Fic: A Way With Words (Part B)
A Way With Words, Part B
Return to Part A
Burt often caught himself thinking that the best thing about Finn and Kurt dating nice but kind of up-tight spotlight-grabbers was it gave them something in common to commiserate over. Yeah, maybe Kurt’s year at Dalton having let them ease into being weekend-only-brothers first, then full-time brothers this summer, had been more important in the big scheme of things. Even so, the two boys wouldn’t have been kneeling side-by-side on the couch, looking over the back and out the window at the driveway right now if Rachel and Blaine weren’t both such weird combinations of cute and overwhelming.
“This dinner is either gonna be crazy good or a total train wreck, isn’t it?” Burt heard Finn say. The new house had an open floor plan, so he could see the boys in the living room while he and Carole shuttled food from the kitchen to the dining area.
“I don’t see what you guys are so nervous about,” Carole said. “It’s not like either of them are ‘meeting the parents’ for the first time, and having dinner with your significant other’s brother’s significant other is hardly anything for them to get nervous about.” She gave Burt a look as she said this. Sweet woman, she knew exactly what they were worried about.
Kurt sighed. “Are you kidding? We should’ve hired a camera crew and pitched this scenario to a reality show producer. Blaine may be polite, but when he’s passionate about something…and we all know about Rachel. If they get into a Streisand versus LuPone argument, they’ll make the Kardashians look like the Brady Bunch.”
Kurt was being melodramatic, and everyone knew it. Considering how little Rachel and Blaine liked being wrong, if they got into a disagreement, it would be a knock-down drag-out, no doubt about it. But because they were who they were, it would be the most polite and carefully-worded yet drama-queeny knock-down drag-out in history.
On second thought, Burt realized, Kurt wasn’t that far off. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as a reality TV family, but they definitely should’ve sold tickets.
An engine rumbled in the driveway, and headlights flashed in the window. Finn knocked his hand against Kurt’s arm. “Which one is it?”
Kurt leaned farther over the couch, nearly pressing his face against the glass to see. “‘IMA STAR’ vanity plate, which means you’re up, stud.”
Finn hopped off the couch, straightening his shirt collar and checking his fly as he made his way to the front door, Kurt trailing after him. Burt was busy trying not to drop the too-hot dish of green bean casserole that he’d stupidly insisted he could carry without potholders to watch Rachel’s grand entrance, but he heard her exchange chirrupy hellos with the boys and Carole.
“Good evening, Mr. Hummel,” Rachel said. Burt finally got the chance to look up. What people wore rarely registered with Burt, but he would’ve had to have been blind not to notice that her rain gear made her a dead ringer for the Morton Salt Girl. “Oh, you made me a portabella mushroom steak! How sweet. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but I sincerely appreciate your family’s sensitivity to my moral repugnance at feasting on the flesh and secretions of our furred and feathered friends.” She said it with a genuine smile, but Rachel still managed to compliment him in a way that made Burt feel guilty about the roast beef at the center of the table.
Before Burt had a chance to answer, Rachel spun away and swept through the room like a tiny yellow hurricane, coming to rest beside Kurt. “Has Blaine arrived yet? Good. Before your boyfriend shows up and you descend into sweet and well-earned but all-consuming sappiness, I need your serious input on-”
“Oh my god, you’re finally burning your animal sweaters and are asking for fashion advice, aren’t you?” Kurt practically crowed with glee. “Please, please let me style you. I swear I’ll do it for real this time and not use any looks associated with Olivia Newton-John as inspiration. Carole can even vouch for my skill.”
Rachel’s face hardened, and she shrugged off her raincoat with an extra flourish. Her short-sleeved sweater had a momma and baby giraffe on it, and a heart in the place where the sun would normally be in a scene like that. “Actually, I’ve been researching Broadway ballads to suggest to Mr. Schuester for our Sectionals set list when school starts, and I wanted you to weigh in on my short list.”
At least Kurt had the good sense to look chastened. “Oh.”
Finn muttered darkly, “Thanks for keeping things calm and not argue-y like we planned, bro.”
Before things could get any more awkward, the doorbell rang, and Kurt made a beeline for the front door to let Blaine in. Blaine entered, clothing as perfectly pressed and hair as perfectly lacquered down as ever. If it hadn’t been for Blaine’s animated face, how it went all moony whenever his eyes fell on Kurt and all grinning and dorky and delighted when he looked at anybody else, he would’ve looked like a very short mannequin. He hugged Kurt and whispered something in his ear that made him smile, and he kissed Carole on the cheek in that goofily gentlemanly way that always made Carole giggle. He shook Finn’s and Burt’s hands, and Burt still couldn’t help but feel guilty about his posture whenever he saw Blaine.
Blaine hesitated when he came to Rachel. Finn jumped into action after a soft elbow in the back from his mom. “Oh, right. Rachel, this is Kurt’s boyfriend Blaine. Blaine, this is my girlfriend Rachel.”
Blaine said, “Nice to meet you officially. I think we might’ve talked a bit at Regionals in the-”
“Blaine’s one of the main soloists for the Dalton Warblers,” Finn cut in. The woodenness made it clear he’d rehearsed this speech beforehand and was hell-bent on getting the introduction right, no matter how much he might actually be derailing it. He was so caught up in it he didn’t even notice the I know this already, dear, look that Rachel was practically trying to burn into his forehead. “Rachel’s a great singer, too. And her dads are gay. Both of them.”
It was probably cruel to laugh, but Burt had never seen Blaine dumbfounded before. A kid that polished, he’d been wondering if it was even possible. Burt bit his lip hard as he set out the serving ladles, and Carole turned her back on the kids and chuckled into a potholder.
Much to everyone’s surprise, it was Rachel who broke the awkwardness. “Though I attribute much of my success to my fathers’ unflagging faith in my talent and for putting me in singing, dancing, acting, and karate lessons from a very young age, which more than justifies my plan to name them first in my Tony Award acceptance speech, I attribute my natural ability to my biological mother, who is an impressive performer in her own right. Has Kurt told you the story of how I discovered my birth mother’s identity?”
Blaine made the mistake of shaking his head. They sat down at the round table, Carole on Burt’s right, then Blaine, Kurt, Finn, and Rachel on his left. Luckily for Burt, Rachel was too busy regaling them all with the story of the Vocal Adrenaline coach again to tell him “interesting” tidbits about slaughterhouse practices. This time through the story, she was going into a lot more detail about her boyfriend/spy than Burt had heard her do before.
