.
"I don't know," he says. "I kind of thought you only did it because your life sucked so much."
"It still kind of sucks now," Blaine says.
"I don't know dude," Puck says, dubiously. "I mean, I do know a guy who does a pretty good job of staying under the radar, better than Mr. Ryerson anyway, but if I get caught with something like that even one more time and my probation officer finds out - "
"Right," Blaine says, cutting him off. "No, it's okay. Forget I asked."
But one of the things that makes Puck an awesome guy is that when you're his friend, he can make stuff happen for you no matter what, and is willing to do anything to help if you ask him. Even better, he never bothers to question the morality behind what his friends need, and so a few days later when his parents are out and Blaine's been saddled with babysitter duty, he's almost bowled over by a terrified Cynthia who comes charging into the living room to say,
"I think there's a witch coming up to our front door!"
She shrieks and dives for the stairs when the bell rings a second later and Blaine is still rolling his eyes when he opens the door to find Quinn Fabray standing there staring back at him, and suddenly Blaine understands why Kurt becomes sombre and despondent when she's come up in conversation lately. From the skank attire, to the smudged gothic Lolita prostitute makeup, straight to the hot pink hair that looks like it was hacked off with a table saw, it would be generous to say that Quinn has seen better days. She looks as lost as Blaine feels.
"Puck texted me," she says shortly, pushing her way into the house without bothering to toss the lit cigarette dangling from her fingers. Blaine grabs it and throws it away for her before she can get too far inside, which garners no response. Instead she reaches into her oversized purse and roots around for a while before she pulls out a small baggie containing several joints.
"You owe me," she says. "The new supplier for the McKinley crowd always tries to grab my ass so I'm charging you extra."
"Not a problem," Blaine says, recovering slightly, but not quite enough to think better of it before he says. "You look like shit. What's wrong with you?"
"Do I look like I want to talk about it?" Quinn snaps.
"A little," Blaine admits, because in his defence she looks like she's going to start writing bad poetry about a wide assortment of stupid white girl problems any minute now: "I am a Fatty," "Dad Won't Buy me a New Car," "I am Tormented, Please Ask Me How," and so on. He quickly changes his mind the next second though as her eyes narrow and she says,
"I'll talk to you about my makeover when you talk to me about how good it felt being kept as a high end sex toy until you lost all your baby fat, sound like a plan?"
Blaine actually takes a physical step away from the words leaving her mouth, but she just collapses onto the sofa he's just vacated and looks at him expectantly.
"Are you going to sit down or not?"
"You're staying?" Blaine questions.
"Better sitting here doing nothing than doing it back in Lima," she mutters. Blaine sits down cautiously and goes back to watching the Oprah Network, occasionally answering the odd text from Kurt, who is giving Blaine a running commentary on the outfits worn by of all his father's customers. Quinn never says a word and neither does he. She doesn't move until it's almost time for his parents to get home. Cynthia doesn't leave her room once and that alone is reason enough for Blaine to invite her to come back any time she likes.
To Part Two B
Author: firefly_ca
Pairing,Character(s): Kurt/Blaine, with appearances by Stevie and the Evans family, the Andersons, and large swaths of Glee clubbers (New Directions and Warblers)
Rating: NC-17 for disturbing themes, scenes, etc.
Word Count: TBD - Part Two is 17K
Spoilers: All of S2, up to 3x02
Summary: AU. Blaine Anderson lived under another name for almost nine years with an abusive man he was forced to pretend was his father. He always thought his own family had given up on him, but now that he's found out the majority of his life was spent believing a lie, he has to try to reconcile the life he had with the life that was taken away from him. Sequel to Looking for a Happy Ending.
Note: Huge thanks to my betas LoonyLevicorpus and callmerayray for taking the fic and trying to help me avoid stupid typos and things that make no sense this time around. Any mistakes you find are all from last-minute edits I made before I posted. Because sometimes I can't leave good enough alone.
A/N: I've given up trying to make sense of Blaine's age because this show's character continuity drives me nuts. For this fic, he is Kurt's age, and Kurt at any rate is going into senior year. The end.
Also, there are now spoilers from the early episodes of season three, which I hadn't planned on and as a result never warned you about, but season thee Quinn suddenly showed up on Blaine's doorstep as I was writing and she won't leave. I think she wants someone to fix her clusterfuck of a storyline (yeah, I said it). I'll see what I can do ;)
Apologies if I misrepresent True Blood. My betas and I don't watch it so I gave myself a crash course, but I don't know how accurate it is.
EDIT: Eep! I almost forgot, but if you've never heard it before, the song future Kurt sings is "I've Got a Little List". Unfortunately it's almost impossible to find a version without updated lyrics, but the good thing is every version you find is funny.
