Waiting for a Happy Ending - Part Two B
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 2 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: Again I feel like I'm being super anti-drug in this section of the story (maybe it's a theme for all my part twos in this 'verse), but I feel like I need to make the comment that the problem (hopefully) being addressed here isn't recreational drug use so much as it's self-medicating, which in itself isn't always a bad thing, but if you're doing it for an extended period to deal with any kind of trauma or condition, it can get dangerous very quickly. I've added self-medicating to the trigger list (it just gets longer and longer haha), but I wanted to draw attention to it here since this is probably the worst it's going to get.
And speaking of the trigger list, remind yourself of its contents before your read these next two parts because the residual trauma angst kicks up a notch for them.
He doesn't expect to see her ever again, except maybe if he has to have Puck set up another drug run for him, but three days later she's on his doorstep again, greasy and dishevelled as before, eyes suspiciously bright, cradling a couple glasses and a bottle what is probably very expensive wine. Cynthia is spending the day at someone's house, so they smoke a joint out on the back steps, neither one of them saying a word, but then when Quinn reaches into her bag to pull out a corkscrew she mumbles,
"It feels like drowning."
"Yeah," Blaine says. He doesn't know what she's talking about exactly, but he still knows what she means. He feels it, too.
They drink in silence for a while and then when he's pouring them another glass she speaks up again.
"I'm a mother."
"I know," Blaine says. "Kurt told me once."
"Some days it feels like there's nothing left," she says. "Like I made a mistake and I can never take it back. It's not fair. Puck picks up and he goes on living his life like nothing's any different. He gets a girlfriend, he sings and dances in that stupid club and he's happy. I've tried to be happy so many times, to find what he's found, but it never works. She's all I had that mattered and I let Shelby Corcoran take her away."
Quinn might be dressing meaner, smoking pot, and stealing alcohol from her mother now, but she is still definitely the same prim and proper girl Blaine used to see smiling at him vaguely in the McKinley hallways. She gets drunk too fast to be used to it.
"It's okay to miss her," Blaine offers, finally.
"She's been gone a year," Quinn says, talking like she hasn't even heard him. "Her birthday came when you had disappeared and Stevie had just gone missing. It was her very first birthday and I missed it because I was out hanging up posters about the two of you."
She's openly crying now, but Blaine doesn't try to comfort her. He has a feeling touching her right now would only leave him with a black eye.
"I'm sorry," is all he can say.
"Why?" Quinn asks. "You aren't the one who forgot, and it's not like I didn't know she was somewhere safe. We thought you were dead, you were more important."
"But we weren't," Blaine says. "Not to you."
Quinn cries harder, burying her face in her hands.
"She should be everything and I couldn't even remember. I know I don't deserve her. I'm a stupid, selfish girl who let herself get pregnant in high school, but I don't care. I can't stop how I feel. I can't stop that I need her, even if all I do is let her down, even when I'm not with her."
Blaine passes her now full glass back to her.
"It doesn't feel much better if you get what you want, anyhow," he says.
Quinn makes a small snorting sound and smirks at him knowingly through her tears as she takes the wine.
***
Kurt isn't exactly thrilled by Blaine's friendship with Quinn.
"I don't think you two are healthy for each other right now," he says flatly after the subject has come up.
"Why not?" Blaine asks, genuinely surprised and a little annoyed. "Because she quit glee club? There's more to life than your high school singing career, Kurt."
"How shallow do you think I am?" Kurt says. "It's not about that. You're a bad influence on each other. Your parents think so, too."
"The only reason they don't like Quinn is because they've caught her in my room a couple mornings before they leave for work. They can't decide if I'm fucking her when they've already decided I'm gay and it makes them nervous. Is that what your problem is? You're mad that she got into bed with me before you did, aren't you? Admit it."
"I'd like to think that when we do get into bed together we'll have better things to worry about than getting pot ash between the sheets," Kurt sniffs, refusing to rise to the bait.
Quinn has taken to visiting as late as three o'clock in the morning. It starts after Blaine mentions that he never sleeps more than 2 hours at a time, a problem they both seem to share. Eventually he slips a key under one of the rocks in the garden and tells her the alarm code and now more than once he's woken up from the unpleasant beginnings of very bad dreams to her sliding into bed alongside him, various illegal substances in tow. It's never anything serious - they've never moved beyond pot and whatever alcohol they can get their hands on, but for Kurt apparently it's more than enough to start passing judgement.
"You never bothered me about this kind of thing before," he protests. "It's no different than what I did in Lima."
"It's different," Kurt insists. "You're in a good a place now, Blaine. No one's hurting you and you're surrounded by people who don't just want to help, they really can. Why are you acting like you still live with him?"
Because in my head I still do, Blaine thinks, but he doesn't say anything. Kurt just doesn't understand, as much as Blaine wants him to. But Quinn knows all about getting trapped in a place everyone else around her has forgotten about. They don't try to help each other because they aren't looking to be fixed when they're together. Out loud he just laughs it off and says,
"Come on, Kurt. I promise it's nothing bad. Are you sure you're not just jealous?"
Kurt refuses to be distracted and just frowns,
"It's not just about you, you know. You're hurting her, too."
Blaine has his own opinions about that. He doesn't fight with Quinn, he just listens. Listening never hurt anyone. The fact that they're getting drunk and high in his parent's house never even registers as one of the negative things Kurt was talking about until one night when Quinn is gone and he has a nightmare featuring Tom breaking into the house, livid over Blaine's betrayal, and Blaine is so scared he can almost taste it until Tom reaches out to him and starts pulling down his boxers. This, at least, is something he knows always keeps Tom happy, so he lies there as quietly as he can, trying not to move, trying not to fight back. The worst part of it is the thought that his parents could walk in and see something any second. The dream scares him as much as the nightmares Blaine usually has about the security guard, which is an upsetting thing to think about. His regular nightmares are bad enough, but if the Tom dreams start to get as bad as the dreams about the guard, Blaine might as well find a gun to go put himself out of his misery, because there's no way he can deal with feeling like he's gone through the motions of reliving a rape every night.
He's lying in his bed, trying to make his hands stop shaking, hoping that tonight will be one of the nights Quinn comes to visit, but the hours drag past and she never shows. Finally Blaine can't take it anymore. He knows if he stays inside another second he's going to lose his mind - start screaming, maybe, and never stop again. He just needs something to make his head stop spinning and his heart stop racing.
He's outside and halfway through the joint when a light turns on in his parent's room. A few minutes later, the door is opening and his dad is looking out cautiously, asking,
"Is someone out there?"
"It's just me," Blaine says. "I'm sorry. I couldn't sleep."
"Oh," his dad says, standing awkwardly in the doorway. "Did...did you want to talk about it or anything?"
Blaine shrugs, nowhere near ready to admit what's keeping him awake.
"I'm fine," he says. "I'm almost done anyhow. I'll come back inside in a minute."
"Are you smoking?" His dad asks, and the question carries a faint edge of something with it. Not anger or annoyance, but maybe something like disbelief.
"Yes?" Blaine says, a little confused. "Is there a problem?"
"Yes," his dad says, slowly. "You're smoking. That's a problem. I don't like seeing you do that, it's not healthy."
"Well what else am I supposed to do?" Blaine asks, probably a little too sharply, but he's just so tired and trying to understand what his parents want from him is exhausting enough on a normal day. "I know it's not fantastic for my lungs, but it doesn't work as well when you put it in brownies."