Fifteen minutes later, she closed her monologue with, “My only comfort is the fact that someday this will all make excellent material for my one-woman autobiographical show a la Minelli on Minelli. But I’m so glad, Finn, that you brought this up,” she patted Finn’s hand and looked at him, which made Finn jerk awake and pretend he’d been interested, “because now that Kurt is returning to McKinley and New Directions, my experience is not only an inspirational story of overcoming heartache and rejection but also a cautionary tale.” Her eyes were boring into Blaine now. “In short, I don’t want Kurt to go through a Jesse St. James. Or to have our set list stolen and have to come up with a new one in the green room. Spontaneity may be one of New Directions’ many strengths, but we’ve overcome that particular form of adversity enough times now. It’s getting old.”
It took Blaine a moment to answer, probably because he was wondering whether Rachel was really done or not. “Don’t worry about that. I have heard about Jesse St. James, and that’s not me at all. Kurt and I have already discussed this, and we’ve agreed not to talk about glee clubs with each other. Along the lines of, ‘The first rule of Glee Club: don’t talk about Glee Club. The second rule of Glee Club-’”
“‘Do not talk about Glee Club,’” Finn and Burt both finished along with him, snickering. Rachel, Kurt, and Carole stared at them blankly.
“It’s from Fight Club. A movie,” Blaine explained to Kurt. “My brothers made me watch it.”
Kurt nodded in acceptance. For as often as he’d heard Blaine say it, Burt was beginning to suspect that “my brothers made me” was actually Blaine’s kind way of saying, “I liked it, but it’s too masculine for you” to Kurt. That theory got upended when Blaine added in a low voice he apparently hoped only Kurt could hear, “It’s gorier than what you tend to like, but it’s probably still worth watching for Brad Pitt’s abs alone.”
After a moment of apparently contemplating Brad Pitt’s abs in his mind, Kurt said, “And that’s all if Blaine is even at Dalton next term. More potato salad, anyone?”
Burt recognized Kurt’s tone as the one he pulled out when he was underplaying something important in the hope that Burt would miss it. It didn’t work. “You’re not going back to Dalton, Blaine?” Burt asked.
“Maybe,” Blaine answered. There was something very odd about Blaine’s expression, but Burt couldn’t pinpoint what. “Listening to Kurt’s reasoning for going back to McKinley, how it makes more sense to save money for a good college than to go to an expensive high school, and now that Karofsky’s graduated and the school board has taken a harder line on bullying-it does make some sense.”
“You’re thinking of transferring to McKinley?” Burt asked. “I thought your folks lived in Mason.”
Blaine actually looked uncomfortable, and not in the amusing what-the-hell-Finn? way like before. “I went to the public school in Mason before Dalton. I…”
Kurt jumped in when he saw Blaine floundering. “Of course he wants to transfer to a school with a good glee club so his talent isn’t wasted. Plus, his aunt lives just outside Lima.”
Weirdly enough, Rachel saved them all from uncomfortable silence again. “That would be wonderful. I for one am always happy to see great new talent added to New Directions.” Finn choked on a green bean. Rachel blinked, clearly restraining herself from glaring. When he stopped coughing, Rachel continued, “Yes, well, it’ll be nice to have even greater variety in my duet possibilities. Your voice would be well-suited to some songs that are in neither Finn’s nor Kurt’s wheelhouses.” She still smiled, but she pointed her fork at Blaine for emphasis. “But don’t go thinking you’re going to get all the solos like you have singing with the Warblers.”
Finn said, “Man, even if you care that much about glee, why the hell would you want to come to McKinley? I mean, Kurt coming back is one thing. He misses home, and he suffered through the crap long enough that he misses some people at school, too. Plus, he knows how much it sucks and that he can handle it. Kurt’s told you how much it sucks, right? OW!”
Burt looked up in time to see both Kurt and Rachel glaring at Finn. He would bet money that Finn had just gotten kicked in both shins.
This time, Burt figured it was his turn to bail Blaine out. He tried to do it as nonchalantly as possible, talking as he reached for the bowl of cut-up watermelon and speared pieces onto his plate. “What do your parents think about this? They’re okay with you not living at home?”
“They were fine with me living at Dalton,” Blaine said. His voice was uncharacteristically mumble-y and hostile teenager-ish.
Later, Burt realized he should’ve looked up at that point, but he didn’t. “Well, yeah, but Dalton’s different. We let Kurt live at Dalton, too, but that was because the damn school board here wouldn’t do their job and keep him safe, and Dalton had the zero-tolerance policy. There’s no way we would’ve let Kurt move away from home otherwise.”
Burt had meant for that last part to come off as parentally loving and responsible, and he was pretty sure it had, so he was extra surprised when he felt a swift kick under the table from Carole. Burt set the watermelon bowl aside and looked up. Carole was grimacing, Rachel looked sympathetic but curious, Finn held a forkful of green beans in mid-air like the conversation had confused him mid-bite, and Kurt was silently but clearly panicking. All of these reactions, it appeared, were because Blaine looked like someone had just shot his dog.
It dawned on Burt that he’d always assumed Blaine’s parents had sent him to Dalton for the same reasons he and Carole had sent Kurt there. Kurt had mentioned that Blaine had been bullied in junior high, but from the look on Blaine’s face, something about Burt’s assumption was wrong. He couldn’t figure out why that would make Blaine upset, but he could tell he’d stepped in it but good.
“Not everybody goes to Dalton for that reason, though, I know. It makes sense because parents want the best for their kids in academics, too,” Burt said, scrambling for a way out of whatever this was and not even sure he was making sense. “And the whole boarding school thing is weird for our family, but I bet there’s lots of kids whose dads and uncles and brothers all went to Dalton. Living away from home might be normal-tradition, even. Your brothers went to Dalton, too?”
“No,” Blaine answered. His voice wasn’t working right. In fact, it was the most pitiful sound Burt had ever heard the poor kid make.
“Oh.” Fuck.
Burt didn’t realize it at the time, but much later, he figured out that Kurt completely consciously chose the nuclear option to take the table’s attention away from Blaine’s transfer and to keep it far away from there for the rest of the evening.
“Blaine, have I ever told you about the ‘Get Happy’-‘Happy Days’ duet Rachel and I did for glee?”
Blaine knew when a conversational life preserver was being thrown at him, and he latched onto it for dear life. “Really? Like Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald did?”
Everyone looked up when Rachel’s fork clattered on her plate. Finn’s eyes were particularly wide.
Rachel was outwardly composed, but anybody who’d been around her before could tell she was a volcano about to blow. It was exactly the same look she’d given Burt months ago when he’d said he was thinking about taking a weekend off to go pheasant hunting.
“You mean like Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, I’m sure,” Rachel said.