Some Day
Kurt tells him that his biggest failing is his complete and total inability to pay attention to the world around him.
"When I need to know what to get for the friend we haven't spoken to in six years for a birthday present, I can ask you and you'll come up with something that ends up in happy crying every single time," he says. "But I ask you why the SWAT team evacuated half your building yesterday and you just thought everyone took an early lunch."
In Blaine's defence, that only happened one time, and he'd had his headphones on so he wouldn't be distracted from writing a very important fundraiser speech at the time. Still, Kurt has a point, and Blaine is never more aware of that fact than he is when he realizes they've decided it's time to start a family. It's not a decision they reach lightly, but still, it would be a lie to say that Blaine was aware of exactly how far along they were in the entire decision making process.
Blaine finally catches up to everyone else one evening not long after Kurt starts rehearsals for his first significant original role Off-Broadway. Everything is still early stages, but there's already talk of it going all the way to Broadway, something Kurt refuses to acknowledge out loud, which means that there's a good chance the rumours have some weight to them. Blaine is very happy for him, but he's also going a little crazy being around him, because Kurt is nervous. Very, very nervous and nervousness in Kurt always leads to something Blaine likes to call "Stress Singing," which is nowhere near as much fun as it sounds. It involves copious amounts of angry, frustrated bursts of Barbra Streisand medleys or random musical numbers whenever he forgets a line, or can't hit a note in just the right way, or when he gets a note to change something about his performance. At first it's always funny, but after a while it devolves into a frustrating and pathetic display that Blaine would sell a kidney to put an end to.
This is where they currently are in the stress cycle when Kurt comes storming into the kitchen where Blaine has been making a grocery list. Appropriately and terrifyingly enough, he's singing that weird song from The Mikado about the people on the executioner's list, and he's put enough thought into it to come up with his own lyrics. He looks like he's finding it just a little bit too cathartic to be normal.
"When we make babies, we're using my gene pool," Blaine tells Kurt, bluntly. "This bursting into song nonsense is alright when you're an artistic soul or whatever, but if we have a son who dreams of accountancy, he'll be screwed."
Ordinarily Kurt would laugh or throw an avocado at Blaine's head in retaliation or something, but now he just stops in his tracks and looks at Blaine in disappointment.
"We're not adopting?"
It's Blaine's turn to stop in his tracks.
"What?" he says. Kurt shrugs.
"You care so much about adoption, I thought it's what we're doing."
"Oh. Well, I never wanted you to feel like you had to," Blaine says. "You've never brought it up so I thought we'd wait for a while anyhow. It has to be something both of us are ready for, you know? You can't bring a kid into a family if you're only half ready."
He doesn't specifically say, "You can't bring an older, traumatized kid into a family if you're only half ready" but he's hoping Kurt will pick up on that part by himself, because Blaine doesn't know if he can handle the idea of adopting a brand new baby with no problems when there are so many children out there who need good homes because someone else screwed them up. He knows people think it's weird that all the fundraising and public speaking that he does focuses just as much on raising awareness about adoption issues as it focuses on child abduction, but he can't help it.
He's the first one to agree to talk about programs that work at finding ways to let kids in trouble know how to find help, or to petition for more effective monitoring of criminals by creating sophisticated sex offender registries that don't classify people who urinate in alleyways as synonymous with people who rape five-year-olds, but when it comes right down to it, he's never forgotten how he felt when he thought no one wanted him. He remembers waking up some mornings and feeling completely empty inside, not because of what Tom was doing to him sexually, but because he knew he wasn't good enough for anything else. He knows what it's like to let yourself be trapped in a place because you think you'll never find anything better, so long-term foster care and adoption programs are kind of a really big deal for him.
He's been working as a spokesman for both adoption awareness foundations and children's rights organizations for almost three years now and he's met enough kids to know that if he and Kurt adopt, they'll never get a baby. He's never mentioned this to Kurt, though, whose life is always so impossibly chaotic that any sort of serious planning about kids seems stupid, but it hasn't stopped him from thinking about it on his own. A lot. He has no idea why he thought Kurt wouldn't be doing the same thing.
"Why would you think I don't want to adopt?" Kurt asks, so incredulously it makes Blaine uneasy. That tone only ever comes out when he's missed something he's going to get in trouble about missing.
"You never said anything," he says, quieter than usual, like making Kurt strain to hear will magically make him less frustrated.
"I ask for recommended reading from your job all the time!" Kurt says. "Blaine, why would I be asking you to bring me books about the logistics of adopting troubled pre-adolescents if I wasn't fully expecting to do that very thing once we've finally made the space in our lives to do it?"