"What?" His dad sounds downright incredulous now, as he steps outside and walks over to smell the smoke curling out of the cigarette. "Blaine, why the hell are you sitting outside smoking pot in the middle of the night?"
"It helps me sleep," Blaine says, equally incredulous, because he can't for the life of him work out why this is a big deal. "Look, I'm not asking you to join or anything. I get that a lot of people don't like it, but I'm not hurting anything."
"Your sister's window is right above your head, Blaine."
"It's not like she can get hotboxed from all the way out here," Blaine says. If he were more awake he'd just apologize and be more careful not to get caught the next time, but right now his frustration is winning out. "I don't just leave this stuff lying around where she can find it, and if I ever smoke inside with Quinn we do it by the window so the smell doesn't go through the house."
"And do the two of you ever take the time to make sure you've properly gotten rid of the embers in the middle of the night when you're too high to stay awake? This is not only stupid, it's incredibly dangerous, Blaine. I assumed something was going on with you and Quinn when we mysteriously started to have more empties in the recycling than usual, but I didn't say anything because I'd rather she stay the night instead of drive back to Lima when she's not sober, but this puts the entire house in danger. What the hell were you thinking?"
The door opens again and his mother steps out, asking about what's going on, but Blaine doesn't pay any attention to her.
"I'm thinking you have no right to tell me what I can and can't do, or that I'm being stupid and reckless when you know nothing about me."
"I think you're out of control," his dad says.
"Tell me something I don't know," Blaine snaps. "Why do you think I'm sitting out here at 4:30 in the morning getting high? Impulse? I'm here because I need all of this to stop, okay? I need to take a fucking break from being me, and nothing else works."
"Blaine, if you're feeling overwhelmed, you can always talk to us," his mother says, not missing a beat.
"I don't know you," Blaine shouts. "Why would I talk to you about this? Just because you're technically my parents doesn't mean you know anything about what I'm going through, or that you're going to be able to help me with any of the things that keep me awake at night."
"And Quinn does help?" His dad asks. Blaine can't quite decide if he sounds hurt or not.
"No," Blaine says. "She doesn't do a thing. But she doesn't pretend like she has any of the answers, either. She doesn't fixate on one thing and act like if I stop doing that my life will turn around."
"No one's saying that," his father starts, but his mother cuts him off, calmly.
"Blaine, we know you're struggling, and that's normal. No one expects you to act like the last nine years never happened, but you can't lock yourself away from the people who are trying to help you cope. Getting into the habit of abusing addictive substances of any kind is only going to hurt you later on."
"It's just pot," Blaine says, angrily. "People actually get it prescribed to them when they're sick. I'm not taking it because I like feeling like I'm fighting the system or whatever. I smoke it because it helps."
"You're drinking because it helps, too," his dad says, in this voice that makes it really obvious that he thinks he's finally gained the upper hand when he so hasn't.
"So?" he says, which is the sort of argument a two-year-old uses, but it's the best he can come up with right now. He's not about to let his dad think he's won something.
"So you can't start doing something like self-medicating without running into major issues when you're older," Dad says.
"They're called controlled substances because they need to be monitored by a professional," his mother adds and he thinks the most frustrating thing about this entire confrontation is how logical and level-headed they're being when he feels like he's flying apart in all directions. "If you think you need to be put on medication, you need to start talking to Dr. Hong in your sessions with her. If you can't handle what you're feeling that's fine, but you need to talk to someone who can find out the best way to help you."
"I know the best way to help me," Blaine protests. "I know what I need, and what I need is for you people to trust me a little bit. I'm not going to turn into a crack head living in cardboard box downtown because I'm an underage drinker and I get high sometimes. I hardly even do it anymore, not when you compare to how much I did it when I lived with Tom, before I met Kurt."
"What does Kurt have to do with this?" His dad asks.
"He doesn't like it when I get high, either," Blaine admits. "So I talk to him when I know it will help. I don't talk to Quinn because when she's over I'm past talking, okay?"
"If talking to Kurt won't help, you can talk to us," Mom insists. "We're always willing to listen."
"But I don't want you to hear!" Blaine says, wanting to shout again, but fortunately aware enough of his surroundings to keep his voice down to an angry hiss. "I don't want to talk to you about this, okay? And you don't want to hear it. You don't want to hear about how I'm scared that people will blame me if I have to get on a witness stand and admit that sometimes I convinced Tom to have sex with me because I felt like I had to earn the right to stay with him. You don't want to hear about the nightmares I have about him and his fucking friends that make me too scared to go back to sleep without someone in the room with me. You keep saying you want to know me better, but don't fucking flatter yourselves, because none of us want that."
He pushes past them into the house and goes back to his room. They don't follow him.
***
He goes from angry to panicked in about five seconds but he manages to hold out against calling Kurt until 6 o'clock, when he knows he'll be getting up to get ready for work anyhow.
"I really fucked things up, Kurt," he says immediately, forgoing any sort of greeting. "I think I ruined everything."
"They're not mad," Is the first thing Kurt says, once Blaine's explained enough of what's happened. "It's just hard right now. You're all just adjusting, that's all. And it's not like I didn't tell you the way you were dealing with everything was a mistake."
"I don't understand why this is so bad to everyone," Blaine says, helplessly. "It's just what I do. I'm not addicted to anything, I'm not the only one who does it, it's just one of those things. I don't get it."
"I know you don't," Kurt says, and Blaine can hear him smile. Sometimes Kurt turns doe-eyed over the weirdest things, like when he acts like an idiot and has to ask for help after. Blaine is pretty sure it's just sad, but he's heard that tone to Kurt's voice more often than not when he calls asking about what he should do. The one time he got frustrated and asked what the problem was, Kurt only said, "I love that you care enough about them to try to fix it." Blaine pretends he doesn't notice anymore, because someone thinking he's wonderful when all he's doing is proving all the reasons why he most definitely isn't makes him feel twice as uncomfortable.
"How bad are you?" Kurt asks. "I can come after work, or I can take the day off and stop by."
"Please don't do that," Blaine says, almost interrupting. "Your dad already thinks I'm pathetic and beyond help. Let's not add to it."
"He does not," Kurt says, but Blaine knows it's not true. "He likes you. You should be counting your blessings, because no one expected my boyfriends to go over with him. You make the whole process so easy, I may just have to keep you."
Blaine is momentarily distracted by hearing Kurt call him that, just like he is every other time he hears it, but it doesn't change that Kurt is dead wrong. Even though Burt is civil and calm to him when they talk, treating Blaine just like the next person, Blaine can tell that he's never forgotten how Blaine had to call and ask for help, or how embarrassingly needy he'd been that night after Anthony's party. He hasn't forgotten the cast or the bruises or how Blaine was so stupid he didn't want his own parents to find him. Burt doesn't like Blaine, he just pities him, and Kurt is too nice to admit it.
"Seriously," Kurt says. "Do you want me to come over right now? I'll lie to my dad and tell him Mercedes is having a wardrobe emergency."
"He'll see right through that," Blaine mutters.
"It's happened before," Kurt says, and while Blaine doesn't doubt that, he knows Burt would still know the real reason. Lately the only time Mercedes and Kurt are involved in any sort of emergency these days is when they both happen to be out somewhere and Blaine calls up in a panic. He really is the worst boyfriend of all time.