Burt didn’t think they could, but Finn’s eyes actually went wider. Finn mouthed at Kurt, “Oh crap. Dude, stop this!”
Blaine was the only one who didn’t recognize that Mount Rachel was about to erupt. “Them too,” he said casually.
Since he didn’t know what you did to prepare for volcanic eruptions, Burt just thought to himself, batten down the hatches.
The debate that followed was a scene that Burt would never forget for the rest of his life. It wasn’t even fair to compare Rachel to a volcano, because she wasn’t mad. Neither was Blaine. They were both just intense. Rachel and Blaine’s clear, keen, and scarily passionate debate convinced Burt that one of the two of them would be President someday, if they took half as much interest in taxes and Social Security as they did in vocal range and timbre, whatever that was.
Burt, Carole, Kurt, and Finn sat back and watched, heads swiveling back and forth like they were watching Agassi and Sampras go at it. Or maybe Serena and Venus Williams. Billie Jean King versus Bobby Riggs would make the genders right, but Riggs was kind of a douche and hadn’t even given King much of a run for her money, so that comparison wasn’t fair. At some point, Burt realized that if the debate was as enthralling as it seemed it was, he really shouldn’t be thinking about tennis as they bandied arguments about Broadway stars back and forth. And yet, it still worked, because he didn’t understand what the hell they were arguing about anyway. The entertainment value had nothing to do with the content; it was all about their wild facial expressions and odd gestures. They would’ve both made good silent movie stars, or cartoon characters.
When Burt finally tore his attention away from those two for a minute, he wasn’t surprised to see Finn staring at them in confusion that probably matched Burt’s own expression. He was a bit startled that Carole had that little crease between her eyebrows she usually only got when she knew Finn or Kurt was trying to pull a fast one on her. He was most surprised that Kurt, who loved Broadway and being all intense and dramatic as much as Rachel and Blaine did, wasn’t jumping into the fray, until he saw Kurt’s face. The way Kurt looked at Blaine as the other boy vigorously defended LuPone’s honor and creative choices made Burt close his eyes and repeat to himself, no, my son does not have an ‘O’ face, and even if he does, I did not just see it.
By far the strangest thing of all-besides that both Rachel and Blaine somehow cleaned their plates without taking a break or speaking with their mouths full-was that by dessert, the two were smiling at each other as they discussed. By the time they said good night and Finn and Kurt helped them on with their jackets, they were hugging and planning the best way to share their rare recordings with one another. Somehow, after all that fierce disagreement, they were…friends?
When the door closed, Finn turned around, jaw slack and eyes unfocused. “I said it’d either be a crazy good dinner or a train wreck,” he said. “It was. I’m just not sure which.”
Even Kurt looked stunned. “Crazy good, I think. Even so, we should be a little afraid of how well those two hit it off.”
“Blaine isn’t, like, a switch-hitter, is he?” Finn asked. Kurt glared indignantly and flushed. Finn continued, “Because I know Rachel said she doesn’t want you to go through a Jesse St. James, and I don’t want you to, either. But even more than that, I don’t want me and Rachel to go through another Jesse St. James, and Blaine kind of has that same insanely intense music lover thing going for him.”
Kurt breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, I thought you were asking if he and I-never mind. Sports metaphors can be confusing, and we’ll leave it at that. To answer your question, no, I’m fairly certain Blaine does not want in Rachel’s hideous kick-pleated skirts. Considering that his last crush on a girl was the pink Power Ranger, I’d say you’re safe from him being competition.”
Carole finally shook herself out of the Broadway diva debate daze and said, “I think we could all use some coffee.”
“Good call. That’s what the Red Cross always hands out to survivors of natural disasters,” Burt added half-seriously.
They all stood in the kitchen, silently processing what had just happened until the coffee was ready. Then they took their mugs into the living room. Burt could see the Red Cross’s logic; the warmth and familiarity of the drink were calming and cleared his head. Without the coffee, Burt might have never remembered that Kurt had purposely pushed the conversation in that weird and dangerous direction to avoid something else. He was pretty sure Carole would have remembered it either way, though.
“Kurt,” Carole said as sat down on the couch next to Kurt. “I don’t know how to ask this politely, but is Blaine out to his parents?” At Kurt’s odd look, Carole hurriedly added, “I know that it’s not really any of my business, but I spoke with his parents at the Warblers’ spring concert. I just assumed they knew the two of you were together. I was wracking my brain all through dinner, trying to figure out if I might have said something that caused problems for him at home, or-”
“No, he’s out to his family, and they know about me,” Kurt reassured her, though he still acted like he was holding back.
“Okay. I wasn’t trying to pry. I just wondered, considering how uncomfortable he was when his parents were brought up. Especially since you never go over to his house.”
“Wait-never?” Burt asked. As soon as he said it, he realized it was true, even though he’d never noticed it before.
“Dude, Blaine’s parents must be, like, Meet the Parents scary if you never go there and come here instead. Rachel’s two dads combined aren’t as scary as Burt. No offense, Burt,” Finn said. “Like, Darth Vader scary,” he added after a little more thought.
Kurt huffed and shook his head. “They’re not scary, they’re just-” Kurt’s head drooped, and he pinched the bridge of his nose.
Burt felt his blood pressure rise. It would be bad enough if Blaine’s parents looked down on a kid for having rough manners like-well, like Burt’s own manners, but Kurt had instructed his toys on which utensils to use for the cheese course when he was four. If they looked down their noses at Kurt, it was based on grubby money and connections, plain and simple. That Burt could not condone. Yes, he himself had been standoffish with Blaine at first, until he’d been sure Blaine’s intentions with Kurt were as honorable as a teenage boy’s intentions could be with someone he was attracted to, but that was beside the point. The assholes probably drove a Ferrari or a Lambo or something else that cost as much as Burt’s house but was impossible to find replacement parts for, too.
Burt wanted nothing more than to find out how Kurt’s sentence ended, but he forced himself to say, “Like Carole said, it’s none of our business. So long as they treat you with respect, you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to.”
“I have no problem talking about it at all-frankly, a little outside perspective might be refreshing-but Blaine…it’s a touchy subject for him.” He could see Kurt war with himself for a moment, then relent. “Nothing ever leaves this room?”
Burt nodded as he sat down, leaning his elbows on his legs.
“Of course, honey,” Carole said. Finn nodded as well.
For once, Kurt seemed uncomfortable with having everyone’s attention. “Now I’ve built it up as if it’s some huge deal…. His family just isn’t like ours. Before we were officially dating, Blaine’s parents came up to Dalton for a visit and took us and a couple other Warblers out to dinner. They were perfectly polite and gracious, but that was it. From the way they spoke to Blaine, I don’t think somebody listening in could have figured out which one of us was their son and which were the random boys they’d just met.”