"I thought you were being supportive?" Blaine tries.
This does earn him an avocado to the head, which he catches and begins to peel almost on autopilot, so he can make apology guacamole and pita chips. Kurt will have to make the chips, as usual, because Blaine always gets distracted and burns them, but hopefully it's the thought that counts.
"When will we have space?" Blaine asks a little later when they're sitting down at the table.
"Two years," Kurt says almost at once.
Blaine raises his eyebrows but Kurt only shrugs.
"All that paperwork takes years to finalize, and they make you go to classes and get background checks and meet people who get to decide if you can take it..."
He trails off when he realizes Blaine is staring at him.
"What?"
"When were you planning to let me in on this?" he asks.
Kurt snorts and grabs the chips and guacamole, walking away without saying a word. Blaine calls his mother.
"I don't know why I'm in trouble," he says as soon as she picks up. He doesn't bother to say hello. They're all used to these kinds of conversations. Even Finn has gotten used to them, because even Finn is better at noticing things than he is, and Finn lacks so much self-awareness Blaine has actually seen him go an entire day wearing two left shoes without realizing it. Whatever is going on now, Mom is bound to know more about it than he does.
"Oh honey, really?" She says once he's finished. She sounds sad, like she sounds when she tells him about their newest pet - a dog who is so stupid they've had to put padding against the one wall in the house that he can never seem to remember exists. "You two talk about family all the time."
"When?" Blaine demands.
"What do you think is happening when the two of you sit down and talk about the best schools to send your kids to, or when you come up with house rules and curfews? You've even asked us how we'd feel if you tried to get them to call us Lola and Lolo. And asked us to be emergency contacts."
"But those weren't real plans," Blaine protests. "I mean, yeah we've made some practical decisions for when we're both ready, but it was all conjecture. Castles in air or whatever."
"Oh my God, Blaine," Cynthia cuts in and Blaine wonders how long she's been listening. "Castles in air are, 'What colour will the bedroom be?' or, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we raised a future president?' They are not 'Let's get some good therapist referrals from my co-workers, just in case.'"
Blaine can't deny that she has a point, he'd just never thought about it the right way before. He dutifully lets himself get berated a while longer before he says goodbye and finds Kurt, who is back to running lines in the bedroom.
"What did they say?" He asks, because he's used to how these failures of communication work themselves out after all the practise they've gotten.
"That I'm a dumbass, basically," Blaine says as he sits next to Kurt on the bed and leans his forehead on Kurt's back. "Has it ever occurred to you that I might be too emotionally stunted to raise a hurt kid?"
He can feel Kurt's shoulders move a little as he laughs.
"You're not as bad when you're in the thick of it. You've always been better than me at extended crisis, and we'll have plenty of that, so how about you help me with the bad times and I help you with the good times? That's teamwork, right?"
"I can't believe I didn't sort this out," Blaine says. "I've been trying to figure out how to talk to you about it for real, but subtly. So you wouldn't feel forced into anything."
"I wish I could say I was more surprised," Kurt says, and Blaine can tell when he's being laughed at. He decides he doesn't mind at all when Kurt adds, "I've been thinking we should ask one of your co-workers for the names of some good classes that help you prepare to adopt. I've been thinking about references, too."
"Can you take a break?" Blaine asks suddenly, lifting his head and looking over Kurt's shoulder at the marked up script.
"Probably," Kurt says. "Why?"
"I don't think being gay is a good enough reason to throw away a perfectly good tradition," Blaine says, snatching Kurt's script and tossing it onto the night table.
"What do you mean?" Kurt asks, before Blaine starts grabbing at the bottom of his shirt, trying to get it untucked and off as quickly as possible without getting crucified for popping a button.
"Sex, Kurt," he says impatiently. "You're doing that thing where you make me want to do dirty, nasty things to you, and families just aren't as good unless they start out with two people fucking."
Kurt starts to make a sarcastic comment about the death of romance but for once he's the one who gets distracted before he has a chance to finish.
***
For Now
With the exception of the day his cast finally comes off, Kurt is the best thing about an remarkably bad summer. It doesn't seem right that Blaine's first summer back with his family should be so terrible, but it really is. Each new day comes with a sense of trepidation, because Blaine never knows when he's going to find out some new piece of information that sends him into yet another tailspin. Like the day he finds out Tom is pleading guilty to kidnapping and statutory rape but not guilty to just about everything else, which means Blaine will probably have to get on a witness stand and tell a room full of people about every little thing Tom did to him. He wants to crawl into a hole somewhere and never come back out again, but his parents are seething.