"Blaine," Kurt starts, but Blaine cuts him off.
"Seriously Kurt, you can't keep coming to my rescue all the time like this," He thinks his argument would carry more weight if he didn't sound traumatized like someone who is watching a puppy get its head ripped off two feet away from him. "I just really wanted to hear your voice right now, but I'll be fine. I can do this."
"Do you promise?" Kurt asks.
"I promise," Blaine confirms.
"Okay," Kurt says, "I'll believe you, but first tell me what you plan on doing if I don't come over."
"I'm going to stay in my room and keep ignoring my parents whenever they try to talk to me through the door."
"Which is what they're doing right now?" Kurt asks.
"You can hear it?" Blaine asks. "They've been coming by and trying to get me to talk about once every half hour or so. They're really persistent right now. I think because they have to leave soon?"
"They can probably hear you talking to me and know you're not sleeping," Kurt says. "You should talk to them before they leave. You get that it's really obvious that they don't hate you, right?"
"I get that no one in this house wants to let me be my own person. I can't help it if my own person is an extension of someone they hate. They should have thought about that before they decided to take me back."
"You're the only one who doesn't get that you're nothing like Tom," Kurt says patiently. Blaine doesn't understand how he can always be so patient with him.
"I should come over," Kurt says, like he's already decided.
"What?" Blaine says. "No, Kurt, come on. I already told you that I'm going to be okay on my own. Listen to me. Listen to my voice. You've heard me worse than this, right? It's nothing."
"It's a fight, Blaine," Kurt says. "It's not nothing, especially since I'm pretty sure you've never done that before. I'm also pretty sure you've never even gotten frustrated with them without having a complete breakdown until this morning. You're practically a normal teenager now. We should celebrate."
"A normal teenager would be grounded," Blaine says, not that he has much experience with being grounded, but he's been watching lots of old TGIF shows now that he has entire days to himself. "And I still freaked out. I wouldn't be talking to you if I hadn't freaked out."
"Don't take this the wrong way," Kurt says. "Because you know I don't mind, but normally when something happens you call right away, and if you don't? I can't get a coherent word out of you for at least half an hour. Not only did you hold off for over an hour before you called me, you weren't spouting gibberish when you did, either. Face it, Blaine. You're getting good at this whole son thing."
Blaine snorts a little, leaning his head against the window.
"I know for a fact you aren't this big of a freak when you're having fights with your dad," he says.
"Not normally," Kurt says, his voice no longer teasing. "But you didn't see me while he was in the hospital. We'd been mid-fight when that happened. When I thought I was going to lose him, I got really bad. Just ask Finn and Carole sometime. You'll get better at family when you're not afraid you'll lose them all the time. I promise."
It takes a while but Blaine finally convinces Kurt to go to work and even though it means his day will now be painfully boring, it would be a lie to say he's not pleased with himself. In the afternoon he goes out with Cynthia, after an agonizing morning spent ignoring his parents' phone calls. Taking Cynthia to the park lets him run away from the problem but he can still pretend he's being a responsible brother, because going to the park is about the only way to get her energy levels down to something manageable. As an added bonus, she's also really easy to handle at a park. The most he has to do is pretend to watch her on the monkey bars, push her on the swing, or if she starts getting too bossy, say, "Hey! I bet you can't run around this entire playground five times really fast."
He ends up spending most of his time there trying to interpret badly spelled texts from Stevie, who in addition to having a bad day that's resulted in him refusing to leave his house, has also stolen Sam's cell. Blaine thinks that overall Stevie is probably doing better than he is at adjusting, but from what Quinn and Sam have told him, it's still pretty bad sometimes. Once Sam, who still hasn't heard the whole story yet, called him up in tears, demanding,
"What the hell happened to him while you were gone?"
That's how Blaine found out that when Stevie has a bad nightmare they have to keep the doors locked.
"He didn't even recognize us and tried to run out into the street. I had to grab him before he ran in front of a car and I felt like I was the one who needed to go to jail."
Blaine has no idea how he's supposed to help Sam figure out a way to handle Stevie when he can barely handle himself, but Kurt says he thinks Sam isn't really looking for a solution.
"You're the only one who really gets what it was like for Stevie," he says after Blaine tells him about the phone call. "And Sam still pretty much thinks you fight crime when Westerville goes to sleep at night, so he probably just wants to remind himself that Stevie can get better. You know, so he remembers that one day Stevie could grow up to become you."
A comment like that pretty much required a hand job at the very least, but before Blaine could even manage to get Kurt's belt undone Carole had gotten home and started calling up the stairs, asking if anyone was home. Kurt had squirmed away from Blaine so fast it reminded Blaine of Cynthia's laboured attempts at eating Jell-o: lots of action, but very little payoff. Which Blaine supposed was a legitimate enough reason to back off, for once. But the problem is something always seems to get in the way whenever he tries to move things anywhere beyond kissing with Kurt. It seems like he's forever running into road blocks and he isn't sure what the problem is. He knows Kurt is into it, he can feel how into it Kurt is, but whenever he so much as tries to grind against him, Kurt pulls away, all bright smiles and excuses, genuinely happy but still determined to put two feet of air between them, like they're at a goddamn Bible camp or something. It's starting to get to him, but then, just about everything is starting to get to him now.
His parents treat him like glass, his sister treats him like a mildly interesting family friend, his therapist treats him like a science experiment, Quinn treats him like scenery, Sam treats him like a superhero, and now his boyfriend treats him like a blushing virgin. Blaine wonders what his life would be like if someone were to just treat him like he's normal.
***
Then again, sometimes normal is admittedly overrated. Blaine might have a boyfriend who skitters away from him like a frightened bunny rabbit at the slightest hint of sex, but he still has a boyfriend who is funny, and easy to talk to, and who always knows exactly what to do to make him feel better about whatever happens to be going on in his life. So much has changed since he ran away from Tom, it's a relief to know that at least he still gets to have this one thing.
Cynthia had been extra rowdy at the park today, probably because of all the tension she couldn't understand between him and their parents, so he's waited a little longer than usual before taking her home. She doesn't like being tricked by Blaine into getting so tired she falls asleep in the afternoons, but she's also really stupid, so all he needs to do to get her nicely exhausted is pretend multiple times that he's miscounted how many laps she's run.
"Five? What? No, no way that was five. You've only been running long enough to go around three times at least. You're not a cheetah, Cynthia, you're a girl. Have they taught you how to count yet in school? Oh okay, well maybe you're right, but how about you start over and count out loud for every time you end up back where you started? That way we'll be sure. Ready? And go! Go, go, go! I'm timing you! Don't waste time arguing!"
They took so long today, that he's only just watched her collapse on the floor of the family room in front of Tangled when the doorbell rings. Kurt is there with a big smile on his face when he answers, cradling a photo album in his arms and looking so pleased with himself, Blaine is immediately wary.
"What's going on?" he asks, suspiciously, making no move to stand aside and let Kurt in. Not that it matters, as Kurt pushes past on his own brightly answering,
"I got you a present."
"For what?" Blaine asks.
"I told you this morning," Kurt says, sounding like he's a little hurt that Blaine's forgotten, but Blaine isn't too worried about having forgotten something important. He knows that self-satisfied gleam in Kurt's eyes too well by now.