Carole put her hand on his shoulder. “Well, like you said, not every family is like ours. Maybe they’re just not as affectionate in public as we are.”
Kurt shook his head again. “From the way Blaine talks, that’s how they always are. He says they’re tolerant, but he makes ‘tolerant’ sound like a dirty word.”
“But they pay for Dalton,” Finn said. “They cared enough to pull him out of his old school, right?”
“Sort of,” Kurt said. That made Burt sit up in his chair. Kurt sighed and explained, “Blaine’s parents didn’t pull him out of public school the way you guys did with me. Dalton was Blaine’s idea, not his parents’, and it took a long time and a lot of begging for them to come around to it. Blaine’s never come out and said it, but I get the feeling they passive aggressively hold the Dalton tuition over his head. Like, the bullying wasn’t his fault, but it is his fault that he couldn’t deal with it, so shouldn’t he be so grateful to them for indulging his weakness by sending him away?”
Even Finn looked shocked. “They actually say that kind of thing to him?” he asked.
“No. No one in that family ever says anything. That I could tell from the dinner in Westerville. It’s all implied.” When Finn screwed up his eyebrows in confusion, Kurt added, “Like the way I insult stupid people by calling them names they won’t understand anyway. But it’s not fair to do that to family.”
“Sorry, still not following,” Finn said. Burt was glad; he was getting a little lost in here, too.
Kurt said, “For example, Blaine would have every right to get mad at his dad for criticizing him for being a short, queer music nerd, right? But Blaine would look silly if he got mad at his dad for going on and on about his brother Cole getting recruited by college basketball teams, and Tristan being at the top of his med school class, and Miles’s baby girl looking just like her mother, but with the Anderson eyes. When you hear Mr. Anderson say all those nice things about Blaine’s brothers, though, you can practically feel the disappointment and criticism behind them. But you can’t call him on it, because he didn’t say anything bad at all.
“Anyway, I think that’s why Blaine wants to transfer to McKinley. I know it was a lot harder for him to leave his school than it was for me, without even factoring in his parents, but I don’t think that’s-”
“Harder than a death threat?” Burt asked in disbelief.
Kurt turned to him, and he looked like he knew he was about to give a lecture he wished he’d never have to give. “I want to be clear. I’m not saying I’m happy somebody threatened to kill me. I’m also not saying that you or Carole did anything wrong before the threat, Dad. But that happening made leaving easier because it didn’t feel like I was making a choice to leave. Once it was out in the open and I saw how seriously you took it, everyone, including me, knew I wasn’t safe there anymore. As humiliating and terrifying as the-”
Kurt paused, catching himself. Burt knew something else had happened in those last few weeks at McKinley that Kurt had never talked about. As good as Kurt said he felt about going back there in the fall, he still wasn’t coming clean on that one. “As bad as the more general bullying was, it was so hard to draw the line between ‘suck it up, high school is this miserable everywhere and the morons will all be working for you someday anyway’ harassment and ‘cut your losses and run’ tormenting.”
That was hard to hear, because Burt knew it was true. “Are you sure you really want to go back to McKinley in the fall?” Burt asked, making sure Kurt was looking him in the eye. “Because the money issue-we can still make Dalton work, so don’t worry about that.”
“I want to go back,” Kurt said evenly. “I needed a place like Dalton this year, but as much as it pains me to say it, I miss McKinley. Or at least I miss some of the people there.” He looked at Finn as he spoke, and Finn grinned at him in return. “I’m ready.”
Later that night after the boys went up to their rooms, as he helped Carole with the dishes, Burt tried to think his way through what had happened that evening. Yeah, maybe he’d been channeling De Niro a little too heavily when he asked Blaine about transferring to McKinley (hey, at least he’d done it in a Meet the Parents way, rather than a The Godfather: Part II way). He was sorry if he put Blaine in a tough spot, but Burt firmly believed it was better to err on the side of bluntness rather than push stuff under the rug. That’s how his and Kurt’s relationship had always gone, and the few times it hadn’t, like with the bullying, the hiding had made things a lot rougher in the long run. If Blaine’s family wasn’t like that, then yeah, it’d probably take him some extra time to get used to the Hummel-Hudson clan. Sometimes a little craziness-including a little of Rachel Berry’s particular brand of crazy-was something you had to accept to make a family work. Kurt hadn’t seemed that upset after dinner, but Burt still wondered if Kurt understood that, or if he was upstairs right now vowing never to let Blaine near the Lima Inquisition again.
He went upstairs to talk to Kurt after Carole ran him out of the kitchen with a “Just go already-I can tell when you’re preoccupied better than you can” and a playful snap of a dishrag on his butt. He saw Kurt’s door was part-way open. Just as he was about to knock, he heard a voice that was definitely not Kurt’s coming from the bedroom.
“You’re sure your dad doesn’t think I’m some crazy stalker who’s only transferring schools so I can be around you?” Blaine asked, his voice distorted as it came through speakers.
“I’m sure. Despite the gruff exterior, he honestly does like you,” Kurt replied. Burt peeked in the room without moving the door and saw Kurt in his pajamas, sitting cross-legged on his bed and rubbing lotion on his hands as he talked to his laptop screen.
Blaine sighed. “It’s just-I don’t know who I am, Kurt. I thank my lucky stars that you can somehow love me, because I really don’t see how you can.”
“Of course I love you,” Kurt soothed. “I love each and every version of you, too. All eleven and a half of them.”
“You keep count?” Blaine chuckled, but he didn’t sound happy. “That’s just it, though. I don’t like all eleven and a half me’s. I don’t know which is really me, but I like the person that I am when I’m with you, and who I am when I’m with your family and your friends from glee club. I know I went a little overboard tonight with Rachel, but it felt so good not to have to…edit myself so strictly. Even when things were awkward, like with your dad, it was an honest kind of awkward. I’ll take that over buttoned-up Dalton me and skulking, angry Mason me any day. I want to be that person. That’s why I need to transfer.”
Kurt said softly, “Besides the you that I’m talking to right now, the you from tonight is my favorite, too.”
Burt left the door as he’d found it and walked down the hall. He couldn’t help but smile. For as much as he blundered with his manners and dinner table conversation skills, finally, finally, being the slightly crazy, mildly overprotective, rough-around-the-edges dad who helped run an equally crazy, overprotective, rough-around-the-edges home had paid off for once. And Kurt knew it. Even if he never admitted it out loud, that counted for a lot.