"That sick bastard is just saying it because he thinks he can get away with telling people it was consensual," his dad says to him one day. "He's trying to make you into a liar, like he really thinks the world doesn't see right through him."
"I think a lot of people believe him," Blaine says, shrugging when his dad looks at him incredulously.
"Blaine there's no way you wanted any of that," his dad says in a voice that makes it clear it's not open for discussion.
Blaine thinks about all the times where he was the one who made the first move during the last year and says nothing. He may not have wanted it when he was little, but he sure didn't fight very hard when he got older. He knows it won't make him look good to anyone when they really think about it, least of all his father, but he ignores the unpleasant feeling in his stomach and tries not to think about it as he goes back to texting Kurt on his new cell phone. His mom finally went out and picked one up for him after telling him she was getting sick and tired of him acting like he was doing something wrong when they caught him using the landline.
"If it will make you feel better having your own phone, that's what we'll do," she said. "We'll get you a plan so you can talk to your friends as long as you want without it costing any extra. You're allowed to have a life now that you're back home, Blaine. We want you to talk to your friends and to spend time with the people you care about. This is what we've wanted ever since you were taken away."
The phone isn't as good as his old one, but it's so much better than nothing, and the plan is the same, so he doesn't have to worry about running up any bills because he's texting Kurt more than he's talking to his family. Which he is. Because texting with Kurt is also better than talking with his father.
Blaine doesn't know how to deal with his dad. He loves him and he loves that he's so different from Tom, but his dad is so serious compared to his mother it throws Blaine off-kilter when they talk. He can't get a good read on him and it scares Blaine a little. His dad is also very intense and even though he's never gotten mad at Blaine, there are some days when Blaine can literally hear him shouting from every room in the house. It doesn't happen a lot but whenever it does it's always about Blaine, and something else that's happened with Tom. When Tom's bail is set at a ludicrously high amount and Blaine is back to sleeping on the couch again because he can't stop worrying about what will happen if Tom somehow finds a way to post it, his father rants about the inadequacies of the American Justice System until Cynthia starts crying. He yells when Detective Warren tells him Tom says the sex didn't start until last year, and when he finds out that Tom is telling everyone the reason he decided to take Blaine from his dad in the first place was he saw him hurting Blaine that day in the mall.
That Tom might be able to post bail is terrifying for Blaine, but in the end it's just fear that he's feeling, and Blaine is used to fear. But the stuff Tom is saying about his dad makes him feel sick. His dad doesn't deserve to be dragged into the middle of this thing between the two of them. Tom is angry at Blaine for leaving and he's taking it out on the people Blaine cares about by making up terrible lies in the hopes that someone will listen, but Blaine's certain his father would never hit him and doesn't want anyone to even entertain the possibility. Even when he sees him angry, his dad never even makes so much as a single violent gesture to anyone or anything. Blaine's been around violence for most of his life, and he knows what a person looks like when they're out of control. His dad is not that person. Not that it stops Blaine from flinching whenever his dad is on a tear and starts to edge into Blaine's personal space. He tries hard not to, especially when he sees how devastated his father looks the first time he catches on to what's happening, but knowing someone won't hurt you and feeling it are two different things, and Blaine's just not there yet. Tom had gotten so bad in the last few years he can't help it and no matter what his dad thinks about it, it has nothing to do with him at all. Blaine flinches around everyone.
He's even caught himself flinching at Mr. Hummel's garage, one time when he was there with Kurt, right after a mechanic broke a part he'd been trying to install into a customer's car. The difference between Mr. Hummel and Blaine's father is that when Mr. Hummel glanced over and saw Blaine frozen in his tracks, he'd only calmly shouted at his employee to take his break and come back when he was ready to behave like an adult. Blaine's dad hadn't been able to look him in the eye for a week, until his mother had given up and grimly marched the entire family into therapy. She signed Blaine up for one-on-one sessions too, even though he keeps telling her he doesn't need them and she's wasting her money. Blaine hates going to see a psychologist. It feels like everything he says is being scrutinized and used against him and no one ever tells him why. He never knows if he's saying the right thing and even though he knows they always say everything is confidential, he feels like if he starts to admit things, somehow his parents will find out about it. In the end he never even tries to talk to her about what he's feeling, just sits there and politely answers the superficial questions while pointedly ignoring the important ones. And if he can't talk to the professionals, he certainly can't talk to his father, either.
Blaine thinks his dad wants to talk to him, but he always feels pushed to talk about things he doesn't want to talk about. He can tell his father desperately wants conclusive proof about Blaine's sexual orientation, like he's always two minutes away from flat-out asking if Blaine is gay or not. He's forever making comments about girls while he tries unsuccessfully to look disinterested in the response, like it wouldn't be a big deal if Blaine wasn't interested, but whenever anyone so much as hints that Blaine might not be 100% straight, he bristles. Blaine's palms sweat a lot when he talks to his father.