Sure enough, Kurt drops the act and starts grinning like the Cheshire Cat as he singsongs,
"You've started fighting with your par-ents."
He holds up the album.
"Like I said, we should celebrate. Especially because the whole thing could have been avoided if you'd just listened to me in the first place. Which means I'm smarter than you."
"You're joking," Blaine says, shaking his head a little. "This is seriously what your lame therapy books are coming up with to help me adjust?"
"The therapy books aren't brilliant enough to come up with this sort of thing," Kurt says, his hand fluttering out a small wave of dismissal. "This is all me. Dad had to answer the phone three times today because I was so focused on getting this ready for tonight."
After Blaine has haphazardly thrown a blanket on the down-for-the-count Cynthia it's easier to pretend they're alone in the room with only a pile of laundry in front of them to distract them from each other. Kurt snuggles up against Blaine on the couch and hands him the album.
Blaine opens the first page to see a girl staring up at him. The photo is carefully centered and the page is awash with glitter and stars and stickers of unicorns. The girl herself doesn't look familiar to Blaine, but she has a pretty, cheeky smile, long blonde hair, pale blue eyes and a low cut top showing off her cleavage. It takes a moment for Blaine to realize that she's also holding a placard in front of her chest with numbers written on it.
"What is this?" He asks, confused.
"It's my gift to you, Blaine," Kurt shushes. "Turn the page."
The next page is as lavishly decorated as the first, albeit with the unicorn stickers swapped out for Precious Moments. It's the same girl in the mug shot, with a caption reading "9 Months Later" above it, in elaborate handwriting, written with what appears to be a glitter pen. The girl's face is now pallid, her eyes unfocused and staring vacantly off in two different directions. Her cheeks are sunken, her hair limp and dirty, and the smile gone. The shirt is still low-cut, but where there was once cleavage there is now only skin and bones. Her face is covered with sores.
"That's attractive," Blaine says. "This is very nice Kurt, I like the stickers, but do you maybe want to get to the point?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Kurt says. "I thought the implication was fairly obvious. This is the face of your future. You know, because of the path you've chosen to take."
"I see," Blaine says, flipping another page. More glitter, My Little Ponies this time. "I'm glad that you're trying to show interest in my interests, but you remember how I'm not a meth head, right? I could have sworn we've had this conversation before."
"Really?" Kurt says, as he cuddles closer and looks over Blaine's shoulder. "Well, have we had the one where I tell you I think marijuana smells like someone successfully set their own body odour on fire?"
"Don't think I've heard that one yet," Blaine says, flipping another page. "It's good though. Well said."
He lifts up the album to get a better look at the picture in front of him before finally saying,
"Actually, I think this person looks better after five years of drug use."
"Dammit," Kurt mutters. "I knew I shouldn't have put that one in there."
They flip through a few more pages, making the odd comment, before Blaine softly says,
"Kurt, you know I'm never going to be one of these people, right? I get that this is just to be funny, and I think you're awesome right now, but you know I'll never end up like this, right?"
"I know," Kurt says, simply. "That's why I made this. I know you'll be fine, Blaine. You have people to help you. I know you hate it, but everyone's watching too closely to let you get into something you can't get out of. Even Quinn, in her own way. But that doesn't mean you're not making this harder on yourself than it has to be. The only way you're going to feel like you belong is you start letting yourself feel what it's like to let people in."
"I've let you in," Blaine says.
Kurt leans over and kisses the corner of his mouth.
"Yeah," he smiles. "Now the trick is to let more people in. You don't have to put a limit on the people you love."
"I never said I didn't love them," Blaine says. "I just love them differently than how I love you, that's all."
Kurt is silent for a moment, giving Blaine a chance to think over what he's just said. His heart stops for the smallest moment, and then starts pounding double time, as he desperately racks his mind for something, anything, that will magically take back the words that just left his mouth. He stops worrying and just goes with it the next second though, when Kurt firmly reaches out and places a hand on Blaine's cheek, forcing him to look right at Kurt before Kurt tackles him a little and kisses him for real, the photo album sliding to the floor forgotten, as they try to make out as quietly as possible.
"I love you, too," Kurt whispers into his ear.
They've both returned to their proper, photo album-browsing, non-compromising positions by the time his mother walks in the door, followed shortly after by his dad. One day Blaine is going to ask how they get home so close to the same time.
"Hey boys," his mother says, nudging at the sleeping pile of blankets with her toe, even after it starts to mutter angrily at the intrusion. It's just as well. The last thing Blaine wants is to see Cynthia so well-rested she spends the entire night singing stupid songs at the top of her lungs. Again.
"Hi Mrs. Anderson," Kurt smiles, manners on full blast, as always. "How was your day?"
"Not bad," she says. "Your dad and I were pretty worried about you though, Blaine."
She looks at him pointedly. "We both tried calling you after we left. You didn't answer."
"Yeah," Blaine says, unable to meet her eyes, and then his dad is there, coming out of the study after putting away his briefcase, and compounding the awkwardness.
"I'm sorry I got so upset with you this morning, I guess," he manages. "I mean, I'm still not sorry about actually smoking the pot, but you were right that I wasn't handling things the right way. I just panicked, and I haven't really been giving you a chance to try and help with any of what's going on, either."
"We can talk about it later," his dad says, glancing at Kurt with an odd expression. Suddenly Blaine is aware of how close he still is to Kurt. There isn't even an inch of space between them. He feels his face heat up as his father continues. "We can sort out some safer ways for you work through some of this, but all we really wanted to say to you before we left was that we're not mad at you. This isn't easy for any of us, and we won't agree on everything, but we're not going to punish you for something that's never gotten you into trouble before. When you do something wrong, we want to let you know why it's not okay instead of automatically penalizing you for it. We'll handle these problems as they happen, okay?"
Blaine nods, and Kurt pokes him in the sides, right where Kurt knows he's ticklish, the bastard, and says,
"You really lucked out on the parent department, you know that? If my dad caught me hanging out with Quinn Fabray and drinking her mother's overpriced wine collection while we smoked pot, I would not get a chance to talk about his expectations of me."
Blaine rolls his eyes.
"Please," he says. "You wouldn't know a mind-altering drug if it bit you in the ass."
"You don't know my life, Blaine," Kurt snits with a smirk. "I lived a rough life before I met you. True story. See?"
He grabs the photo album from Blaine and flips forward almost to the end, where he's placed a picture of an impeccably well-dressed little boy who can only be Kurt in the before picture, and then flips the page to show a shot of himself dressed as Riff-Raff from the year before. It's the same shot Blaine took in the basement of the old Hummel house that first night he went over for the Top Model marathon.
His mother laughs out loud and snatches the book from off of their laps.
"What the hell is this?" she demands before looking a little closer at the page and adding. "And where did you find Angelina Ballerina stickers?"
Even his dad is laughing as he looks at the picture with his wife and listens to Kurt's embarrassed explanations. As Blaine fights the urge to bury his head into Kurt's neck and laugh, he feels a little twinge of sadness come over him, because the more Kurt visits, the more his parents are charmed by him. Blaine wishes he was brave enough to tell them the truth, because sometimes he needs them to understand that for as good a friend as Kurt is, he's an infinitely better boyfriend. He wants them to know so badly it almost hurts.
Kurt is the greatest thing that's ever happened to him, and he can't work up the courage to properly explain why.