~~**~~**~~
On to Part C
Return to Part A
Burt often caught himself thinking that the best thing about Finn and Kurt dating nice but kind of up-tight spotlight-grabbers was it gave them something in common to commiserate over. Yeah, maybe Kurt’s year at Dalton having let them ease into being weekend-only-brothers first, then full-time brothers this summer, had been more important in the big scheme of things. Even so, the two boys wouldn’t have been kneeling side-by-side on the couch, looking over the back and out the window at the driveway right now if Rachel and Blaine weren’t both such weird combinations of cute and overwhelming.
“This dinner is either gonna be crazy good or a total train wreck, isn’t it?” Burt heard Finn say. The new house had an open floor plan, so he could see the boys in the living room while he and Carole shuttled food from the kitchen to the dining area.
“I don’t see what you guys are so nervous about,” Carole said. “It’s not like either of them are ‘meeting the parents’ for the first time, and having dinner with your significant other’s brother’s significant other is hardly anything for them to get nervous about.” She gave Burt a look as she said this. Sweet woman, she knew exactly what they were worried about.
Kurt sighed. “Are you kidding? We should’ve hired a camera crew and pitched this scenario to a reality show producer. Blaine may be polite, but when he’s passionate about something…and we all know about Rachel. If they get into a Streisand versus LuPone argument, they’ll make the Kardashians look like the Brady Bunch.”
Kurt was being melodramatic, and everyone knew it. Considering how little Rachel and Blaine liked being wrong, if they got into a disagreement, it would be a knock-down drag-out, no doubt about it. But because they were who they were, it would be the most polite and carefully-worded yet drama-queeny knock-down drag-out in history.
On second thought, Burt realized, Kurt wasn’t that far off. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as a reality TV family, but they definitely should’ve sold tickets.
An engine rumbled in the driveway, and headlights flashed in the window. Finn knocked his hand against Kurt’s arm. “Which one is it?”
Kurt leaned farther over the couch, nearly pressing his face against the glass to see. “‘IMA STAR’ vanity plate, which means you’re up, stud.”
Finn hopped off the couch, straightening his shirt collar and checking his fly as he made his way to the front door, Kurt trailing after him. Burt was busy trying not to drop the too-hot dish of green bean casserole that he’d stupidly insisted he could carry without potholders to watch Rachel’s grand entrance, but he heard her exchange chirrupy hellos with the boys and Carole.
“Good evening, Mr. Hummel,” Rachel said. Burt finally got the chance to look up. What people wore rarely registered with Burt, but he would’ve had to have been blind not to notice that her rain gear made her a dead ringer for the Morton Salt Girl. “Oh, you made me a portabella mushroom steak! How sweet. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but I sincerely appreciate your family’s sensitivity to my moral repugnance at feasting on the flesh and secretions of our furred and feathered friends.” She said it with a genuine smile, but Rachel still managed to compliment him in a way that made Burt feel guilty about the roast beef at the center of the table.
Before Burt had a chance to answer, Rachel spun away and swept through the room like a tiny yellow hurricane, coming to rest beside Kurt. “Has Blaine arrived yet? Good. Before your boyfriend shows up and you descend into sweet and well-earned but all-consuming sappiness, I need your serious input on-”
“Oh my god, you’re finally burning your animal sweaters and are asking for fashion advice, aren’t you?” Kurt practically crowed with glee. “Please, please let me style you. I swear I’ll do it for real this time and not use any looks associated with Olivia Newton-John as inspiration. Carole can even vouch for my skill.”
Rachel’s face hardened, and she shrugged off her raincoat with an extra flourish. Her short-sleeved sweater had a momma and baby giraffe on it, and a heart in the place where the sun would normally be in a scene like that. “Actually, I’ve been researching Broadway ballads to suggest to Mr. Schuester for our Sectionals set list when school starts, and I wanted you to weigh in on my short list.”
At least Kurt had the good sense to look chastened. “Oh.”
Finn muttered darkly, “Thanks for keeping things calm and not argue-y like we planned, bro.”
Before things could get any more awkward, the doorbell rang, and Kurt made a beeline for the front door to let Blaine in. Blaine entered, clothing as perfectly pressed and hair as perfectly lacquered down as ever. If it hadn’t been for Blaine’s animated face, how it went all moony whenever his eyes fell on Kurt and all grinning and dorky and delighted when he looked at anybody else, he would’ve looked like a very short mannequin. He hugged Kurt and whispered something in his ear that made him smile, and he kissed Carole on the cheek in that goofily gentlemanly way that always made Carole giggle. He shook Finn’s and Burt’s hands, and Burt still couldn’t help but feel guilty about his posture whenever he saw Blaine.
Blaine hesitated when he came to Rachel. Finn jumped into action after a soft elbow in the back from his mom. “Oh, right. Rachel, this is Kurt’s boyfriend Blaine. Blaine, this is my girlfriend Rachel.”
Blaine said, “Nice to meet you officially. I think we might’ve talked a bit at Regionals in the-”
“Blaine’s one of the main soloists for the Dalton Warblers,” Finn cut in. The woodenness made it clear he’d rehearsed this speech beforehand and was hell-bent on getting the introduction right, no matter how much he might actually be derailing it. He was so caught up in it he didn’t even notice the I know this already, dear, look that Rachel was practically trying to burn into his forehead. “Rachel’s a great singer, too. And her dads are gay. Both of them.”
It was probably cruel to laugh, but Burt had never seen Blaine dumbfounded before. A kid that polished, he’d been wondering if it was even possible. Burt bit his lip hard as he set out the serving ladles, and Carole turned her back on the kids and chuckled into a potholder.
Much to everyone’s surprise, it was Rachel who broke the awkwardness. “Though I attribute much of my success to my fathers’ unflagging faith in my talent and for putting me in singing, dancing, acting, and karate lessons from a very young age, which more than justifies my plan to name them first in my Tony Award acceptance speech, I attribute my natural ability to my biological mother, who is an impressive performer in her own right. Has Kurt told you the story of how I discovered my birth mother’s identity?”
Blaine made the mistake of shaking his head. They sat down at the round table, Carole on Burt’s right, then Blaine, Kurt, Finn, and Rachel on his left. Luckily for Burt, Rachel was too busy regaling them all with the story of the Vocal Adrenaline coach again to tell him “interesting” tidbits about slaughterhouse practices. This time through the story, she was going into a lot more detail about her boyfriend/spy than Burt had heard her do before.