He's okay with the hugs and the encouraging, manly, "my boy's a man now" claps on the shoulder, in fact he kind of likes them. His dad is always a little too awkward about it, like he's not used to demonstrative affection but isn't about to waste the opportunities now that he finally has them again, but Blaine still wishes he'd do it more often. He tries his hardest not to let himself analyze how he feels because it's so weird, but it's nice to be able to have that decidedly masculine contact without having to worry about it escalating into something else. But talking to his dad, who watches Blaine with a sombre expression as he worriedly tries to find the smallest hint of something wrong, leaves Blaine's nerves frayed around the edges, because he knows that if his dad ever sees anything "wrong," whatever it is, it will automatically turn into a Big Problem. And knowing Blaine's luck, the problem his dad finds is likely going to have something to do with how he's completely indifferent about girls.
"He doesn't have any problems with me," Kurt offers one day when Blaine is over and they're sitting together on Kurt's bed looking at something stupid on Facebook. "And I'm so gay I practically have my own private Lady Gaga following me around, catering to my needs like my own little helper monkey."
The conversation inevitably gets derailed for a while as they try to work out the logistics of owning a "Gaga monkey," but eventually they make their way back to the depressing topic at hand.
"A lot of people are okay with queer until it's their own kid who comes out of the closet."
Kurt doesn't have anything encouraging to say about that because they both know it's true, and like it or not, Blaine's dad seems more and more likely to be one of those people, especially after what happens the first time he's taken to meet his grandmother.
"You have to meet her again. It's not right that you haven't seen Lola yet," his mother tells him. "Even if you have spoken with her."
They'd been holding off on house calls until Blaine started to settle into his own home a little better, but now that his cast is off and his ribs are almost completely normal again, the grace period is officially over. Blaine decides that's alright because all in all, it's not a terrible thing to be stuck going to see his only surviving grandparent anyhow. Besides, he thinks there's a good chance he likes Lola Grace. She's been slowly recovering from a broken leg ever since Blaine first came back and as a result still isn't fit for travel outside of her senior's residence, but Blaine's already had several awkward phone conversations with her, the worst being the one where he accidentally let it slip that he thought her first name was actually "Lola."
"It's not my name, it's who I am," she scolds. "You need to take a better interest in your family, Blaine. You've forgotten too much. You need to improve your attitude."
Blaine agrees with her until she stops giving him a hard time because she's old, harmless, and just a little bit beyond connecting her thought processes to what's happening in the world around her. She's feisty and proud of her heritage and obviously wants her descendents to feel the same way. It's important enough to her that no matter how many times Blaine's parents step in to gently remind her that Blaine hasn't so much forgotten about being part Filipino as he's been severely encouraged not to think about it, she can never quite hold on to that piece of information when she starts to talk about how bad he's been for forgetting all the Tagalog she's taught him over the years.
Still, Blaine is actually looking forward to seeing her, at least somewhat. She's so blunt it makes his skin crawl, but she always laughs when she talks to him and even though he can't remember her specifically, her accent makes him feel like he's stepped into a time machine. When he talks to her, it's like he's suddenly seeing the world from the perspective of someone still too small to see on top of the kitchen counter and whose ignorance has tricked him into believing that the world is a wonderful place. It makes the painful frankness almost worth it.
Or so he thinks before he actually does go meet her in person. Which is when he experiences what it's like talking to her while his parents are in the room with him and can actually hear what she's saying instead of just listening to his side of the conversation and making guesses. One minute he's sitting next to her, getting another lecture on how poor his language skills have become while his parents try not to let their boredom show (Cynthia has long since abandoned them to go play with the little girl visiting her grandfather down the hall), and the next minute she's putting a wrinkled hand on Blaine's knee as she sympathetically says,
"I watch on the news about you, you know."
She clucks a little and shakes her head. He can see his parents start to tense up, like they're waiting to run in and do damage control.
"The things they say about you!" She shakes her head in disapproval. "One said you were there because you liked men! You know. Because you're a gay? What a disgusting thing to say."
Blaine just stares at her with his mouth hanging open until his Dad starts into action.
"Grace," he says, skipping right past the Lola. "You cannot say things like that. That is completely inappropriate and uncalled for."
His grandmother doesn't even flinch.
"I know," she says, patting Blaine's knee again. "But there's no point shouting about it, Jason. Besides, there's nothing to worry about now. I took care of the awful man myself. I wrote a letter and told him it was none of his business. Blaine is allowed to like other young men without bringing that gago into it."