To Part Two C
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 2 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: Again I feel like I'm being super anti-drug in this section of the story (maybe it's a theme for all my part twos in this 'verse), but I feel like I need to make the comment that the problem (hopefully) being addressed here isn't recreational drug use so much as it's self-medicating, which in itself isn't always a bad thing, but if you're doing it for an extended period to deal with any kind of trauma or condition, it can get dangerous very quickly. I've added self-medicating to the trigger list (it just gets longer and longer haha), but I wanted to draw attention to it here since this is probably the worst it's going to get.
And speaking of the trigger list, remind yourself of its contents before your read these next two parts because the residual trauma angst kicks up a notch for them.
He doesn't expect to see her ever again, except maybe if he has to have Puck set up another drug run for him, but three days later she's on his doorstep again, greasy and dishevelled as before, eyes suspiciously bright, cradling a couple glasses and a bottle what is probably very expensive wine. Cynthia is spending the day at someone's house, so they smoke a joint out on the back steps, neither one of them saying a word, but then when Quinn reaches into her bag to pull out a corkscrew she mumbles,
"It feels like drowning."
"Yeah," Blaine says. He doesn't know what she's talking about exactly, but he still knows what she means. He feels it, too.
They drink in silence for a while and then when he's pouring them another glass she speaks up again.
"I'm a mother."
"I know," Blaine says. "Kurt told me once."
"Some days it feels like there's nothing left," she says. "Like I made a mistake and I can never take it back. It's not fair. Puck picks up and he goes on living his life like nothing's any different. He gets a girlfriend, he sings and dances in that stupid club and he's happy. I've tried to be happy so many times, to find what he's found, but it never works. She's all I had that mattered and I let Shelby Corcoran take her away."
Quinn might be dressing meaner, smoking pot, and stealing alcohol from her mother now, but she is still definitely the same prim and proper girl Blaine used to see smiling at him vaguely in the McKinley hallways. She gets drunk too fast to be used to it.
"It's okay to miss her," Blaine offers, finally.
"She's been gone a year," Quinn says, talking like she hasn't even heard him. "Her birthday came when you had disappeared and Stevie had just gone missing. It was her very first birthday and I missed it because I was out hanging up posters about the two of you."
She's openly crying now, but Blaine doesn't try to comfort her. He has a feeling touching her right now would only leave him with a black eye.
"I'm sorry," is all he can say.
"Why?" Quinn asks. "You aren't the one who forgot, and it's not like I didn't know she was somewhere safe. We thought you were dead, you were more important."
"But we weren't," Blaine says. "Not to you."
Quinn cries harder, burying her face in her hands.
"She should be everything and I couldn't even remember. I know I don't deserve her. I'm a stupid, selfish girl who let herself get pregnant in high school, but I don't care. I can't stop how I feel. I can't stop that I need her, even if all I do is let her down, even when I'm not with her."
Blaine passes her now full glass back to her.
"It doesn't feel much better if you get what you want, anyhow," he says.
Quinn makes a small snorting sound and smirks at him knowingly through her tears as she takes the wine.
***
Kurt isn't exactly thrilled by Blaine's friendship with Quinn.
"I don't think you two are healthy for each other right now," he says flatly after the subject has come up.
"Why not?" Blaine asks, genuinely surprised and a little annoyed. "Because she quit glee club? There's more to life than your high school singing career, Kurt."
"How shallow do you think I am?" Kurt says. "It's not about that. You're a bad influence on each other. Your parents think so, too."
"The only reason they don't like Quinn is because they've caught her in my room a couple mornings before they leave for work. They can't decide if I'm fucking her when they've already decided I'm gay and it makes them nervous. Is that what your problem is? You're mad that she got into bed with me before you did, aren't you? Admit it."
"I'd like to think that when we do get into bed together we'll have better things to worry about than getting pot ash between the sheets," Kurt sniffs, refusing to rise to the bait.
Quinn has taken to visiting as late as three o'clock in the morning. It starts after Blaine mentions that he never sleeps more than 2 hours at a time, a problem they both seem to share. Eventually he slips a key under one of the rocks in the garden and tells her the alarm code and now more than once he's woken up from the unpleasant beginnings of very bad dreams to her sliding into bed alongside him, various illegal substances in tow. It's never anything serious - they've never moved beyond pot and whatever alcohol they can get their hands on, but for Kurt apparently it's more than enough to start passing judgement.
"You never bothered me about this kind of thing before," he protests. "It's no different than what I did in Lima."
"It's different," Kurt insists. "You're in a good a place now, Blaine. No one's hurting you and you're surrounded by people who don't just want to help, they really can. Why are you acting like you still live with him?"
Because in my head I still do, Blaine thinks, but he doesn't say anything. Kurt just doesn't understand, as much as Blaine wants him to. But Quinn knows all about getting trapped in a place everyone else around her has forgotten about. They don't try to help each other because they aren't looking to be fixed when they're together. Out loud he just laughs it off and says,
"Come on, Kurt. I promise it's nothing bad. Are you sure you're not just jealous?"
Kurt refuses to be distracted and just frowns,
"It's not just about you, you know. You're hurting her, too."
Blaine has his own opinions about that. He doesn't fight with Quinn, he just listens. Listening never hurt anyone. The fact that they're getting drunk and high in his parent's house never even registers as one of the negative things Kurt was talking about until one night when Quinn is gone and he has a nightmare featuring Tom breaking into the house, livid over Blaine's betrayal, and Blaine is so scared he can almost taste it until Tom reaches out to him and starts pulling down his boxers. This, at least, is something he knows always keeps Tom happy, so he lies there as quietly as he can, trying not to move, trying not to fight back. The worst part of it is the thought that his parents could walk in and see something any second. The dream scares him as much as the nightmares Blaine usually has about the security guard, which is an upsetting thing to think about. His regular nightmares are bad enough, but if the Tom dreams start to get as bad as the dreams about the guard, Blaine might as well find a gun to go put himself out of his misery, because there's no way he can deal with feeling like he's gone through the motions of reliving a rape every night.
He's lying in his bed, trying to make his hands stop shaking, hoping that tonight will be one of the nights Quinn comes to visit, but the hours drag past and she never shows. Finally Blaine can't take it anymore. He knows if he stays inside another second he's going to lose his mind - start screaming, maybe, and never stop again. He just needs something to make his head stop spinning and his heart stop racing.
He's outside and halfway through the joint when a light turns on in his parent's room. A few minutes later, the door is opening and his dad is looking out cautiously, asking,
"Is someone out there?"
"It's just me," Blaine says. "I'm sorry. I couldn't sleep."
"Oh," his dad says, standing awkwardly in the doorway. "Did...did you want to talk about it or anything?"
Blaine shrugs, nowhere near ready to admit what's keeping him awake.
"I'm fine," he says. "I'm almost done anyhow. I'll come back inside in a minute."
"Are you smoking?" His dad asks, and the question carries a faint edge of something with it. Not anger or annoyance, but maybe something like disbelief.
"Yes?" Blaine says, a little confused. "Is there a problem?"
"Yes," his dad says, slowly. "You're smoking. That's a problem. I don't like seeing you do that, it's not healthy."
"Well what else am I supposed to do?" Blaine asks, probably a little too sharply, but he's just so tired and trying to understand what his parents want from him is exhausting enough on a normal day. "I know it's not fantastic for my lungs, but it doesn't work as well when you put it in brownies."