Fifteen minutes later, she closed her monologue with, “My only comfort is the fact that someday this will all make excellent material for my one-woman autobiographical show a la Minelli on Minelli. But I’m so glad, Finn, that you brought this up,” she patted Finn’s hand and looked at him, which made Finn jerk awake and pretend he’d been interested, “because now that Kurt is returning to McKinley and New Directions, my experience is not only an inspirational story of overcoming heartache and rejection but also a cautionary tale.” Her eyes were boring into Blaine now. “In short, I don’t want Kurt to go through a Jesse St. James. Or to have our set list stolen and have to come up with a new one in the green room. Spontaneity may be one of New Directions’ many strengths, but we’ve overcome that particular form of adversity enough times now. It’s getting old.”
It took Blaine a moment to answer, probably because he was wondering whether Rachel was really done or not. “Don’t worry about that. I have heard about Jesse St. James, and that’s not me at all. Kurt and I have already discussed this, and we’ve agreed not to talk about glee clubs with each other. Along the lines of, ‘The first rule of Glee Club: don’t talk about Glee Club. The second rule of Glee Club-’”
“‘Do not talk about Glee Club,’” Finn and Burt both finished along with him, snickering. Rachel, Kurt, and Carole stared at them blankly.
“It’s from Fight Club. A movie,” Blaine explained to Kurt. “My brothers made me watch it.”
Kurt nodded in acceptance. For as often as he’d heard Blaine say it, Burt was beginning to suspect that “my brothers made me” was actually Blaine’s kind way of saying, “I liked it, but it’s too masculine for you” to Kurt. That theory got upended when Blaine added in a low voice he apparently hoped only Kurt could hear, “It’s gorier than what you tend to like, but it’s probably still worth watching for Brad Pitt’s abs alone.”
After a moment of apparently contemplating Brad Pitt’s abs in his mind, Kurt said, “And that’s all if Blaine is even at Dalton next term. More potato salad, anyone?”
Burt recognized Kurt’s tone as the one he pulled out when he was underplaying something important in the hope that Burt would miss it. It didn’t work. “You’re not going back to Dalton, Blaine?” Burt asked.
“Maybe,” Blaine answered. There was something very odd about Blaine’s expression, but Burt couldn’t pinpoint what. “Listening to Kurt’s reasoning for going back to McKinley, how it makes more sense to save money for a good college than to go to an expensive high school, and now that Karofsky’s graduated and the school board has taken a harder line on bullying-it does make some sense.”
“You’re thinking of transferring to McKinley?” Burt asked. “I thought your folks lived in Mason.”
Blaine actually looked uncomfortable, and not in the amusing what-the-hell-Finn? way like before. “I went to the public school in Mason before Dalton. I…”
Kurt jumped in when he saw Blaine floundering. “Of course he wants to transfer to a school with a good glee club so his talent isn’t wasted. Plus, his aunt lives just outside Lima.”
Weirdly enough, Rachel saved them all from uncomfortable silence again. “That would be wonderful. I for one am always happy to see great new talent added to New Directions.” Finn choked on a green bean. Rachel blinked, clearly restraining herself from glaring. When he stopped coughing, Rachel continued, “Yes, well, it’ll be nice to have even greater variety in my duet possibilities. Your voice would be well-suited to some songs that are in neither Finn’s nor Kurt’s wheelhouses.” She still smiled, but she pointed her fork at Blaine for emphasis. “But don’t go thinking you’re going to get all the solos like you have singing with the Warblers.”
Finn said, “Man, even if you care that much about glee, why the hell would you want to come to McKinley? I mean, Kurt coming back is one thing. He misses home, and he suffered through the crap long enough that he misses some people at school, too. Plus, he knows how much it sucks and that he can handle it. Kurt’s told you how much it sucks, right? OW!”
Burt looked up in time to see both Kurt and Rachel glaring at Finn. He would bet money that Finn had just gotten kicked in both shins.
This time, Burt figured it was his turn to bail Blaine out. He tried to do it as nonchalantly as possible, talking as he reached for the bowl of cut-up watermelon and speared pieces onto his plate. “What do your parents think about this? They’re okay with you not living at home?”
“They were fine with me living at Dalton,” Blaine said. His voice was uncharacteristically mumble-y and hostile teenager-ish.
Later, Burt realized he should’ve looked up at that point, but he didn’t. “Well, yeah, but Dalton’s different. We let Kurt live at Dalton, too, but that was because the damn school board here wouldn’t do their job and keep him safe, and Dalton had the zero-tolerance policy. There’s no way we would’ve let Kurt move away from home otherwise.”
Burt had meant for that last part to come off as parentally loving and responsible, and he was pretty sure it had, so he was extra surprised when he felt a swift kick under the table from Carole. Burt set the watermelon bowl aside and looked up. Carole was grimacing, Rachel looked sympathetic but curious, Finn held a forkful of green beans in mid-air like the conversation had confused him mid-bite, and Kurt was silently but clearly panicking. All of these reactions, it appeared, were because Blaine looked like someone had just shot his dog.
It dawned on Burt that he’d always assumed Blaine’s parents had sent him to Dalton for the same reasons he and Carole had sent Kurt there. Kurt had mentioned that Blaine had been bullied in junior high, but from the look on Blaine’s face, something about Burt’s assumption was wrong. He couldn’t figure out why that would make Blaine upset, but he could tell he’d stepped in it but good.
“Not everybody goes to Dalton for that reason, though, I know. It makes sense because parents want the best for their kids in academics, too,” Burt said, scrambling for a way out of whatever this was and not even sure he was making sense. “And the whole boarding school thing is weird for our family, but I bet there’s lots of kids whose dads and uncles and brothers all went to Dalton. Living away from home might be normal-tradition, even. Your brothers went to Dalton, too?”
“No,” Blaine answered. His voice wasn’t working right. In fact, it was the most pitiful sound Burt had ever heard the poor kid make.
“Oh.” Fuck.
Burt didn’t realize it at the time, but much later, he figured out that Kurt completely consciously chose the nuclear option to take the table’s attention away from Blaine’s transfer and to keep it far away from there for the rest of the evening.
“Blaine, have I ever told you about the ‘Get Happy’-‘Happy Days’ duet Rachel and I did for glee?”
Blaine knew when a conversational life preserver was being thrown at him, and he latched onto it for dear life. “Really? Like Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald did?”
Everyone looked up when Rachel’s fork clattered on her plate. Finn’s eyes were particularly wide.
Rachel was outwardly composed, but anybody who’d been around her before could tell she was a volcano about to blow. It was exactly the same look she’d given Burt months ago when he’d said he was thinking about taking a weekend off to go pheasant hunting.
“You mean like Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, I’m sure,” Rachel said.