She smiles at Blaine, who doesn't smile back, instead opting to continue staring blankly at the wall.
"Gay boys aren't all bad. I'm sure you're fine."
"Grace," his dad says again, and he sounds livid. Blaine's never seen him this upset before, but then no one's called him out on being gay with his dad in the room before, either. "This is not appropriate."
His lola turns hard eyes onto his father and points an accusing finger at him.
"You need to clean up your act," she lectures. "The world is passing you by, Jason. I used to be like you, but do you know what I did? I bought cable. I subscribe to HBO, young man, and now I know how the world works."
"I have to go check on Cynthia, excuse me," his mother semi-gasps out before getting up and leaving the room.
Lola is all smiles again when she looks back at Blaine.
"The girls on our floor like to get together every week and watch that show about the vampires. Crafting club has gotten very angry sometimes, now that Eric is half-gay and a lot of us want him to start seeing that black fellow with the nice eyes. If neither mind sleeping with other men, why should I? Anyhow, I think they would make a very attractive couple. Do you have a boyfriend, Blaine?"
Blaine might have been mortified by the entire exchange, but when Kurt hears about it the next day he laughs until he's wheezing, air hissing in and out of his lungs like he's sprung a leak.
"It wasn't that funny," Blaine says, not even bothering to hide his annoyance. "Do you know how uncomfortable it is to have to break a frail old lady's heart by refusing to admit that you like cock?"
"Hey," Kurt says, calming down enough to nudge him in a gentle reprimand. "Stop trying to make who you are sound like something you need to keep hidden under a mattress. It's not dirty, it's just who you are. That's why your grandmother wanted to talk to you about it. She wants you to be happy, that's all."
"That's sounds really nice, Kurt," Blaine says, unimpressed. "But she watches True Blood. I think she's less concerned about the beauty of love than she is watching hot vampires sleep with each other."
Kurt snickers again.
"Do you think she writes Twilight slash, too?"
"Hey!" Blaine says, snatching a pillow off the bed to throw in Kurt's face. "Don't talk about my grandmother like that. She's got taste, Kurt."
"Well, she does seem to like you, so you may have a point," Kurt says, smiling as he reaches over to pull Blaine down onto the bed next to him. Blaine is more than happy to comply, and Kurt seems interested enough, so he goes to lie on top of him, deciding that now is as good a time as any to see how far Kurt is willing to take things, but Kurt squirms out from underneath him almost instantly to ask,
"Would you have told her you're gay? If your dad wasn't in the room, I mean. Would you have told her?"
"Probably not," Blaine says. "I mean, it's pretty obvious that she doesn't get how privacy works anymore, so there'd be nothing to stop her from talking to my parents about it. If I'd have known it would stay with her? Maybe. It would be nice to have someone who I know won't have a problem with it before I have to say anything."
"It doesn't sound like your mom would mind," Kurt offers. "She thought the whole thing was pretty funny, too."
Blaine shrugs and doesn't answer. He doesn't want to talk to one parent without talking to the other one, too. He doesn't think he can handle the idea of coming out more than once to these people. He doesn't have that much courage.
"It felt wrong lying to her," he says. "She just wanted to know if I was happy. After I'd denied your existence loudly enough for it to register with her, she went straight to asking about girlfriends. She kept saying how I was just like everyone else my age and I needed to remember to act like it. If I'd told her about you at least I wouldn't have felt like I was letting her down."
Kurt is looking at him strangely, sort of like Blaine's grown a new head, but for some reason Kurt is really happy about it.
"What?" he asks.
"Am I your boyfriend?" Kurt asks, and he sounds so hopeful it's the only thing that keeps Blaine from jumping off the bed and backing out of the room, apologizing for being a presumptuous asshole.
"I'm sorry," he says. "Is that weird? That I think of you that way, I mean? I know we haven't done a lot with each other yet, and I kind of wanted to wait a little longer before I asked you about it, but don't worry if you don't want to say yes, or if you want to just keep doing what we've been doing or whatever, I'll do whatever you want."
"Blaine, shut up," Kurt orders, a little harshly considering the expression on his face. "You're dangerously close to ruining another first for me. This is not something you apologize about, okay? This is something you ask me, and then I get choked up and maybe cry about it a very little bit, but you don't mention anything because you know I'd get embarrassed and it would spoil the moment, so you just wait, and then I say yes, and then this happens."
Kurt pulls him into a kiss and Blaine is more than happy to reciprocate, but before they have a real chance to get started, Kurt stops and pushes him away, staring expectantly.
"What's wrong?" Blaine asks, confused.