"What?" His dad sounds downright incredulous now, as he steps outside and walks over to smell the smoke curling out of the cigarette. "Blaine, why the hell are you sitting outside smoking pot in the middle of the night?"
"It helps me sleep," Blaine says, equally incredulous, because he can't for the life of him work out why this is a big deal. "Look, I'm not asking you to join or anything. I get that a lot of people don't like it, but I'm not hurting anything."
"Your sister's window is right above your head, Blaine."
"It's not like she can get hotboxed from all the way out here," Blaine says. If he were more awake he'd just apologize and be more careful not to get caught the next time, but right now his frustration is winning out. "I don't just leave this stuff lying around where she can find it, and if I ever smoke inside with Quinn we do it by the window so the smell doesn't go through the house."
"And do the two of you ever take the time to make sure you've properly gotten rid of the embers in the middle of the night when you're too high to stay awake? This is not only stupid, it's incredibly dangerous, Blaine. I assumed something was going on with you and Quinn when we mysteriously started to have more empties in the recycling than usual, but I didn't say anything because I'd rather she stay the night instead of drive back to Lima when she's not sober, but this puts the entire house in danger. What the hell were you thinking?"
The door opens again and his mother steps out, asking about what's going on, but Blaine doesn't pay any attention to her.
"I'm thinking you have no right to tell me what I can and can't do, or that I'm being stupid and reckless when you know nothing about me."
"I think you're out of control," his dad says.
"Tell me something I don't know," Blaine snaps. "Why do you think I'm sitting out here at 4:30 in the morning getting high? Impulse? I'm here because I need all of this to stop, okay? I need to take a fucking break from being me, and nothing else works."
"Blaine, if you're feeling overwhelmed, you can always talk to us," his mother says, not missing a beat.
"I don't know you," Blaine shouts. "Why would I talk to you about this? Just because you're technically my parents doesn't mean you know anything about what I'm going through, or that you're going to be able to help me with any of the things that keep me awake at night."
"And Quinn does help?" His dad asks. Blaine can't quite decide if he sounds hurt or not.
"No," Blaine says. "She doesn't do a thing. But she doesn't pretend like she has any of the answers, either. She doesn't fixate on one thing and act like if I stop doing that my life will turn around."
"No one's saying that," his father starts, but his mother cuts him off, calmly.
"Blaine, we know you're struggling, and that's normal. No one expects you to act like the last nine years never happened, but you can't lock yourself away from the people who are trying to help you cope. Getting into the habit of abusing addictive substances of any kind is only going to hurt you later on."
"It's just pot," Blaine says, angrily. "People actually get it prescribed to them when they're sick. I'm not taking it because I like feeling like I'm fighting the system or whatever. I smoke it because it helps."
"You're drinking because it helps, too," his dad says, in this voice that makes it really obvious that he thinks he's finally gained the upper hand when he so hasn't.
"So?" he says, which is the sort of argument a two-year-old uses, but it's the best he can come up with right now. He's not about to let his dad think he's won something.
"So you can't start doing something like self-medicating without running into major issues when you're older," Dad says.
"They're called controlled substances because they need to be monitored by a professional," his mother adds and he thinks the most frustrating thing about this entire confrontation is how logical and level-headed they're being when he feels like he's flying apart in all directions. "If you think you need to be put on medication, you need to start talking to Dr. Hong in your sessions with her. If you can't handle what you're feeling that's fine, but you need to talk to someone who can find out the best way to help you."
"I know the best way to help me," Blaine protests. "I know what I need, and what I need is for you people to trust me a little bit. I'm not going to turn into a crack head living in cardboard box downtown because I'm an underage drinker and I get high sometimes. I hardly even do it anymore, not when you compare to how much I did it when I lived with Tom, before I met Kurt."
"What does Kurt have to do with this?" His dad asks.
"He doesn't like it when I get high, either," Blaine admits. "So I talk to him when I know it will help. I don't talk to Quinn because when she's over I'm past talking, okay?"
"If talking to Kurt won't help, you can talk to us," Mom insists. "We're always willing to listen."
"But I don't want you to hear!" Blaine says, wanting to shout again, but fortunately aware enough of his surroundings to keep his voice down to an angry hiss. "I don't want to talk to you about this, okay? And you don't want to hear it. You don't want to hear about how I'm scared that people will blame me if I have to get on a witness stand and admit that sometimes I convinced Tom to have sex with me because I felt like I had to earn the right to stay with him. You don't want to hear about the nightmares I have about him and his fucking friends that make me too scared to go back to sleep without someone in the room with me. You keep saying you want to know me better, but don't fucking flatter yourselves, because none of us want that."
He pushes past them into the house and goes back to his room. They don't follow him.
***
He goes from angry to panicked in about five seconds but he manages to hold out against calling Kurt until 6 o'clock, when he knows he'll be getting up to get ready for work anyhow.
"I really fucked things up, Kurt," he says immediately, forgoing any sort of greeting. "I think I ruined everything."
"They're not mad," Is the first thing Kurt says, once Blaine's explained enough of what's happened. "It's just hard right now. You're all just adjusting, that's all. And it's not like I didn't tell you the way you were dealing with everything was a mistake."
"I don't understand why this is so bad to everyone," Blaine says, helplessly. "It's just what I do. I'm not addicted to anything, I'm not the only one who does it, it's just one of those things. I don't get it."
"I know you don't," Kurt says, and Blaine can hear him smile. Sometimes Kurt turns doe-eyed over the weirdest things, like when he acts like an idiot and has to ask for help after. Blaine is pretty sure it's just sad, but he's heard that tone to Kurt's voice more often than not when he calls asking about what he should do. The one time he got frustrated and asked what the problem was, Kurt only said, "I love that you care enough about them to try to fix it." Blaine pretends he doesn't notice anymore, because someone thinking he's wonderful when all he's doing is proving all the reasons why he most definitely isn't makes him feel twice as uncomfortable.
"How bad are you?" Kurt asks. "I can come after work, or I can take the day off and stop by."
"Please don't do that," Blaine says, almost interrupting. "Your dad already thinks I'm pathetic and beyond help. Let's not add to it."
"He does not," Kurt says, but Blaine knows it's not true. "He likes you. You should be counting your blessings, because no one expected my boyfriends to go over with him. You make the whole process so easy, I may just have to keep you."
Blaine is momentarily distracted by hearing Kurt call him that, just like he is every other time he hears it, but it doesn't change that Kurt is dead wrong. Even though Burt is civil and calm to him when they talk, treating Blaine just like the next person, Blaine can tell that he's never forgotten how Blaine had to call and ask for help, or how embarrassingly needy he'd been that night after Anthony's party. He hasn't forgotten the cast or the bruises or how Blaine was so stupid he didn't want his own parents to find him. Burt doesn't like Blaine, he just pities him, and Kurt is too nice to admit it.
"Seriously," Kurt says. "Do you want me to come over right now? I'll lie to my dad and tell him Mercedes is having a wardrobe emergency."
"He'll see right through that," Blaine mutters.
"It's happened before," Kurt says, and while Blaine doesn't doubt that, he knows Burt would still know the real reason. Lately the only time Mercedes and Kurt are involved in any sort of emergency these days is when they both happen to be out somewhere and Blaine calls up in a panic. He really is the worst boyfriend of all time.