Burt didn’t think they could, but Finn’s eyes actually went wider. Finn mouthed at Kurt, “Oh crap. Dude, stop this!”
Blaine was the only one who didn’t recognize that Mount Rachel was about to erupt. “Them too,” he said casually.
Since he didn’t know what you did to prepare for volcanic eruptions, Burt just thought to himself, batten down the hatches.
The debate that followed was a scene that Burt would never forget for the rest of his life. It wasn’t even fair to compare Rachel to a volcano, because she wasn’t mad. Neither was Blaine. They were both just intense. Rachel and Blaine’s clear, keen, and scarily passionate debate convinced Burt that one of the two of them would be President someday, if they took half as much interest in taxes and Social Security as they did in vocal range and timbre, whatever that was.
Burt, Carole, Kurt, and Finn sat back and watched, heads swiveling back and forth like they were watching Agassi and Sampras go at it. Or maybe Serena and Venus Williams. Billie Jean King versus Bobby Riggs would make the genders right, but Riggs was kind of a douche and hadn’t even given King much of a run for her money, so that comparison wasn’t fair. At some point, Burt realized that if the debate was as enthralling as it seemed it was, he really shouldn’t be thinking about tennis as they bandied arguments about Broadway stars back and forth. And yet, it still worked, because he didn’t understand what the hell they were arguing about anyway. The entertainment value had nothing to do with the content; it was all about their wild facial expressions and odd gestures. They would’ve both made good silent movie stars, or cartoon characters.
When Burt finally tore his attention away from those two for a minute, he wasn’t surprised to see Finn staring at them in confusion that probably matched Burt’s own expression. He was a bit startled that Carole had that little crease between her eyebrows she usually only got when she knew Finn or Kurt was trying to pull a fast one on her. He was most surprised that Kurt, who loved Broadway and being all intense and dramatic as much as Rachel and Blaine did, wasn’t jumping into the fray, until he saw Kurt’s face. The way Kurt looked at Blaine as the other boy vigorously defended LuPone’s honor and creative choices made Burt close his eyes and repeat to himself, no, my son does not have an ‘O’ face, and even if he does, I did not just see it.
By far the strangest thing of all-besides that both Rachel and Blaine somehow cleaned their plates without taking a break or speaking with their mouths full-was that by dessert, the two were smiling at each other as they discussed. By the time they said good night and Finn and Kurt helped them on with their jackets, they were hugging and planning the best way to share their rare recordings with one another. Somehow, after all that fierce disagreement, they were…friends?
When the door closed, Finn turned around, jaw slack and eyes unfocused. “I said it’d either be a crazy good dinner or a train wreck,” he said. “It was. I’m just not sure which.”
Even Kurt looked stunned. “Crazy good, I think. Even so, we should be a little afraid of how well those two hit it off.”
“Blaine isn’t, like, a switch-hitter, is he?” Finn asked. Kurt glared indignantly and flushed. Finn continued, “Because I know Rachel said she doesn’t want you to go through a Jesse St. James, and I don’t want you to, either. But even more than that, I don’t want me and Rachel to go through another Jesse St. James, and Blaine kind of has that same insanely intense music lover thing going for him.”
Kurt breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, I thought you were asking if he and I-never mind. Sports metaphors can be confusing, and we’ll leave it at that. To answer your question, no, I’m fairly certain Blaine does not want in Rachel’s hideous kick-pleated skirts. Considering that his last crush on a girl was the pink Power Ranger, I’d say you’re safe from him being competition.”
Carole finally shook herself out of the Broadway diva debate daze and said, “I think we could all use some coffee.”
“Good call. That’s what the Red Cross always hands out to survivors of natural disasters,” Burt added half-seriously.
They all stood in the kitchen, silently processing what had just happened until the coffee was ready. Then they took their mugs into the living room. Burt could see the Red Cross’s logic; the warmth and familiarity of the drink were calming and cleared his head. Without the coffee, Burt might have never remembered that Kurt had purposely pushed the conversation in that weird and dangerous direction to avoid something else. He was pretty sure Carole would have remembered it either way, though.
“Kurt,” Carole said as sat down on the couch next to Kurt. “I don’t know how to ask this politely, but is Blaine out to his parents?” At Kurt’s odd look, Carole hurriedly added, “I know that it’s not really any of my business, but I spoke with his parents at the Warblers’ spring concert. I just assumed they knew the two of you were together. I was wracking my brain all through dinner, trying to figure out if I might have said something that caused problems for him at home, or-”
“No, he’s out to his family, and they know about me,” Kurt reassured her, though he still acted like he was holding back.
“Okay. I wasn’t trying to pry. I just wondered, considering how uncomfortable he was when his parents were brought up. Especially since you never go over to his house.”
“Wait-never?” Burt asked. As soon as he said it, he realized it was true, even though he’d never noticed it before.
“Dude, Blaine’s parents must be, like, Meet the Parents scary if you never go there and come here instead. Rachel’s two dads combined aren’t as scary as Burt. No offense, Burt,” Finn said. “Like, Darth Vader scary,” he added after a little more thought.
Kurt huffed and shook his head. “They’re not scary, they’re just-” Kurt’s head drooped, and he pinched the bridge of his nose.
Burt felt his blood pressure rise. It would be bad enough if Blaine’s parents looked down on a kid for having rough manners like-well, like Burt’s own manners, but Kurt had instructed his toys on which utensils to use for the cheese course when he was four. If they looked down their noses at Kurt, it was based on grubby money and connections, plain and simple. That Burt could not condone. Yes, he himself had been standoffish with Blaine at first, until he’d been sure Blaine’s intentions with Kurt were as honorable as a teenage boy’s intentions could be with someone he was attracted to, but that was beside the point. The assholes probably drove a Ferrari or a Lambo or something else that cost as much as Burt’s house but was impossible to find replacement parts for, too.
Burt wanted nothing more than to find out how Kurt’s sentence ended, but he forced himself to say, “Like Carole said, it’s none of our business. So long as they treat you with respect, you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to.”
“I have no problem talking about it at all-frankly, a little outside perspective might be refreshing-but Blaine…it’s a touchy subject for him.” He could see Kurt war with himself for a moment, then relent. “Nothing ever leaves this room?”
Burt nodded as he sat down, leaning his elbows on his legs.
“Of course, honey,” Carole said. Finn nodded as well.
For once, Kurt seemed uncomfortable with having everyone’s attention. “Now I’ve built it up as if it’s some huge deal…. His family just isn’t like ours. Before we were officially dating, Blaine’s parents came up to Dalton for a visit and took us and a couple other Warblers out to dinner. They were perfectly polite and gracious, but that was it. From the way they spoke to Blaine, I don’t think somebody listening in could have figured out which one of us was their son and which were the random boys they’d just met.”