"I'm waiting," Kurt says.
"For what?" Blaine asks.
"Blaine," Kurt says in genuine exasperation. "I'm not going to ask myself to be my boyfriend. I have standards."
"Oh," Blaine says, sitting up a little. Sometimes Kurt gets really hung up on doing things properly. "Kurt, do you want to be my boyfriend?"
He barely gets the words out before Kurt lets out what has to be the most adorable squeak of excited laughter Blaine has ever heard and then Kurt is surging up and wrapping him up in a hug, saying,
"Yes! Okay! Boyfriends are good. I would like that. Yes, please! That was perfect, yes!"
Blaine laughs a little too, kissing Kurt softly before he lets his head drop onto Kurt's chest. In a few minutes Burt will probably come knocking on the door telling them to "leave it open, you two. Seriously, how many more times do I need to tell you?" But Blaine doesn't care. Kurt's happiness is infectious and settles inside him like the memories of his life before Tom. For a minute he forgets who he is. Blaine wishes there was something he could do to show Kurt how much that minute means to him, but the peaceful feeling inside of him has an almost debilitating effect and he stays quiet, enjoying it while it lasts.
***
Blaine has spent so much time worrying about how he'll handle his senior year in a strange new school where he has no friends, and more to the point no Kurt, it's never occurred to him that he could be worrying about the wrong thing. Because finally one day his mom and dad tell him that all the public schools they've spoken to are telling them the same thing: he's missed too many days and his grades fell too far down in those last few months of his last semester to be able to graduate at the end of his next year. Not even summer school is presented as an option, because apparently he's missed too much time to be able to do that, too.
"It wouldn't be fair to you anyhow, honey," his mother says, finally accepting the inevitable after her third meeting with a principal. "You'd be spending all your time trying to make up what you've missed and you were already struggling so much before, especially since your attendance will be affected again if you have to testify at Brenner's trial."
"I don't know why I have to be punished because of this," Blaine says, angrily. "It's not my fault. It's not like I'm stupid or anything. I had other things to worry about."
"That's putting it mildly," his dad says, squeezing Blaine's shoulder consolingly. "No one's trying to punish you, Blaine. We're trying to do what's best for you. The Westerville principal seemed really positive that you would do well this way."
The Westerville principal is another problem Blaine finds himself facing over the summer. Not her specifically, but how much his parents seem to like her. Mrs. Kingston is positively effusive over Blaine when she meets him, talking excitedly about her plans to help integrate him into the school and make him feel welcomed.
"We don't believe in special treatment here at Westerville high," she says firmly to his parents. "Blaine won't be singled out by any of our teachers because of what he's been through, I can promise you that. We make allowances for students who have been going through crises, of course, but we never pander to anyone. I can't get into specific examples for obvious reasons, but over the past several years we've had hosts of students faced with things like deaths of loved ones, sickness in the family, and personal illness and injury, all interfering with their learning. We have special remedial classes that we set up for those students during study periods, and they are all assigned buddies within each of their classes to help them stay on top of things. I fully understand that Blaine will be busy over the course of the next year with police business, court dates, and possibly even some therapy or doctor's visits that might require him to have lower attendance. We could easily find room for him in our remedial program under those circumstances."
"She seems like she knows what she's talking about," his dad says afterwards, and Blaine can tell that both his parents have been completely charmed by her. He just looks out the car window and doesn't say anything. Personally, he can't shake the feeling that she just wants him to come to her school so she can brag about how well he's doing under her administration during teacher's conferences. Admittedly he's likely more than a little paranoid about these kinds of things, and his opinion is severely clouded by knowing that his parents aren't going to be sending him to Dalton, but he still thinks there's something about Mrs. Kingston that seems desperate. He is not looking forward to the fall.
"You should just tell them," Wes says one day when he meets up with him and Kurt to go to a movie. When Blaine started spending time with Kurt again, he'd been expecting to spend time with the McKinley glee club again as well, and he has been, a little bit. But for some reason he never expected Kurt to still spend time with the Warblers, too. It's sort of ridiculous, since if anything it should work the other way around, since Kurt is still going to Dalton and hasn't gone to McKinley for half a year, but he's still surprised to be spending so much time with people like Wes and David. David doesn't even go to Dalton anymore, and is getting ready to head off to University in the fall, but he's still always hanging out with Kurt and Wes, and now by extension Blaine.
It's not bad. Blaine likes both of them a lot. For as apoplectic as they can get about a cappella, they're surprisingly low-key and non-judgemental when it comes to Blaine's myriad issues, even when they don't always understand what the problem is. Like right now.