"Blaine," Kurt starts, but Blaine cuts him off.
"Seriously Kurt, you can't keep coming to my rescue all the time like this," He thinks his argument would carry more weight if he didn't sound traumatized like someone who is watching a puppy get its head ripped off two feet away from him. "I just really wanted to hear your voice right now, but I'll be fine. I can do this."
"Do you promise?" Kurt asks.
"I promise," Blaine confirms.
"Okay," Kurt says, "I'll believe you, but first tell me what you plan on doing if I don't come over."
"I'm going to stay in my room and keep ignoring my parents whenever they try to talk to me through the door."
"Which is what they're doing right now?" Kurt asks.
"You can hear it?" Blaine asks. "They've been coming by and trying to get me to talk about once every half hour or so. They're really persistent right now. I think because they have to leave soon?"
"They can probably hear you talking to me and know you're not sleeping," Kurt says. "You should talk to them before they leave. You get that it's really obvious that they don't hate you, right?"
"I get that no one in this house wants to let me be my own person. I can't help it if my own person is an extension of someone they hate. They should have thought about that before they decided to take me back."
"You're the only one who doesn't get that you're nothing like Tom," Kurt says patiently. Blaine doesn't understand how he can always be so patient with him.
"I should come over," Kurt says, like he's already decided.
"What?" Blaine says. "No, Kurt, come on. I already told you that I'm going to be okay on my own. Listen to me. Listen to my voice. You've heard me worse than this, right? It's nothing."
"It's a fight, Blaine," Kurt says. "It's not nothing, especially since I'm pretty sure you've never done that before. I'm also pretty sure you've never even gotten frustrated with them without having a complete breakdown until this morning. You're practically a normal teenager now. We should celebrate."
"A normal teenager would be grounded," Blaine says, not that he has much experience with being grounded, but he's been watching lots of old TGIF shows now that he has entire days to himself. "And I still freaked out. I wouldn't be talking to you if I hadn't freaked out."
"Don't take this the wrong way," Kurt says. "Because you know I don't mind, but normally when something happens you call right away, and if you don't? I can't get a coherent word out of you for at least half an hour. Not only did you hold off for over an hour before you called me, you weren't spouting gibberish when you did, either. Face it, Blaine. You're getting good at this whole son thing."
Blaine snorts a little, leaning his head against the window.
"I know for a fact you aren't this big of a freak when you're having fights with your dad," he says.
"Not normally," Kurt says, his voice no longer teasing. "But you didn't see me while he was in the hospital. We'd been mid-fight when that happened. When I thought I was going to lose him, I got really bad. Just ask Finn and Carole sometime. You'll get better at family when you're not afraid you'll lose them all the time. I promise."
It takes a while but Blaine finally convinces Kurt to go to work and even though it means his day will now be painfully boring, it would be a lie to say he's not pleased with himself. In the afternoon he goes out with Cynthia, after an agonizing morning spent ignoring his parents' phone calls. Taking Cynthia to the park lets him run away from the problem but he can still pretend he's being a responsible brother, because going to the park is about the only way to get her energy levels down to something manageable. As an added bonus, she's also really easy to handle at a park. The most he has to do is pretend to watch her on the monkey bars, push her on the swing, or if she starts getting too bossy, say, "Hey! I bet you can't run around this entire playground five times really fast."
He ends up spending most of his time there trying to interpret badly spelled texts from Stevie, who in addition to having a bad day that's resulted in him refusing to leave his house, has also stolen Sam's cell. Blaine thinks that overall Stevie is probably doing better than he is at adjusting, but from what Quinn and Sam have told him, it's still pretty bad sometimes. Once Sam, who still hasn't heard the whole story yet, called him up in tears, demanding,
"What the hell happened to him while you were gone?"
That's how Blaine found out that when Stevie has a bad nightmare they have to keep the doors locked.
"He didn't even recognize us and tried to run out into the street. I had to grab him before he ran in front of a car and I felt like I was the one who needed to go to jail."
Blaine has no idea how he's supposed to help Sam figure out a way to handle Stevie when he can barely handle himself, but Kurt says he thinks Sam isn't really looking for a solution.
"You're the only one who really gets what it was like for Stevie," he says after Blaine tells him about the phone call. "And Sam still pretty much thinks you fight crime when Westerville goes to sleep at night, so he probably just wants to remind himself that Stevie can get better. You know, so he remembers that one day Stevie could grow up to become you."
A comment like that pretty much required a hand job at the very least, but before Blaine could even manage to get Kurt's belt undone Carole had gotten home and started calling up the stairs, asking if anyone was home. Kurt had squirmed away from Blaine so fast it reminded Blaine of Cynthia's laboured attempts at eating Jell-o: lots of action, but very little payoff. Which Blaine supposed was a legitimate enough reason to back off, for once. But the problem is something always seems to get in the way whenever he tries to move things anywhere beyond kissing with Kurt. It seems like he's forever running into road blocks and he isn't sure what the problem is. He knows Kurt is into it, he can feel how into it Kurt is, but whenever he so much as tries to grind against him, Kurt pulls away, all bright smiles and excuses, genuinely happy but still determined to put two feet of air between them, like they're at a goddamn Bible camp or something. It's starting to get to him, but then, just about everything is starting to get to him now.
His parents treat him like glass, his sister treats him like a mildly interesting family friend, his therapist treats him like a science experiment, Quinn treats him like scenery, Sam treats him like a superhero, and now his boyfriend treats him like a blushing virgin. Blaine wonders what his life would be like if someone were to just treat him like he's normal.
***
Then again, sometimes normal is admittedly overrated. Blaine might have a boyfriend who skitters away from him like a frightened bunny rabbit at the slightest hint of sex, but he still has a boyfriend who is funny, and easy to talk to, and who always knows exactly what to do to make him feel better about whatever happens to be going on in his life. So much has changed since he ran away from Tom, it's a relief to know that at least he still gets to have this one thing.
Cynthia had been extra rowdy at the park today, probably because of all the tension she couldn't understand between him and their parents, so he's waited a little longer than usual before taking her home. She doesn't like being tricked by Blaine into getting so tired she falls asleep in the afternoons, but she's also really stupid, so all he needs to do to get her nicely exhausted is pretend multiple times that he's miscounted how many laps she's run.
"Five? What? No, no way that was five. You've only been running long enough to go around three times at least. You're not a cheetah, Cynthia, you're a girl. Have they taught you how to count yet in school? Oh okay, well maybe you're right, but how about you start over and count out loud for every time you end up back where you started? That way we'll be sure. Ready? And go! Go, go, go! I'm timing you! Don't waste time arguing!"
They took so long today, that he's only just watched her collapse on the floor of the family room in front of Tangled when the doorbell rings. Kurt is there with a big smile on his face when he answers, cradling a photo album in his arms and looking so pleased with himself, Blaine is immediately wary.
"What's going on?" he asks, suspiciously, making no move to stand aside and let Kurt in. Not that it matters, as Kurt pushes past on his own brightly answering,
"I got you a present."
"For what?" Blaine asks.
"I told you this morning," Kurt says, sounding like he's a little hurt that Blaine's forgotten, but Blaine isn't too worried about having forgotten something important. He knows that self-satisfied gleam in Kurt's eyes too well by now.