Carole put her hand on his shoulder. “Well, like you said, not every family is like ours. Maybe they’re just not as affectionate in public as we are.”
Kurt shook his head again. “From the way Blaine talks, that’s how they always are. He says they’re tolerant, but he makes ‘tolerant’ sound like a dirty word.”
“But they pay for Dalton,” Finn said. “They cared enough to pull him out of his old school, right?”
“Sort of,” Kurt said. That made Burt sit up in his chair. Kurt sighed and explained, “Blaine’s parents didn’t pull him out of public school the way you guys did with me. Dalton was Blaine’s idea, not his parents’, and it took a long time and a lot of begging for them to come around to it. Blaine’s never come out and said it, but I get the feeling they passive aggressively hold the Dalton tuition over his head. Like, the bullying wasn’t his fault, but it is his fault that he couldn’t deal with it, so shouldn’t he be so grateful to them for indulging his weakness by sending him away?”
Even Finn looked shocked. “They actually say that kind of thing to him?” he asked.
“No. No one in that family ever says anything. That I could tell from the dinner in Westerville. It’s all implied.” When Finn screwed up his eyebrows in confusion, Kurt added, “Like the way I insult stupid people by calling them names they won’t understand anyway. But it’s not fair to do that to family.”
“Sorry, still not following,” Finn said. Burt was glad; he was getting a little lost in here, too.
Kurt said, “For example, Blaine would have every right to get mad at his dad for criticizing him for being a short, queer music nerd, right? But Blaine would look silly if he got mad at his dad for going on and on about his brother Cole getting recruited by college basketball teams, and Tristan being at the top of his med school class, and Miles’s baby girl looking just like her mother, but with the Anderson eyes. When you hear Mr. Anderson say all those nice things about Blaine’s brothers, though, you can practically feel the disappointment and criticism behind them. But you can’t call him on it, because he didn’t say anything bad at all.
“Anyway, I think that’s why Blaine wants to transfer to McKinley. I know it was a lot harder for him to leave his school than it was for me, without even factoring in his parents, but I don’t think that’s-”
“Harder than a death threat?” Burt asked in disbelief.
Kurt turned to him, and he looked like he knew he was about to give a lecture he wished he’d never have to give. “I want to be clear. I’m not saying I’m happy somebody threatened to kill me. I’m also not saying that you or Carole did anything wrong before the threat, Dad. But that happening made leaving easier because it didn’t feel like I was making a choice to leave. Once it was out in the open and I saw how seriously you took it, everyone, including me, knew I wasn’t safe there anymore. As humiliating and terrifying as the-”
Kurt paused, catching himself. Burt knew something else had happened in those last few weeks at McKinley that Kurt had never talked about. As good as Kurt said he felt about going back there in the fall, he still wasn’t coming clean on that one. “As bad as the more general bullying was, it was so hard to draw the line between ‘suck it up, high school is this miserable everywhere and the morons will all be working for you someday anyway’ harassment and ‘cut your losses and run’ tormenting.”
That was hard to hear, because Burt knew it was true. “Are you sure you really want to go back to McKinley in the fall?” Burt asked, making sure Kurt was looking him in the eye. “Because the money issue-we can still make Dalton work, so don’t worry about that.”
“I want to go back,” Kurt said evenly. “I needed a place like Dalton this year, but as much as it pains me to say it, I miss McKinley. Or at least I miss some of the people there.” He looked at Finn as he spoke, and Finn grinned at him in return. “I’m ready.”
Later that night after the boys went up to their rooms, as he helped Carole with the dishes, Burt tried to think his way through what had happened that evening. Yeah, maybe he’d been channeling De Niro a little too heavily when he asked Blaine about transferring to McKinley (hey, at least he’d done it in a Meet the Parents way, rather than a The Godfather: Part II way). He was sorry if he put Blaine in a tough spot, but Burt firmly believed it was better to err on the side of bluntness rather than push stuff under the rug. That’s how his and Kurt’s relationship had always gone, and the few times it hadn’t, like with the bullying, the hiding had made things a lot rougher in the long run. If Blaine’s family wasn’t like that, then yeah, it’d probably take him some extra time to get used to the Hummel-Hudson clan. Sometimes a little craziness-including a little of Rachel Berry’s particular brand of crazy-was something you had to accept to make a family work. Kurt hadn’t seemed that upset after dinner, but Burt still wondered if Kurt understood that, or if he was upstairs right now vowing never to let Blaine near the Lima Inquisition again.
He went upstairs to talk to Kurt after Carole ran him out of the kitchen with a “Just go already-I can tell when you’re preoccupied better than you can” and a playful snap of a dishrag on his butt. He saw Kurt’s door was part-way open. Just as he was about to knock, he heard a voice that was definitely not Kurt’s coming from the bedroom.
“You’re sure your dad doesn’t think I’m some crazy stalker who’s only transferring schools so I can be around you?” Blaine asked, his voice distorted as it came through speakers.
“I’m sure. Despite the gruff exterior, he honestly does like you,” Kurt replied. Burt peeked in the room without moving the door and saw Kurt in his pajamas, sitting cross-legged on his bed and rubbing lotion on his hands as he talked to his laptop screen.
Blaine sighed. “It’s just-I don’t know who I am, Kurt. I thank my lucky stars that you can somehow love me, because I really don’t see how you can.”
“Of course I love you,” Kurt soothed. “I love each and every version of you, too. All eleven and a half of them.”
“You keep count?” Blaine chuckled, but he didn’t sound happy. “That’s just it, though. I don’t like all eleven and a half me’s. I don’t know which is really me, but I like the person that I am when I’m with you, and who I am when I’m with your family and your friends from glee club. I know I went a little overboard tonight with Rachel, but it felt so good not to have to…edit myself so strictly. Even when things were awkward, like with your dad, it was an honest kind of awkward. I’ll take that over buttoned-up Dalton me and skulking, angry Mason me any day. I want to be that person. That’s why I need to transfer.”
Kurt said softly, “Besides the you that I’m talking to right now, the you from tonight is my favorite, too.”
Burt left the door as he’d found it and walked down the hall. He couldn’t help but smile. For as much as he blundered with his manners and dinner table conversation skills, finally, finally, being the slightly crazy, mildly overprotective, rough-around-the-edges dad who helped run an equally crazy, overprotective, rough-around-the-edges home had paid off for once. And Kurt knew it. Even if he never admitted it out loud, that counted for a lot.
~~**~~**~~
On to Part C