"It's not that easy," Blaine says. "You heard my dad that day at the mall. Not sending me to Dalton was a really big deal. I don't want to get them upset."
"I don't know why you think they'd be upset," Wes insists. "Dalton makes much more sense for you than public school at this point, and it's only fair that they know all the reasons why. You said that Westerville High wants you to repeat all your classes again from last year. My brother shattered his femur senior year when he got T-boned by a drunk driver, and Dalton bent over backwards to make sure he lost as little academic ground as possible at school. I bet if you came to Dalton, you'd only have to repeat the classes from the one semester instead of the entire grade. It's your best option."
Blaine doesn't say anything, pretending he's thinking over what Wes is saying, but at least one person isn't buying it, he realizes when he glances over to see Kurt staring at him sadly. Blaine hadn't expected to be able to fool him anyhow. He's spent too many hours on his phone late at night, listening to Kurt's gentle voice patiently talk him out of panic attacks after he says or does the wrong thing, like accidentally referring to Tom as his dad, or the time he accidentally prompts Cynthia to throw a temper tantrum when he throws out a hideous craft she had made for their mother under the mistaken but justifiable belief it was garbage.
His reactions are always so stupid, and he knows it's not normal by the way everyone around him responds to them, which is the most embarrassing thing about it. Blaine honestly doesn't know why he reacts as poorly as he does, but he seems to be forever making mistakes. It gets to the point where he can hardly sit still, he's so panicked over the thought that any moment he could do something wrong, until one day he decides he can't take the stress anymore. He asks Puck if he can get his hands on some pot one day when several members of New Directions are over at Kurt's house.
"You're still into that stuff?" Puck asks, looking at Blaine in surprise.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Blaine asks.
Puck shrugs.
"I don't know," he says. "I kind of thought you only did it because your life sucked so much."
"It still kind of sucks now," Blaine says.
"I don't know dude," Puck says, dubiously. "I mean, I do know a guy who does a pretty good job of staying under the radar, better than Mr. Ryerson anyway, but if I get caught with something like that even one more time and my probation officer finds out - "
"Right," Blaine says, cutting him off. "No, it's okay. Forget I asked."
But one of the things that makes Puck an awesome guy is that when you're his friend, he can make stuff happen for you no matter what, and is willing to do anything to help if you ask him. Even better, he never bothers to question the morality behind what his friends need, and so a few days later when his parents are out and Blaine's been saddled with babysitter duty, he's almost bowled over by a terrified Cynthia who comes charging into the living room to say,
"I think there's a witch coming up to our front door!"
She shrieks and dives for the stairs when the bell rings a second later and Blaine is still rolling his eyes when he opens the door to find Quinn Fabray standing there staring back at him, and suddenly Blaine understands why Kurt becomes sombre and despondent when she's come up in conversation lately. From the skank attire, to the smudged gothic Lolita prostitute makeup, straight to the hot pink hair that looks like it was hacked off with a table saw, it would be generous to say that Quinn has seen better days. She looks as lost as Blaine feels.
"Puck texted me," she says shortly, pushing her way into the house without bothering to toss the lit cigarette dangling from her fingers. Blaine grabs it and throws it away for her before she can get too far inside, which garners no response. Instead she reaches into her oversized purse and roots around for a while before she pulls out a small baggie containing several joints.
"You owe me," she says. "The new supplier for the McKinley crowd always tries to grab my ass so I'm charging you extra."
"Not a problem," Blaine says, recovering slightly, but not quite enough to think better of it before he says. "You look like shit. What's wrong with you?"
"Do I look like I want to talk about it?" Quinn snaps.
"A little," Blaine admits, because in his defence she looks like she's going to start writing bad poetry about a wide assortment of stupid white girl problems any minute now: "I am a Fatty," "Dad Won't Buy me a New Car," "I am Tormented, Please Ask Me How," and so on. He quickly changes his mind the next second though as her eyes narrow and she says,
"I'll talk to you about my makeover when you talk to me about how good it felt being kept as a high end sex toy until you lost all your baby fat, sound like a plan?"
Blaine actually takes a physical step away from the words leaving her mouth, but she just collapses onto the sofa he's just vacated and looks at him expectantly.
"Are you going to sit down or not?"
"You're staying?" Blaine questions.
"Better sitting here doing nothing than doing it back in Lima," she mutters. Blaine sits down cautiously and goes back to watching the Oprah Network, occasionally answering the odd text from Kurt, who is giving Blaine a running commentary on the outfits worn by of all his father's customers. Quinn never says a word and neither does he. She doesn't move until it's almost time for his parents to get home. Cynthia doesn't leave her room once and that alone is reason enough for Blaine to invite her to come back any time she likes.
To Part Two B