Sure enough, Kurt drops the act and starts grinning like the Cheshire Cat as he singsongs,
"You've started fighting with your par-ents."
He holds up the album.
"Like I said, we should celebrate. Especially because the whole thing could have been avoided if you'd just listened to me in the first place. Which means I'm smarter than you."
"You're joking," Blaine says, shaking his head a little. "This is seriously what your lame therapy books are coming up with to help me adjust?"
"The therapy books aren't brilliant enough to come up with this sort of thing," Kurt says, his hand fluttering out a small wave of dismissal. "This is all me. Dad had to answer the phone three times today because I was so focused on getting this ready for tonight."
After Blaine has haphazardly thrown a blanket on the down-for-the-count Cynthia it's easier to pretend they're alone in the room with only a pile of laundry in front of them to distract them from each other. Kurt snuggles up against Blaine on the couch and hands him the album.
Blaine opens the first page to see a girl staring up at him. The photo is carefully centered and the page is awash with glitter and stars and stickers of unicorns. The girl herself doesn't look familiar to Blaine, but she has a pretty, cheeky smile, long blonde hair, pale blue eyes and a low cut top showing off her cleavage. It takes a moment for Blaine to realize that she's also holding a placard in front of her chest with numbers written on it.
"What is this?" He asks, confused.
"It's my gift to you, Blaine," Kurt shushes. "Turn the page."
The next page is as lavishly decorated as the first, albeit with the unicorn stickers swapped out for Precious Moments. It's the same girl in the mug shot, with a caption reading "9 Months Later" above it, in elaborate handwriting, written with what appears to be a glitter pen. The girl's face is now pallid, her eyes unfocused and staring vacantly off in two different directions. Her cheeks are sunken, her hair limp and dirty, and the smile gone. The shirt is still low-cut, but where there was once cleavage there is now only skin and bones. Her face is covered with sores.
"That's attractive," Blaine says. "This is very nice Kurt, I like the stickers, but do you maybe want to get to the point?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Kurt says. "I thought the implication was fairly obvious. This is the face of your future. You know, because of the path you've chosen to take."
"I see," Blaine says, flipping another page. More glitter, My Little Ponies this time. "I'm glad that you're trying to show interest in my interests, but you remember how I'm not a meth head, right? I could have sworn we've had this conversation before."
"Really?" Kurt says, as he cuddles closer and looks over Blaine's shoulder. "Well, have we had the one where I tell you I think marijuana smells like someone successfully set their own body odour on fire?"
"Don't think I've heard that one yet," Blaine says, flipping another page. "It's good though. Well said."
He lifts up the album to get a better look at the picture in front of him before finally saying,
"Actually, I think this person looks better after five years of drug use."
"Dammit," Kurt mutters. "I knew I shouldn't have put that one in there."
They flip through a few more pages, making the odd comment, before Blaine softly says,
"Kurt, you know I'm never going to be one of these people, right? I get that this is just to be funny, and I think you're awesome right now, but you know I'll never end up like this, right?"
"I know," Kurt says, simply. "That's why I made this. I know you'll be fine, Blaine. You have people to help you. I know you hate it, but everyone's watching too closely to let you get into something you can't get out of. Even Quinn, in her own way. But that doesn't mean you're not making this harder on yourself than it has to be. The only way you're going to feel like you belong is you start letting yourself feel what it's like to let people in."
"I've let you in," Blaine says.
Kurt leans over and kisses the corner of his mouth.
"Yeah," he smiles. "Now the trick is to let more people in. You don't have to put a limit on the people you love."
"I never said I didn't love them," Blaine says. "I just love them differently than how I love you, that's all."
Kurt is silent for a moment, giving Blaine a chance to think over what he's just said. His heart stops for the smallest moment, and then starts pounding double time, as he desperately racks his mind for something, anything, that will magically take back the words that just left his mouth. He stops worrying and just goes with it the next second though, when Kurt firmly reaches out and places a hand on Blaine's cheek, forcing him to look right at Kurt before Kurt tackles him a little and kisses him for real, the photo album sliding to the floor forgotten, as they try to make out as quietly as possible.
"I love you, too," Kurt whispers into his ear.
They've both returned to their proper, photo album-browsing, non-compromising positions by the time his mother walks in the door, followed shortly after by his dad. One day Blaine is going to ask how they get home so close to the same time.
"Hey boys," his mother says, nudging at the sleeping pile of blankets with her toe, even after it starts to mutter angrily at the intrusion. It's just as well. The last thing Blaine wants is to see Cynthia so well-rested she spends the entire night singing stupid songs at the top of her lungs. Again.
"Hi Mrs. Anderson," Kurt smiles, manners on full blast, as always. "How was your day?"
"Not bad," she says. "Your dad and I were pretty worried about you though, Blaine."
She looks at him pointedly. "We both tried calling you after we left. You didn't answer."
"Yeah," Blaine says, unable to meet her eyes, and then his dad is there, coming out of the study after putting away his briefcase, and compounding the awkwardness.
"I'm sorry I got so upset with you this morning, I guess," he manages. "I mean, I'm still not sorry about actually smoking the pot, but you were right that I wasn't handling things the right way. I just panicked, and I haven't really been giving you a chance to try and help with any of what's going on, either."
"We can talk about it later," his dad says, glancing at Kurt with an odd expression. Suddenly Blaine is aware of how close he still is to Kurt. There isn't even an inch of space between them. He feels his face heat up as his father continues. "We can sort out some safer ways for you work through some of this, but all we really wanted to say to you before we left was that we're not mad at you. This isn't easy for any of us, and we won't agree on everything, but we're not going to punish you for something that's never gotten you into trouble before. When you do something wrong, we want to let you know why it's not okay instead of automatically penalizing you for it. We'll handle these problems as they happen, okay?"
Blaine nods, and Kurt pokes him in the sides, right where Kurt knows he's ticklish, the bastard, and says,
"You really lucked out on the parent department, you know that? If my dad caught me hanging out with Quinn Fabray and drinking her mother's overpriced wine collection while we smoked pot, I would not get a chance to talk about his expectations of me."
Blaine rolls his eyes.
"Please," he says. "You wouldn't know a mind-altering drug if it bit you in the ass."
"You don't know my life, Blaine," Kurt snits with a smirk. "I lived a rough life before I met you. True story. See?"
He grabs the photo album from Blaine and flips forward almost to the end, where he's placed a picture of an impeccably well-dressed little boy who can only be Kurt in the before picture, and then flips the page to show a shot of himself dressed as Riff-Raff from the year before. It's the same shot Blaine took in the basement of the old Hummel house that first night he went over for the Top Model marathon.
His mother laughs out loud and snatches the book from off of their laps.
"What the hell is this?" she demands before looking a little closer at the page and adding. "And where did you find Angelina Ballerina stickers?"
Even his dad is laughing as he looks at the picture with his wife and listens to Kurt's embarrassed explanations. As Blaine fights the urge to bury his head into Kurt's neck and laugh, he feels a little twinge of sadness come over him, because the more Kurt visits, the more his parents are charmed by him. Blaine wishes he was brave enough to tell them the truth, because sometimes he needs them to understand that for as good a friend as Kurt is, he's an infinitely better boyfriend. He wants them to know so badly it almost hurts.
Kurt is the greatest thing that's ever happened to him, and he can't work up the courage to properly explain why.
To Part Two C